My boyfriend and I go out to eat one night. We are seated next to a wait stand, where wait staff can get trays for checks or pens or anything else they need.

After finishing our meal, our waitress removes our dishes and we wait for her to bring the check. And we wait. And wait. The wait staff all seem to be rearranging part of the restaurant, possibly for a large party later, but no one is paying any attention to us. We try multiple times to get the staff’s attention, but no one will even look our way. We think about dine-and-dashing, but we’ve both waited tables before and are inclined to be forgiving of wait staff screwups.

But after waiting for fifteen minutes for someone to notice that we have no food and are just sitting there, we get bored. Because we are in no hurry, and because we are easily amused, we grab the entire stack of check trays from the wait stand next to us — maybe seven trays –and start trying to build towers with them.

For the record, they don’t work well for tower-building.

After several minutes of this, one of the wait staff notices the noise coming from our table and comes over to investigate.

Waitress: “Um… what are you doing?”

Boyfriend: “Playing with the check trays.”

Waitress: “Why?”

Me: “Because we’ve been waiting for our check for twenty minutes. Could you find our waiter and ask him to get it for us, please?”

Waitress: “Sure.”

The waitress then takes the stack of check trays we’ve been playing with and puts them back on the wait stand — still within easy reach of us — and walks away. After waiting another five minutes for the check, we start playing with them again. We see the waitress who took them away from us look over at us, say something urgently to another member of the wait staff, and then come back over to us.

Waitress: “You can’t play with these.”

Boyfriend: “We’d be glad to stop playing with them, just as soon as we’ve settled our bill.”

Waitress: “…”

The waitress removed the check trays again and this time placed them out of our reach. Thirty seconds later, another waiter dropped off our check and waited while I got out my card to pay. Two minutes later, I signed the check and we left.

This story has been included in our June 2020 roundup as one of that month’s most memorable stories!

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The pool I work at hired a new employee who previously worked at a famous water park in our area. Since she had that background, we assumed she’d be a great employee. When I first met her, she was caked in makeup with eyelashes up to her forehead, and she was about to teach a swimming lesson. Surprisingly, none of it came off, so I asked her where she got her mascara. She then tried to play it off like her eyelashes were natural, which was warning number one. 

She has a shift on Saturdays from four to eight, but a month into working, she advertises that she wants the shift covered because she recently had a concussion and her grandma is sick.

Legitimate reasons, and I’m sure if she had talked to our boss, it would’ve been covered no problem. She didn’t, though, because she only wanted the six-to-eight part covered. No one wants to only work two hours on a Saturday night, but I’m already working noon to four, so I offer to work the entire four-to-eight shift. I hear nothing later and just assume she’s changed her mind.

A week or so passes until I’m working with the girl and she brings up the topic of her Saturday night coverage.

Girl: “It’s just been a hard decision for me because I don’t feel well, but I need the hours. So I’m trying to just get rid of two hours of my shift, so I can just have a break because it’s hard with my concussion.”

Me: “I understand, and I really want to help out. What if I worked four to six? It’s more convenient for me and you would still get those two hours.”

Girl: *Pauses* “Mmm, I have to think about that.”

I was stunned by this response because that was as good as she was going to get. I didn’t live nearby at all and didn’t want to work noon to four, have two hours off, and then be back from six to eight. I decided to drop it and cover someone’s opening on the next Saturday, instead.

On Friday night, around 11:00 pm, I was lying in bed and I just got a feeling to check our work’s email. I opened it up and, sure enough, that girl replied to my old email recently with, “Thanks, [My Name], you’re the best.”

So, I basically had to work a 6:30 am to 8:00 pm shift, and I was not happy. Luckily, she didn’t last long.

I work at a local family-owned fast food restaurant. The owners are all siblings, and quite a few of their children work there, as well. Usually, unless they’re the shift manager, the children of the owners don’t hold any authority over any of the other workers. 

This restaurant has a system where each area of the restaurant has a list that must be completed by the end of each shift. For example, if you’re on fryer, you not only have to cook all the fries and stuff, but you also have to complete a list of certain tasks by the time the shift is over. 

This particular night, I happen to be the one on fryer. Usually, there are two people on fryer: one person on one side who does only French fries, the other person does chicken strips, onion rings, etc., on the other side. It can get pretty stressful even with two people, but tonight, I’m the only person on fryer, which means I have to cover both sides. It’s really stressful, and I don’t even have a chance to start checking off my list until around 9:00. I usually try and start by 8:30 just to be safe, so I am running a little late.

I ask [Coworker #1], whose job for the shift is “help everywhere” — literally just to go around and help wherever help is needed — if she can watch my order screen for the rest of the shift while I do my list and to call me over if she needs help. She agrees and I start my list. 

A few minutes after I start, [Coworker #2], who also happens to be the son of the owner who is managing that night, comes to the back and yells — pretty sure all the other employees heard him — “(My Name), can you stop doing your list and actually watch your screen and do your job?” Doing the list is my job. “You have another two hours to do your list; you don’t have to start it right now!”

Some of the many items on this list: fill the small freezer by the fryers; fill the larger freezer that we fill the smaller freezer from; make sure all the stuff in the walk-in freezer is in place; fry about twenty tortillas — takes about thirty seconds each — into bowl shapes, which are then used to make taco salads; break down a ton of cardboard; and prepare shake toppings like cookie dough bits, brownies, raspberries, and strawberries.

The restaurant closes at 10:30, so if I were to actually take two hours, I would be there half an hour after everyone else had left. 

