(I work the front desk for a company that makes movie trailers. Sometimes clients will send gifts to my bosses and use mobile delivery services to do so. One day, a delivery boy from a delivery company comes by to drop off a gift.) 

Delivery Boy: “You guys work in entertainment, right? What exactly do you guys do?”

Me: “We make movie trailers.”

Delivery Boy: “What does [Gift Recipient] do?”

Me: “Um. He is a producer.”

Delivery Boy: “Oh, well, I’m an actor, so would it be all right if I leave my information for him?”

Me: “He produces movie trailers. He is not a movie producer.”

Delivery Boy: “I still like to leave my information for people, just in case.” *begins writing down his information*

Me: “But like I said, we make movie trailers; we don’t make movies. The studios send us the film and we cut it into a trailer. We are post-production.”

Delivery Boy: *continues to write down his “acting” information and then tries to flirt with me for five more minutes*

(My roommate comes up to me one night and says she has to tell me this wholesome story about her day. She explains one of the employees at her work’s new building is usually cleaning up the break room about the time my roommate gets there, so they’ve become friendly. Between her limited English and [Roommate]’s non-existent Spanish, they’ve managed to create a cordial dynamic. One day, after greeting each other happily all week, [Roommate] gets to work to find that her friend seems a bit off.)

Roommate: “Hi! Is everything okay?”

Friend: “No… eh… my mother…” *points upward*

Roommate: “Your mom… passed away?”

Friend: “Yes. Five day ago.”

(My roommate offered her condolences then headed to her office. She thought about how that woman’s mother had died five days before, but she still had to come into work and clean up after snobby, entitled jerks. So, she headed down to the closest market and bought her friend a bouquet of flowers. She brought it back to the building to give them to her, which turned into a whole ordeal as her friend was off working in another area. Security finally located her and her boss even came down to see what was going on. But when she saw my roommate with the flowers, she started BAWLING and immediately fell into her arms. My roommate just held her and let her cry. The littlest thing to you can mean the biggest difference to someone else. Be kind.)

I come to a recycling center and park my car on one of several smallish areas they have that can fit about three cars side by side. All the other spaces are empty. I have multiple paper bags as well as a large trash bag full of recycling filling up my back seat. A helpful employee brings over one of their large plastic bins to empty my recyclables into.

Meanwhile, a fancy convertible with its top down pulls in right next to me. It has one single trash bag with recycling sitting in the back seat. Just as I open my back door on the side that’s next to the convertible, the driver gets out of his car. He’s a healthy-looking guy in his 30s, and taller than me. Not thinking anything of it, I start emptying my many paper bags into the bin.

The guy is standing right behind my back, on the other side of my open back door. And standing. And standing. I slowly realize he’s staring at me. It seems creepy, but I just continue emptying my recycling into the bin.

Finally, after a couple of minutes of silent glaring at the back of my head, in a grating, annoyed voice, he goes, “Excuse me.”

I turn toward him, confused. “Um… yes?”

He goes, again, in an even more pissed-off tone, “Can I pass?” turning his gaze pointedly at the trash bag in his back seat and then glaring back at me.

Bewildered, I look at the fully open top of his car, at the trash bag in it which is at most two feet away from the other door of his car’s back seat, at the obvious fact that all three other sides of his car are completely unimpeded to access by anything whatsoever for at least a dozen feet around, that this man definitely looks stronger and more able-bodied than me, and that I’m certain he pulled in several minutes after me and deliberately parked very close to my car.

I look back at him incredulously. He’s still glaring at me expectantly, with an aggressive posture, getting more and more annoyed. He’s clearly indicating that I’m blocking his access out, against all reason and physical evidence to the contrary.

In this area of the city, I think better of risking getting into an altercation with a man, so — still in sheer disbelief — I go through pushing away the awkwardly heavy plastic bin, closing my back door, and moving out of his way. He impatiently and quite pointedly walks through the narrow space between our cars where I’m standing warily pressed against mine, then very easily grabs his trash bag out of his back seat and finally walks off.

I just stare after him, blinking slowly. Did that really just happen? Just how lazy and entitled can a person be?

Then, I open my door again, bend over, and reach all the way into my — non-convertible — car to haul out my full, large recycling bag from all the way over on the other side of the back seat, without any difficulty or complaining.

This story is part of our Recycling roundup!

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(I rent out a house with four other women, one of whom is my sister, who’s ended up not having the best relationship with the other two people. She’s never done anything outright horrible, but has an air of entitlement and does little things that bother us sometimes. One of the things that has bothered us the most is whenever she asks to borrow our personal cars. Hers was wrecked by her boyfriend two years ago and, since I sometimes have “no good reason” to NOT allow her to borrow the car while I’m using it, I’ve allowed her until recently. She’s never been in a wreck herself, but she always treats my car like it is her own garbage bin, always claims she needs it for an “emergency” when really she wants to go shopping, and never, never, NEVER tops up the tank. She once borrowed it for a full week without telling me until I confronted her about my almost-empty tank of gas. I always let her walk all over me until one day I put my foot down and set some rules, which doesn’t exactly work, so I take away the “deal” we never made of sharing my car, telling her to finally look for her own. What does she do? She goes and asks our roommates, of course. [Roommate #1] gives her a shot, but refuses after my sister is gone past one am and won’t answer her cell phone when our roommate calls to see if she is all right. [Roommate #2] gives her a hard no from the beginning. So, my sister has been forced to take a mix of public transportation and ride-hailing apps, despite having a valid license. I have always thought it was because she worked out it was cheaper that way, despite the passive-aggression she always throws my way whenever a bus is late during her route or the comments about how inconvenient it is to catch a [Rideshare]. That was all until [Roommate #3] moves in. Literally within the first week of settling in, while she’s playing a video game in the living room and [Roommate #2] and I are in the kitchen, my sister approaches her:)

Sister: “Hey, [Roommate #3]! Listen. Huge favor. Would it be okay to let me borrow your car?”

