I’m shopping in a supermarket. I turn to go down the next aisle when I see a woman and her daughter blocking it with their trolley. I pause a moment to consider getting past them when I notice that she is applying nail polish; it’s so unusual and blatant that it makes me stop in my tracks.

She has several very expensive bottles of nail polish opened and set up on the trolley seat like her own personal display and has left the shelves a mess of boxes and opened bottles.

I watch her finish doing a nail, hold her hand out to consider the colour, frown, and then put the bottle back on the shelf. This shop doesn’t have testers, so she has just ruined another bottle.

I blurt out without thinking.

Me: “Wow, the thieves are getting bold these days.“

Instantly, I regret saying anything at all. I was just going to scuttle off, but then she comes back with this stupid comment.

Customer: “I am not a thief! I haven’t taken anything.”

Me: “And you’re going to pay for the products you used?“

Customer: “It’s not stealing! I put it back!”

Me: “You still used it! You can’t take a bite out of an apple and not pay for it.”

Customer: “It isn’t an apple; it’s makeup!”

Me: “You are just utterly clueless.”

Customer: “What’s it to you, anyway? You don’t know what it’s like to be a single mum!”

She goes on and on. I tell her that I simply do not care; her circumstances do not make it okay to steal, which riles her up even more. I walk off, at which point she rams me with her trolley, the whole time ranting and raving about how hard it is to be her.

We get a few aisles down. She is still in pursuit and has struck the back of my heels twice already when an employee comes over.

Employee: “Is there a problem?”

Me: “Yes, I caught her stealing and now she’s mad at me.”

Customer: “What? No, she was rude. I demand you kick her out!”

Employee: “What was it that she was stealing?”

Me: “Makeup — well, nail polish. She has opened a dozen bottles. I bet her nails are still wet.”

Customer: “It’s not stealing! I put it back!”

The employee radios for loss prevention. They lead her away with her shouting her innocence.

Me: “What’s going to happen to her?”

Employee: “They will ask her to pay for the products she damaged or ban her from the store.”

Me: “I doubt she will pay.”

Employee: “The crazy ones never do. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.”

When I worked in a print shop, I was the only person in the office. I often had people treat me like a therapist, and of course, I was trapped.

This woman came in to have a bunch of scraps of paper copied — torn notebook pages, scratch paper, ripped sticky notes, things like that. As I was copying everything and meticulously spreading them out to her liking, she started telling me why she needed these copies.

I wish I could remember it all, but she told me a convoluted story about how the young new pastor at her church was sweet on a married woman, caused a divorce, and then was flaunting his new bride.

Apparently, this customer was the organist and she knew something secret about the affair, and someone was trying to keep her quiet by stealing her organ music in hopes that she would leave. She had apparently confronted several people, but no one would listen to her, and she was laughed out of the church.

She later went to the pastor’s home and punched him in the face. The reason she needed all these notes was to use as “evidence” in her trial that she was actually the victim.

Folks. She talked to me for four hours. Four. And no, I never got her name.

I cycle to the pub and hide my bike behind a few buildings, not locked. Last orders come, and my bike isn’t there. It’s my own fault for not locking it, but no one likes to be judged, right? I have a look around and go back to the pub.

Me: “Hi, do you know if there is CCTV out the front? My bike has walked.”

Customer: “Was it locked?”

Barkeep: “I don’t think so, sorry.”

Customer: “Police won’t be interested. You won’t get it back.”

Me: *To the barkeep* “Thanks for your help.” *To the customer* “Thanks, but that isn’t what I asked, and I can deal with the authorities.”

He’s right, though. If you don’t take basic precautions, what do you expect? I report it anyway.

Me: “Hi, can I report the theft of a bicycle?” *Gives details*

Police #1: “I’ve logged that, incident [number]. I hope you get it back. Good luck.”

My phone rings soon after.

Police #2: “We have your bike here at [Police Station ten km away].”

Me: “I… How? Did somebody presume it was lost or something? I’ll come and get it in the morning.”

Police #2: “I don’t know, probably.”

My phone rings again soon after.

Me: “Bicycle theft victim answering service, how may I be of assistance?”

Police #3: “Would you like to make a statement for court?”

Me: “How can you make a statement about a lost bicycle?”

Police #3: “Actually, I confiscated it.”

Me: “Wait a minute. At 10:00 pm, I leave a $50 bike in a car park, not secured in any way. Two hours later, it is in the police station. How did that happen?”

Police #3: “I was on a foot patrol. A ten-year-old boy cycled past. I knew him, and I knew it wasn’t his bike, and I’m treating it as theft.”

