My mother-in-law calls my husband one day, clearly angry about something. I can only hear his half of the conversation, but he gives me the short version on our way to the hospital: his mother was in an accident involving a motorcyclist. We get to the hospital and find her in a room in the Emergency Room. She has a bandage on her forehead, a few scratches on her arms, and blossoming bruises, but she is otherwise outwardly unharmed.

Mother-In-Law: “Finally! Tell the nurse there to discharge me.”

The nurse at the nearby station glares at us and shakes her head “no” before turning away.

Me: “What happened?”

Mother-In-Law: “I was driving, and this motorcyclist stopped right in front of me!”

Me: “Okay, well, did you talk to the police? Is there a video?”

Mother-In-Law: “Yes! They’re saying it’s my fault because I hit him! If he saw my car coming why didn’t he move?”

Husband: “I… I don’t understand. Why was the motorcycle stopped?”

Mother-In-Law: “He said the light was red. I didn’t see it, though, so I think he was lying.”

Me: “You rear-ended a motorcyclist making a legal stop at a red light?!”

Mother-In-Law: “I didn’t know he was there! I was using my phone for GPS, and I dropped it, and—”

Me: “Jesus. Why—”

Mother-In-Law: “Well, if he had been paying attention, he could have moved!”

Me: “If you had been paying attention, you could have stopped!”

Husband: *Carefully calm* “Mom. You could have killed him.”

Mother-In-Law: “But I didn’t! So I should get to go home.”

Husband: “You have to stay here. They need to make sure you don’t have a concussion or anything.”

Mother-In-Law: “Take me home. Now.”

Husband: *Leading me toward the exit* “We’ll talk to you later, Mom.”

After all kinds of legal issues and [Mother-In-Law] being her usual stubborn self, her license was revoked, and she paid some fines and had to pay the motorcyclist’s medical bills. She thought all of this was unfair since she still believed she wasn’t at fault. A gas station at the corner submitted their security camera video as evidence, showing the motorcycle stopping a full fifteen seconds before [Mother-In-Law]’s fifteen-passenger van plowed straight into him and the SUV in front of him. The motorcyclist had a long recovery ahead of him, but he did make it through. [Mother-In-Law] will still tell anyone who will listen that she shouldn’t have been blamed because the motorcyclist should have seen her coming and moved.

It’s around 2003 or 2004. I am working in the toy section at a huge big-box store doing shelf stocking. Around Black Friday, we happen to have this doll on sale for $19.99; Toys “R” Us has the same doll for $79.99.

People know about this and are lined up outside five hours before we open. They’re not just your regular bargain shoppers but a bunch of middle-aged women who have been standing in the cold for five hours for this… doll. Of course, there are a few normal bargain shoppers in the mix, also.

Fifteen minutes before opening, we start hearing this loud bang, so a few of us go to see what’s happening.

They’re ramming the door! Two-hundred cold people are trying to take down the gate to the kingdom! Five minutes later, there is the inevitable SNAP! Yup… they’ve broken through the doors! Everybody rushes into the store even though it’s not open yet and nobody is at their cash register.

It doesn’t matter; people think it’s okay to go in through the door that popped off its hinges. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve worked retail for almost ten years in total now.

First, we have to call an ambulance, as one of our elderly customers (a very nice, old man who always makes people smile) was near the front entrance, in the front line of the battle of the bargains (barbarians). He fell to the floor and got run over by countless people. Nobody stopped to help; he just got stepped on.

At the same time this is happening, I head over to the toys section where the three pallets of these dolls are sitting. And what do I see? A crazy woman swinging her cane violently, claiming the whole lot of them! She’s screaming things like:

Crazy Customer: “I’ve been here for eight hours! I brought $5,000 and I’m getting them all! If you want some, you are going to have to buy them from me!”

She hits two employees along with many customers. Our security guard is there, though. She’s small but she is built. She goes up to the front of the crowd and addresses the violent woman.

Security Guard: “This is strike two. I want you to leave now or else I’m having you removed.”

Crazy Customer: “Bring it on; you can’t take me!”

The guard slowly walked up to her, put her hands in her pockets, and threw three or four bouncy balls on the floor. The crazy lady was a little thrown off and looked at the balls. The guard snapped the cane out of her hands. The cops showed up a few minutes later.

We sold out of dolls in minutes, with a limit of one per customer.

[Coworker] sits next to me in the office. We have nothing in common — we’re complete opposites, in fact — but get on really well.

However, she does repeatedly try to invite me out to eat somewhere or order takeaway. When I politely refuse, she brings in the leftovers to try to get me to eat.

