When I was in college, I went on a date with a guy that didn’t go well. I told him I wasn’t interested in seeing him again, deleted his number, and moved on.

About six months later, I got a random text.

Bad Date: “Hey! How’s it going?”

Me: “Fine, but uh, who is this?”

Bad Date: “Oh, haha, it’s [Bad Date].”

Admittedly, I should have just stopped responding, but I was bored at work (I worked at an arcade in a mall and it was a dead time), and part of me was curious about what made him start texting me again out of the blue.

Me: “Oh. Uh, how are you?”

Bad Date: “Good. Listen, I’m wondering if I can ask you a favor?”

Me: “Um, no.”

Bad Date: “So, the thing is, my mom’s in the hospital, and my truck’s out of gas. And they’re saying they don’t think she’ll make it through the night, so I really want to go to see her.”

Me: “I’m sorry, that’s really unfortunate, but no. I’m at work. Can you take a cab?”

Bad Date: “Oh, I have no money. Come on. Can’t you help me out?”

Me: “I’m at work, so no. What about your cousin? Or a neighbor?”

Bad Date: “Cousin’s out of town and none of my neighbors are available. Please help me out?”

Me: “I didn’t even drive tonight, so no. And also, I’m at work.”

Bad Date: “Well, what if I get a ride to you? Can you give me a ride to the hospital then?”

Me: “Still no because I’m still at work. If you can get to me, then you should be able to get to the hospital.”

Bad Date: “Well, I was going to walk to you.”

Me: “Then walk to the hospital. I’m at work.”

Bad Date: “Oh, come on. I really want to see my mom. Can’t you help me out?”

I did stop responding then because I had a customer come up and need assistance. I also blocked his number as soon as I had a second.

Ten years later, I’m pretty sure he had other plans in mind, but why he’d use a sick mom to get me to him, I’ll never understand. Plus, with the way he was shooting down all my other options, he had to realize that I wouldn’t believe him, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

I did have a little laugh a few months later when he walked in with his cousin and a few friends. He saw me and immediately left the arcade. I pretended I hadn’t seen him because I was actually busy at the time, but I really wanted to ask him how his mom was.

A teenage customer is at the register, looking past me at the cigarettes.

Teenage Customer: “Do you ID?” 

Me: “Uh, especially when you ask like that!“

Teenage Customer: “That’s not fair! I don’t have pockets in my tights to carry my stuff around!” 

Me: “So, how old are you?”

Teenage Customer: “Twenty-one!” 

Me: “You’re twenty-one, and no one’s explained the concept of bags to you?”

Teenage Customer: *Storms out* “F*** you!”

I have a job, but I am casually looking for better compensation (and not retail). I mention this to a friend, and he says his job is hiring. It’s warehouse order fulfillment, so it’s not my cup of tea, but I would only have to travel ten minutes to work instead of half an hour. I tell him I will look into it, but the next day, I get a phone call. 

Me: “Hello?”

Recruiter #1: “Hi, this is [Recruiter #1] at [Company]. Can I speak to [My Name]?”

Me: “Speaking?”

Recruiter #1: “Hi, thank you for taking my call today…”

He goes into a speech, talking about the great opportunities his company provides, the benefits, the hours, and so on. 

Me: “That’s great. So, it’s full-time?”

Recruiter #1: “Yes! We work up to sixty hours per week.”

Me: “That’s a lot. I do have a job right now, so—”

Recruiter #1: “Oh, we were under the impression that you were unemployed.”

Me: “No, I have a job. I’m just seeing what else is out there to decide if I want to switch career paths.”

Recruiter #1: “Well, great!”

The next part of the conversation is what feels like an interview. He asks about my previous job experience, how I handle pressure in the workplace, and whether I can lift up to fifty pounds.

Recruiter #1: “Well, this has been great! Do you have any questions for me?”

Me: “Could you tell me the pay range for this position?”

Recruiter #1: “The… pay range?”

Me: “Right. Like, [Local Gas Station] has window clings saying they pay $13 an hour to start. What is your starting rate?”

Recruiter #1: “Oh. Um, I’m not sure. We can discuss that during your interview, though.”

Me: “I thought we just did the interview?”

Recruiter #1: “No, this is just the initial contact. We can set up an interview for [time and date] if that works for you.”

Me: “Okay…”

The interview time comes, and the conversation is much the same: employment history, conflict resolution, and so on and so on.

Recruiter #2: “Well, I think you would be a great fit for [Company]. If you can come by today, we can get your drug test done, and as long as everything comes back clean, you can start next week.”

Me: “I’m sorry, what is the starting wage?”

Recruiter #2: “Oh, [Recruiter #1] should have told you.”

Me: “He said that would be discussed in this interview.”

Recruiter #2: “I see. Well… I will have to get back to you on that. Are you able to come get your drug test paperwork today?”

Me: “I would like to know the pay before continuing any further with this process.”

Recruiter #2: *Getting annoyed* “That’s not something we discuss outside the company.”

Me: “But you just said [Recruiter #1] should have told me. How can—”

Recruiter #2: “I will have to have someone call you with that information. I don’t have it on hand.”

Me: “Okay. Once I have that, I will decide if I want to join [Company].”

He hangs up without another word. I have basically decided that I’m not taking this job, but I still want to know the pay; their avoidance of the subject just makes me want to press harder.

A week goes by before my next call. [Recruiter #3] goes through the same interview questions, talks about the same benefits… and avoids the same question.

Recruiter #3: “We offer a lot of great benefits, and—”

Me: “Look, I am not going to go forward with this until someone tells me the pay range.”

Recruiter #3: “I don’t have that information on hand.”