Me: “Where?”

Police: #3: “On [Street the pub is on].”

Me: “Well, I can’t fault that for service. What will you do with him? Have a chat with the [jargon for officer who deals with children]?”

Police #3: “Realistically? I’ll give him a telling off with a social worker in his care home.”

I now have the full picture. At 11:00 pm, a child absconded from his care home and took my bike for a joyride. Two hundred metres away, he cycled past a cop. Game over. I was exceptionally lucky.

Me: “If it makes it easier to explain to him that taking bicycles is wrong, then I’ll make a statement.”

Police #3: “Are you one of my colleagues? You know some cop-speak.”

Me: “Not currently, but some of my in-laws are.”

My phone rings again.

Police #4: “Are you in now, and I’ll drive this bicycle out to you?”

Me: “If you can fit it into your car. It’s 0130; I would have thought you would be busy.”

Police #4: “No, it’s Tuesday. Actually, we’ll leave it to the morning; you’ve clearly had a few pints and I can’t take a drunk statement.”

Me: “See you then.”

The next morning, two detectives arrived at my house with the bicycle. They took a statement of one paragraph that basically said, “My bike wasn’t where I left it.” I thanked them profusely and assured them I would be more careful. Through unofficial channels, I heard that the conversation took place between the boy, the youth police officer, and a social worker attached to his care home.

But really, you absolutely can’t fault the service from law enforcement. Foolish man abandons cheap bicycle. Child finds it and goes for a joyride. It is confiscated from him on the same street and returned to the owner the next day. What are the odds?

About twenty-one years ago, I was making my bi-monthly drive from Duluth back to the Twin Cities. The drive up and down I-35 is boring. At the time, the speed limit was sixty-five miles per hour, and it was a solid three-hour drive from Duluth to the Twin Cities driving at this speed. My car at the time was a 1989 Ford Tempo and the color was called “almond,” but it was really an off-white/tan looking color. The car wasn’t fast, but it was awesome with getting high miles per gallon, and it got me from A to B without issues. The speedometer only went to eighty-five, but on a few occasions I buried the needle and I’m sure I was flirting with 100, but I didn’t make a habit of it.

It was Sunday, early morning, and I was about halfway home from Duluth. The speed limit was sixty-five miles per hour, but I was cruising at eighty-five. As I came around a bend in the highway, about a good mile down the road on the straightaway I saw the glimmering of a car sitting in the median.

I thought to myself, “Crap, a state trooper is sitting there.”

I killed the cruise control and let my car slow down closer to the speed limit, and I continued on. As I passed the trooper, he was not moving, and I impatiently watched in the rearview mirror to see if he’d come out. I got maybe half a mile past him and started to feel relieved that he didn’t follow me, but that feeling of relief soon vanished as I watched him pulling out of the median.

I thought to myself, “Son of a b****. I’m screwed.”

I rounded a bend in the highway, and the trooper was far enough behind that he was no longer in direct line of sight in the rearview mirror. I was in the right lane, and I was coming up on an exit off the highway. I passed it, and a car was coming up the onramp. I got in the left lane to allow this car to merge onto the highway.

The car merging onto the highway was the exact same make, model, and color as my car, had Minnesota license plates on it, and had a single male driving the car — just like mine.

I’d been checking the rearview mirror this whole time and the trooper hadn’t come into view yet, so the trooper never saw this other car merge onto the highway.

About ten seconds later, the trooper came into view, and he had picked up speed to catch up to me. About thirty seconds later, he was right on the tail of the guy driving my cloned car in the right lane, and I was driving along next to him in the left lane. The trooper hung back behind both of us for a couple of minutes, and then he dropped back and went into a cross point in the median on the highway.

My best guess is that the trooper didn’t know which of us had been speeding, and after pulling up our license plates in his system, nothing came back to give him a reason to pull either of us over.

The rest of my drive home was much closer to the speed limit.

I am working for an eCommerce company that sells online courses. One of our USPs [Unique Selling Points] is the fact that we offer a one-hour free tutor service if you purchase a course. One day, my boss came to me.

Boss: “Please create a page for this category and list these products.”

Before I started to create the page, I noticed that the company didn’t have any tutors for this specific category.

Me: “We’re not gonna offer the Mentor service, right? Since we don’t have any tutors for this category at the moment.”

Boss: “No, we are going to advertise with the service even if we don’t have a tutor at the moment.”

Me: “You do know that we can be sued by a client, right?”

Boss: “What’s the problem?”

Guess it’s time for me to find a new job.