Client: “Why hasn’t [project] made any progress?”

Boss: “Well… you no-showed for the past two meetings, and we were waiting for input. I left you a voicemail.”

Client: “What? I never did. When were those meetings?”

Boss: “[Date #1] and [date #2].”

Client: “This clearly isn’t my fault. I couldn’t have no-showed then because I wasn’t even in Minnesota that whole week.”

Boss: “That’s… Yes, but—”

Client: “Besides, I don’t even know how to ‘no-show.’ How do you expect to do work when you need your clients to do all this technical stuff?”

Our office rents space in a mall. One morning, we come into work to see a sign on our door saying, “I noticed a bumblebee got into your office. Please give the bee some sugar water and let the bee out,” signed [Employee] at [Store].

We take the challenge, scour the office, and eventually find the bee in question. We catch it in an upside-down water cooler cup with a business card underneath to trap it in. We tape it shut, and I am volunteered to leave the office on this beautiful day to find some flowers to release the bee next to.

It is a short walk to some flowers, and I let the bee go. Then, I return to the mall and go to [Store].

Me: “Is there a [Employee] here?”

Employee: “That’s me. Why?”

She seems afraid. Maybe I need to work on my tone of voice?

Me: “I just wanted to let you know that we found the bee and followed your instructions. Have a nice day!”

I then turned around and left, but I heard her making happy-sounding noises behind me as I left.

Warehouse work usually isn’t difficult — shipping/receiving, cleaning, pulling orders, using forklifts, and so on. The work itself isn’t hard, but sometimes those truck drivers you have to deal with can be a real pain in the back.

A truck driver sees that our dock is busy. He stops on the street, gets out of his cab, and walks inside. He asks how long the current truck will be in our dock, and we let him know it will maybe be another ten or fifteen minutes. He walks back out to his truck and waits for the current truck to finish and pull out.

About fifteen minutes go by, and the current driver takes her signed paperwork for her delivered shipment, gets back in her truck, pulls out, and drives away.

For the next forty-five minutes, I find other things to keep me occupied as the guy is struggling to back his trailer into the dock. Eventually, he gives up and comes back inside.

Truck Driver: “Your driveway is too short. I can’t get my sleeper cab and this fifty-three-footer backed into your dock. I’ll have to go back to our distribution center and someone else will have to try delivering this stuff another day.”

Me: “The last driver that was here also had a sleeper cab and fifty-three-footer on it. She backed it in without a problem. One shot.”

Truck Driver: “…”

Me: “Do you want me to call the company she worked for and see if she can come back to give you lessons on backing up your trailer?”

Truck Driver: *Pauses* “I’ll keep trying.”

He went back out, and after another fifteen minutes or so, he finally got his truck backed into the dock so we could unload him.

In high school, I had a friend who was mechanically inept. [Friend #1] was so bad at using tools that, even after we tried to show him, he reminded me of a toddler getting their hands on a toy tool for the first time and having no idea how to work them.

For example, [Friend #1] wanted to help [Friend #2] and me build a box for skating that had a rail, a ramp, and an edge for doing tricks. He asked to help do something, so we handed him a hammer and nails so he could help. He held the hammer’s handle just below the head and he could not hammer a nail in. It was painful to watch him fumble with the hammer. We had to take the hammer away from him and make him just sit on the side and watch.

Fast forward a couple of years from the skating box. Against our recommendation, [Friend #1] purchases a used Honda Civic that was abused; it was driven hard and the transmission was dropped. Sadly, he sold off his decked-out Honda Prelude to purchase the broken Civic.

He doesn’t have the money to pay for a shop to replace the transmission for him, so he asks a few of us to help him replace it with the rebuilt one he picked up. We tell him we can help, but he will need to rent an engine hoist because the engine rests on the transmission and we need to lift it to remove the old transmission and lift it to put the new one in place. He says he will take care of getting the hoist, and we agree to come over to help this coming Saturday.

We show up on Saturday afternoon and [Friend #1] is anxious to get going. With how bad he is at using tools, everyone else does the work for him. Since the car is going up on the jack stands, we also check the brakes and rotors and fix a part of the exhaust that has a hole in it and the hanging brackets that are broken.

Time for replacing the transmission. We get the car up, disconnect the transmission, and ask [Friend #1] to bring over the engine hoist.

