A patient calls us one morning.

Me: “Good morning, [Doctor]’s office. How can I help you?”

Patient: “What time do you open?”

Me: “We’re open now.”

Patient: “What time, though?”

Me: “We open for labwork at 7:30.”

Patient: “Okay, well, I had an appointment at 7:30, and the doors were locked. The hours posted outside say you open at 8:30.”

This is true, but that is for walk-ins. I arrived at 7:25 — about an hour ago — and unlocked the doors. I remember something, though.

Me: “I saw a car in the parking lot when I came in. Was that you?”

Patient: “Probably? You didn’t say anything?”

There’s no way I’m going to approach some random car in our lot.

Me: “No, I didn’t know who you were.”

Patient: “That’s why you say something! Your doors were locked when I was there.”

Me: “I unlocked them at 7:25.”

Patient: “And you don’t want people to arrive early for appointments?”

Me: “Not for lab work, no.”

Patient: *Irate* “Well, what am I supposed to do now?”

Me: “We can do your labs now or send you to the hospital for them.”

Patient: “That’s not going to work! I had an appointment and you were locked. I can’t do it now.”

Me: “We weren’t; we opened at 7:30.”

Patient: “You weren’t! And you saw me and didn’t do anything?”

Me: “Sir, we were open at 7:30.”

Patient: “WELL, OBVIOUSLY, YOU DON’T GIVE A S***!” *Hangs up*

This call only lasted a few minutes, but the way they yelled at me made me upset. I spoke to the doctor about it, and he immediately released the patient. They had a follow-up scheduled for the next week, and when they showed up, our doctor spoke to them and let them go. Good riddance!

One time at my bookstore, we had a traveling group come through that was putting on a show at all the stores in the chain. It was all about the children’s book series “Junie B. Jones”, which is about a Pre-K kid. The person playing Junie B. was a somewhat short girl in her twenties. She came out and told stories and sang, and the kids had a great time.

Afterward, the kids could get their books “signed” by Junie B. In reality, it was just a rubber stamp, but the kids didn’t care; they were just amped to talk to her.

But one father was kind of grumpy about it.

Father: “You’re just stamping the books? You don’t even sign them?”

Junie B.: “I’m only five.”

The father clammed up immediately and looked embarrassed. We could tell she had gotten that question before with the speed and ease of her reply.

I’ve been trying to drink more water. On my shift today, I’ve decided to skip coffee altogether and drink only water. It’s a morning shift and I’m missing my coffee but doing well as far as I can tell; by lunchtime, I’m feeling a little foggy but surviving. 

A group of regulars walk in and I follow them to their booth; one of them pipes up before they even sit down.

Regular #1: “Spicy burger with fries.”

[Regular #2] and [Regular #3] both pause slightly as they haven’t even finished sliding into the booth and [Regular #1] isn’t even sitting yet.

Me: *Laughing a little* “All right, do you guys know what you want, as well?”

Regular #2 & #3: “Nope, we need menus, thanks.”

I laugh a little and say:

Me: “All right, well, let’s calm our pants for a moment.”

I look at [Regular #1].

Me: “What can I get everyone to drink?”

Regular #1: *Petulantly* “Well, I guess I need new pants.”

I try to keep the mood light and chuckle.

Me: “No, you have pants; you just need to calm them a bit. What can I get everyone to drink?”

Regular #1: *In a sing-song voice* “I smell no tiiiiiip.”

I’ve already considered him rude for ordering before his group even had a chance to sit and then being upset that they are being given the chance to look at menus, so I say:

Me: “That’s okay. I still get paid at the end of the day.”

It wasn’t until I got back to my station to put in the order that I realized what I had said. It seems my BS tolerance is greatly lowered when I’m on no caffeine. I’ll have at least one cup of coffee during my shift now.

This takes place around 1980 or thereabouts.

In my last two years of university, I was also a part-time staff member at one of the campus cafeteria locations. By the time of this story, I had worked my way up to become one of the “Assistant Managers” at this particular location. It was a pizza- and sub-themed cafeteria that normally did not open until around 4:00 pm, so the two full-time day staff were primarily there to do prep work for opening. One, [Coworker], was a gruff little Italian lady who could be nice, but if you did something wrong, you had to watch out as she could be rather testy with you from that point on.