Honestly, it was sweet at first, but I am getting a little fed up with it. I’ve said several times that I’m in training, so I have to watch what I eat, and I can’t eat unhealthy food this month. At any mention that I’m finding it difficult, she tries to convince me to cheat on my diet — as if it wasn’t difficult enough.

It’s lunchtime. I’ve brought a layered salad I made last night. It’s not exactly on calorie, but I need a little boost today. It’s full of all my favourite veg and loads of meat and dressing. I’ve been looking forward to it all morning.

[Coworker] spots this. It’s Friday so she is ordering burgers. I know she is going to ask me what I want to order and then act surprised when I say that I’m okay. She then will say how bad she feels being the only one eating rubbish and remark on how she should probably eat better. I know this because this is what she says every. Single. Week. 

However, today, she catches me by surprise and changes up the script.

Coworker: “Oh, poor you, having to eat… that.”

Me: “This? Oh, no. This is great; it’s one of my favourites.”

Coworker: *With a condescending laugh* “Oh, poor thing. I might not be ‘healthy’, but I know what tastes good. Why don’t you order something with me?”

Me: “That’s… kind of you. But no, thanks. Really, I’m happy with this.”

Coworker: *Suddenly irritated* “Oh, don’t be silly. Come on. How can that rabbit food taste good?!”

Me: “I don’t know, [Coworker]. Some people like it.”

Coworker: *Even more irritable* “Oh, because I’m fat, I couldn’t possibly understand. Is that it?”

This again?

Me: “I think your blood sugar is off. Maybe have a snack?”

Coworker: “Oh, you would like that wouldn’t you? I eat even more and get even fatter? So you can lord it over me with your healthy food?!”

Me: “I’m not talking to you when you are like this.”

She started ranting, and it got less and less intelligible. Her manager rushed over and struggled to get her to calm down. Then, he made her go to his office.

She appeared later and blanked me completely, only talking to make snide comments about something being “someone’s” fault and how “some people” are inconsiderate.

Whatever. She could be as petty as she liked. I would not engage with her; she could calm down and apologise if she wanted anything from me.

To my surprise, she requested to move desks. Apparently, I was “not being considerate enough of her life choices,” whatever that meant. I’m pretty sure she just wanted someone to enable her.

Then, I found out where she is now sitting. She’s surrounded by coworkers who are just as health-conscious as I am. Four of them are in my running club, and one is allergic to something in her beloved burgers.

Not only will they not entertain her moaning, but she won’t be allowed to eat at her desk as she insists on doing, lip-smacking and pleasure-moaning as she eats.

Enjoy your new surroundings, [Coworker]. In truth, I won’t miss you that much, or your complaining, your emotional blackmail, or the stink of reheated takeaways.

I once had a job at Harvard. (Yes, that Harvard.) I replaced a guy who was legally blind but refused to admit he couldn’t read a screen. He had “screen enlargement” software which he’d used to blow up text until the entire screen showed one letter, and he’d proceed to spend several minutes trying to figure out what letter it was. As you can imagine, especially for commands which would usually be several hundred characters each, this made computer programming very slow.

They were used to giving him a task to do — always “produce mailing labels to these specifications” — and it taking a week before they got results. They gave me a task, and I had results in an hour.

Me: “I’m sorry this took me so long. It took me a while to figure out the printer.”

Without even looking at my work, the boss ripped me a new one.

Boss: “You couldn’t possibly have results in an hour! I know for a fact that it should take at least a week. Go back and do it right this time.”

I took the labels back to my desk, put them on a shelf, read novels for a week, and brought the labels back to the boss. He looked at them and announced that they were perfect.

Boss: “Now you see what taking your time to do it right can do?”

So, when an employer gives me a task with a stated timeframe that is ridiculously long, I get it done and then don’t give them results until about when they are expecting results; if I do otherwise, I know they will reject my work.

Two days before Thanksgiving, I noticed that something was wrong: my youngest son wasn’t his usual energetic self. He was crawling across the floor to the breakfast table and muttering incomplete sentences that I couldn’t make sense of. I touched him and he was burning up.

I took him to the doctor and they said he had a fever of 106.5F, which is very bad — and could get worse.

My husband asked around while I was with the kid at the hospital, and it turns out that the neighbor’s kid had had a fever of about 105F recently, but the neighbor let him play with my son despite being dangerously ill, because it was “just a little fever”.

Our family was supposed to visit us for Thanksgiving, but I called them to cancel since I didn’t want my nieces and nephews to get sick.

One of my brothers actually mocked me for “being a wimp” and “letting a little fever cancel Thanksgiving”.

So, here we are on Thanksgiving Day, smuggling a turkey, some cranberry sauce, and a pumpkin pie smoothie into the hospital to feed my smallest a Thanksgiving meal. Because some morons didn’t take disease prevention seriously.