(I am on summer vacation in Southern Italy to visit family and go to the beach. One day, two of my aunts entrust me with three cousins to go visit the nearby city. After a long day spent visiting a few attractions and window shopping, we are about to head home, but the youngest cousin really wants some soda, so I decide to stop at a tiny convenience store to buy him his drink, as well as a few things for me. As I pick up the items, the other two cousins, a boy and a girl of roughly the same age, patiently wait for me at the checkout. The cashier notices that their eyes have been attracted by a small rack of condoms. Note that my cousins are nine or ten years old at the time.)

Cashier: *in a sweet voice* “Oh, looking at those pretty boxes, eh? But do you know what are they for?”

Female Cousin: *proudly* “Of course! They’re for when you don’t want babies!”

Male Cousin: “Or if you want to prevent AIDS.”

(The cashier’s face crumpled up like a used tissue as she recoiled, before raising her head to shoot daggers at me, just as I’m putting down my things.)

Me: “All right, [Female Cousin] and [Male Cousin], you get back to the car with [Younger Cousin]; I’m going to come soon.”

Male Cousin: “Roger!”

(As [Female Cousin] takes [Younger Cousin]’s hand and follows [Male Cousin] speeding off to the car, I start bagging things. The cashier is glaring at me.)

Cashier: “Are they your children?”

Me: “No, I’m their cousin. Why do you ask?”

Cashier: *grimacing* “Ugh, their parents must be really f****** revolting; kids shouldn’t know what a condom is.”

Me: “As long as they don’t get first-hand experience… why not?”

Cashier: “Oh, so you think there’s nothing wrong with children screwing? Is that what you’re telling me, you disgusting piece of trash?”

Me: *taken aback* “I don’t know what the f*** you are trying to say. I just said that nothing’s wrong with children knowing what a condom is.”

Cashier: “If they know what a condom is and what it’s for, they know how to use it. How can you think it’s not sick that their parents taught them how to put condoms on?”

Me: “Look. I don’t have time for this. They just said what a condom is, not how to use it. Now let me just pay for this before I lose my s***.”

(The cashier grumbled loudly about my uncles being “disgusting child rapists” and blatantly did the “I’m watching you” gesture at me as I left the store. Nothing came out of it, and I sincerely doubt anyone at the police station gave her the time of day, assuming she even cared enough.)

(I’ve been working as an assistant store manager for over six years but am in the middle of my 13-week’s notice to start a new job out of retail. I already jokingly tell my coworkers I can talk back to our sales manager, who oversees five stores. What’s he gonna do, fire me faster? This week he is on vacation, and we have been appointed a replacement. In our store, we have a clearance rack for discounted food-action items located at the entrance of our store. We can discount most items ourselves. A man, who I believe is the replacement, comes up to me while I’m stocking it with newly discounted items.)

Sales Manager: *with an attitude* “Can you stop filling the clearance rack and put it in the back?”

Me: “No. I need room for the new food action starting tomorrow.”

Sales Manager: “It draws attention away from our main action for this week.” *twelve bottles of two-liter soda for a lower price*

Me: “People aren’t going to buy that here; they are too heavy. We are in the middle of the town center and don’t have a parking lot. The closest paid parking garage is too expensive so people don’t really use it. The next one is cheaper but it’s about a ten-minute walk, so it’s too far to carry twenty-four liters. We sold about ten packs in three days.”

Sales Manager: “The clearance rack is commercially not viable.”

Me: “Whenever we fill it to the brim, it sells out within a week. It keeps the flow of goods going for stuff that normally sits on the shelves for weeks. How is that not viable? Besides that, our regular sales manager says we can keep it, because corporate changes its mind about every month whether or not we can display it.”

(He decided to drop the conversation and talk to my store manager. Afterward, she told me two things: he wasn’t the replacement, but rather our sales manager’s boss, our regional director. I didn’t know what he looked like because we only see him once or twice a year, and he is fairly new to our region. Also, he caved in, because he couldn’t think of a decent reply to my arguments. Felt like a win!)

When I was in high school, I went shopping at the local mall with two of my friends. At the time, it was common for people to smoke everywhere with no restrictions. We were looking at many things, laughing, joking around, and having a good time.

