My boyfriend is recovering after emergency surgery. As he had a spinal block, he needs more time to recover from the anesthetic. He has just regained full function a couple of hours after the operation is finished when a (male) nurse comes into the room. It’s about 11:00 at this time. Normally, someone would only need thirty minutes or so if they used a general anesthetic, which my boyfriend opted out of.

Nurse: “You guys need to leave.”

I’m here as support and to take down all instructions as my boyfriend is understandably a bit out of it.

Me: “Why?”

Nurse: “We are about to get very busy. You need to leave so we have this bed free.”

We are in the A and E department (emergency room). There are a few private rooms at the end of the corridor with the waiting room at the other end as it’s a small hospital. I literally stick my head out the door, look right, and look left. There is not a sound or another soul except us three.

I turn to look at the nurse, who stares at me and says:

Nurse: “What are you waiting for?”

It was the most unprofessional discharge I have experienced. What kind of emergency was going to occur on a Thursday morning that would require the entire A and E?

I moved to the Big Apple from Los Angeles in April and signed a lease for an apartment sight unseen. It was the same price as my LA apartment, but while in LA, $1,350 gets you a master bedroom with a walk-in closet, a private bath, and three roommates, in NYC, for $1,350, they’ve turned my closet into the bathroom and I now weigh 135 pounds thanks to the seven flights of stairs that I had to walk up every day. Some days, I would raise my arms to put on deodorant and scrape my elbow on the ceiling. One of my five roommates was a registered nurse, though, so there was the upside. The only saving grace was that this apartment was pet-friendly and had an in-unit washer and dryer.

I hated living there, and after two months when my job said I could work remotely, I packed up and went to the Caribbean. While I was there, I won the NYC housing lottery. For the first time in my life, I could afford to live by myself in NYC of all places. I’d read in forums that landlords are usually pretty happy for tenants when they win and let you out of your lease with no problem.

In my optimism, I sent the management company an email letting them know that I had won the lottery and wanted to discuss terminating my lease early. They told me to speak to the brokerage to get my room filled. The brokerage told me that I would need to pay a broker’s fee of $1,350 and still pay rent until they filled the unit, or I could try and fill it myself.

I found a guy who was already applying with the broker for another unit, and he wanted my room! Then, management said they wanted the guy I found to pay $1,400. This was genuinely the worst apartment that I’d lived in; I didn’t feel right trying to get someone to pay $1,400 for this room.

I was in a bit of a time crunch as the new guy wanted to move in on August 1st, so I needed to hire movers to take my stuff to storage the next day, but if I didn’t get the approval from management that everything was good to go on their end, then there was no point. So, I needed management to agree to let this guy take over my lease for the price that was on my lease. I argued that a new price would be a new lease, and if they wanted to do that, they would have to release me from the lease and market the apartment at this new price point. They refused, saying that I should pay the broker’s fee or forfeit my deposit and continue to pay rent until they got my room rented.

I was upset because management basically wanted to make more money and assume no risk. I would end up paying until they rented out the awful room to someone. I told them this was unfair and made no sense.

Then, management told me there was no lease takeover in the lease. I was confused because I vaguely remembered reading something about a $500 fee for a lease takeover.

Management: “Read your lease! We were doing you a favor before, but now we’re only going by the lease!”

So, I found my lease because I remembered there being this $500 clause.

I never found the $500 clause because written on the first page of the lease was Clause 2: “Length of Lease: The term of this Lease is beginning on 2/1/2022 and ending on 8/31/2022.”

I was elated! My move-in date for my new place was 8/25/2022, so I no longer needed to rush. All because management told me to read my lease. I gave them a call back and asked whether I needed the email address to send my thirty-day notice of intent to vacate or if it should be mailed as it was not specified in the lease.

Management: “You can’t break the lease!”

Me: “I’m not; it ends next month.”

I sent them a photo of the first page of the lease.

Management: *Sputtering* “You know it’s a year-long lease! This is a typo. As you know, I just took over managing the building, and I inherited some bad leases.”

I didn’t know this, but I gleefully responded:

Me: “Well, I was doing you a favor before, but now I can only go by the lease. If the lease says my term ends next month, I have to honor that.”

He hung up, furious that this was happening. At this point, I was no longer concerned about hiring movers, so when he called me back at 8:00 pm, I was ready to tell him the cut-off for the movers was 4:00 pm and that I would move out according to the lease, but he started the conversation in a somber, defeated voice:

Management: “You can move out on the thirty-first. We just have to go according to the lease. We will do a final walk-through and give you back your deposit.”

As I am still in the Caribbean, my cousin will be subletting for August, and I will be moving into my new apartment when I get back. Everything worked out in the end, all because I read my lease.

My wife got a job working in the office for a local contractor. It was stressful and not particularly well-paying, but she stuck it out until the day the owner came in upset because someone had used a thin rubber band instead of a fat rubber band on the outgoing correspondence. He proceeded to lecture the entire office on this for ten minutes before [Wife] began to snicker. She said it was simply too ridiculous. And then she laughed.

The old man got upset.

Owner: “You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

Wife: “I’m not. How can anyone take this seriously?”

Owner: “Then maybe you don’t really need to be working here.”

Wife: “You’re right. I don’t. I quit.”

She picked up her stuff and left.

