I work as a doctor in a psychiatric hospital. During the night shifts, there’s only one doctor for all patients coming into our clinic. (There’s also a senior physician on call for advice or to come in if necessary.)

The doctor responsible for patients coming in at night also takes all inbound calls from people wanting to come in or asking for advice on mental health. During the nights, we only take emergencies with immediate danger since we’re so short-staffed. Everyone else has to call back during the day to arrange an appointment with a lady coordinating the waitlist for non-emergency treatment.

There’s a very simple rule about coming into our hospital: unless it’s a life-or-death situation, you need to bring a referral. It can be from any doctor — we’re really not picky — but no referral means no treatment.

There’s one person I’ll call [Phantom] who everyone in our clinic knows but nobody has ever seen. He calls every night, and the conversation usually goes like this.

Phantom: *In a very whiny voice* “You gotta help me. I feel so bad.”

Doctor: “Who is this?”

Phantom: *Hesitantly* “This is… [Phantom]. Please help me.”

Doctor: “Hello, [Phantom], why are you feeling bad?”

Phantom: “I just feel bad. I’m so stressed.”

Doctor: “Okay, are you experiencing an emergency? Are you thinking about ending your life?”

Phantom: “No! I’d never do that! I just feel bad. You need to help me! I’m stressed!”

Doctor: “In that case, please contact [Coordination Lady] in the morning. She’s available from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. You’ll need a referral to our clinic.”

Phantom: “I’M NOT GONNA GET A REFERRAL! I DON’T WANNA! YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!”

Doctor: “No referral, no treatment. We’ve been over this before, Mr. [Phantom].”

Phantom: “BUT I DON’T WANNA GET A REFERRAL!”

Doctor: “In that case, I currently can’t help you. Good night.” *Hangs up*

[Phantom] has been calling every single night for YEARS. By now, everyone except the coordination lady in our clinic recognises his voice, and he ours. She’s the only one he has never called, not even once. He knows he needs a referral, and he does have a primary care physician he regularly goes to who could easily give him one.

Once, a night shift doctor actually asked him to come in just to see what would happen. He never showed up.

I really wonder what his deal is.

I’m a med student. A couple of months ago, my flatmate went abroad for a year. She had been tutoring a boy in English and German (we’re German), and the boy’s mother asked her if she knew anybody who could replace her while she was gone. As I’ve done some tutoring before and I’m fairly good at English and German, my flatmate asked me, and I agreed.

When I started, the mother asked me if I could also tutor her son in maths. They used to have another tutor for that, but she had moved cities recently. I’m not particularly good at maths, but the boy is only in fifth grade (ten or eleven years old in Germany), so I said I’d try.

However, it became frustrating very quickly. At first, I seriously wondered how he’d made it to fifth grade because he couldn’t even do basic addition. I could tell fairly quickly that it definitely wasn’t due to lack of will or laziness; he simply couldn’t understand numbers at all. For example, they were learning about fractions at the time, and he couldn’t envision at all what the difference between 2/3 and 3/2 was.

I had heard about dyscalculia before, so I did some tests with him like asking him to tell time on an analog clock (he was unable to), making him solve a list of addition and subtraction problems in which each was repeated three or four times (different results for all of them), asking him to tell me which of two numbers is larger (mostly unable to), etc. I honestly wondered how neither his parents nor his teachers had ever noticed anything.

I didn’t want to keep getting money for a job I couldn’t do, so I sat his mother down after a tutoring session.

Me: “Your son has such massive issues in maths that I’m in no way qualified to help him. He shows a lot of signs of dyscalculia, and while I’m not a professional and that doesn’t mean he has it, I would suggest having him checked by a professional and organizing a professional tutor, not some med student who knows nothing about teaching kids with more serious troubles in school.”

She got ANGRY.

Mother: “Get your f****** shoes and get the f*** out of my house!”

Me: “What did I do?!”

Mother: “I will not tolerate strangers telling me that my son is dim-witted or stupid! This is a normal and honorable family.”

Me: “I’m saying the total opposite of that. Your son having that condition would be nobody’s fault, and he just needs specialized help, which is anything but dishonorable.”

Mother: “I’m going to call the head of your university! Someone like you is totally unfit to treat patients if you call all of them idiots. An arrogant b**** like you shouldn’t be let loose in a hospital!”

I knew she couldn’t realistically do anything, but it still hurt to hear. I didn’t reply anymore at that point and just took my things and left. I haven’t heard from her again — or from my uni, for that matter! — but I do feel very sorry for her son because it doesn’t seem like she will get him the help he needs.

Our shop was recently partially remodeled, meaning the bakery counter near the entrance was removed completely to make more space for our merchandise, and the registers were rearranged.

We still get bread, rolls, and pastry from the bakery that worked the counter, though, which is for sale in a self-serve display. The very same display was been in use in the old layout when it was stocked by said bakery.

I’m straightening some shelves near the checkout when a lady approaches me.

Customer: “I just have to tell you this: since the bakery is gone, you don’t have those tasty rolls in your display anymore. You always carried them, and I came here specifically to get them.”

Me: “Oh, yes, the counter is gone, but we still get the same merchandise from them. We just restock it ourselves.”

Customer: “No, those are not the same. They taste different.”

Me: “I can’t really imagine, as they are the same product from the same company. They just don’t retail it themselves. Here, let me show you.”

I walk behind the display to grab this morning’s delivery slip, which has the company’s logo and address printed on top.

Customer: *Getting angry* “You don’t have to show me! I don’t want to see this. It’s not true, anyway. I know a [Other Bakery] roll when I taste one!” *Stomps away*

It’s the end of our annual sale, and a customer approaches my fed-up manager mid-weekend rush.

Customer: “Excuse me! Why are there so many women’s styles 70% off and the best you can do for men’s is 30%?”

Manager: “Because the men’s stuff is not as ugly as what is left in women’s.”

She was right!

I work as a museum staffer. All staff carry radios in order to communicate with our central office and exhibition management — “operations” for short. When we radio them, the formula is “[Name] to operations” on a public channel and then switching to a second private channel to report whatever issue needs reporting. The phrase for that is “on two”.

It’s a busy day visitor-wise, and there’s construction work for a special exhibition going on, so there’s plenty of radioing to report in technical issues and to field guest complaints. I spend a lot of time on the radio until pretty much the last minute of my shift. After, I decide to call a taxi to get home because I’m too exhausted to brave our crowded public transport.

I call a taxi line on my mobile phone.

Employee: “[Taxi Line], how may I help you?”

Me: *On auto-brain* “[My Name] to operations.”

Employee: “Excuse me?”

Me: *Somewhere between auto-brain and awareness* “Oh, my God, I’m sorry. On two! On two!”

Employee: “Is… is this a prank call? But you just gave me your name…”

I finally snapped back to the present when I was looking for the button to switch to channel two on my phone and realized that I wasn’t on the radio any longer.

The taxi line employee and I shared a good laugh about it once I explained. Turns out she knew all about auto-brain and was definitely able to sympathize.

I got my taxi and made it home fine, and since then, I’ve called them a couple of times. When that employee is staffing the phones and I give my name, her usual reply tends to be, “This is operations.” It makes me smile every time, and I’m glad that if I’m one of Those People, at least I belong to the amusing variety.