I also had an experience where there was a robbery during my job interview. Unfortunately, mine didn’t go nearly so well.

I was interviewing for a position as a cashier at a gas station. While I was interviewing in the back room, we heard shouting from up front. It was some sort of customer complaint.

The manager waited until the shouting was over, then went to the front and started chewing the cashier out over, essentially, being yelled at by a customer. This was already a pretty big red flag, but the shouting customer returned with a gun, held it on the manager and cashier on duty while I cowered in the interview room, robbed the place, and left…

And then the manager started chewing out the cashier EVEN HARDER for giving in EVEN THOUGH THE MANAGER WAS RIGHT THERE AND ALSO GAVE IN.

I left before the manager finished his rant.

It is Super Bowl Sunday, and my wife and I are hosting a two-in-one Super Bowl party and birthday party for my son, who just turned eleven. Our relatives are all in attendance, and we’re all die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fans. Our team made it to the big game for the third straight year. Naturally, all the decorations at our party are in the Chiefs’ colors of red, gold, and white.

After we served my son’s cake and sang “Happy Birthday”, I brought out the piñata that we had bought for the party. My son looked at me quizzically as I hung it up.

Son: “Dad, this is an Eagles piñata.”

For those not into football, the Eagles were our Super Bowl opponents, whom we had also faced (and beaten) in the Super Bowl two years prior.

Me: “I know.”

I handed him the stick and blindfold.

Me: “And you and all the others will get your own chance to beat the Eagles yourselves! Just like our Chiefs will beat ’em tonight!”

Son: “Aw, yeah!” *Putting on the blindfold* “FOR CHIEFS KINGDOM!”

My son took a few swings at the Eagles piñata, getting a hit in and causing candy and party favors in Chiefs colors to fall out. All the other kids then took turns beating the living daylights out of the Eagles-themed piñata and enjoying the goodies within.

I wish I could say the absolute smackdown the kids put on the piñata that night was a sign of things to come in the Super Bowl, but the Chiefs lost.

CONTENT WARNING: Car Accident (No injuries)

Years ago, I was driving to work mid-winter when I started hydroplaning on an on-ramp to a highway. Before I could get control, I hit the grass on the inside curve and went down the hill. My car rolled a few times, pretty sure it toppled a young tree on the way down, and landed on its side on an off-ramp for a different highway that was just below mine.

Miraculously, I was unhurt, just incredibly shaken. I had to climb out my passenger door and jump down because of how my car landed. Luckily, it was still rather early, and not too many people were on the road, but I was still in the middle of an off-ramp, and incredibly concerned.

A car stopped about fifty feet back, closer to the start of the ramp, put their hazards on, and came out. It turned out they were on their way home from out of town and saw me go down. They parked in such a way as to at least warn approaching vehicles that couldn’t see me (although thankfully there were none).

After making sure I was unhurt, they stayed with me as I waited for a tow truck and my partner with their car. They let me sit in their truck for warmth and kept me distracted and upbeat all things considered. I think they ended up waiting with me for almost forty-five minutes before my partner arrived and I bid them goodbye.

Unfortunately, my car was totaled, and I sent a picture of it post-crash to my manager in lieu of an explanation for missing work. But I still think about that family and how they sat with an absolute stranger for almost an hour just to make sure she was okay.

I am an assistant manager at a BBQ restaurant. One day, a man and his son came in and spent a very long time looking through the menu. Eventually, the father came up and started asking me about ingredients because his son was allergic.

At some point, the boy, who was probably about six or seven, handed me a laminated card that listed all his allergies. It was a lot. I don’t remember exactly, but I know eggs, gluten, and pork were on there, as well as a couple of seasoning things, like onions.

There was no way I was remembering this, and I didn’t know what the seasoning blends were off the top of my head, so I asked to borrow the card so I could go check. He agreed, and off I went.

It turned out that a lot of our seasonings and sauces used at least one thing the boy was allergic to, and the allergy to pork took over half our menu options away on its own. I spent roughly ten minutes checking basically everything to see what we could serve him safely.

I occasionally went up to update the family on what I was doing. The father seemed mildly surprised that I was going out of my way to figure this out.

