I have a crush on a former coworker and just found out it was mutual. While we aren’t specifically told not to date in the workplace, you do have to disclose your relationship to management so they can be sure there’s no conflict of interest. We are only seeing each other during work breaks, so we haven’t said anything to anyone.

During one of our unpaid lunch breaks, we are walking toward the exit when one of our regular customers approached me. He has a mental handicap, usually has someone with him to shop, and often calls the female associates “sweetie” or “darling.” He’s one of my favorite customers because he’s always happy and has nice things to say about the people he meets.

Customer: “Hey, sweetie, going to lunch?”

Me: “Yup, just heading out now. Gonna go to [Sandwich Shop].”

Customer: “All righty, you have a good day!”

As soon as he’s out of earshot, my coworker speaks.

Coworker: “What a f****** r*****d.”

Me: *Shocked* “What?”

Coworker: “That guy!”

Me: “You mean [Customer]?”

Coworker: “How is that pervert not in jail?”

Me: “Because he’s done nothing wrong.”

Coworker: “He called you ‘sweetie.’”

Me: “Yeah. He calls lots of people ‘sweetie.’ It’s just his greeting.”

Coworker: “He should be banned. F****** disgusting.”

Me: “Um… are you jealous? Because that’s—”

Coworker: “Of a r****d? Are you kidding?”

Me: “Why does it matter how he addresses me? He’s not—”

Coworker: “He obviously wants to f*** you.”

Me: “He does not.”

I stop just outside the exit doors. 

Me: “What is wrong with you?”

He puts his arm around my shoulder.

Coworker: “I’m just looking out for you. You can’t talk to guys like that. They’re pigs.”

I push him off me.

Me: “And I suppose you don’t want anything from me?”

Coworker: *Laughs* “Well, I mean, I’m not—”

He hits his chest twice, makes the childish hand gesture for calling someone the R-word.

Coworker: “—like him.”

Me: “You know, I don’t think we’ll have to tell management about anything between us.”

Coworker: “What?”

Me: “I don’t want to go out with you.”

Coworker: “Because of him?!”

Me: “Because of you.”

I walked back into the store and sat in the break room for my entire lunch, not eating. One of the managers noticed and asked what was wrong. I told her about the conversation, and she thanked me and left. Since he was off the clock, there was no real repercussion, but I think it did save me a lot of trouble down the road.

Back in January of this year, I went on a date with a guy I had met on a popular dating app — the one where the girl has to make the first move. 

We met up for dinner and drinks and things were going very well! He was nice and funny and I was enjoying his company. He was an EMT; this is important later in the story. 

After dinner, he suggested we go to an ice rink to go ice skating. I was skeptical, as I’m a very clumsy person and can barely stand up on my own two feet on solid ground, and I knew I was going to thoroughly embarrass myself at the rink. But I said yes anyway. 

For the first hour, things went well. We were both hobbling along the side of the wall and making fun of each other’s form, but I got cocky, pushed away from the wall, and ate it. I landed on my butt and tried to catch myself with my arm. I landed so hard my ears were ringing and I was woozy. 

My date had to help me off the ice and he immediately went into EMT mode, rolling up my sleeve and feeling around my arm to see if he could feel any breaks. 

Besides the numbness in my arm, we both agreed that it probably wasn’t broken, and I turned down his offer to take me to the emergency room. 

We spent the next six hours on a cliff overlooking the beach, with me flinching at the slightest touch to my arm.

When I woke up the next day, I was in tears. My entire arm was black and blue and swollen beyond belief; I couldn’t even put a shirt on without crying out in pain. I had to have my brother take me to Urgent Care. 

While at Urgent Care, the doctor on call told me that not only was my elbow broken, but that I had fractured my wrist, as well, when I tried to stop myself from falling. The impact of me landing on my wrist fractured it and broke my elbow almost immediately, but the massive swelling that immediately took place is what made my date unable to tell that my arm was broken. 

There was so much fluid in my arm that it felt like a normal arm. 

I was immediately taken off work for the next four months, as I am a barista while finishing school, and I teased my date about my arm all the time. We dated for a month but decided we were better off as friends.

We’re still friends to this day, and I still give him crap about my elbow.

It still hurts when the weather gets cold, too, even after having it out of a sling for six weeks.

