While working in the UK tax authority, I get assigned to a record with a large debt that is clearly an error, as this year’s tax return is literally a hundred times as much as the previous year’s. The taxpayer is known to be… difficult, and the notes show that he’s abused staff before over this issue, even though it’s not our fault; his return was just wrong.

He is now at the stage where we’re ready to send him to enforcement as this debt is several months old. I give him a call to see if I can sort everything out. I introduce myself and confirm I have the correct person.

Me: “Can I just confirm a few details before we carry on?”

Taxpayer: “Sure, but make it quick.”

I verify three of the four needed details.

Taxpayer: *Interrupting* “I don’t have time for this. You’ll need to send a letter to my accountant.”

The record only has the taxpayer listed as a contact, and we don’t routinely communicate through letters, anyway, as it’s a data security risk.

Me: “Okay, sir, what’s the number of your accountant so that I can speak with them?”

Taxpayer: “You have it on file.”

No, we don’t.

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t seem to find it. Do you have it at hand?”

Taxpayer: “No, I know that you have it. I won’t tell you how to do your job! Send the letter to my accountant now!” *Click*

Okay, sir, I’ll send you that letter. You know, the one that says that we’ve sent you to enforcement and you can expect legal proceedings to follow? All because you’re just too important to speak to an office worker like me? Sure, I’ll happily send that one out!

We don’t exist to just steal from people. If he’d just listened to us and worked with us, we could have solved it on the phone then and there. He just needed to say, “Yes, this is an error,” and submit a corrected return!

I am waiting for my coffee in a coffee shop. The front counter has a machine that makes a certain two-beep noise every few seconds when an online order comes in. The notes the beeps make sound familiar but I can’t quite place it.

I have been coming to this coffee shop every day for a while so I know the nationalities of the workers.

Moroccan Worker: “That beep…”

Mongolian Worker: “Yeah…”

Italian Worker: “What about it?”

Moroccan Worker: “It sounds like the first two notes from Super Mario.”

Mongolian Worker: “Oh my god, you’re right!”

Moroccan Worker: *Makes the noise.* “Do-dee…”

Mongolian & Italian Worker: *Both chiming in.* “—do-dee…doo-de-do—”

Argentinian & Gambian Worker: *Both chiming in.* “—do-de-de-doo-doo-de-doo-de-doo-do-do!”

Within seconds every worker, regardless of where they came from, and even a few customers finish the riff, and it brings a smile to everyone’s face. Just goes to show no matter where you’re from some things transcend cultures!

Today is Mario Day! Get your fix of more Mario-themed stories with our Mario Day Roundup! Let’s-a go!

I was walking through this very long train to position myself for the optimal point to disembark, so I went through multiple interconnecting doors between carriages.

This was decades ago before interconnecting doors slid apart just by pressing a button, and on this train, it was a hinged door you had to push. Usually, these hinged doors would open easily, but sometimes they’d stick a bit.

With one door, I turned the handle and pushed, but there was some friction so I had to push a bit harder to open it. 

When I turned round to close it, I noticed a carrier bag full of shopping there, and I realised that this was what caused the friction. And someone sitting in the seat next to the door was glaring at me. 

Obviously, one of the stupidest places to leave a bag is in front of a door, so I just stared back at him for two seconds, silently closed the door, and sat down. I looked up a few seconds later, and the man was still glaring at me. I stared back for another couple of seconds and resumed reading my paper but not before noticing that he’d reinstated the bag in front of the door.

Thirty seconds later, a woman came through the door and apologised to the man for having pushed his shopping aside, but the man just silently glared back at her, and again, he put the bag in front of the door. He was also still glaring at me.

I stopped taking any notice until about ten minutes later. I looked up and saw the man picking the bag up while someone was turning the handle, and after that person came through, he put his bag in front of the door again.

This was a busy commuter train in South London, so the man must have been doing this continually throughout the journey — hearing the door handle, picking up his bag, and then putting it back again — instead of putting it in the overhead rack or between his legs like any normal person.

I work for a donation-based charity stop, so inspirational acts occur frequently in my life. A few stand out though.

Donator: “I’d like to donate this item to the shop. You’ll likely get a pretty penny for it.”

Me: “Sir! Are you sure? This… this is a PS5!”

Donator: “Haha, yes, I am sure. I got it for my son for Christmas, but his grandparents also got him one. And we were thinking over Christmas that if our family can afford to have two PS5’s there’s probably a family out there that can’t afford one that might be able to through you guys and a charity gets a nice little earner to boot.”

