When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, and we found that eating certain foods exacerbated the symptoms, the worst ones being gluten and dairy.

I was at a cafe with my dad and my uncle, who I don’t get to see very often. The menu labeled the gluten-free foods, which was good, but didn’t indicate dairy-free, which meant I had to ask the waitress when she came to take our order.

Me: “Is the orange and almond cake dairy-free?”

Waitress: “I’ll have to go check.”

We waited for a few moments and she came back.

Waitress: “I asked the cook, and they said the orange and almond cake is dairy-free.”

Me: “Awesome, I’ll get a slice of that.”

Waitress: “Would you like ice cream with that?”

I decide to order a pizza. Originally, I was going to pick it up myself from a place right down the block, but I discover I’ve left it too late, and this close to closing, they aren’t answering the phone for new orders. So, I order a pizza from a place a little further away; I order online and opt for delivery.

For whatever reason, delivery drivers have a hard time with my apartment complex, especially the fact that my side of the complex is served by only one gate off the main entrance — where there’s a keypad for secure entry — while the other side has both that gate (which is often kept open lately for plumbing work) and an exit-only gate opening onto another road. If the delivery drivers aren’t going through the already-open gate and going the wrong way before looking for my building, they’re sneaking through the exit-only gate the other way, which means they’ll never actually get in front of my building; they’d have to go back out and then in again as directed.

Since this is pretty much always the case, I always leave really detailed instructions on the order form when I submit it. “Enter from [Road], use code [number], and go right/east through Gate #1, and it’s the building directly ahead at the end of the lot,” etc. I do that tonight, and, as usual, add a decent driver tip at checkout.

At the very end of the delivery window, when the tracker has shown the driver at my apartment complex for at least ten minutes, I get a phone call.

Driver: “This is [Pizza Chain]. Is this [My Name]?”

Me: “That’s me.”

Driver: “Hey, I’ve got your pizza. I’ve been driving around, but I can’t find your building.”

Me: “Oh, did you not get the instructions I added to the order?”

Driver: “No, I did, but I didn’t come in the way you said.”

Me: “Ah, that’s the problem; if you come in through the other gate, it doesn’t connect, so you have to come out and back in through Gate #1.”

There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence as I wait for him to acknowledge this; the moment stretches out for way too long. Finally…

Driver: “So, I’m out by the pool. Are you gonna come to get your pizza?”

Me: “All right, I’m headed your way. Just hang on a moment.”

I slip my shoes on and head down two flights of stairs and all the way across the parking lot. The pool is right behind the leasing office, in the middle of the complex, bordered by blocks of apartments on three sides with parking lots on the other side of all three, so I’m not sure exactly where I’m heading, but he’s still on the phone.

Me: “Which side of the pool are you on?”

Driver: “I’m right by the gate.”

I head out to the front gates, looking for his car. The gates are up by the leasing office, so I take that sidewalk, and there’s a car out there, but the young lady behind the wheel backs out, heads for the exit, and drives away. I keep going and head around the corner, not seeing anybody. The driver is still on the phone, but he hasn’t said anything in a good minute and a half. I come across another car in the middle of the parking lot, but it’s standing open with no one in sight.

Me: “I’m sorry, where did you say you were?”

Driver: “Did you come out to the pool?”

Surely not, I think, but I cut through building eight and discovered that he had, in fact, left his car in the parking and lot and decided he would randomly wait for me leaning against the walk-gate into the actual pool enclosure… which I’m sure wasn’t at all creepy and threatening for the two young girls swimming by themselves.

Sometimes I think online ordering needs to let you decrease a tip retroactively. At least the pizza was good.

I’m the unofficial IT person in my job. This is mostly because I can read and follow instructions, and I’m slightly more computer savvy than most as my dad is a tech geek and most of my friends are, too.

We have a meeting three times a week for allocating cases to case managers. I’m in the meeting in Teams, and my coworker is trying to get on it. It isn’t working.

Coworker: “My camera isn’t working! I know I switched it on! It must be broken.”

Me: *To the video call* “Sorry, two minutes. She’s having tech issues again.”

I walk over and look at her screen.

I then slide the cover on the camera so it isn’t blocking the lens. I walk back to my computer and put my headset back on.

Me: “[Boss], I’m gonna be charging £1 an incident from now on to fix IT issues.”

Boss: “Fair. Go for it.”

My coworker started off happy I had fixed it. She was less happy by the end of the day when she owed me £5 under my new invoicing system.

I’m still on my parents’ insurance and have been struggling with my mental health. We find a counselor within the network and call them to make sure they do accept the insurance. The receptionist runs it and tells us that they do, so we make an appointment.

I see the counselor for a few months before I determine that I’m doing better and stop seeing her.

It has been a little over half a year since seeing her when I get a call from her. She is aggressive right off the bat.

Counselor: “It turns out that we stopped accepting your insurance shortly around the time that I started seeing you, so only the first two appointments were covered. You will need to pay me for my time from the other appointments.”

Me: “How much is owed?”

Counselor: “$1,600, and I will need the entire payment right now. I can take a card number from you when you are ready.”

Me: “I don’t have $1,600 in my account. You need to call my parents and discuss it with them since it was under their insurance.”

She calls my mom.

Counselor: “It turns out we stopped accepting your insurance shortly after [My Name] started seeing me, and you now owe me $1,600.”

Mom: “When we first called, your receptionist told us that you accepted the insurance. If we had known that you no longer did, we would have found a different practice that did and wouldn’t have made any more appointments with your practice. Why were we never made aware that you stopped accepting our insurance?”

Counselor: “We didn’t catch it until now. Not my fault. I’m still going to need a payment from you.”

Mom: “I understand that it was a mistake, but it’s been months since she’s stopped seeing you, and you just discovered that you no longer accepted the insurance? I’d understand if it was paying for one or two appointments, but why wasn’t this caught sooner?”

Counselor: “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

Mom: “So, we have to pay for a mistake that your office made?”

There’s a long pause before the counselor responds.

Counselor: “I mean, what am I supposed to do? Fire my receptionist?”

Mom: “I’m not asking you to do that, but she’s the one that made the mistake and didn’t catch it for months. Not us.”

The counselor ended up begrudgingly accepting that it was the fault of her receptionist for letting it go on as long as it did. She decided to let it go by putting some of her unused pro bono toward the sessions.

Today is a windy day. A coworker and I are putting up flyers for a building event. We have quite a few in a small box, one for each elevator lobby, each exterior door, etc. I partially tape one flyer on the front door while my coworker and I chat idly, and as I go for the tape to complete the flyer, an employee from another office cuts in with a hasty, “Excuse me, sorry,” and throws the door open all the way to go outside.

The wind pushes into the lobby, ripping the flyer I have been putting up off the glass and sending the rest of them shooting out of the box across God’s creation.

The employee just trots away without addressing the chaos she has just unleashed because she didn’t want to wait a literal fraction of a second for me to put down the second piece of tape. It’s worth noting that only six feet to the right there is another set of doors.

Coworker: “I hate people.” 

Me: “Understandable.”