I respond to an ad that’s looking for tech support help.

Me: “What kind of tech support are you looking for?”

Client: “Iphone and computer; very simple questions. It’s a non-paying gig and you have to come to Cambridge. I will provide food.”

Obviously, I don’t reply. After two days, I receive a message from them:

Client: “Hello?”

Me: “Hello. I can’t work for food.”

Client: “You don’t eat? You must not be human! Are you must be E.T?”

Me: “My landlord has enough food, the train doesn’t take food and my car doesn’t run on food.”

Client: “Okay. Too bad. Goodbye, E.T.”

This happened at scout camp in the early 1980s. In addition to our troop, we had one scout from a different troop entirely camping with us. (I never did find out why.) He was from London, and he was constantly bragging about how tough it was there in the east end and how tough he was for living there. He’d brag about all the fights he’d won, the dangerous gangs there, and so much more. It was all he’d ever talk about when we were out of earshot of the leaders.

This camp, by the way, was in Suffolk, which is about as far removed from any metropolitan life as possible.

At one point, amidst his latest embiggening of himself, [Scout] pointed at scrawny timid me and said:

Scout: “You’d never survive one minute in Leyton. Where are you from?”

Me: “Actually, I was born there and lived there for several years.”

Everyone else laughed at him for that, and he FINALLY shut up about blasted Leyton!

It is summer 2020, the height of lockdown in the UK, and mask-wearing in public spaces is mandatory. My job is based in the City of London, and I am tasked with going to the office once a week to do all the Things that keep it ticking over and allow everyone at home to keep working. I don’t mind because there’s hardly anyone on the trains, and the streets of London are eerily quiet.

At my train station, there are two entrances/exits, one on each side of the tracks. The opposite side is accessed via a covered bridge, and there are stairs and lifts (elevators) to get up to the bridge. I am on my way home one evening and have just gotten off the train. I need the exit on the opposite side and, as I have a heavy bag with me, I decide to take the lift. The lifts are small, designed for a maximum of four people. It should be noted that I am female.

Just as the lift doors are closing, a man forces his way inside. There’s a sign outside the lift indicating that only one person at a time should use it, but the doors have closed now, so it’s too late to protest. And who reads signs, anyway? BUT as if his presence in the lift weren’t bad enough, the man is not wearing his mask.

Me: “Can you put your mask on, please?”

The man starts patting his pockets, looking for his mask.

Me: *More urgently* “Sir! Put your mask on!”

Man: *Irritated* “I’m looking for it!”

Me: “It’s under your chin!”

By now, the lift has (thankfully) reached the upper level, and the doors open. As the man turns to leave, I hear it: the perennial cry of the man who knows he’s in the wrong but can’t possibly admit it to a member of the opposite sex.

Man: “Stupid woman!”

And he walks away.

I am a social media manager. When the marketing department manager retired, they moved a manager over from elsewhere in the company to take over. This was strange since we had some skilled, seasoned supervisors who could easily be trained up, but whatever. Upper management must surely know what they’re doing, I thought.

The first thing the new manager did was visit each employee to see what they did, which seemed like a positive start. However, when he got to me, it was anything but positive.

Manager: “What are you doing on Facebook?!”

Me: “I’m checking the stats for an ad we’re running. If you look here, we’re getting great conversion rates—”

Manager: “I don’t pay you to sit around and play on Facebook all day!”

Me: “With all due respect, this is my job. I’m a social media manager. I manage the company’s social media accounts. If you look, you can clearly see that this is our corporate—”

Manager: “No social media during work hours. No exceptions.”

Me: *Pauses* “How do you expect me to do my job as a social media manager if I can’t use social media?”

Manager: “That’s your problem. You figure it out. Use social media on your own time. I’m not paying you to play around on Farmville and tweet all day.”

I tried to explain what my role entailed to help him understand why I needed to access social media, including things like checking what competitors were doing — something he especially didn’t like.

Manager: “We have a non-compete clause. You can’t be looking at a competitor’s Facebook!”

I was dumbfounded and had no idea how to respond to such a stupid statement. We didn’t have a non-compete clause. And even if we did, it wouldn’t bar us from looking at social media.

[Manager] went on a tirade about how pointless social media was and how unprofessional it was to be on it while on the clock. He capped it off by proudly proclaiming that he didn’t have a single social media account, and he managed just fine. In his opinion, social media was “just a fad”, and we didn’t need all these “stupid” social media accounts.

I reported my concerns to my supervisor, who said she would talk to him. However, he wasn’t interested and brushed her off. She told us to keep working and she’d handle it.

The next day, I arrived at work and found all social media sites had been blocked. None of us could work. [Supervisor] was furious and demanded that [Manager] unblock the sites as we needed access to do our jobs; we were in the middle of a very important and expensive campaign. [Manager] screamed at her and threatened to fire her for insubordination. 

We had been a tight-knit team for years, and we’d never had issues like this with the previous manager. Now, in just a few days, it was starting to fall apart.

[Supervisor] immediately escalated the issue to [Manager]’s manager. At first, he tried to brush her off and told her to just “sort it out between us”, but [Supervisor] reminded him how much money the company had invested in the latest campaign and that if we could not access social media, it would fail. Were they really happy flushing thousands of pounds down the drain? Miraculously, he decided it might be worth having a talk with [Manager] after all.

I don’t know what was said between them, but it was clear that [Manager] did not take it well. He stormed out of the meeting, screamed at us for “undermining” him, and threatened to fire us.

[Supervisor] quietly collected a group complaint from all of us. Several of us — me included — threatened to walk if the situation did not improve. We all had years of experience and a great record for hitting targets. It would not be hard for us to find work elsewhere. Right now, they needed us a whole lot more than we needed them. This was something [Supervisor] made abundantly clear to Human Resources and to [Manager]’s manager.

We regained access to social media within a few hours. The next day, [Manager] was nowhere to be seen. We were told he had transferred to a different department “to pursue other career options”.

Perhaps they learned their lesson; they then promoted one of the supervisors to fill his place as department manager, and they continue to do a great job to this day.

My uncle is a cabbie (taxi driver – but in a black cab common in England). It is around the early to mid-eighties. He is taking two women from the centre of town to the northern outskirts late one Friday night. Of the two, one is tipsy, but not drunk like the other.

Less-Drunk Woman: “Can my friend be dropped off first?” 

After she’s scooped her friend out of the cab and into her front door, she returns to the cab and sits in the front.

Less-Drunk Woman: “I expect you get propositioned a lot.”

Uncle: *Somewhat nervously.* “Sometimes.”

Less-Drunk Woman: “I expect, some even offer it up on a plate, don’t they?”

My uncle at this point is more than a little uncomfortable and just laughs. She falls silent after that and when they reach her destination, she pays and goes to leave the cab.

Less-Drunk Woman: “Would you like to come in?”

Uncle: “I don’t think so, but thank you.”

Less-Drunk Woman: “I have a plate…”