We rent out houses. It sometimes happens that mail gets delivered wrongly or people get mail from the previous tenant. This can be annoying but is not our fault. We can send the previous tenant a letter with the request to change his address, but that is pretty much all we can do. If we have the time for it, people can bring in wrongly delivered mail and we’ll write “return to sender” on it. Since we are usually busy, this rarely happens and is reserved for those “escalation cases”.

A woman comes in with a crate filled with mail. It is really a lot, and I see why my coworkers offered for her to bring it to us to help her. She seems irate.

Woman: “I can’t believe you let this happen!”

Me: “I’m sorry this happened, miss. Were there any letters from us, as well?”

Woman: “No, none from you. Just from all these other companies.”

Me: “We always tell tenants they should change their address when they move, but sometimes people forget it, don’t take the mail forwarding service of the post services, or they were too late for that one letter. But let me check the letters for you.”

Woman: “Check them? Why?”

Me: “Just to make sure these are all for the previous tenants.”

Woman: “Of course! Why would you check that?! Why are you holding me up like this?”

At that moment, I spot a tax letter for the woman in front of me. I say nothing but just place it in front of her while I continue sorting.

Woman: “Oh, eh… well, I missed that one.”

I put another letter for her in front of her.

Woman: “Oh… well…”

And another one. In total, I find fourteen letters addressed to her including three from our national IRS — those envelopes are always a certain kind of blue, so you can recognise them instantly. The woman is silent.

Me: “I’ll bring the rest to my coworker, so she can send them back. Feel free to do so yourself if you receive another one. Can I help you with anything else?”

Woman: “Eh… no…” *Mutters. “Thank you.”

Me: “Most welcome!”

I order food from a well-known delivery service. The food is outside, and the guy calls us to ask where our house is because it’s hard to find and their GPS map always places us further up our road than we are. It’s easier for me to go outside and get it from them rather than explain how to find our house. So I go, grab the bag, and thank the guy.

As I’m walking back to the house in the dark, it strikes me that this seems like a lot more food than we ordered. I get inside and look at the receipt stapled to the bag and, sure enough, our £23 order is missing and this is someone else’s £35 order. I call the guy, who tells us he can’t do anything because he’s just a delivery guy for a third-party company and to contact the delivery company helpline. Fair enough. I hop on the chat.

Me: “Hi, I received an order, but it’s entirely wrong. I ordered a meal with specific dietary requirements so I cannot eat any of it. Can I get a refund, please?”

I send this with proof of my actual order and what I received.

My family eats the food we got because at least they get dinner that way. I end up making something anyway because I can’t eat any of what I got.

Eight entire hours pass by before customer support… refunds me £1.64.

At first, I think maybe they misunderstood because some of the items we ordered did happen to be in the order we got, but neither the chicken nor the burger we actually got was this price. Literally nothing I ordered was £1.64 — not even the tip we left the delivery guy, delivery charge, or service fee was £1.64 — and I still have no idea where they got this value from.

Me: “Hi. Why was I only refunded £1.64 for a £20+ order I never got?”

Several more hours pass by. It is now about midday the next day.

Customer Support: “Your refund of £1.64 is already being processed; it will appear in two to three business days.”

Me: “Yes, thank you, but that isn’t my problem. None of what I ordered was £1.64. None of the charges were £1.64. I’m confused about why the value I’m being refunded isn’t the value of my entire order I never got.”

Customer Support: “Your refund of £1.64 is being processed. I’m closing the claim.”

Cue me opening a third claim, mainly out of principle now.

I reexplain the ordeal AGAIN.

Me: “Please, can I just be refunded?”

Another probably about four or five hours passed by, and I went to check the logs with no update. At this point, it had been like two days, and I’d given up getting my money back.

I was sitting there wondering if the family that ordered £35 of stuff that we got had gotten their refund, and I saw they had refunded me the entire amount a few minutes prior. I guess they decided it would be nicer if it was a surprise because no one replied to my customer support chat.

I am currently walking with a knee brace and an ankle brace. Sometimes I use a cane when the pain gets too bad. This happens while I am waiting for a (notoriously unreliable) elevator to get to one of my classes on the third floor. A chipper lady from administration walks up to me.

Lady: “You know, here at [College], we’re promoting health this month!”

Me: *Not really paying attention* “That’s great.”

Lady: “You know, taking the stairs would be a lot healthier for you! You could lose some weight!”

I stare pointedly at my immobilized leg and cane.

Me: “Ma’am?”

She walked away. I don’t think she even noticed. Lady, if I could take the stairs, I would!

When I was fifteen, I got my first part-time summer job as a “server” at a local buffet restaurant. I put “server” in quotes because what I did was refresh the trays of food, bring out new utensils and flatware, and in general look after a section of the buffet. I was not in any way doing table service.

My family had a two-week vacation planned for the beginning of August, and as I was only fifteen, there was no way that I was not going to be going on it. I was upfront about that and the dates in my interview, I gave the manager a letter detailing the dates that I would be out when I started, and I periodically reminded him of the dates throughout May, June, and July. He always acknowledged these with a verbal “okay,” and I never got the impression that those constraints would not be honored.

Fast forward to late July, the week before the vacation started, and lo and behold, I saw my name all over the schedule for those two weeks when I would be out. I went to the manager and remind him that I wouldn’t be there.

Manager: “Time off is never guaranteed. If you want that time off, you need to find other people to cover your shifts. If you don’t show up and there is no one covering for you, you will be fired.”

Me: “Okay…?”

I did not find anyone to cover my shifts. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I didn’t have contact information for any of my coworkers, and as this was the early 1990s, there was no social media or any of those other fallbacks. Besides, when I got home and consulted with my Dad on that dilemma, he reassured me that I had done everything right and that the whole situation was the manager’s fault and his problem to fix.

So, we went on vacation as planned.

Two weeks later, we came home to a lot of increasingly angry voicemails from the manager, really ranting and threatening, which pissed my parents off quite a bit. 

The next day, my dad took me to drop off my uniform and pick up my last paycheck, since we both assumed that I was fired. Surprisingly, this was not the case.

Manager: “So, you aren’t coming in for your shift tomorrow?!”

Me: “No!”

Dad: “After what you said on our answering machine? You have got to be kidding!”

Honestly, I would have quit after Labor Day, anyway, since my parents were adamant that during the school year my job was to focus on school. I wasn’t unhappy to have those last couple of weeks free, even though I was upset at how my very first job ended.

Content Warning: Gross Content

A truly awful woman and her two mischievous children have just ordered some meals. She has been verbally abusive, entitled, impossible to please, and generally just everything that’s wrong with society wrapped in a clichéd soccer mom skin.

Her kids have been playing around outside after barely touching their meals, while she is on the phone. They come back in and up to the counter, giggling while disgorging the contents of their hands onto my counter: about half a dozen writhing caterpillars.

They are obviously expecting to get some kind of reaction out of me, but I am not going to give them the pleasure.

Me: “Oh, lovely! More meat for our burgers!”

The boys looked disappointed for a moment, but then they got another evil glint in their eyes. They ran back over to their mom, who was still enthralled with her phone call, and started playing with the food. Specifically, her food.

The mom eventually enjoyed her burger while the boys just watched with glee.

As did I.