My partner and I have invited both sets of parents over for lunch. His parents are in their eighties and have limited mobility, so they have a disabled badge in their car.

Unfortunately, the weather is appalling today — really heavy rain, and no signs of it stopping. Parking along our road is also appalling and can be a potluck as to whether you get a space. My parents, who are only in their sixties, arrive first and have to park almost on the next road over. My car is right in front of the house, parked next to a disabled space in front of my elderly neighbour’s house, and usually, my partner’s parents call when they are five minutes away so we can move cars if necessary.

They forgot to do that today. The doorbell rings, and it is [Partner’s Mum], soaking wet.

Partner’s Mum: “We had to park several houses away, so [Partner’s Dad] will be here very shortly.”

[Partner’s Dad] is still a few minutes away and walking really slowly. [Partner] grabs an umbrella and goes to help his dad while my parents and I help [Partner’s Mum]. Eventually, [Partner] and his dad get safely into the house, and he is absolutely saturated. [Partner’s Mum] has realised she forgot to call ahead and feels absolutely awful about that.

My car is still outside the house, so I decide to move it. [Partner] gets the keys from his parents and goes to get their car. I get into my car and stay put until [Partner] is here; if I move too early, someone will snag the space. I look in the mirror to see where [Partner] is and spot someone getting into the car in the disabled space and driving away.

[Elderly Neighbour] doesn’t drive anymore, but she has nurses and carers who pop in to see her, so one of them must just be leaving. Excellent! The space is available for [Partner], so I get out of my car. [Partner] arrives, spots the space, and heads straight into it. He gets out of his car, and we say how lucky this was.

Cue [Neighbour], who is walking down the road and sees us.

Neighbour: “Oi! You can’t park there! You don’t look disabled!”

Partner: “Oh, this is my elderly father’s car. I’ve just moved it for him.”

Neighbour: “My wife uses that space! You don’t look disabled!”

Now, [Partner] and I are both tall men around the forty-year mark, and yes, we don’t LOOK disabled. But of course, there are lots of invisible disabilities, and I have several myself. So, [Partner] tried explaining again that the car belonged to his elderly and disabled father, the car had a blue badge for disabled parking, and it was fine for him to park the car there, but [Neighbour] wasn’t having that. He started shouting and then stomped away in a huff. As we were getting very wet, [Partner] and I just shrugged and went back inside.

We never heard anything else, but I’m sure [Neighbour] was watching the space the entire time and probably moved his car into it as soon as my partner’s parents had gone.

One day, the fire alarm goes off in our store. I am on the emergency team and have additional responsibilities, so [Cafe Colleague] and I head to the meeting point to see what we need to do. Our store has two entrances on the main road, so we are both assigned to an entrance each to stop customers from coming in. On my way to my post, I have to shoo many customers away, including a lady who “just wants to look at the sale stuff quickly”.

About ten minutes after the fire alarm starts, it’s still ringing, and the store is empty. I’m standing at the door nearest to the post office down the road, and [Cafe Colleague] is standing at the other door. We can’t see each other due to the road layout. [Admin Colleague] walks toward me from the street. Thinking maybe she is coming to give me an update, I call her over.

She tries to go into the store! I stop her.

Admin Colleague: “What’s going on? Why can’t I go in?”

Me: “Um, the fire alarm is going off?”

The alarm is still going — very loudly. [Admin Colleague] suddenly gets a look of horror on her face.

Admin Colleague: “Oh, no! I’ve just been to the post office and I didn’t swipe out!”

We have a board near the fire exits where every staff member, contractor, etc., has to sign in. You move your T-card with your name on it to the relevant board when you enter the store and move it back when you leave. You should do this even when leaving the store for just a couple of minutes. In the event of a fire, the managers grab this board and do a roll call at the evacuation point to make sure everyone is safe. If you are still showing as “in-store” and you’re not there, they will be looking for you and could put themselves in danger.

Me: “You’d best get to the evacuation point quickly, then!”

The quickest and safest way to get there is by walking down the road that runs parallel to the store. [Admin Colleague] walks off and I think nothing else of it.

Later on, the alarm is off, we’ve been given the all-clear (it turns out a faulty sprinkler set the alarms off) and we are back at work. I tell [Cafe Colleague] about [Admin Colleague].

Cafe Colleague: “Yeah, I saw her, too. She tried to come in through my door, as well.”

Me: “What?”

Cafe Colleague: “She wanted to get to the evacuation point by going through the store and going out the back entrance.”

Me: “A store that theoretically could have been burning down?”

Cafe Colleague: “Yep…”

I suspect [Admin Colleague] was given a stern talking-to by the managers after this.

My mother asked me to help her set up the printer on her first home computer. 

This was the mid-1990s. I was in my early twenties, I’d had an IBM computer since I was sixteen, and I’d been earning a good salary as an IT consultant for the past couple of years. My mum, though, had trouble accepting that I could possibly be a fully functioning adult.

She had the computer all set up and her copy of “PCs For Dummies” at the ready. 

She wanted me to walk her through the steps in her “For Dummies” book so that she could reference it if she needed to do it again, so we turned to the section on installing a printer. 

