I got a call from a nurse saying my uncle had been shot and was in surgery. I dropped everything and went to the hospital. Sitting in the waiting room was his union rep. The rep explained that two men came into their workplace and demanded the clerks empty their cash drawers. When one had his back turned, my uncle rushed in to subdue him. The working theory is my uncle made too much noise, as the man suddenly turned and fired three shots (possibly more, but that is how many hit my uncle). According to my uncle’s coworkers, the gunshots rattled the men and started them fleeing before my uncle even hit the ground, taking only about $100.

The good news is my uncle survived. The bad news…oh boy. First, he was written up for violating procedure and not complying; the union was unable to get this overturned. Second, as this violated procedure, Workers’ Comp would not be covering his hospital bills. Third, this write-up and several others were enough to meet the requirements outlined in the union contract to fire him; the union was unable to overturn this, either. Fourth, as this surgery and hospitalization came as a result of a violation of procedure that culminated in his termination, his company health insurance was fighting to not pay for this either; this one the union was still fighting.

After the union rep left upon dropping the bombshell, I started trying to figure out how we were getting out of this one. As my frustration grew, I turned to my uncle and snapped about his thought process. He told me he was doing what he thought he was supposed to. When I asked him to clarify, he insisted an email had been sent out saying that workers were supposed to stop robbers because the company would hold workers responsible for the theft if they did nothing.

Already seeing a possible out and the window closing, I called a friend of mine. While he is a divorce lawyer, my friend knows enough legalese to get the company to halt wiping my uncle’s emails and workstation, and then he introduced me to someone better qualified for the situation. One subpoena later, and we had our copies. After a bit of searching, he found the email, and it said precisely what my uncle claimed. The two elements of particular note: the language in this email did not look like it had gone through a legal team, and the sender address did not look like upper management in the company. He and I were initially nervous about a scam, but my uncle revealed the email address belonged to his union rep. That got the lawyer a subpoena for a deep dive into the server.

It took considerably more digging to piece this together. Months ago, a different facility had also been hit. As no one stepped up, the robbers took the entirety of every drawer, totalling around $5,000. The trio practically had one foot out the door with the money when they suddenly turned around and pulled the manager into the back.

As it turns out, one particularly loud worker turned to the manager and commented how thankful he was they did not demand she open the safe. The last few night managers had been lazy about making bank runs, so their score jumped to nearly $150,000.

Once the police confirmed every one of the multitude of idiots had no connection to the thieves, the company handed out write-ups to the managers, but wanted to crucify the worker who opened his mouth, arguing this was predominantly his fault. The union would work out a deal to give this idiot a chance of not letting this destroy his hirability elsewhere, but one of the terms of the deal was the union had to clarify that the procedure of “complying” did not include volunteering information unprompted or jeopardizing the safety of their coworkers and managers, and that such acts would result in a write-up. In his laziness, the union rep instead represented this as the workers being responsible for losses by robbers and did not let legal review his actions.

This much got the lawyer very curious, and he subpoenaed my uncle’s disciplinary record. Upon cross-referencing similar slipshod memos with my uncle’s record, he showed me that while my uncle was violating the company’s directives, he was in compliance with the union’s notices; had the union mentioned these emails at the negotiations and arbitrations, his record would have been spotless.

The lawyer brought all of this to my uncle and me. He assured us this was an airtight case. While he doubted Workers’ Comp would budge, it was basically guaranteed the union would be paying my uncle’s medical bills and whatever wages he would be losing during recovery, and he was hopeful that the write-ups would be overturned and my uncle’s job returned.

Once the lawyer finished his outline of the case, my uncle verbally tore the lawyer a new one so hard he would tear his own stitches. He was overjoyed when we thought the case was against the company, but apparently the union is beyond reproach, and this lawyer is an idiot for suggesting they are ever at fault. As I tried to calm him, he lashed out at me for hiring this “incompetent ambulance chaser” and my friend for recommending him.