Me: *not thinking I heard right* “Wait, wha–”

Roommate #3: “Uh, sure? Why? When?”

Sister: “Oh, I was–“

Me: “[Roommate #3]! Seriously? You don’t have to.”

Sister: “She already said yes.”

Roommate #3: *raises an eyebrow at the both of us* “Um… Is there something I’m not getting? Do you, what, have a DUI?”

Roommate #2: *muttering low enough just for me to hear* “Nope, just her ex.”

Sister: “What? Are you f****** serious? Do I look like someone who would have a DUI?”

Roommate #3: “All right, sorry, jeez. But, yeah. Unless you have a history of f***** up cars–“

Sister: “I don’t.”

Roommate #3: “Okay, so, when do you need it?”

Sister: “I was thinking right now?”

Me: *getting up* “Okay, no. [Sister], that’s just rude to try and practically bully [Roommate #3] into giving you her car.”

Sister: “But she said yes!”

Roommate #3: *shrugs* “That I did. And sure. My key is the one with the green keychain.”

(My sister thanks her profusely and goes to get ready to leave while [Roommate #2] and I share a look, completely floored, not only over how brazen my sister was, but how careless [Roommate #3] seems to be. Ultimately, we just shake our heads and allow this incredibly poor idea pan out. My sister leaves, dressed up and ready to go… before coming back in, seeming annoyed.)

Sister: “You’re out of gas.”

(I try to stifle laughter over the irony.)

Roommate #3: “What?”

Sister: “I said, you’re out of gas.”

Roommate #3: “Did it not turn on? I put five bucks in it yesterday.”

Sister: *confused* “Er, no. I was able to turn on your car, but the gas gauge is basically sitting on the ’empty’ side.”

Roommate #3: “Ohhh. Psh. Yeah. It does that, but that baby’s got another couple miles in it. Don’t worry; it can make it to the closest gas station and you can just put in how much money you need for gas.”

(Note that this entire time, [Roommate #3] hasn’t even looked up from her video game to address my sister fully, who’s staring at her like she’s just grown another head. After a moment, my sister sneers and huffs out a “fine” before storming back out. A while later, while most of us are talking and hanging out, my sister comes in and hands [Roommate #3] a receipt.)

Sister: “Here. For the gas.”

Roommate #3: *looks at the receipt and eyes go wide* “WHOA! You filled the whole tank?!”

Sister: “Yes, and you can pay me back whenever yo–“

(She doesn’t get to finish the sentence and, thankfully, [Roommate #3] seems to never have heard it since she was too busy bolting up and almost tackling my sister to the ground with a bearhug.)

Roommate #3: “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much! You didn’t have to do that! You can borrow my car whenever you want!”

Sister: “…”

(It didn’t take long for us to learn that [Roommate #3] came from working-class parents where she picked up a lot of penny-pinching techniques and habits, one of them being to only pay for only the amount of gas necessary to get from point A to point B. She legitimately thought that’s how most people did it, and her mind was blown when she found out none of us made the “common, new-driver mistake” of running out of gas on the freeway from overestimating how much was left in the tank. This meant that eventually when all the gas my sister put in dwindled, [Roommate #3] kicked back into her old habit of just paying what she needed, confused as to why this had suddenly become a pet-peeve to my sister’s. Other than her unique money-saving tactics and her obliviousness, she’s become an awesome housemate. My sister made it through borrowing her car for about a month until [Roommate #3] confronted her about dirtying up her car — “I mean, you could pay for the car cleaning, at least? Then you can drive my car again. Fair?” — and she magically found her own money to get a used car, herself.)

(I am sitting outside soaking in the sun right after a quantum mechanics final. A guy approaches me and says hi.)

Me: *not wanting to be rude* “Hi. How’s it going?”

Guy: “It’s all right. I’m [Guy]. What’s your name? What are you doing here?”

Me: “I’m [My Name]. Just got out of a final.”

Guy: “Oh, what final? What major are you?”

Me: “I’m a physics major. This was the final for the last course in the quantum mechanics series. I have a math final later, too, so I’m just waiting on campus.”

Guy: “Quantum mechanics? That’s so cool. How much do you know about it?”

Me: “I mean, that’s a little hard to say, but I know everything I should at an undergrad level, and enough to be able to engage in research. The core of the subject, essentially.”

Guy: “Well, I could teach you so much about!”

Me: “Oh, that’d be cool. Are you a physics grad student or something?”

Guy: “No, I’m a psychology major. I don’t really know anything about the math or anything. But I’ve seen so many YouTube videos about it. There’s so much crazy stuff about it that you won’t believe. Anyway, maybe I could take you out to dinner or something?”

Me:  “…”

(While I appreciate people trying to learn about a subject in whatever way they can, it seemed really arrogant to assume that YouTube videos would make you more familiar than me with a subject I’m majoring in. Especially when the subject in question is essentially all math; you can’t do any physics without doing the math! It’s what differentiates it from random thought experiments.)