My coworker’s son’s school was cancelled due to a tornado warning. I had to call him about something, and the conversation shifted to his son having a virtual learning day.

Coworker: “It’s crazy! Canceling for wind? We were never that lucky.”

The “wind” in question was reaching gusts of up to 80 mph, and it was raining enough that our road drainage system could not keep up.

Me: “They’re doing remote classes today, though, right?”

Coworker: “Yeah, but we didn’t have that option.”

Me: “We graduated in a time when dial-up was fancy. Of course it wasn’t an option.”

Coworker: “They get to stay home and still be in school; they don’t lose vacation days to make up for missed classes.”

Me: “Yeah, but we—”

Coworker: “—Kids today are so spoiled.” *To his son.* “Do you know how lucky you are?”

Coworker’s Son: *In the background.* “You sound like you walked to school in the snow. Uphill. Both ways.”

He quickly ended the call. I didn’t even get to point out that we work remotely from home almost every day.

I was interviewing for a position as a fry chef with the manager in her office. The manager’s office had windows that overlooked the kitchen.

Through the windows I saw… well, I wasn’t 100% sure what I saw, but it looked a lot like someone had just accidentally been too close to an open flame for too long and now had a smoldering sleeve.

Me: “Um…”

I said, glancing out the window. The guy was waving around the smoldering bit of shirt. This is a bad idea, because it puts more oxygen on the fabric. Chef’s clothing is largely self-extinguishing if you don’t do something stupid, but this was something stupid.

Manager: “Please pay attention to me during the interview.”

The manager said, reaching behind herself to adjust the blinds without looking.

Me: “It’s just that…”

Manager: “The kitchen can be a distracting environment, and I need workers who can focus on the task at hand regardless of what’s going on around them. Can you please turn your attention back to our interview? You’ve been doing really well up until this point, and I would like to hire you.”

Me: “Okay.”

I turned my attention back to the interview. I figured whatever was happening in the kitchen would sort itself out. We started negotiating my compensation to the tune of increasingly loud chaos coming from the kitchen. Finally, the noises got to be too much.

Me: “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

Manager: “You can’t what?”

I simply stood up and opened the door between the manager’s office and the kitchen, revealing about the worst wreck of a kitchen I’ve ever seen. In about ten minutes, the kitchen had gone from chaotic but not the worst place I worked, to something that looked like the aftermath of an attack by flying monkeys.

Me: “If I’m supposed to focus on my job, I really think you shouldn’t make such a pig’s ear of yours.”

It wasn’t the first, nor only, job interview I’ve walked out on, but that one felt particularly good to walk out on.

Having a free day for once in my life, I decided to shut myself off in my room and play Roller Coaster Tycoon. After spending nearly the entire day building a theme park and rides, I eventually come out of my room to eat, and my roommate gives me a very awkward look.

Roommate: “Earlier, I had to peek into your room to see what you were doing because I kept hearing what sounded like a little kid screaming!”

I like to make puppets as a hobby, and I’m discussing my latest project with a friend on the phone.

Me: “So, the next puppet I’m planning is going to be a jackalope.”

Friend: “A what? What the h*** is a jackalope?”

He proceeds to look it up.

Friend: “What the…? Who comes up with this s***?”

Me: “A taxidermist with a sense of humor?”

When I was in high school, we had a “blizzard.” Due to the power company being lazy with their trimming for many years, this one ice storm knocked down a ton of trees and limbs, which took down a ton of power lines all over a multi-county area. Hundreds of households had no power, my road included. Most folks got power back within a few days. The power company worked steadily, getting the lines back up.

We were understanding that it’d take a few days to get the mess sorted at first. We knew our rural-ish area wasn’t going to have power restored immediately with so many folks without power. It wasn’t our first big power outage. We could be patient.

A week later, the power company was all over the news, bragging about how they’d finished power restoration to the area. Everyone had power again!

Except us.

My road was still powerless. The entire road had no power. Everyone around us had power. But us? Still freezing our tails off in the dark with no running water. Calls to the power company, telling them we still didn’t have power, got no results. “Our system shows you have power.” No convincing them that we did not, in fact, have power. Their system said we did, and that was the only thing they listened to.

The neighborhood decided to take action. Neighbors called the local news station and set up an interview time to address our problem. Mom was ‘volentold’ that she was going to give the interview. (In fairness, Mom was the best choice due to her public speaking experience.) The local station sent their crew out to interview Mom about how we didn’t have power, hadn’t had power in over a week, and the power company refused to send anyone to fix it.

The story aired first thing with the six o’clock news.

There were five power company trucks parked at the church at the entrance to our road by half past six.

Our power was back on before seven. Turns out they’d fixed the physical lines, but someone forgot to flip a switch at the church to turn on the power to our road. (It’d been turned off while they were working for obvious safety reasons.)

Amazing how fast that power company got off its tail to restore power when they were being publicly shamed on the big local news station.