My periods are INSANELY painful. I’ve been hospitalized because of them. When I am around fifteen, my stepmom and my dad go to a barbecue. They ask me to come along, but I don’t feel that great, so I stay home.

About two hours after they leave, I fall to the floor in COMPLETE pain. My dogs find me; my pit bull stays next to me while my boxer runs around looking for someone to help me. I text my dad, telling him he needs to come home, but he doesn’t answer. About five minutes later, I get a call from my stepmom.

Stepmom: “Why did you text your dad that?”

Me: “Because I’m lying on the floor in pain and can’t get up.”

Stepmom: “Why can’t you get up?”

Me: “I’m on my period and this pain won’t stop unless I stay curled up in a ball like this.”

Stepmom: “Ugh, fine, we are coming home. But don’t ever text your dad with that again.”

She hangs up. They arrive fifteen minutes later. My boxer runs over to them and shows them where I am. My dad picks me up and carries me to my room. My stepmom gets some painkillers and a heating pad and tells me to sleep. She is mad the rest of the day and won’t even look at me.

The next day, we meet my mom, and my dad tells her everything that happened. My mom and I decide to start looking into birth control. We find out I can’t have the pill because I have epilepsy, so we end up going with an implant.

I later tell my dad and stepmom that I got birth control to help and my dad is happy.

Stepmom: “I hope you know that means you can’t go around sleeping with everyone.”

I sit there in shock that she said something like that IN FRONT OF MY DAD.

Around dinnertime, I still can’t stop thinking about what she said. My dad knows that something is troubling me.

Dad: “She didn’t mean it, you know. That’s not how it was meant to come out.”

I believe my dad, of course.

When dinner is finally served, my stepmom keeps giving me dirty looks and looks at the food like I just gave her a severed human head to eat.

Stepmom: “Did [My Name] help make any of this?”

Dad: “Everything except the vegetables that you made.”

My stepmom then proceeded to only eat the vegetables, like I was going to give her some sort of disease because I got birth control. I ate about half my food and then cleaned up. My dad apologized for her, but I didn’t believe it this time.

I used to work in a smoke shop. We had shelves sitting in the middle of the worker area, holding dip and chew and cigarettes. They went nearly to the ceiling. Those things were rickety, and a stiff breeze would have toppled them.

So, you can guess what had happened when I came in one day and saw that the shelves were all gone. Someone told me the details of what happened, and it was an “OMG!” moment, to be sure.

The shelf decided to let go at the least opportune moment and fell over onto [Coworker]. It slammed her into the register and actually pinned her head there.

Bless the customer she had been waiting on; he got a rush of adrenaline, jumped clean over the counter into the worker-only area, and lifted it off of her.

A couple of big, burly security officers had to come in, pull everything off the shelves, and drag those menaces out of the building one at a time.

This was decades ago before the world got more lawsuit-savvy. Sadly, not much else was done, not even to check out other displays to make sure they were safe. To this day, [Coworker] STILL has back problems from the incident. 

Management didn’t even close the store. They just kind of shrugged with a blank face and a “Meh. Oh, well,” attitude. Oh, wait. I nearly forgot. They did do something: they griped for weeks about losing a display and having to pay for another one.

I’m so very, very glad I don’t work there anymore.

My manager is taking reservations for graduation weekend, one of the busiest times for restaurants in my town. She gets this call from a woman who wants to make a change to her reservation.

Caller: “I already made a reservation for grad week for five people, but I was wondering if we could reserve a bigger table, like for six people.”

Manager: “Are you adding another guest to your reservation?”

Caller: “No, it’s still five people; we just need a larger table.”

Manager: “I’m sorry, but we are completely booked for that weekend and we need the larger tables for the larger parties.”

Caller: *Sighs* “It’s just… my husband… he’s just so fat.”

Manager: *A bit taken aback* “Oh, well, umm… perhaps we could find a smaller table to add to yours, but I can’t promise anything, since the seating plan will already be a bit tight. I’ll see what we can do.”

Caller: “Okay, I guess that’ll work. He’s… just so fat.”

Manager: “Okay, well, is there anything else I can help you with?”

Caller: “No, that’s all. Thank you.” *Mumbling to herself* “…just so fat.”

When it comes to cleaning, I much prefer to leave these matters to my dad. My mom means well, of course, but she is utterly incompetent when it comes to housekeeping and can’t seem to acknowledge it.

She and my dad came over to help me out for a bit, as I was a bit sick after a vaccination. Mom asked if she could use my bathroom while she was here, and, being the polite host I was expected to be, I said yes.

While dad was helping me feel a little better, I noticed she was taking a while in there. After she left, I had to use the bathroom myself. That was when I noticed the smell of cleaning solution. She’d taken it upon herself to clean my toilet while she was in there. Still, I didn’t suspect anything was wrong.

It wasn’t until the next day that I noticed that the smell was as strong as it had been when she visited, when it should’ve disappeared by that point. That’s when I discovered what she did.

She didn’t know what I used to wipe the toilet down after cleaning whenever I did it, so instead of doing the logical thing and asking me — if she had, I would’ve pointed out where my cleaning cloths were — she just assumed the appropriate solution was to use paper towels. And of course, since those can’t be flushed, she just dumped them in my garbage can right next to the toilet and left them there.

To make matters worse, the instructions on the bottle she used clearly said, “Do not breathe in fumes.” Because she just left them there, I ended up inhaling the fumes every time I had to go until I noticed the paper towels and disposed of them in the outdoor garbage can. I ended up feeling sicker than I had been before their visit all because my mother’s well-meaning efforts accidentally poisoned me.

I work at a store in my local mall that appeals to alternative and geek culture. A family comes in: grandma, mother, and daughter. The daughter is maybe in her early teens, bald, and basically, the typical teenage girl who shops at our store. They walk around for a bit and I notice that the daughter keeps excitedly pointing out things she likes and her mom and grandma keep shooting her down.

They finish shopping after about forty-five minutes and come to pay. I ring them up and the mother and grandmother are visibly displeased with the total (as if they didn’t know the prices of what they had grabbed) and the girl looks kind of uncomfortable, but then she drops a bomb on me.

Girl: “Um… Do you have a cancer discount?”

She’s looking at me with the saddest little doe eyes, as if a sixteen-year-old being paid minimum wage at a massive corporation has any say in the price of things.

I am totally taken aback. Her mother and grandmother don’t interject whatsoever. How do I answer this without looking like an a**hole?!

Me: “Umm… no, I’m sorry.”

Luckily, my manager overheard and turned around to quickly take care of the situation. He was livid when they left. I have a sneaking suspicion that the mother and grandma were telling her to say that to guilt people into giving them a discount.