They called her for months asking her to come back, but she just laughed and said no.

I work the night shift at a supermarket, from midnight to opening. My manager recently retired, and today is my first day with the new one. He seems a bit stricter than the previous, but nothing unreasonable… until I’m about to clock out for the day.

Manager: “[My Name], I want to talk to you before you go. Are you clocked out already?”

Me: “Not yet. What’s up?”

[Manager] proceeds to give me a couple of points of advice for improving my efficiency — shorter routes I can take, advice for sorting my workload, and other minor things that I can already tell will improve my work speed if I get into the habit.

Manager: “Keep it in mind for tomorrow, all right?”

Me: “Oh, I don’t work tomorrow.”

Manager: “What?! What do you mean, you don’t work tomorrow?”

I already do not like where this is going.

Me: “I’m scheduled for Tuesday to Saturday. Tomorrow is Sunday, so I don’t work tomorrow.”

Manager: “Why not?!”

Me: “…Because it’s my day off?”

Manager: “No. You work for [Supermarket], bottom line. You are going to be here tomorrow.”

Me: “[Manager], this was arranged when I was hired. I work five days a week, and I get the other two off. I can’t work seven days a week, or I’ll go crazy, or burn out, or one and then the other. I have a life outside of work.”

Manager: “Then you’re fired.”

Me: “Excuse me?!”

Manager: “You heard me. Get out of here, and don’t come back — not as an employee, not as a customer. If you’re not dedicated to [Supermarket], you’re not welcome here.”

I could not believe what I was hearing. I had to physically stop myself from screaming at [Manager]. I stormed away to clock out and sat in my car for a solid ten minutes to let (most of) the anger dissipate before driving home.

I got a call from the higher-ups the next day apologizing for [Manager]’s behaviour, which was a violation of [Supermarket]’s termination policy. They explained that [Manager] was fired, and if I still wanted the job, I was not. I accepted their apology and was back to work on Tuesday.

I was tempted to disregard [Manager]’s efficiency advice out of spite, but I decided to at least try it out and discovered that it was sound. The replacement manager is just as strict during work hours but a lot more understanding about the concept of days off.

My husband is the middle child with an older sister and a younger brother.

Being the “oopsie” baby, my brother-in-law was a bit coddled. He never really learned any life skills and is a bit of what the Internet would call an incel. At one point, we even had to tell him to take a shower because he stunk so badly. While he is extremely smart, he is the kind of person who will meet his untimely demise by being hit by a bus because he forgot to look both ways. What he makes up in book-smarts, he severely lacks in street-smarts — and social skills, for that matter. It doesn’t help that he has sort of fallen into major success so he believes life is easy.

My sister-in-law is very sweet but was also parentified by her conservative parents. While [Brother-In-Law] doesn’t know how to wipe his own a**, [Sister-In-Law] did most of the domestic work such as cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. As a result, while she is neat, clean, and organized, she is stunted in a lot of ways. For example, she’s highly naïve, and she never had the opportunity to go to college like her brothers, and as a result, she lived at home until she was nearly thirty-four because she could never afford rent in our city.

When she does move out, it is into [Brother-In-Law]’s house. 

My dear husband and I are concerned about it for different reasons. He is concerned in case twenty-seven-year-old [Brother-In-Law] wants to bring a girl home. I am concerned that [Sister-In-Law] will become a maid. Obviously, one of us has very valid concerns and the other one is living in a fantasy world where his brother has “game”. Sure enough, one of our fears is realized.

We go to visit [Sister-In-Law], and she is doing laundry. As we are chatting, I cannot help but notice that while she tends to like men’s graphic tees, one is distinctly neck-beard gamer in nature. I keep quiet, but my husband does not.

Husband: “So, how do you like living together?”

Sister-In-Law: “It is a lot like living with Mom and Dad, but I have my own place without them, you know?”

Husband: “So, you are splitting cooking responsibilities?”

Sister-In-Law: “No. I mostly cook.”

Husband: “At least [Brother-In-Law] gets groceries, right?”

Sister-In-Law: “No… I do the shopping. I don’t mind it.”

Dear husband gives me a look that I pointedly ignore.

Me: “Well, at least you have someone to share in the cleaning?”

Sister-In-Law: “Well, [Brother-In-Law] is kind of a mess…”

Me: “Does he at least keep it to his own room?”

Sister-In-Law: *Oblivious* “I have to clean it twice a week. It is fine, though. I usually do it when I do laundry.”

Husband: “Laundry?”

Sister-In-Law: “Yeah.” *Motions to the shirt* “I am doing it right now.”

Husband: “And [Brother-In-Law]?”

Sister-In-Law: “Well, it is the least I can do. He is letting me live here. He could be living alone. It has to be hard on his dating life living with his sis.”

My husband glowers at me as I stifle laughter, knowing full well why he cannot actually find anyone to go on a second date with him. And trust me, it has more to do with him thinking it appropriate to be rude to a girl for not playing “Guild Wars 2” than living with such a kind, caring, albeit a little daft and clingy sister.

After she walks away, I turn to my husband.

Me: *Jokingly* “No wonder he doesn’t have a girlfriend; he already has the live-in maid part.”

It is their life, but I cannot imagine paying rent to do my landlord’s laundry, brother or not.