Customer: “These are supposed to be $1.00, not $3.49.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s the croutons that are a dollar, not this. Here’s the sign.”

Customer: “I can f****** read. Stop putting products that aren’t the same price next to each other.”

One of my older cousins — she’s in her late teens and I’m eleven — is visiting for a bit and we’re driving around with my mom at the wheel. My cousin is chewing some gum when she decides she’s done, she rolls down the window and spits it out. She’s extremely gullible.

Mom: *Gasping* “You shouldn’t have done that!”

Cousin: “What?”

Mom: “Spit your gum onto the road! You could stop a car!”

Cousin: “What?!”

Me: *Catching on* “Yeah! If someone hits it with their tire, it could pull the tire right off!”

My cousin is now looking rather horrified.

Cousin: “I had no idea! I’m so sorry!”

Mom and I can’t keep up the act anymore and start laughing.

Cousin: “Ohh! That’s not nice!”

Mom: *Between giggles* “You’re right. Sorry. But you really shouldn’t litter.”

Maybe that was a bit mean, but at least she spit her gum into tissues or wrappers after that!

I’m a fairly new office administrator for a pest control company and am still in-training. I work with two other admins who have been with the company for more than ten years, as well as the manager who has been around for more than twenty years. [Admin #1] has several adult children but is otherwise happy and healthy, [Admin #2] has a chronic health condition, and [Manager]’s wife has terminal cancer. This concludes my stage-setting for one of the worst phone calls of my life.

I’m happily snoozing away when I’m awoken by my phone. It’s [Admin #1]. I answer with the expected amount of attentive grogginess and am told something to the effect of:

“Sorry to wake you. [Manager]’s wife just died, [Admin #2] is in the hospital, and my son was just in a car accident. You need to come in… fifteen minutes ago.”

And that’s the first and worst time I solo’d running an office forty employees strong: through a trial-by-fire while my coworkers handled their life-altering events where they were most needed. No one had a good time that day, but I think I got off the easiest.

This happens when I am in third grade, nine years old, and getting the second report card of the school year. The teacher hands them out at the end of the school day, but my mother and I see her at my dance studio that night.

Me: “Ms. [Teacher]? Why did I get a bad grade in reading?”

Teacher: “You didn’t take any of your reading quizzes. You need to read a book every month.”

Mom: “You know her. You know she’s read more books than any other student in your class. What are these reading quizzes you’re talking about?”

Teacher: “The ones on the computer. It generates a report automatically, grading each test and averaging them out with what I put in for your grade.”

Me: “You mean I have to do more? But I already have all my points. Twelve books, twelve quizzes.”

Teacher: “Wait… You already did them all? When?”

Me: “The first month of school.”

By taking every quiz I needed to in the first semester, the software was setting me up with zeros for the rest of the year. They changed it immediately to be one book a month rather than the ten books a year the syllabus had stated.

I’m a nurse, working with inmates that are detoxing from drugs and/or alcohol. This particular inmate is a pregnant female with very noticeable track marks from intravenous drug use on both her neck and arms. We have deputies that stand next to us at all times when passing out medications.

An inmate shows her identification wristband. I pour the patient’s medications — vitamins and anti-nausea — into her med cup.

Inmate: “What’s this s*** you’re giving me?!  I ain’t taking this crap! I ain’t going to take anything that’s gonna hurt my baby!! Y’all are trying to kill my baby!”

The deputy and I look at each other and then back at the inmate.

Deputy: “You’re in here because you’re shooting yourself up with illegal drugs, while pregnant, and you think this nurse is trying to kill you by giving you prenatal vitamins? Yeah, that makes sense. Your choice on taking the vitamins or not, but stop wasting the nurse’s time and go sit down.”

Me: *To the deputy* “You are my favorite person ever.”

The sad thing is, I get inmates like this at least once or twice a month.