When I worked a closing shift, which normally wrapped up around 2:00 am, I was responsible for locking up, including the door from the loading dock. It could only be locked and unlocked from the outside, so when I left, I had to exit to the dock and then lock the door. The normal procedure was to return the key sometime in the morning after the day staff were in.

The morning after one such shift, I was just starting to wake up when my phone rang.

Me: “Hello?”

Coworker: “Hello, [My Name]. I was just calling to let you know… you forgot to lock the door last night. It was unlocked when I came in at 7:45.”

Me: “Unlocked? No… I’m pretty sure I locked it up as usual.”

Coworker: “Well, I was the first one in, and it was definitely unlocked. I know you think you did, but it wasn’t—”

Me: *Interrupting* “No, I am sure I did….”

Coworker: *Interrupting, and in that condescending tone we all know* “I’m sure you think you did, but it was not locked. That’s okay; we don’t need to tell anyone. We keep this between you and me, okay?”

Based on other student staff experiences with this particular lady, I recognized that as the “I’m going to hold that over your head and watch you like a hawk, and you’d better not screw up again or else” message.

I ended the phone call because I had to get up and get ready to head out for my first class of the day. I planned to go past the cafeteria to drop the key off after that and argue my case with her then.

A couple of hours later, I arrived in the kitchen and stepped into the office to return the key. When I came back out, [Coworker] was there waiting for me.

Me: “Morning, [Coworker]. I had my doubts when you called me early this morning, but I can assure you that I did lock up properly last night…”

Coworker: *Rather quietly* “Yes, you did. I know.”

Me: “Wait, what? If you knew, why did you call me—”

Coworker: “After I called you, I had to call [Other Kitchen] to find out where our baked goods were. They hadn’t been delivered yet. Just as I was doing that, [Driver] came in with them, apologizing. He came by just before I came in, unlocked the door, and then went into the truck to get the baking and realized he’d forgotten ours. He finished his rounds, went back to get it, and came by later than usual. After I talked to him, he realized he’d forgotten to lock the door before getting back in the truck.”

Me: “I see.”

Coworker: “So, it wasn’t you after all.”

With that, she turned and went back to work. There was no apology or recognition of her unfounded accusation. The best I can say is she was always pleasant to me on the occasions our paths crossed after that.

Many years ago, the company I worked in doing radio systems design had a group doing medical systems. A customer approached them with a requirement for a “pill” that was a swallowable endoscope to send back pictures of the small bowel — something that cannot readily be done with a conventional endoscope.

The medical products group had no radio design experience and they “borrowed” me for a three-day meeting in California. My manager, who I didn’t get on with, justified it to his manager by saying, “It’s only three days, and they haven’t a hope in h*** of getting the contract.”

So, off I went to California with a marketing man from Sweden, where the design work would be done, and we got the contract — which proved to be worth about $15 million by the time it was finished. The three days turned into three and half years as other projects appeared, much of which saw me in Sweden and California, and occasionally at my desk in the UK.

Toward the end of this time, layoffs were coming. My UK manager, who I had hardly seen, gave me a review — something he should have done annually but was too lazy to bother with. He said, not knowing or possibly not caring what I had been doing, that I “didn’t contribute” and “wasn’t a team player,” obviously setting me up to be laid off.

Three weeks later when I was in Sweden, the last flight back to London was delayed and I eventually got home at 3:00 am. The following day, Thursday, I didn’t go to work, but I went in on Friday to find a number of strange emails.

That Thursday, there had been a worldwide electronic meeting covering the US, Canada, Sweden, and Japan with subcontractors in Russia, Spain, and Australia. There it was announced that I had been given a $5,000 special award for “contributions to the Medical Products Group design team” — thus the strange emails.

Rather than being laid off, I was transferred permanently to that group, and my old manager took a voluntary layoff!

Karma, indeed…