My 23-year-old brother-in-law is a six in looks and a two in personality. He is the youngest out of four siblings, so on top of having the spoiled baby syndrome, he is egotistical, selfish, and condescending. He is not above making fun of things like speech impediments to make himself feel superior or talking down to people, despite being the kind of guy who could easily be hit by a bus by not looking both ways.

He also is an electrical engineer which, for non-engineers, means he has a God-complex and is always right. And for whatever reason, this catch of a man thinks he deserves the perfect woman by his standards: a ten physically and a fifteen intellectually and a personality that matches him, despite never taking the time to get to know any of these girls. It is sufficient to say that he is squarely single and can’t figure out why from these encounters:

Date #1: He decides not to see a girl after having sex on the first date, because it was “just okay.” Naturally, he ghosts her.

Date #2: He decides not to see a girl again because she is an ER nurse and he is offended that she is late to their first date.

Date #3: Potential girlfriend refuses to get physical and just wants to hold hands because this is her first date ever.

Date #4: The girl is religious so that makes her automatically insane.

Date #5: She hasn’t seen one obscure anime, so she must have lied to him about liking anime.

The list of his jerky exploits goes on and on and on as he picks out a new insecure girl only to reject them in a horrible, self-righteous manner. I think he is going to be single for a while. If only he would stop going on dates and screwing with these poor girls.

(For my birthday, my gift request from my boyfriend is just a thoughtful, quality-time date. He doesn’t disappoint. We have a lovely time watching a movie together and then painting together at a local park. Afterward, he tells me there’s one last part of the date and we pull up to a small sushi restaurant in a shopping plaza. He looks excited as we do.)

Me: “Aw! I love sushi.”

Boyfriend: “Yeah! Do you recognize it?”

Me: *confusedly* “Er… I came here once with [Friend]?”

Boyfriend: *still smiling at me* “Are you sure you weren’t here… with me? Like two and a half years ago?”

Me: “Oh! Are you talking about our first date?”

Boyfriend: *excitedly* “Yeah!”

Me: *looking around* ”Babe, this is not where we had our first date. We had our first date at [Sushi Restaurant twenty minutes away].”

Boyfriend: “WHAT?”

(To be fair, the names of the places were almost identical. And I thought it was hilarious.)

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m working with my shift manager and one other driver. Out of the three of us, I have the lowest rank but the most experience by a long shot, which lets me get away with a lot. It’s usually busy on this holiday as people have stay-in dates or feed babysitters while they go out, and we always get the requests for heart-shaped pizzas, which we don’t offer. We tried one year and it screwed up our times and messed up food cost because they didn’t “look right” and needed to be redone. Today has been no different, as I’ve turned a couple of people down by late lunch.

I come in from a delivery and see my coworker writing on a box in marker. I glance at it and it says something like, “Although I can’t be your Valentine this year, know I will always love you.” I just chuckle and move on until that coworker comes to me and tells me it’s for a customer that will be calling back and the pizza is for his girlfriend, but they’re on a “break.” I stare at her for a few moments and promptly nope my way out of it. I am not getting involved in whatever that is.

She leaves on delivery and I get back to my morning prep work. The phone rings and I answer. Surprise! It’s Mister Romantic. I begin to humor him, thinking I’ll just pass it off to my coworker, until he says it’s supposed to be heart-shaped. I tell him we don’t do that and he says my coworker said we did. 

I ask my shift manager if they want to go through the trouble for this guy and I get a noncommittal response. I go back and tell him no. Then, I find out more of the story.

This guy is living and working in Ohio and is trying to send a heart-shaped pizza and flowers to his — on break — girlfriend’s workplace here in Florida. He begins to tell me that his pizza place in Ohio does it and it’s really easy… blah blah blah… Meanwhile, my brain is putting together all the facts and realizing just how weird and stalkerish this sounds. Scenes of showing up to an unwitting escapee of a relationship and being turned away start playing in my head along with it.

He finishes trying to shame me into making his pizza heart-shaped and I tell him to call back when the coworker that promised it is back if he wants it, but the two of us there at the moment aren’t making it. I get, “I guess if you don’t do it, you don’t do it,” from him and work towards getting off the call.

Afterward, I relate what I learned to my shift manager and they agree that it sounds bad. When my coworker returns, I relate what I learned to her, and she says she knows and thought it was sweet. My manager glance at each other and I tell her, “We think it’s creepy. If he calls back, you can deal with it, but we want no part.” She grumbles a bit but lets it go. 

Fortunately, he never calls back.

I passed this story to some of my friends, and they all agreed. Super creepy.