My spouse and I are traveling in San Francisco. We decide to use a car rental service that lets people rent out their personal or spare car. Since I’m most familiar with a particular kind of car, we pick that kind to rent. We buy the optional extra insurance on our vehicle, just in case. One of the things I’ve noticed with [Car]s is that there’s a tendency for the back latch to fall off.

So, we use the app and rent someone’s old used [Car]. The back latch is loose, and I know it’s going to fall off. I warn my spouse and mark it in the damages. No problem.

Sure enough, the latch falls off partway through the trip.

This story, though, isn’t actually about the latch. It’s about what we discover when we are cleaning up the car to return it. In the driver’s side pocket, there is a glass tube with brown residue in it, wrapped in tin foil. And underneath the driver’s seat is a mysterious triangular hole cut in the floor of the car for no readily apparent reason.

My spouse and I figure that it is probably a crack pipe and that the car is probably used in some sort of drug smuggling, hence the triangular hole in the floor.

We debate reporting it to the cops. Ultimately, we decide not to because we are on vacation and we are afraid of what would happen if they got involved.

When we get home, they don’t charge us for the latch… but we charge the insurance we got for the hole in the floor.

My father used to work for a company that made things like diapers and other such products. As such, they worked with what is known as super-absorbent. This is the stuff that actually absorbs and holds in the liquid. For anyone who has never seen super-absorbent in its raw form, it is basically a white granular powder, kind of like sugar.

One time, well before the increased security from 9/11, my dad’s boss was flying to a business conference. In his suitcase, he had several samples of super-absorbent to show. Unfortunately, while in the terminal, his suitcase was stolen.

If you have ever played with super-absorbent, or even seen what happens to a diaper in a pool, you’ll know that when it comes into contact with liquid: it turns into a gel and expands. It expands quite a bit, actually. So, if it were inside a confined space when that happened, like, say, inside someone’s sinus cavity…

The boss was able to retrieve his briefcase later from the police at the nearby hospital. He never did get his super-absorbent samples back, though.

This story is part of our Best Of May 2021 roundup!

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I’m a new cashier in a supermarket. When we are not busy, I will help stock shelves. Half an hour before close, I am cleaning my register; luckily, we have no customers. My manager is restocking the cigarettes when a guy high as a kite walks in wearing nothing but a white sock on his left foot.

Me: “Ah, [Manager].”

My manager looks up in time to see him walk down an aisle. She’s momentarily stunned.

Manager: “Oh, umm… [My Name], can you please go and stock and keep an eye out for customers?”

Me: *Trying my hardest not to laugh* “Sure thing.”

I stand and tidy the end display between the aisle he went down and the next while my manager calls the cops. I watch him grab a soft drink and start drinking it while dancing around to the next aisle. He grabs a multipack of chocolates and dances on the spot while singing gibberish.

The cops arrive within five minutes. One is carrying a blanket and wraps it around him.

Officer #1: “[High Guy], you need to come with us. We’ll take you home.”

High Guy: *More gibberish*

Officer #2: “Come on, they’re closing now. Time to go.”

They lead him out of the store; he goes without a fight.

Me: *To the manager* “What the h***?”

Manager: “He comes in occasionally high, but that’s a first.”

A couple of months later, he came back and apologized for what had happened. The cops took him to the hospital that night. He then checked into rehab and got himself clean, and five years later he’s still a regular customer and is doing really well.

This story is part of our Best Of May 2021 roundup!

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Years ago, I worked in a meat processing factory. Although I was employed as one of the admin staff, I still had to go through the same company induction as everyone else. So, I turned up at 7:30 am on the day of induction and sat through all the usual guff one might expect in a company induction: Health and Safety, Terms and Conditions, and so on. Just before lunch break, one of the training team gave us a very detailed talk about the company’s drugs and alcohol policy. The short version: don’t drink or take drugs on the job, and if you must drink or take drugs on an evening or weekend, at least make sure you’re sober/clean by the time you arrive on site for shift. We were also told that the company does conduct random, voluntary, and for-cause drug tests.

During the spiel about the drug tests, I raised my hand and asked, “Ever caught anyone during these tests?”

The trainer started to chuckle. He told us that several years previously, he’d been standing in the exact same room, giving the exact same talk about drug testing. He’d dismissed the inductees for lunch and gone off to get his own lunch. A little while later, he’d gone off to use the toilet, and when he walked in, he found one of the inductees sitting in the cubicle, puffing away on a joint!

The inductee was swiftly fired, just a few hours into his induction, and without even having made it as far as the factory floor to meet his colleagues!

We all got a good laugh out of that story.

I briefly worked as a teacher in one of the worst schools in the country. There were all kinds of social problems, including rampant drug abuse. One of the pupils decided to smoke cannabis to calm himself down before an exam; unfortunately, he smoked a rather large amount, so he was barely conscious when he filed into the exam hall.

Some minutes in, the teacher invigilating the exam observed that the boy’s exam paper had fallen on the floor and he was busily writing on the table. There was some anxiety as to whether this might mean that the table would have to be sent in to be marked, but thankfully, on examination — pun definitely intended — it was ascertained that what he had written on the table had nothing whatsoever to do with the exam paper or even its subject.

That was good, because the exam board would not have appreciated having a tabletop sent in for marking.