Our old house was ridiculously hard to find. The entrance was easy to drive past, it had a series of apartments next to it, and four houses all split off from the path that came to our house.

Whenever I ordered pizza, I checked how well the driver had been able to find the house, and I kept adding instructions until I had about three paragraphs accurately guiding people down the right paths, giving them a clear location to park, and listing three different ways to identify if you were going down the wrong stairs, including the fact that the closest stairs you could mistakenly go down were attached to a car-port.

Once I got it to this length, most drivers commented happily how useful it was since it saved them a lot of messing around, or they at least found us very rapidly without knocking on the other house we were attached to.

This only failed me twice. The first time, I was absolutely certain that the driver wasn’t quite at reading level in English, which was fair, and he was sweet and only a little lost. The second one, though…

He went down the wrong stairs, complained when I corrected him, basically had very little interest in coming down to the correct area, and made me come up to meet him. The kicker, though, was his parting line.

Delivery Driver: “Why do you have so many directions on your place? It’s so easy to find.”

I didn’t see that guy again. I didn’t make a complaint because he made it to me in the end. However, the next driver was once again grateful for the instructions. It’s only you, mystery driver.

It’s my last day working as a cashier and the universe has been testing me. I finally snap on one customer at the end of the day.

Customer: “You’re scanning too fast and getting it all wrong! I’ve been patient, but I demand your manager. I’m going to get you fired for your incompetence!”

I nonchalantly call for the manager and remain deadpan. Apparently, this was not the reaction of panic and fear this customer was after.

Customer: “What?! You’re not even going to defend yourself?”

Me: “Ma’am. I have had a customer threaten to call the police on me because I wouldn’t take their cookie to the staff breakroom and microwave it for him. I had a customer call me a c*** because I wouldn’t let her remove her baby’s dirty diaper on my conveyer belt. I had a customer who also tried to get me fired just like you, because only having crunchy peanut butter in stock and not the smooth kind is now a fireable offense.”

Customer: “Well, I—”

Me: “And all of those were just today! Ma’am, word of advice, if you get your kicks from trying to make people miserable or scared, don’t try it on a retail worker. We’re already miserable, and nothing you can do can scare us. Have fun with my manager.”

My manager arrived, and I served the rest of the customers. She did still try to get me fired, but she was even more annoyed when she was told it was my last day anyway. I occasionally see her in the store now, as a fellow shopper. I just smile, wave, and ask if she’s gotten anyone fired lately. She doesn’t respond.

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I had a coworker who would collect the company recycling and turn it in for cash. It was probably just a few dollars a week, so management didn’t care. After he moved on to another job, he asked if he could continue to come by and pick up the recycling. Again, management agreed.

In the beginning, he showed up every Friday morning like clockwork. After a month or so, he said he had a family emergency and could not come out. We understand, things happen, so we put the recycling in the storage closet.

The next week, he had an issue with his car and could not come out — another bag in the storage closet. On the third week, he simply didn’t answer our calls. We had several bags of recycling piling up and it was getting in the way. Management told him that if he did not pick it up by the next Friday, we would throw everything away and the deal was off. He did not respond, so someone else offered to take it in.

Several weeks after my former coworker stopped responding, he showed up one Friday morning expecting to pick up everything he had neglected. Management informed him that someone else had taken over the recycling since he had basically dropped off the face of the earth.

He was furious. He claimed that we had never reached out, that we were stealing from him — anything he could come up with. He demanded that the person who was now taking the recycling reimburse him for whatever they had earned in his absence.

Management showed him the call log and then showed him the door.

I work as a Regional Sales Manager for a pretty major consumer/industrial electronics manufacturer. I specifically work with a lot of the national retail channels, and I will do meetings with a lot of each retailer’s leadership and directors in-store to discuss product sales, supply chain projections, product marketing, and other various metrics. I also have in-store brand ambassadors who represent our product lineup specifically in [Electronics Chain] locations.

For starters, when I go into stores, I generally wear dress clothes or something semi-formal with an identification lanyard and a bookbag, specifically so I don’t get stopped a bunch of times by customers when I’m trying to complete my job. I usually don’t mind helping people out in stores when I can, but I have to be pretty concise with my schedule and I have limited time available to be in the field.

On one of my most recent visits, I was meeting with one of my brand ambassadors to complete a performance assessment. When I was walking in, a middle-aged woman grabbed my shoulder — I cannot STAND being touched, so great start — and immediately started asking me about some open box television and what kind of “deal” I could work for her.