Eventually, I did figure out what I could serve the boy. Because one of his allergies was meat, I switched out every piece of my cutting board, wiping the table for good measure as pork grease gets everywhere.

The father thanked me profusely for being so accommodating. He had apparently had trouble finding a restaurant that served something his son could eat that wasn’t just essentially under-seasoned or extremely boring.

They quickly ended up becoming regulars, and I would see them at least once a week. Since the boy already knew what he wanted (and what was safe), it was much faster. I still cleaned the heck out of the cutting station and made sure anyone else I saw serving them did the same, but that usually took less than a minute.

The boy kept telling us this was his favorite place to eat, and the father added that it was extremely reassuring to him, watching me automatically start to change everything out when I saw them come in; sometimes he worried the extra precautions were too annoying to deal with, and I was always very cheerful about it.

Eventually, they stopped coming in. I think they moved, but I’m not certain. I missed that family.

A while back when my health was better, my mother and I routinely walked to a nearby strip mall to dine and buy groceries. My mom, who is capable of walking short distances, couldn’t make the mile-long walk on her own. For this, she used an electric wheelchair.

Federal law considers these devices a part of the person’s body, and state law specifically describes individuals in motorized assisted devices as pedestrians. As a result, if there is a sidewalk, she must use it, while those on skateboards, bicycles, and other modes of transportation are actually forbidden from doing so at all. Furthermore, since her chair is pretty much “wheel legs” by law and not a form of transportation, she is not required to have any form of vehicle insurance to use it.

During one particular trip, my mom and I found the disabled ramp to the strip mall’s side not so much blocked by an illegally parked vehicle as actually occupied by it. Some person had simply driven his very nice car and placed it directly on the ramp itself. This presented a problem for my mom: we had no phone, and it was unreasonable for either of us to wait for this car to just go away. She decided to try to go around the car — arguably not the best choice, but there weren’t many choices here — and turned down her wheelchair speed to make it easier.

She hit a bump, her chair jerked, and she dinged the corner of the car’s bumper.

Apparently, the owner of the car was inside the restaurant we were going to enter. Since the ramp was in plain view of the seating area, he saw it happen, and we were approached by a very well-dressed and angry individual who began to scream at my mom for dinging his car. Among the many things he shouted, the one that stuck out the most was, “I bet you don’t even have insurance!”

My mom is perfectly capable of handling herself, and if she had wanted to, she was almost certainly capable of making this guy back down into a corner by out-screaming him. Furthermore, other members of my family are highly prone to this exact type of behavior, and from my experience, I know that the best thing I can do is stand back and let things take their course. That said, I wasn’t going to let that accusation go. I informed the man, not quite screaming or cussing but very much impolitely, that my mom was not legally required to have insurance and that, unlike her wheelchair, his car was actually not allowed to be on the sidewalk at all.

At that point, this guy whipped out his cell phone and called the police to report a vehicle collision with an unlicensed motorist.

That was when his bad decisions started to turn on him. His screaming attracted the attention of the restaurant’s owner. She was half his size, at least twice his age, and apparently in some way related to him. And when he hung up the phone, she was already there, screaming at him about abusing her customers.

I don’t know exactly what was said after that. The two argued — I’m not sure the exact language, but I definitely didn’t speak it — and the owner proved herself more than capable of outshouting this guy. This went on for a bit while we stood there in awe.

After a while, a police cruiser pulled up, and two officers stepped out to find that those two were screaming back and forth at each other, there was an illegally parked motor vehicle, and the “unlicensed motorist” was a woman in a wheelchair. They took over and excused us from the scene. We were hungry, so we went inside to eat.

This was a fast food restaurant with four tables. We took the one farthest from the scene, and I took the seat facing the window. The entire time, the owner kept coming over to apologize profusely and ask us if we needed anything. We just kept telling her that we were okay and that it wasn’t her or the restaurant’s fault. As we finished our food and prepared to leave, we spotted a tow truck pulling up the scene outside and two very angry and clearly out of patience officers handcuffing the driver.

We’ve been back to the restaurant many times since and have seen the car a few times as well — always parked well away from the ramp in the middle of the parking lot. We never saw the driver again, though.

Did you enjoy this story? Check out other stories like this one in our roundup: 15 Stories About The Ableism That Wheelchair Users Have To Put Up With