Me: “I… understand, I think. Would you like me to keep it in the back for a day or two in case you change your mind?”

Donator: “Does buyer’s remorse also apply to some people who donate.”

Me: “When it’s high-value items, then yes we do.”

Donator: “Well that’s a bit rubbish, but I assure you no such thing with me. Put it on the shelf right now I say! It’ll sell out fast!”

There is a slight “ahem” from a customer behind us.

Customer: *To me.* “I was wondering… maybe… if you were really going to accept the PS5 from this gentleman, that maybe I could get first dibs on it? My kids would be over the moon and I couldn’t afford one at the scalper’s prices.”

Donator: “Told you!”

It was sold for £50 under RRP and the original donator and customer walked out together talking about how much fun it is gaming with their children.

Many years ago, I temped at a recruitment agency that specialised in support positions that required security clearance. This could be anything from a security guard for a government building to a senior administrator for MI5.

I had been hired for a few months to effectively screen the person who would be doing the job I had been hired as a temp for, except she was going to be a recruitment manager, so she’d have a few more duties that I wasn’t qualified for. I was chosen as a stopgap because I already had full security checks from a previous position working in a school and extensive admin experience.

The new hire couldn’t start until everything came back clean. This included running an extended criminal check, as well as calling for references from all previous employers. Let me tell you, getting references from twenty-plus years ago can be a time-consuming pain in the backside.

Her criminal check came back clean. However, her employment references were… problematic. Any references where she had indicated management experience either had no record of her working for that company or no record of her working there in a management position. A few references were for companies that had long since closed, so there was no way to confirm either way. Still, I soldiered on through the references.

During this time, the new hire came by the office a few times to drop off necessary documentation such as photo ID and to do some training. While she was in, I asked her if she had gone by any other names, thinking this might explain why some employers had no record of her working there. Perhaps I was just giving them the wrong name. She looked down her nose at me and told me no in the most condescending way possible. “Okay,” I thought, and got back to work, grateful I wouldn’t be working alongside her.

I was having difficulty locating the correct information for one of her more recent employers, so I decided to see if she had a Facebook account that might confirm the right details — many people list where they’ve worked, after all.

That’s when I discovered that she was writing nasty comments about various people in the office on her public Facebook profile. She wrote that I was a “fat cow” who was deliberately dragging my feet on getting her references so I could steal her job. She also called my manager a “perv”, and she said she would report him for sexual harassment when she started to “put him in his place”.

But the worst part was that she had managed to sneak photos of some staff and had added nasty captions. She managed to take a picture of me while I was nibbling on some food at my desk and wrote the caption “porky”. On a photo she had snuck of my manager, she had written the caption “panty sniffer”.

Aside from the malicious nature of the photos, taking any photos in our office was strictly forbidden. Cameras and mobile phones were banned from the office because we dealt with a lot of confidential contracts. Phones were taken at reception and put in secured lockers to be collected either when you went to lunch or when you went home. The receptionists were pretty on the ball about this, so I have no idea how she managed to sneak a phone in.

But the icing on the proverbial cake was that she regularly complained about how long it was taking because she was going travelling in nine months. Every day I “dragged my heels”, I was “stealing” money she needed for her travels. That explained her attitude with me.

In her interview, this woman had not mentioned anything about her planned travels. In fact, she had said she was looking for something long-term and expressed an interest in helping the company grow. It became clear that what the woman really wanted was to grow her bank balance with this high-paying job, so she lied through her teeth about having management experience.

I informed my manager of this, emailing him screenshots of her posts. The woman was marched into my manager’s office, where he not only told her we were rescinding our offer of employment, but he made her delete all the photos from her phone and Facebook while he watched. He warned her that if he saw any photos of this office or its employees on social media, he would be taking legal action.

In response, the woman posted rant after rant on her — still public — Facebook profile saying we had discriminated against her and that my manager tried to feel her up and then fired her, she claimed that I lied to make her look bad, and she also claimed my manager was racist and that’s why he terminated her. Both my manager and this woman were white, for the record.

I reported it to my manager, who called her and told her that unless she took down those posts, she would be sued for libel. The posts were taken down within the hour, and passive-aggressive posts about freedom of speech and how “you can’t say anything without people getting offended” posts replaced them. And she still didn’t make her profile private. Go figure.