Once we left my uncle with the medical staff, I thanked the lawyer for his effort and apologized for wasting his time. However, as I was the one bankrolling this, we agreed I was *technically* his client as well, even if I was not the party suffering damages. Therefore, he handed over a copy of that file to me. I reached out to as many of my uncle’s coworkers as I could find. Management, worker, I did not care. Every last one of them got an outline of my lawyer’s findings. And boy oh boy did things blow up.

I am not privileged to the entire result, but here is what I do know. The union was massively overhauled and the problematic players removed completely. A bunch of workers got their records cleared and were assured there were notes in their files saying they were owed raises and promotions. Management put a thumb on the scale to ensure the company health insurance would still cover my uncle’s surgery and overnights. And a check arrived for my uncle from the new union president to cover his part of the bills.

The only bad news: since my uncle’s turnaround on the lawsuit was public knowledge and the file proved he listened to the union before he listened to management, the company would not undo his firing unless the union formally challenged his disciplinary record. This was still a guarantee, but my uncle refused to let them get the ball rolling.

Even after the overhaul, my uncle remained adamant that a union can never do any wrong, so he refused to let the new guard throw the old guard under the bus. Eventually, the new guard agreed my uncle was a lost cause and stopped pursuing the issue, wishing him good luck, knowing he was going to need it.

Near the start of the COVID-19 Lockdowns, I got a call from my insurance agent that my policy was pending cancellation due to my license being suspended. This was news to me, as I was not even aware of an infraction, let alone a consequence.

My agent informs me that, according to MassDOT’s records, I was charged with reckless driving in Washington state back in September of 2018. When I asked why the charge only just appeared, he revealed MassDOT has been integrating old records into a new system and countless unresolved tickets have suddenly cropped up; without using names, he even tells me one of his other clients just got a suspended license over an unpaid parking ticket from 1982.

Since this took nearly two years to even appear in MassDOT’s files, I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to appeal the default judgment, especially since I knew for sure I was not responsible for this alleged infraction; I had a passport and photos proving I was in Italy when they claim this happened.

Unfortunately, the courts were backed up for months due to the lockdowns. Therefore, I went to MassDOT directly to try to talk, being sure to record the call. While adamant I had to pay, the manager I spoke with utterly refused to discuss the situation or show me the evidence against me before hanging up on me without giving me a chance to prove that I could not have been responsible.

Rather than try to handle it with MassDOT again, I looked up Washington’s DMV and made a recorded call to it instead. I gave the woman all the information about the infraction (my name, the date, my plate, and the charge) and…there is no record of a reckless driving charge against me on that date.

I asked her to vary the date, omit my name, and change the charge, and every time the woman claimed there was still nothing. She could not understand why MassDOT was insisting I had such a charge, either.

I tried MassDOT one more time. While this manager was more reasonable, all that means is I was not hung up on after being yelled at. This person was still adamant I was guilty, and I had to pay, and still insisted I was not entitled to see the evidence.

I then pushed, one final time, for him to actually look at the evidence himself, and he assured me that it was my vehicle in the file, so it was definitely my problem. The only good thing that came out of my exchange with Washington was that I looped in my insurance agent. He tried asking on my behalf as well, and when he received the same response, he was able to use his confirmation and my formal appeal to get the company to continue my policy despite my suspended license. However, that would not make the courts move faster so we could even begin to reinstate my license.

At this point, my non-lawyer mind figured there had to be a violation of my rights in here somewhere, so I called an actual lawyer to confirm. My first bit of good fortune came from the secretary, rather than a lawyer or a paralegal. She told me about a news article from the end of 2019 that may explain everything.

Turns out I was not the first person in Massachusetts to have a phantom reckless driving charge appear. The cause: Massachusetts does not have a negligent driving charge. When states with such a charge forwarded the charges to MassDOT, MassDOT was escalating them to Reckless Driving rather than reducing them to what the charge would have been in Massachusetts.

This escaped the notice of myself and many others since it was only in print and buried. After that, I explained the rest of the situation, including why I am sure this charge cannot be my responsibility, and she connected me with one of the lawyers. However, the lawyer told me not to call Washington again and let him handle it; there is a chance the woman in Washington did not do any of the subsequent searches and just took an extra break, and that being the case would hurt his current position.

