I work at a coffee shop. We sell canisters for coffee beans with the shop’s name on them, and we keep them on a high shelf behind the register. I’m very short, so I usually have one of my taller coworkers grab them for me.

A middle-aged man came in and asked for a canister. My coworker was downstairs doing dishes, so I grabbed a chair to reach the shelf. I grabbed a canister, and suddenly, I felt someone grabbing me underneath my armpits and lifting me off the chair. The customer had decided he was going to come back behind the register and “help” me down off the chair.

I kind of panicked, made an awkward baby-bird-like flapping movement with my arms as he lifted me off the chair, and looked at him in shock.

Afterward, I asked my coworker if I could do the dishes for the rest of the shift so I could hide in the kitchen and not have to deal with customers for a few minutes at a time.

I worked in testing back during the global health crisis. I joined pretty late, so it was relatively chill.

Normally, we got patient information through an app (the tests themselves were paid for by the German government), and patients could “book” a slot any time, even a minute before they were up. It was normal that some older people didn’t have phones, so we took their information manually and printed their tests for them.

One day, an old lady (late sixties or early seventies, I reckon) with a motorcycle came into the queue, which was pretty much empty at the time. I took her information and we did her tests. She was nice enough, but I noticed her kinda punk fashion style. (We have a phrase in German, “Jung geblieben”, i.e. “Stayed young”, which is meant as a light insult, and it would fit here.)

Me: “It’s going to be fifteen minutes for us to evaluate and print your results.”

Lady: “Oh, no problem. I’ll just smoke my medical marijuana over here!”

And she moved five meters over into the middle of the (empty) queue.

We politely asked her to please not stand in the middle of the queue area while smoking weed, and she was polite and moved a couple of meters outside the tent to her bike.

What a crazy lady. Hope she’s doing good.

My father had a Ph.D. and worked in the administration in Hamburg, Germany. Through his tennis club, he became friends with a guy who was the general manager at a small factory on the outskirts of Hamburg. [Friend] didn’t have a college education — which is not remotely as unusual in Germany as it is in the USA — and [Friend] made a lot more money than my dad did. My dad suspected that [Friend] was mainly his friend so he could introduce my dad to his peers as “my friend, Dr. [Dad]”.

One day, my dad had a heart attack. It was very serious. Word traveled that he was sick, and [Friend] called our house.

Friend: “I heard something is going on with your dad. What is it, exactly?”

Me: “He’s really not well. That’s all I’m going to tell you.”

Friend: “Oh, come on. Tell me what’s going on?” 

Me: “He’s really not well. Let’s leave it at that, please.”

Friend: “No, I’m one of his closest friends. I demand that you tell me what’s going on with your dad!”

Me: “Fine. He’s had a heart attack and he’s dying. When he’s out of his misery, you and your wife will get a notification about the time and place of the funeral.”

Friend: “…”

Me: “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’d like to return to the hospital now.”

My dad died the next day.

[Friend] and his wife attended the funeral, but whenever they saw my mother later, which happened regularly in our suburb, they pretended they didn’t know her. 

I guess my father was right about his Ph.D. as a main motivator for this “friendship”.

Back in 2011, we moved to Hamburg, Germany from The Netherlands. My German was basic at best, but I tried. One day, I was coming back from a jogging session and I saw a neighboring building on fire. It was nothing massive, but black smoke was coming out of a couple of kitchen windows on one of the stories.

In front of that building, I saw my neighbor: a young woman with her four-month-old daughter in a pram. The neighbor was completely in distress, obviously trying to reach someone on the phone without any luck. She was screaming into what I suppose was a voicemail:

Neighbor: “Pick up the d*** phone. Why don’t you answer me?!”

I approached her to see what was wrong and whether I could help. Apparently, one of the kitchens burning belonged to a friend of hers — the one she couldn’t reach. She was in complete panic, afraid that the friend was still inside. The street was starting to fill out with various emergency vehicles, being extremely loud. I offered to help her and she gave me her kid so that the baby wouldn’t be in all that noise. Mind you, I had been living there for just a couple of months and more than knowing we were neighbors could not be said about our relationship. 

I took the kid in the pram to a safer place and had to ask for permission to enter the street, as it was closed off by the police officers. I was wearing a bright neon pink shirt — the typical “don’t run me over” jogger outfit. The kind police lady let me pass after I told her I live in the building next door and advised me to go inside with the kid to avoid breathing in the fumes. In all the confusion, I didn’t tell the neighbor where I was going, and she didn’t tell me where to take the kid. We each assumed the other one knew. I’m sure you all already know where this is going.

I took the kid inside, into my apartment, as advised. She was tired, and as I rocked her in my arms, she fell asleep. I put her on the sofa and sat beside her, not knowing if the could turn and fall down. All of a sudden, I could hear helicopters flying over, quite low. My heart leaped; I was sure that the building on fire was in a very bad condition.

Suddenly, someone rang the doorbell. When I opened it, I saw two police officers standing in front of me. They looked at me, up and down, and asked if I had seen a baby girl, matching the description of the baby sleeping on my sofa. 

Me: “Yeah, she’s here, sleeping.”

Officer: “What? Wait… This was all a misunderstanding. What luck. Oh, dear, what luck! Could you pick her up and bring her along?”

Me: *Completely confused* “Sure.”

I picked up the still sleeping girl and, guided by the two police officers, stepped out of my apartment onto the street. What I saw scared the living daylights out of me. There was an entire corridor of the police force: a full K9-unit, motorbike police officers, police officers on horses, uncountable police cars, ambulances, etc.

Apparently, the neighbor — the little girl’s mother — finally reached her friend and, happy that the friend was okay (she wasn’t at home, but working, to begin with), she turned around to her kid… who was gone… and she had no recollection anymore to whom she had given the child. So, her first reaction was to go into full-blown panic mode and claim that someone had kidnapped her kid.

In a street full of emergency services due to a fire, it wasn’t difficult to organize a full search. And then, it hit me: those helicopters were looking for me!

All is well what ends well: we (me and my husband, who missed the whole ordeal due to work) went to visit the neighbors a couple of days later with some newborn presents, and we had coffee, cake, and a good laugh about everything. I even ended up babysitting on a couple of occasions.

And, ladies and gentlemen, that is how I ended up having a true story of how I, once upon a time, was Hamburg’s most wanted criminal, even if it was for a very short period of time.

I’m in line to check out. The old woman in front of me is still loading her items but there is still plenty of space for me to place a divider and my items, as I only have four things. Queen of the conveyor belt doesn’t like this and turns to give me a death glare. She is trying to spread each and every single item out on the belt, taking more space than she actually needs.

She’s also standing right in front of the card reader and staring intently at the customer who is currently being checked out. When it’s her turn to check out, she speaks very condescendingly to the cashier.

He starts to ring up some slightly bruised tomatoes and she stops him.

Customer: “No, no, not those! Those are bad.”

Cashier: “Okay, then I will set them aside.”

Customer: “No! I still want them; I just don’t want to pay for them! They’re bad! You’re just going to throw them out anyway!”

Cashier: “Well, I don’t have the authority to make that call.”

Customer: “Fine, then I don’t want them!”

Cashier: “Sorry, I don’t own the store, so I can’t make that decision.”

Customer: *Rolling her eyes* “Ugh, I know that!”

She then took forever to pay and to pack her things. What bothers me most is that she deliberately picked out “bad” tomatoes, hoping she could bully the minimum-wage cashier into giving them to her for free — or perhaps she hoped a manager would get involved.