Me: “Your team has called numerous times, and I’ve answered the same questions time and again, but nobody there can tell me what the hourly rate will be. If the next person to reach out doesn’t have the answer, I will not be taking the job.”

Recruiter #3: “Okay. Well, thank you for your time.”

They did not call again. I asked my friend what he started at, and he told me it was a dollar above minimum wage.

I recently got a phone call at work that set several red flags flying for me. First, when I answered the phone, there were several seconds of silence before I got anybody on the line. Then came the tell-tale noises of a busy call centre and, finally, a lady with a foreign accent.

She gave her name, but the next part of the call was indecipherable due to a badly glitching line. Hmmm… I caught something about:

Caller: “…as a valued phone and electricity customer, you are eligible for a discount.”

Me: “Okay, that sounds good.”

I was a bit suspicious but, well, the big companies do tend to outsource, so I thought maybe this MIGHT be legit… but then came the final red flag.

Caller: “Can you tell me who your electricity provider is, please?”

Me: “If I’m a ‘valued customer’, you’d already know that. Goodbye!”

Sorry, scammers, but I have work to do!

My husband and I have a son who is about to turn four, and we have a baby girl on the way.

As a baby, my son developed a severe allergy to diapers. He’d get awful rashes that took way too long to get better, and nothing we did helped much. Because of that, my husband and I decided to start potty training a bit early, right before he was eighteen months old. We talked to his pediatrician and relied on cloth diapers as much as we could. After a few months of that, he’d almost grown out of his allergy, but we kept going.

Today, he’s fully potty trained. He has some (very) rare accidents, but only when he tries to delay his bathroom trips for too long. When that happens, we wash him up and replace his underwear.

My husband’s mother was firmly against our decision to potty train our son early. She insisted that it would lead to IBS and that he should wear diapers until he was at least three. She tried to convince us to change our minds for months, but we held our ground.

In early December, I had a doctor’s appointment while my husband was at work, so I left our son with [Mother-In-Law] for a couple of hours. Sometime later, she called me and said [Son]’d had a (bathroom) accident. He hadn’t had one in months. I instructed her on how to proceed, as well as where to find the spare clothes I’d packed for him.

I picked [Son] up about an hour later. On our way home, he complained about being “itchy”. I didn’t know why until I got him ready for bathtime later that night. He was wearing a diaper. (It was clean.)

He didn’t get any rashes, but the diaper was a couple of sizes too small, and he hadn’t worn one in a long time, so I think that’s where the itchiness came from. When I asked him about it, he confirmed that [Mother-In-Law] had said he was “still a baby” and put him in the diaper.

When my husband and I confronted her about it, she defended herself by saying his accident was clear proof we’d made a mistake by potty training him early, and he should go back to wearing diapers for the time being. At no point did she apologize.

We decided that [Mother-In-Law] was forbidden from babysitting, as well as from spending time with our son unsupervised. She is not our only babysitting option; my mom and stepdad, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my best friend also babysit. [Mother-In-Law] didn’t think we were serious until we went to her place on Saturday. We had to go to the hospital, and rather than leaving our son with her, we took him with us.

Now that she knew we were serious, she started calling us dramatic and ungrateful, as well as claiming that we were alienating her from her grandchildren out of stubbornness. She maintained that she was right about early potty training being a bad idea and that she was only trying to help us.

I didn’t think we were in the wrong, but this did feel a bit dramatic. My brother-in-law, who was skeptical of our decision back in the day, thought we were right to be angry but it was still an overreaction to revoke [Mother-In-Law]’s permission to babysit our son.

For a while after the diaper incident, I’d been wondering where [Mother-In-Law] had gotten the diaper from. When I asked her about it, she told me it was a leftover from when my son was younger. As much as I didn’t think that was true, it did make some sense, and she swore by it. When I asked my son back in December, he just told me she had the diaper.

After I posted about it online in early January, some people reached out to me with theories about that. I talked to my husband about them, and later that week, we decided to confront [Mother-In-Law] again. We did it over the phone after our son went to bed.

This time, she decided she wanted to “come clean” — her exact words. She admitted that the diaper wasn’t a leftover, but rather a new one she bought right after [Son]’s accident.

To clarify: rather than obey my instructions and change my son into his spare clothes, [Mother-In-Law] left him alone in her bathtub while she went to the pharmacy near her house and bought diapers. She left my three-year-old alone in her house for ten whole minutes because she wanted to prove a point.

She claimed what she did was fine because the bathtub was empty and she’d locked the bathroom door. She also said [Son] was crying when she got home, and she “comforted” him by saying it would make my husband and me happy to see him in a diaper.

And then, she had the nerve to say that it was “good to get this off her chest” and that we could finally move on from this.

Needless to say, the word “outraged” doesn’t even begin to cover how we were feeling. My husband yelled at [Mother-In-Law] for over half an hour before hanging up the phone.

My husband and I talked to [Son] about it, and he said he didn’t tell us anything because he didn’t want us to be mad at him. We managed to reassure him that he’d done nothing wrong. We promised him that he’s a big boy, and he’ll never wear a diaper again.

[Mother-In-Law] called us several times over the weekend. She gave us dozens of excuses, ranging from “I couldn’t find his underwear” (I clearly remember her announcing she had it when she called me that day) to “I left my sons home alone all the time when they were younger” (my husband had no idea).

We lost whatever patience we had that day. We decided that [Mother-In-Law] won’t be allowed near our family for the next six months. If she doesn’t improve her behavior until then, that will become permanent. She’s also uninvited from [Son]’s fourth birthday party next month and won’t be allowed to see our daughter at the hospital when she’s born (I’m due in May).

We sent her a text with the above before blocking her. Even if she does change, she’ll never be allowed to babysit our kids again. We have other people who can take care of them on occasion.