I’m at a friend’s house. Her aunt is currently visiting. My friend is a lesbian, and this aunt has been giving my friend a hard time about her homosexuality. While she is not totally homophobic, she just doesn’t understand what it means. I’m a witness to the following exchange.

Aunt: “I still can’t understand why you wouldn’t even try to find a husband. I’m sure if you found the right person—”

Friend: “[Aunt], I’m lesbian; you know that. I’m not attracted to men. Like, at all.”

Aunt: “But you are a woman. It is your God-given duty to marry a man and have children!”

Friend: “At this day and age, that’s just nonsense.”

Aunt: “Don’t you want to start a family and have children?” 

Friend: “At some point, I might.”

Aunt: *Triumphantly* “Well, how can you have children if you don’t have a husband? Don’t tell me you’re thinking about going to a sperm bank. That’s gross and unnatural.”

Friend: “If I decide to have children, I’ll adopt.”

Aunt: “Adopt? Why?”

Friend: “There are enough children out there who don’t have parents. I don’t need to make more. Besides, if I adopt an older child, I don’t need to bother with not being able to sleep at night and having to change diapers all the time.”

Aunt: “But adopted children often have… issues.”

My friend takes a moment to understand what she means and process the statement.

Friend: “[Aunt], I have ADD and PTSD, I was born with diabetes, and I’m allergic to half of the things on the planet! I’d say I have more issues than most orphans, and I’m home-grown.”

Her aunt didn’t say anything after that. But from what I’m told, that wasn’t the first or last time she brought that up.

To clarify, my friend’s PTSD comes from her home burning down when she was little. She never fully got over it and is still very afraid of fire.

Sometimes, when we go to patient’s homes to get them to the hospital, we can’t bring them to the closest one because it’s full. This patient was set to go to the closest, but it was not possible.

Patient’s Wife: “So, you’ll bring him to [Hospital], right?”

Colleague: “Ma’am, [Hospital] is currently full.”

He opens the website that shows the availability of hospitals in the area.

Colleague: “See? It’s red. We could bring your husband to [List Of Different Hospitals in the area].”

Patient’s Wife: “But he has always been treated at [Hospital]! They know him there!”

Colleague: “They might know him, but that doesn’t mean they can magically fit him in the already full hospital.”

Patient’s Wife: “This is outrageous! My husband’s sick and you refuse to get him to the hospital!”

Me: “No, ma’am. We simply can’t get him to [Hospital]. But we’re offering you hospitals in the area that’ll surely treat him just as well. Just give us the physician letters from the hospital and the other hospital will surely know how to proceed and properly treat him.”

Patient’s Wife: “I demand you call the hospital and ask if you can bring him!”

My colleague and I look at each other and sigh. He starts calling the hospital. He explains the situation to the woman sitting at the ER desk. He then puts her on speaker.

Woman At The ER Desk: “Ma’am, we are pretty busy here. The paramedics could bring him here, but he would have to wait a very long time until he’s being treated.”

Patient’s Wife: “I don’t care! He has to be at [Hospital]!”

My colleague and I shrugged and decided to just drive the patient to the hospital. We dropped him off, apologizing quietly to the ER staff for giving them more work. A few hours later, as we passed by the ER to pick a patient up to drive them home again, we saw the woman loudly complaining to the ER desk and asking why it was taking so long for her husband to be treated. My colleague and I just looked at each other, shook our heads, and moved on with our days.

When I was in university, I had a friend who was in the same course and we noticed that a lot of people had trouble with a certain subject. He enjoyed being active with people, organizing things, taking part in student politics, and the like. Thus, he offered to organize an afternoon course for people who needed help with the subject. I also agreed to help, we booked a room, and he even managed to enlist one of the professors teaching the subject. He told everyone when the courses would take place and a couple of people said they’d come.

The date and time came and nobody showed up. My friend and I were rather confused, the professor was rather miffed, and we tried to find the other students. We knew they were likely still in the building since we had a course later that day. We found them in one of the computer labs, playing. Most of us had laptops, but the WiFi was terrible and very restricted.

When we asked them why they didn’t show up, they said they didn’t know it was serious and thought we were just asking if anyone was interested.

“We told you the times and you said you’d come,” my friend pointed out.

The response was general shrugging and comments that they didn’t remember that.

Adding insult to injury, the professor reprimanded my friend for wasting his time. “Next time, make sure to confirm with people when you organize something before wasting my time.”

Needless to say, my friend felt like he had been stabbed in the back and, once we were alone, he cried tears of rage. All I could do was to try and console him, telling him he wasn’t the one who wasted anyone’s time; they had wasted his, instead.

This was the last time he tried anything like this, deciding that people didn’t need or want his help, so why should he bother. He also retreated from some of the other activities he had participated in, feeling similarly disappointed, but for different reasons.

I work at an institution for further adult education and we offer a very broad variety of courses and workshops, from IT-classes to cooking, music, languages, college degrees, etc. There are also some federal support programs in place that help pay the tuition for people who live on low-income or have none at all.

As a part of this, the responsible federal office also offers to pay for the driving expenses if a student lives more than a certain amount of kilometers from the school. If that is the case, the student can apply for this additional support and, once it is granted, they need to provide us proof of their travel expenses — i.e. expired bus or train tickets. We then relay this information to the federal office, who in turn refunds the money.

A man has just come to my office to give us his tickets. Usually, our customers and students are very polite and pleasant to deal with, but occasionally, we get an odd one like this.

Man: “Hello, I want to give you my bus ticket.” *Hands it over*

Me: “Thank you very much. Can I see your ID, please?”

Man: “Sure, here.”

Me: “Thank you.”

I write down his name on the receipt form we have for these cases and then proceed to check the ticket. I notice something.

Me: “Um, sir, it seems to me that someone has tampered with this ticket. There is something written over the print with a black marker. Do you know what that is about?”

Man: “Huh? No, I did not do that. I don’t know.”

I show him the ticket.

Me: “Are you sure? Here, look. The date of expiry of this ticket has clearly been written over, apparently in an attempt to change it to a later date.”

He looks as if he only notices it now.

Man: “Oh, yes, that was me!”

Me: “Uh, you know you are not supposed to do that, right? It is not allowed to alter your bus tickets like this, and you could get fined for doing it.”

Man: *Apparently still oblivious* “But no one ever said anything about it before.”

Me: “You are still not allowed to tamper with your tickets! Plus, if the federal office learns about this, you might be in real trouble because they might think you are trying to deceive them or commit fraud.”

Man: “Oh, but I don’t want to deceive the federal office. I only wanted to deceive the bus driver.”

He smiles and leaves.

Me: “Did… he really just tell me that?!”

A customer wants a document sent by fax. Even if there are more modern ways, this is no odd request and since there is an appropriate number in his contact details, I do as I am told.

Several hours later, the customer calls again.

Me: “This is [Insurance Office]. You’re talking to [My Name]. How may I help you?”

Customer: “Yes, this is [Customer]. I wanted you to send me a fax but I didn’t get one.”

I know it was sent; I have the proof right next to me.

Me: “Well, I sent it right after you called. It should be there.”

Customer: “But I didn’t get it.”

Me: “Okay, no problem Mr. [Customer]. I’ll send it again. Just to be sure, would you please tell me the right number again?”

Customer: “Of course. It is [email address].”

Me: “…”

Related:
Taxing Faxing, Part 27
Taxing Faxing, Part 26
Taxing Faxing, Part 25
Taxing Faxing, Part 24
Taxing Faxing, Part 23