Rather than a normal meeting, my lawyer took the call recordings along with my passport and photos to threaten MassDOT that they were (near as we could tell) sitting on evidence that my car had been stolen and further refusal to turn over the evidence would expose them to both criminal and civil liability.

They, very quickly, surrendered the file.

Then he called Washington and asked for its copy of the file as well, this time navigating it properly with only Negligent Driving. And there was the very same file. The very same, not my file.

Some moron in Washington failed to check for data integrity. The Massachusetts plate had been entered with two characters swapped and another one a complete typo; by chance, this linked to my white Toyota Tacoma rather than the red Honda Civic in the photo.

Washington was bad enough, but now in MassDOT, no one on its side of the situation looked at the evidence either, most notably, the RMV manager who assured me that he had opened this file and it was, indeed, my truck in the file.

After nearly a month of going back and forth, MassDOT finally removed the ticket from my record, reinstated my license, and paid the full amount my lawyer listed in the lawsuit. That covered all of my legal fees and gave me plenty of cash to survive the lockdowns even before the checks went out.

I used to work for a solicitor’s (law firm) that mainly handled remortgages.

Just to set the scene, our service was FREE. The service was covered by the banks. This woman was referred by the bank that holds her current mortgage, and we’ve been discussing her remortgage.

Customer: “So when can I get this remortgage all done and dusted?”

Me: “It usually takes four to six weeks, provided we have—”

Customer: “—huh? No! I need this done in two days! I have sellers for a house waiting for their money! If I don’t have it in two days, I lose the property!”

Me: “I can try my best, but I can’t do anything without your paperwork and ID documents back.”

Customer: “I received those in the post but threw them away without reading them because it was like, fifteen pages long!”

Me: “I can’t do anything without those!”

She then emailed me a screenshot of her Facebook profile as her ID.

Every time I tried to help this woman, her stupidity held me back, but it was all my fault somehow.

Obviously, she lost the sale of the house and demanded her money back for our “s***ty service”. We had a forty-five-minute argument about how she hadn’t actually paid us a penny until I ended up saying that if she could send me a copy of the bank statement showing any payments to us, I’d be happy to refund her. Funnily enough, I never received one.

I run a charitable event at my work (interior design firm). We usually put on a carnival to raise money for charity and raise awareness of our company/establish ourselves in the community/attract customers (but all the money goes to charity).

I stood up at the carnival and gave a big speech about the importance of the charity and how the cause was personal to me and my family (it funded cerebral palsy research that particular year, and my father lives with it).

I was very visible throughout the whole event, sharing my story, raising money, and running carnival booths, etc.

Fast forward a couple of months. I bumped into someone while in line to get coffee who said they’d met me at that event last year. We ended up starting a pleasant conversation, so we sat outside to drink our coffees together.

In hindsight, she seemed a little… “off”, a little tightly wound, but it didn’t register over such a brief encounter.

She mentioned how she had been so glad to see a large-scale cerebral palsy charity event and hadn’t seen us do any events since.

I had started to explain the yearly nature of the carnival and how we pick different charities, but she (unintentionally) cut me off, caught up in her own emotions, as she began to recount a moving story about a sibling who suffered from the condition.

I was telling her how terrible that was and how I completely understood, (in reference to my own experiences).

Before I could really get into talking about my own story, she checked the clock and said she didn’t realize how much time had passed, and she needed to go, but she appreciated the work I did and my support in listening to her, etc.

She began fumbling in her purse for her keys. Then, as she was leaving, she said, “And here’s a little something to support your work,” producing something folded in a napkin from her purse and leaving it at my side.

I’m an interior designer, so I had no idea what she could be talking about in terms of supporting my work, but we were seated just by the street parking, so she was gone too quickly for me to ask.

I unfolded the napkin, and to my shock, she had slipped $100 into the napkin. I was dumbfounded with confusion as to why this perfect stranger would give me any money to “support my work” in commercial interior design, without getting anything designed in exchange.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I eventually realized she must’ve come to the carnival and assumed the charity itself had put on the event, so she thought I worked for them, not an interior design firm.