Me: *Kindly* “I am a store visitor that works with [Chain] leadership, but I don’t represent [Chain] in any way. And my brand doesn’t sell TVs, so that isn’t my area of expertise.”

Woman: “Oh, well, you’re here now, so I need you to tell me about it and figure out what we can do here. Also, I’m a real-a-tor, so no funny sales tricks!”

That’s strike two.

After reluctantly dealing with her for about fifteen minutes and finally getting her to make a purchasing decision, she begins questioning me.

Woman: “Why do the display TVs look ten times better in the store than my TV does at home?! That should be illegal marketing practices!”

I’m fed up at this point.

Me: “They use a flash drive of specifically optimized videos and have the TVs professionally calibrated.”

I also use an analogy relatable to her.

Me: “Think about it like this: as a realtor, you’ve sold a home that’s absolutely f****** hideous, let’s face it. I’m sure when you staged that home, you put a bunch of beautiful $5,000 couches, fancy love seats, and a mahogany coffee table in there to really sell the ‘personality’ of the home. In reality, you just put lipstick on an ugly pig. It’s the same thing with any kind of visual product marketing.”

She ended up apparently trying to file a complaint with the store and district manager. They informed her that they didn’t have an employee named [My Name], so they had no idea who she had talked to.

I went to a VERY small middle school that contained only sixth and seventh grade, and there were only five classes in each. I had the highest grades in my sixth-grade classroom, and I never got in trouble. When I say never, I mean NOT ONCE. It’s important to know that our school year is divided into blocks of six six-week sections, and we are at the beginning of the last six weeks.

Because we were such a small school, we only had PE two or three times a week as our teacher had to cater to all ten classes. On the day in question, I was chewing gum because one of the more popular students handed it out. My English teacher stopped me before we went to PE.

English Teacher: “[My Name], are you chewing gum?”

At this point, I was petrified of what she would say. I had seen her go nuclear over small things, and besides that, our math teacher, who we had just left, let us chew gum. I just forgot to spit mine out. I stopped chewing and cheeked it.

Me: “Uh… no, ma’am?”

About halfway through PE, the gym teacher saw me chewing gum while playing four square and told me to spit it out. I didn’t think anything of it until about five minutes after we went back in.

English Teacher: “[My Name], come here! [PE Teacher] told me that she had to tell you to spit out your gum. Not only did you break school rules by chewing gum outside during PE, but you lied directly to my face, so sincerely! You know what this means, right?”

Oh, yes, I knew. This meant I’d have silent lunch that day. For those not familiar, silent lunch is where you are sent to a table to eat alone, and in our school, you faced the wall and were not allowed to get up until everyone else has left. After that, you helped clean all of the tables.

Me: “Silent lunch today?”

English Teacher: “No, ma’am, [My Name]. You will have silent lunch all week, and I’m calling your mom.”

I should mention at this point that this was during the late 1990s when many clothing factories in the south were slowly closing. My single mom worked in one and received no child support. Our home phone had been cut off for a week now.

Me: “You can’t call my mom, ma’am.”

English Teacher: “What do you mean, I ‘can’t’? I’ll call her and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

Me: “Ma’am, we don’t have a phone.”

English Teacher: “Everyone has a phone, [My Name].”

Me: “Ma’am, we don’t now. It got cut off last week.”

Mind you, we were in a small classroom and my classmates could hear this. Bullying was a huge issue there, and my classmates already teased me as it was. I was ashamed as it was, and she just made it worse.

English Teacher: “I’ll write her a note and she can find a way to contact me tomorrow, or you’ll have silent lunch until June!”

She wrote a note, which my mom read and signed, and she hastily wrote a response that she could not make long-distance calls at work — she worked in North Carolina — and that me lying about gum was really not that horrible. My teacher called my mom at work, but predictably, they let her know my mom was not able to take phone calls unless it was an emergency.

Fast forward to the end of the six weeks. We had a “Good Conduct Party.” This was for students who did not get in trouble during the six weeks. I had always been able to attend, so I got in line for it. As I was standing there, my teacher walked up to me.

English Teacher: “Oh, no, ma’am, [My Name]! After what you did? You lied to me about that gum and not having a phone. You’re going to the Bad Conduct Party.”

This was literally a classroom where any students who had an N or U in conduct were sent to work on things that were not graded for two hours until the Good Conduct Party was over. The teachers always called it this to remind us it was not fun.

So, in summary, I panicked about chewing gum, was ratted out by the PE teacher, and was punished for not having a phone!