My mother used to love telling this story. In the 1970s, my sister, brother, and I attended a small, private Hebrew Day School from kindergarten through sixth grade. Our mother was very involved in the PTA (Parent Teacher Association).

One meeting was devoted to discussing whether or not to have sex education in the school.

Mom #1: “I definitely do not want my son to learn about S-E-X at school! Only at home!”

Mom #2: “Oh, come on, [Mom #1]. You and your husband have a kid, so you must have done it at least once, right? What’s your problem?”

[Mom #1] stood up, clutching her pearls (metaphorically) and sputtering incoherently, and stormed out of the meeting!

After a moment, a third mom spoke up.

Mom #3: “[Mom #2], you know that [Mom #1] and her husband’s son is adopted, right?”

You could have heard a pin drop!

About fourteen years ago, I went to work for a major petroleum company in Indianapolis. Over my four years there, I applied myself and gained enough knowledge to be more knowledgeable than the most senior guy.

One day, stuff hit the fan, and we were looking at a potentially major spill because the packing in a pump had failed. Nobody was doing anything, and I’m a take-charge kind of guy, so I started barking orders. You have to understand that this would have been an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) nightmare, so there was no time for niceties.

The other employees went and complained. I was called into the manager’s office and was told about the complaints that I had just barked orders and didn’t ask nicely.

Manager: “You did the right thing. Next time, if it isn’t going to be a major issue, give them enough rope to hang themselves.”

Bet!

The next time, I saw that they had the valves set up in such a way that two soap tanks (for making asphalt emulsion) would overflow. While not an EPA big deal, it would bring scrutiny from the Health, Environmental, Safety, and Security division of our company. I mentioned to them that they might want to check the valve lineup because something didn’t look right. They told me to mind my own business.

As it was time for me to go home, I called the manager from my car.

Me: “You should probably start heading to the terminal because two tanks are about to overrun. I tried to tell them, but they told me to mind my own business.”

I didn’t get halfway home before a neighbor to the facility came knocking on the door saying liquid was overflowing two tanks. As the only first responder not involved in the incident, I had to return to the facility and supervise clean-up until the big guns from corporate came in about three hours later.

All three employees were put on probation and then eventually fired for more screw-ups. The beauty of this was that after that incident, they were told to follow what I said explicitly and never again complain that someone doesn’t say please and thank you in a crisis. They all hated me until the day they left. Why? Because I was the only person to take charge when no one else would.

I work for Wendy’s, a fast food chain. We had to call the police to have a moron thrown out this week.

The guy saw a picture of Wendy and… decided that this was a trans Ronald McDonald. He spent nearly an hour ranting in our lobby to any customer who came in about how “woke-ism” was out of control.

Customer: “Ronald is trans now! RONALD MCDONALD! THIS IS TRANS RONALD!”

Finally, the police arrived — forty-five minutes after we called them — and escorted the man off of the property. I’m just so exhausted.

I completed my student teaching in 2018. I was assigned a ninth-grade geography class at a school in a rough area. The students were not super motivated to do their school work, and many of them were several assignments behind in all of their classes.

They were mostly fourteen and fifteen years old, old enough to be aware of the state of the world and tensions between our country and others. Occasionally, I would ask a student why they had not completed an assignment, and the student would respond with something like, “Nuclear war is inevitable. We’ll all be dead by 2020. There’s no point in doing school work since we won’t live long enough to go to college.”

At the time, I was showing a student news segment each day. Usually, the kids ignored the news, but one day, the host was talking about the President of the United States meeting with the leader of a certain Asian country in person. This was interesting to the kids, and after the news ended, one of them raised their hand.

Student: “Miss, does this mean we won’t be going to war in the immediate future?”

Me: “It doesn’t look like it.”

Student: “Dang it! I guess I should ask my English teacher for an extension on that essay I was supposed to turn in today. If I’m going to be alive for graduation, I should probably make sure I actually graduate.”

I am writing this in 2022, so clearly, we haven’t all perished. I hope he and my other students were able to raise their grades in all their classes. Things may still not be great as far as our relationships with other countries, but refusing to prepare for any sort of future isn’t the way to live. If anyone reading this is still in school, please keep your grades up, just in case.

I work in a men’s clothing store known for huge discounts and sales. Our business took a huge hit with the work-from-home movement, so the savings now are tremendous to push through the extra inventory we are stuck with.

A guy and his wife come in on a Saturday evening to get a couple of suits as he put on some weight recently. He wants to know the price of the suits he selected.

Me: “The suits you have here are each $199.”

Customer: “No, no, no. How much are they on sale for?”

Me: “That’s the sale price. $199.”

Customer: “Well, how much can I get them for?”

Me: “Still $199.”

Customer: *Deep sigh* “Okay… When you look up my account and see how much I’ve spent here, how much will they be?”

Me: “Still $199. As the store manager, I cannot do better than that price as it has never been that low in the past year.”

Customer: “Okay… Whatever, I need them, so I guess let’s get them.”

We got up to the register and I asked for his phone number to look up his account. We tried his home, cell, and work number, and even his wife’s cell, but no account came up. Turns out it’s been about five years since he last shopped with us, so his account was automatically removed from the system. People frustrate me with throwing around how much they spend somewhere as a means of getting a better deal.