It took me ten to fifteen minutes to realize, so it was far too late to try and catch up to her, and all we’d exchanged were first names. I didn’t even know where she worked.

So, without any hopes of tracking her down, I figured the best thing to do would be to just donate the money to the charity. I did, and that was that.

Fast forward a few more months. Somehow or another this woman came to realize I don’t work for the charity but am in fact in the for-profit sector (I think it is because I was featured in an online ad that the firm’s been running).

She left a message on my work phone, half angry, half embarrassed, saying she was “willing to forgo holding me accountable” if I paid her back in full.

The problem is, I didn’t have the money anymore; I donated it! I explained this to her, but she wanted proof.

I left her a message (she didn’t pick up when I called) explaining that the company ran a carnival event to raise money for the charity, but that we aren’t the charity ourselves, and that I absolutely did donate her money to the charity so she could rest assured.

I didn’t hear anything back for about three days.

On the fourth day after I’d left the message, the police showed up at our firm’s headquarters. We’re almost all working remotely because by this time, COVID was in full swing, so they unduly terrified our teenage receptionist.

I was also scared half to death, because I had to have a serious meeting with my boss in which she asked if I had misrepresented myself as a charitable worker and collected donations in a personal capacity, because of the claims this woman made to our business.

When I explained, my boss blew her off, and that’s when she got the police involved.

This woman called and said we were masquerading as a charity, scamming people out of money, so the police came to confirm we were operating a legitimate business. They saw nothing out of the ordinary, obviously, and that was that.

Or so we thought.

Fast forward to a week later. My boss got a letter from a lawyer (I don’t know exactly what it said), but it accused us of scamming this woman and demanded that her money be returned.

I wish I could have just provided proof of the donation, but I have thousands of emails, I delete most of them, and I could not for the life of me find the confirmation email that reflected my donation.

So, instead, my boss made another $100 donation to the charity, took a screenshot, and sent it to the lawyer. We haven’t heard from her (the lawyer) since, so I don’t think she was wild about representing this woman in the first place.

We have still gotten a couple wild phone calls from the woman saying since the date on the $100 donation is so recent, it means we still had the money, and we should’ve returned it to her when she asked (why, if she wanted to donate it to charity anyways?).

Anyways, my boss explaining we donated it the first time, and this was a second donation to assuage her concerns, has not helped.

Eventually, we just blocked her number.

I work in a law office. The previous office manager was the head lawyer’s long-term partner before he passed. While she was still at the office, she had started a wedding planning business at a local golf venue with her daughter and used the office phone as the main contact before stepping away to focus completely on the wedding business. Occasionally, the office will still get phone calls meant for her, but I give them the venue’s number, and all is good.

Except this guy.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Law Office]. How can I assist?”

Caller: “Hi, I’m Brian with [Restaurant Business]. Can I speak with Heather?”

Me: “Heather no longer works here. If it’s regarding [Venue], I can give you her phone number.”

Caller: “Can you forward me to her?”

Me: “She no longer works here, so no. I can give you the phone number, and you can call her.”

Caller: “Can you forward me to her?”

Me: “No. I can give you her phone number, and you can call her.”

Caller: “Why can’t you call her?”

Me: “Because I’m not doing your job for you. I’m not going to get your info and call her to tell her to call you. If you want to talk to her so bad, you can call her yourself.”

Caller: *Smugly.* “But she’s your coworker, so it is your job to call her.”

Me: “I already said she doesn’t work here anymore. I’m giving you a courtesy by even giving you the phone number. I will hang up right now and block this number so you will have to go and do extra work – which you seem allergic to – to try and find her number.”

Caller: “So you won’t forward me to her?”

Me: “No.”

Caller: “…I’ll take that phone number.”

Me: “Sure, here you go.” *Gives number.*

Caller: *Sarcastically.* “I hope you have a great day.”

Me: “I hope you have the day you deserve.”