A customer was talking with me at my counter. Suddenly, as she was speaking, she violently spat out a tooth in front of me! She hurriedly grabbed it and put it back in her mouth.
My colleague was dying and I had to maintain a straight face!
My friend is a bit of a moron. He’s not a bad person, and he’s not an anti-vaxxer, but he legitimately didn’t seem to think that getting vaccinated was important until all his coworkers started getting sick with the latest variant of a particular contagious illness.
As soon as the third coworker where he works caught [illness], [Coworker] scheduled an appointment to get vaccinated, but he could only find one three and a half weeks out.
Sadly, he tested positive himself four days before the appointment. This absolute moron of a man decided to go and get vaccinated while currently sick with the illness, despite my efforts to convince him to wait, because, and I quote:
Friend: “I ain’t waiting another three and a half weeks. I’m ready to do it now, and I’m gonna get ‘er done.”
He was in the emergency room the next day; the vaccine had made his symptoms worse. He spent two weeks in the hospital.
About two weeks after that, he tested negative for the illness. He’d been testing every two or three days. He told me:
Friend: “Oh, good thing. I got my second dose of the vaccine yesterday.”
Two women in their sixties are browsing the shoe department. After some minor language-barrier problems, I bring out several pairs of our lightweight hiking boots.
That’s when the older of the two ladies takes off her shoes and socks and I see that the tips of her toes are black… and not with dirt!
She says something to her companion and the companion asks me:
Woman: “What causes that?”
In my head, I scroll down the list of possible responses: diabetes, wearing shoes that are too tight, long periods of inactivity, frostbite, and EEEWWWWW! But I settle on:
Me: “Ma’am, I’m not a doctor, but I think your friend should get that checked out by a doctor… and soon!”
She relayed that info, they both nodded and took their purchases up to the registers.
Meanwhile, I was thinking, “Why would you POSSIBLY let a condition like that just slide? And why ask a shoe salesman for a medical diagnosis?”
I’m still shaking my head over that one.
I am a customer at a restaurant. A woman and a teenage girl sit down at the table next to mine. I swear I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.
Woman: “And where is [Boy], exactly?”
Girl: “He wasn’t feeling well so he stayed at home.”
Woman: “[Health crisis illness]?”
Girl: “His tests all came back negative. And he’s not coughing, he’s tummy-and-headache sick.”
Woman: “Too sick to visit on my birthday?”
Girl: “That’s just how it goes sometimes, Mum.”
Woman: “I suppose, but I think he’s exaggerating. The world doesn’t stop just because you don’t feel well.”
Girl: “The last time you told me that, you sent me to school with shingles.”
Woman: *Triumphantly* “And you passed your exam with an A!”
When I was in my early twenties, I’d mostly worked short-term temp jobs. I had very low confidence and (at the time undiagnosed) severe social anxiety. I’d had many job interviews, none of which had led to job offers, and some of them had felt like rejections even before the interview was over.
Eventually, I’d been unemployed for so long that the jobcentre insisted I had to go onto a work placement, essentially two weeks of working full-time for zero extra money — just the regular £40 each week — or I’d lose my benefits. My advisor was sympathetic and agreed that my problem wasn’t a lack of initiative, like with many of her clients, but a lack of confidence. She suggested that even though it wasn’t the work I was looking for, I should try a placement in retail as working with people might help me develop more confidence and social skills. I was terrified, but she promised me that if it was too much for me, she’d write me off as sick after a few days and make sure I didn’t lose my benefits as a result.
On the first day of the placement, I really was sick. I had to phone the shop I was placed at and let them know. The man who answered the phone took the message in a clearly sceptical tone. I’d later learn that the previous few people the jobcentre had sent had been useless and most hadn’t even shown up, some not even phoning.
The next day, what should have been my second day but was my first, I managed to get to the shop and go through some basic training, and I was told to shadow one of the staff for the morning and that I’d be put to work in the afternoon. I was still very nervous and soon felt quite ill. I went to the manager.
Me: “I don’t feel well. May I go home?”
She rolled her eyes.
Manager: “Maybe I’ll let you leave early if you don’t slack off.”
I walked back toward the till and suddenly threw up all over the shop floor. The manager, the customers, and the other staff were all suddenly trying to help me, and I realised that it hadn’t been a lack of sympathy but a certainty that I was feigning illness to protest being forced to work.
Obviously, I was allowed to go home as soon as I felt well enough to leave, and the manager even insisted on it when I offered to work after all since I felt a bit better. The whole thing made a bizarre ice breaker, and I was soon made to feel part of the team and was told stories about my useless predecessors. By the time my two-week placement was finished, I’d already been hired as a part-time sales assistant, and I ended up working there until the company went bankrupt several years later.