[Coworker #2], when he saw my screen fill up with orders, didn’t even bother calling [Coworker #1] over; fryers didn’t have any orders so she had gone to help somewhere else for a few minutes. Also, he was supposed to clean the fryers that night — we have six fryers, so it takes a while to clean them all — and he should have started at the same time I started my list, if not before. Most people who are assigned to clean fryers offer to keep an eye on the orders screen for the person on fryer so that person can go do their list, but he apparently didn’t think to offer that common courtesy. 

Anyway, I run over to start putting orders down — which he could have done in the time it took to yell at me — and just as I get there, [Coworker #1] comes back over and starts chewing out [Coworker #2], and a couple of other coworkers who had just been standing there, for not going and getting her when the screen fills up. She then tells me to screw the other guy and just keep working on my list. Remember, [Coworker #2] doesn’t actually have any authority over us, plus she has worked there longer than he has. 

Five minutes later, [Coworker #2]’s mom comes back and starts yelling at him for not starting to clean the fryers yet. Guess who left at 10:30, and guess who was still there when I left?

It’s April, in the middle of the health crisis. My air conditioner went out over the weekend, so Monday morning, the repairman is here to work on it for me. When I answer the door, he’s wearing rubber gloves, which strikes me as a nice gesture, though he isn’t wearing a mask. He works on the unit for a while, finds the problem, and calls another employee to make the run from the warehouse to my place with the part he needs while he has lunch in his truck.

Eventually, the other employee arrives, and some time later, the repairman comes back inside. What’s odd is that when he comes back, he’s now wearing a bandana over his face, but no gloves! He goes to work on the AC, gets it finished and working, and then goes out to the truck to write up the bill.

This time, when he comes back, he has no gloves and no mask at all.

After he left, I got a routine call from the company to ask my opinion of the service I received, and they included a question about whether the repairman had been “using both a mask and gloves to protect your health.” I said I honestly didn’t know how to answer that, because he’d used both a mask and gloves, but not at the same time and not for the whole visit!

When I am in middle school, I do gymnastics through the school. During the last meet of my last year at the school, I dislocate my shoulder doing a cartwheel while I am warming up. Looking back, this is all pretty hilarious. At the time, not so much.

I’m slightly in shock but I know something’s wrong. I’m crumpled against the practice beam.

Me: “[Coach], [Coach]!”

My coach was watching the current student perform her routine and thought I just had questions, so she’s shushing me. Up in the stands, my mom saw me fall but thought that I’d just bumped the beam when I went down.

Mom: *Jokingly to a family friend* “I know she’s had worse. She just needs to shake it off; she’ll be fine.”

Back on the floor, a couple of teammates and one of the other coaches have realized that there’s a problem. They get me upright and the coach signals my mom to get down to the floor. By this time, the initial shock has worn off and I’m in massive amounts of pain — when my shoulder dislocates, my arm gains about three inches in length and what feels like 1000 pounds — so there is some minor crying going on on my part. My mom gets into the locker room, gets a hold of my dad, and tells him to stay in the car because we need to get to urgent care.

We get ice on my shoulder and my mom uses an ace bandage to immobilize things and we get in the car. We get down to urgent care and I remember this guy who sees me and lets me go ahead of him — not sure what his issue was, but thank you so much for letting the screaming and crying teenager jump the line!

We get into the exam room and the doctor comes in and starts examining things. Keep in mind that, A, I’m in a gymnastics leotard and, B, there’s a noticeable divot at my shoulder. He starts poking where my shoulder is supposed to be and asking if it hurts. At that point, not really, and I tell him so. He then starts probing my arm and gets to where my shoulder actually is, and of course, there’s a ton more pain and I tell him so.

The doctor looks up at both my parents.

Doctor: “So, this isn’t a dislocation; she’s broken her humerus. I’m going to order X-rays to be sure, and then we’ll get this fixed.”

Both my parents just stare at him, because it’s obvious that it’s a dislocation. Honestly, my dad was a medic when he was in the army, but the only reason he didn’t reduce my shoulder himself was that he didn’t want to risk something getting pinched. The X-rays get developed, and what do you know, my shoulder is dislocated.

Doctor: “Well, uh, I’m going to send you to the ER. They’ll have better drugs to give her. We’ll give her something to help for now and call ahead to get you guys checked in.”

A nurse comes in and gives me a shot of Demerol — I think; it might have been Dilaudid — and then we’re off to the ER. We get to the ER and they get us checked in, get vitals, and give me the exact same dose of Demerol. Then, they get me into a waiting gurney in the hallway.

We wait there for a while — I don’t remember much of it because I was so drugged up — but my mom finally goes out and asks what’s going on, so then they move me to a bed behind a curtain. I get hooked up to monitors and then to morphine, as well.

Looking back, there were an awful lot of drugs onboard that night. Again, hindsight humor: I thought I was asleep 90% of the time, but apparently, I wasn’t; my parents never mentioned if I said anything weird, but I’m sure I was entertaining.

There is more waiting and my mom finally goes out to the nurses’ station where they are just hanging around.

Mom: “Hi. Excuse me. Could we get some assistance back here? I know this probably isn’t exactly a high priority, but my daughter is fourteen and in pain and a little scared. Can someone please take a look?”

There was a flurry of activity and, within a few minutes, my shoulder was reduced. The doctor then had to pin me to the bed because I immediately tried to put my arms over my head. I suddenly felt better; why wouldn’t I try to use my arm?

My mom called urgent care a few days later to complain about the doctor we’d seen there and it turns out the guy was an allergist! He’d been covering the on-call because they’d had to make a run to help a patient. Mom thinks he was just scared to reduce it which is why he’d sent us to the ER.