She had already managed to connect the cables, and all we needed to do was set up the driver. This was back in the days before USB and plug-and-play; the driver came on a 3.5-inch floppy disc and had to be installed before we could use the printer.

The book said to open the installation file and run it.

Mother: “How do we do that?”

Me: “We have to put the disc with the driver in the disc drive, and then we can find the right file.”

Mother: “How do we do that?”

Me: “We put it in here.”

I reached to put the disc in the drive.

Mother: “STOP! How do I make sure it’s the right way round?”

Me: “It will only go in one way, and this is the right way round.”

For those of you unfamiliar with 3.5-inch discs, they were hard-shelled and had a little spring-loaded door at the front that slid out of the way to let the drive read the disc, and there was a notch on one corner that ensured it would only go into the drive one way

Mother: “What if you’re wrong?”

Me: “I’m not. This is the way they go in. This is the only way it will go in.”

Mother: “Show me where it says which way to do it in the book.”

Me: “It doesn’t say that in the book.”

Mother: “Why not? It has to tell you; otherwise, how would people know?”

Me: “People just know. It’s not something they put in books because it’s so obvious.”

Mother: “Show me where it is in the book.”

I double-checked the book. Even the “For Dummies” series assumed that you could work out how to insert a floppy disc for yourself.

Me: “It doesn’t say. But this is the right way to do it.”

Mother: “How can you be sure?”

Me: “Because I have been working with computers for eight years and for the past two I have been paid a lot of money to do it.”

Mother: “But why can’t you show me in the book?”

Me: “Because it isn’t in the book.”

Mother: “But why isn’t it in the book?”

Me: “Because they don’t think they need to tell you something so basic. Now, can I put it in the drive so we can get your printer working?”

Mother: “No. I am not going to let you until you show me where it says in the book.”

In desperation, I went through the printer manual and the PC manual in the hope that they would contain something that might convince her. No such luck.

Me: “I can’t show you, because it isn’t there. Now, will you just let me put it in so that we can do this?”

Mother: “No.”

Me: “I do this every day. Why won’t you let me just do it?” 

My eleven-year-old sister sensed the frustration and came into the room. 

Sister: “It’s okay, Mum, we did this in computer class at school. It goes in like this.”

She put the disc into the drive in exactly the way I had been trying to, without the slightest objection from Mum.

Mother: “Now, why couldn’t you show me how to do it like that?”

And that’s how I learned that my mum was more prepared to trust a kid with the benefit of forty minutes on a school computer than an adult twice her age who worked with computers for a living.

I live in a flat right by a Canterbury tourist attraction: a medieval gateway that’s the largest of its kind in the country. It’s a frequent stop for guided tours of the city. I work from home and, as such, get to hear a lot of facts about the gateway as the guides talk to their groups.

One summer, I have the window wide open when I hear this.

Guide: “And this gateway was paid for by a man called…”

He dries up, leaving an awkward pause. I decide to help the poor guy out and yell out of my window:

Me: “Simon Sudbury, 1380!”

He looked around, surprised, trying to work out where my voice was coming from. He didn’t look up and see me, however. After a pause, he called out, “Thanks!” and continued with the rest of his spiel.

As a volunteer tour guide elsewhere in Canterbury, I know what it’s like to suddenly forget a name in a speech you’ve done hundreds of times. I just hope the poor man wasn’t too confused by the “helpful ghost” and got the rest of his tour done smoothly!

Our store has two cafes: one on the ground floor and one on the second floor. Until recently, both cafes offered the exact same menu, but now they are targeting different groups of people and have differing menus. The Upper Cafe still does the full menu, focusing on sit-down meals, whereas the Lower Cafe now focuses more on “grab and go”-type items.

About three weeks after the change, it’s 5:20 pm and I am in the Lower Cafe, behind the counter. The Upper Cafe has been closed for nearly an hour and we are only ten minutes away from closing ourselves.

[Woman] walks in.

Woman: *Very abruptly* “I want a jacket potato.”

Me: “I’m sorry, madam, but we don’t do jacket potatoes in this cafe anymore. The cafe upstairs still does them, but they are now closed for the day.”

Woman: “I’ve bought one from here before!”

I begin to explain, but she interrupts me.

Woman: “So, what do you do now, then, huh?”

Due to it being nearly closing time, we don’t have that much left.

Me: “Well, we have a few toasties left, and we still can serve coffee or cake—”

Woman: *Interrupting* “Cakes are for fat people. You are only serving things for fat people.”

Me: “We do have our fruit juices in the fridge—”

Woman: “Toasties are for fat people.” *Angrier* “They. Are. For. Fat. People.”

She keeps repeating this, trying to get me to “admit” that she is right and that all of our food is only for “fat people”. When she realises this isn’t going to work and that I’m not falling for her games, she storms off.

Woman: “You’ve just lost yourself a customer.”

Me: “You’ll have to call corporate in that case.” *Dismissing* “Thank you.”

I tell my colleagues about her a couple of minutes later.

Colleague: “Does she not know how many calories are in our jacket potatoes, especially when you add butter or cheese? I guess they must be for ‘fat people’, too!”