I’m a self-checkout attendant. A customer pushing a large cart approaches me.

Customer: “Do you have a gun?”

While there is a prominent hunting culture in the area, concealed or open carry is relatively rare. Not to mention, there is absolutely NO reason for any employee to have a gun at work; the area is far from rural, so we don’t have to worry about wild animals, and the local violent crime rates aren’t high.

After a moment of half-panicked confusion, I remember that I work in a grocery store.

Me: “A scan gun?”

Customer: “Yeah.”

One word. Four letters. A world of difference.

In 2000, I enrolled in a government-funded residential vocational training program called Job Corps geared toward helping at-risk teens and young adults learn trade skills and find lucrative employment.

One of the students there made it more than obvious that he was simply there for the free ride. Aside from sleeping in class, he found amusement in bullying other students who generally could not fight back due to his massive 300-pound size. His antics would include snatching food out of other students’ hands and eating it, wrestling smaller students around while ignoring their shouts to get off of them, taunting students relentlessly even when no one was responding to him, and in one instance, calling a student’s mother and telling her about a very personal and embarrassing incident that had happened to him. Complaints about him were usually addressed with a “knock it off” talk and nothing further.

As my luck had it, this goon ended up being assigned to my dorm room. I probably shouldn’t need to go into detail about how he made it a hobby to make life absolutely unbearable for me. It came to the point where I once ended up going to management and asking them to just give me a bus ticket back home if they weren’t going to move me to another room.

Now, again, this was in the year 2000, and cell phones were not as widespread as they are today. For security reasons, Job Corps had a very strict policy against possessing cell phones or pagers. (Rumor had it that it was to discourage drug deals and gang activity on the campus, but I never got a clear answer.) At one point, after a student was involved in a serious incident that had been facilitated by the use of a smuggled cell phone, the center director announced that anyone else caught with a cell phone on the campus would face automatic termination.

A student approached me saying, “Hey, look. I just got this phone, but I don’t want to take the risk of automatic termination. I spent a lot of money on it, though. Could you take it for $50?”

At that point in time, I had become so disgruntled and disillusioned with the Job Corps program that I honestly didn’t care anymore if I completed or was terminated. I bought the phone from him, planning to stash it in a sock and use it in lone places like the utility room.

By strange coincidence, one of the dorm resident advisors announced that his phone had fallen out of his jacket and was offering a $200 reward for its return. The brand name and color didn’t match the phone I had bought from the aforementioned student. However, later that day, the bullying roommate spotted my phone, which had fallen out of my sock as I was rummaging through my things.

Bully: “YO! That’s that cell phone from [Dorm Advisor]!”

Me: “No, his was a [description].”

Bully: “Naw, naw, naw, that’s the phone! Give it to me!”

Me: “It’s not the same phone—”

Bully: *Grabbing me by the collar* “I SAID GIVE IT TO ME BEFORE I BREAK YOUR JAW!”

I gave him the phone, and he ran out of the room with a huge smile on his face. He ran straight to the dorm residential advisor.

Bully: “Hey! I found your phone!”

Resident Advisor: *Looking it over* “This is not my phone, but what are you doing with a phone on the campus anyway? The center director made it crystal clear that anyone else caught with a phone would be terminated from the program!”

Bully: “[My Name] had it. He was trying to sell it to me! I thought maybe it was yours! It’s his phone!”

I heard the resident advisor making his way down the hall and I knew this was about to become a fabulous day.

Resident Advisor: “Is this your phone?”

I pretended to read a book and looked very uninterested.

Me: “Huh? No, that ain’t mine.”

Bully: “TELL HIM THAT’S YOUR PHONE!”

Resident Advisor: “[Bully], I’m going to ask you to come with me, please.” *Pulls out his radio* “I need security down to Dorm 4.”

Seeing [Bully]’s bed stripped and his belongings cleaned out of his closet felt like Christmas had come early. I still get a chuckle when I think about how the problem took care of itself — the bully ironically bullied himself out of the program!

I work in a grocery store as a cashier and self-checkout attendant. By the time parents with little kids reach me, they’re usually rowdy, whiny, or both. I’m not a huge fan of kids in general, so I’ve figured out my own way to get them to behave for at least a few more minutes.

Kid: *Throwing a fit.*

Me: “Hey, be careful. If you throw a tantrum in [Store], they make you work here. That’s what happened to me. I threw a fit here when I was ten and I’ve been working ever since.”

Kid: *Suspicious.* “Really?”

Parent: “Yes, listen to her! You don’t want to get left behind, do you?”

Works every time.

My mother is doing some early prep work for Thanksgiving. One of her tasks is chopping up fresh herbs for the turkey and stuffing. One of these herbs is parsley. However, it has started to go limp, so she sends my father to the store for a new bundle.

Dad: “I’m home! And I have your parsley!”

Mom: “Great! Was the store busy?”

Dad: “Yeah, it was insane. People absolutely everywhere. But I got through them! And I got the parsley!”

Mom: *Looking in the bag* “Honey, this is dill.”

My dad groans, and my mother and I burst into laughter.

Dad: “But I grabbed it from the parsley bin!”

She made do with the limp parsley instead of sending him back out, but we made fun of him for getting the wrong herbs for the rest of the afternoon.

My mother is at her first OBGYN appointment following the birth of my youngest brother. While she’s nowhere near the oldest person they’ve seen postpartum, she’s definitely on the older end, and given that my brother was completely unplanned, she tells the nurse that she wants to revisit her birth control options.

Nurse: *Snottily* “You know, most women your age would love to be pregnant.”

Mom: “I just had my fourth child.”

There’s a pause.

Nurse: “I’ll put you down for a consultation.”

Luckily, the actual doctor gave my mom zero sass and she got an IUD without any fuss.