Then, in a large department store, we noticed we were being followed even though we couldn’t see who was tailing us; he reeked of body odor and very floral, unpleasant cigar or pipe smoke. We were looking at records — yes, that long ago — and the smoke wafted our way, so we hightailed it to accessories. There was that stink again. Off to another department, and wouldn’t you know it, there the stench followed. Figuring where it was coming from, we peeked around the end of a display and saw a man trying to look unobtrusive but very much failing to do so. We let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he was to stop following us.

A few months later, after high school graduation, I started work for the local small-town police department. Although my job was primarily filing and acting as relief dispatcher, I occasionally accompanied an officer — all men — to pick up a female suspect. One day, the destination was that same department store, where they’d detained a suspected shoplifter. Entering the office, I saw, and smelled, that the loss prevention officer was that same creepy man!

I’m sure he thought we were acting suspiciously those months before because we kept quickly moving from location to location without buying anything, although he was close enough he should have been able to hear us talking about why we were doing it. I really don’t know how he could catch anyone unless they had no sense of smell!

Shortly after, the mall banned smoking and the number of apprehensions increased so I was back several times. The man still stunk of BO, but at least that truly awful smoke smell was mostly gone, thank goodness.

(I work at [Fast Food Restaurant #1], but I get bored of the same food, so for my break, I go across the street to [Fast Food Restaurant #2].)

Me: “Hi. Welcome to [Fast Food Restaurant #1]. How can I help you?”

Employee: “This is [Fast Food Restaurant #2].”

Me: “Sorry, can I have a double and medium fries?”

Employee: “Would you like to add a drink and make it a combo?”

Me: “No, thank you. Will that be all?”

Employee: “I don’t know, will it?”

Me: “Yes, that will be… Second window.”

Employee: “First window. I’m not buying your food.”

(When I picked up my food, the employees were gathered around laughing. At least I made their night.)

I arranged to drive three friends to Adelaide — about an eight-hour drive — on Thursday night, and head back on Sunday night. We were meeting friends there, we had hotel rooms booked, and we had booked a laser tag session to run from midnight to dawn on Sunday morning. 

Yeah, this was a while ago and the nearest laser tag was 800 km away. We were young; it seemed like a good idea.

My car was running poorly and some major part needed to be replaced — like the differential. I took it to a mechanic, who agreed to do it on Thursday. I chose Thursday for the repair because I was going to pick up my friends straight after work, so I would have to drive that day anyway. The mechanic was near the office. I specifically mentioned that I needed to be sure it would be ready, as I was driving to Adelaide straight after picking it up. 

When I went to pick up the car, the job was done — hooray — but then, he handed me a piece of paper with the instructions for running the new part in! And they were pretty incompatible with blowing a quarter of the way across the country overnight. I can’t remember the details, but it was something like not exceeding 80kph for the first 500km, and letting the car cool down for half an hour after each hour of driving.

I was ropeable! I specified to the mechanic exactly why I needed the repair and exactly what my driving plans were. Surely if he knew his job he would have known about the running in that was needed. I don’t remember what I said but I was furious. If I had known about this I could have had the work done earlier, found another car, or found us places in the other cars that were driving across. But this late in the day, there was nothing to be done. I was going to let my friends down. We’d been planning this trip for weeks.

The mechanic looked at me, confused, and asked, “Do you have a stressful job?”

ARGH!

But after that, there was just such a blissful ignorance about the man — he could not understand why I was angry — that my anger started to dissipate. It was fruitless; we were where we were, and shouting wasn’t going to fix it. He did the sensible thing and put me on the phone with the parts supplier. The supplier understood why I was angry and agreed the mechanic was an idiot. Then, he talked me through how to run the part in on our road trip.

It meant that instead of four drivers taking turns to drive straight through with only a toilet break, we spent a lot of time waiting by the roadside for the engine to cool, or sitting in roadhouses drinking coffee we didn’t want. Instead of arriving at the hotel at one or two am, we got there at nine. Oh, well, we can sleep all day. Yeah, no. The temperature quickly rose to 40C in our cheap and un-air-conditioned hotel room, and the busy building site across the street had already started its day’s work. We never did make up the sleep deficit over the weekend, making the drive back on Sunday a whole different kind of adventure.