Friend #1: “Oh, I never rented one. You can do the work without it.”

We should say no and walk, but we are young and determined that we can get it done. It takes three of us to muscle up the engine just enough to pull out the old transmission, and it takes a lot longer to get the new transmission in.

About six hours later, it’s now after 10:00 pm, and we’re all exhausted from the work, while [Friend #1] patiently sat around trying to help as much as he could without being able to actually work on the car. We check and make sure everything is bolted down correctly and clean up all the tools. We get the car back down off the jack stands, tighten the lug nuts on the wheels, and we’re done.

One of the guys helping brings [Friend #1] over and shows him where to add the transmission fluid, tells him how much to add, and shows him how to open and close the cap for where the fluid goes. This is the one and only thing our mechanically inept friend has to do. He’s excited his car is done and can’t wait to drive it.

It’s now close to 11:00 pm. We’re all tired after the unnecessary extra work and cleaning up, and we all leave him to his car and its new transmission.

At about 8:00 am the next day, I get a call from another friend, and he’s laughing as I answer the phone.

Friend #3: “You’ll never guess what happened to [Friend #1].”

Me: “What? What’s so funny?”

Friend #3: “[Friend #1] backed his car out of the garage last night after we all left and wanted to drive the car around for a bit. He got a few blocks from his house and the car stopped.” *Laughs* “The moron never put in the transmission fluid, and he seized the new transmission!”

Me: *Laughing* “What a dumba**! He was literally handed the transmission fluid, and [Friend #4] told him how much to add and showed him where right before we left. How did he forget to put it in?”

Friend #3: “I don’t know, but he’s pissed, and he wants to know if we will help him replace the transmission again if he can get another new one.”

Me: “I hope you told him no. I’m not helping again.”

Friend #3: “I told him he was on his own.”

[Friend #1] had to borrow money from his parents to get his car to a mechanic and have them replace the transmission. He was upset with himself about letting his Prelude go and getting into the mess with the Civic. Sadly, this isn’t the only stupid thing he’s done with his cars, but those are other stories for another time.

My roommate and I, along with a handful of other guys at the dorms, couldn’t figure out what we wanted to do on a Saturday night. We’d only been in school for about a month and some were in the mood to party.

Half of the group was begging to have us go out and find parties, but the other half of us didn’t want to. We were all freshmen, so we were only eighteen or nineteen years old and not old enough to legally drink. The handful of parties that had been going on since school started had been pranks on underage students. Basically, people old enough to buy alcohol would set up a party, invite freshmen and sophomore students, and let people get their drink on. A few hours into the party, all the people that lived at the house where the party was taking place would leave and call the cops and get all the underage students busted.

With that in mind, we all eventually just agreed not to bother with trying to find a party. None of us wanted to eat at the dorm cafeteria; the food was okay but not something we all enjoyed eating every day.

We decided to order pizza from a local pizza place about a mile away. The pizza place had a deal where you get your pizza in thirty minutes or it’s free. We put in an order for four large pizzas, and once the order was placed, we started a timer.

The pizza place was usually pretty fast, and you’d see your order at around the twenty-minute mark. Twenty minutes came and went, and there was no pizza delivery guy yet. Then, twenty-five minutes and still no delivery guy.

Some of us were getting excited; it might be free pizza night if the delivery guy didn’t show up in the next five minutes. We all went outside to wait.

When the pizza place had three minutes left, some random student came from around the corner of the dorm building, laughing.

Student: “Come look at this pizza guy running up the street!”

We all went around the corner and, sure enough, there was a pizza delivery guy holding up a bag of pizzas and running up the sidewalk at a full sprint.

One of the guys in our group started a countdown to the thirty-minute mark when there were only thirty seconds left. The pizza guy came around the corner of the dorm building as fast as his feet could carry him. He stopped in front of the building, took a second to catch his breath, and belted out:

Pizza Guy: “I have a delivery for [Student Who Ordered]!”

Countdown Guy: “That’s for us! You only had seven seconds left before the thirty-minute delivery time was up!”

Pizza Guy: “My car wouldn’t start, and I only had about five minutes left to get the pizzas to you, so I just started running!”

We were pretty impressed that he had run almost a full mile in about five minutes, all while carrying four large pizzas. We didn’t have much money between us, but we ended up tipping him about an extra $20 for the hard work he put in to get the pizzas to us in time.

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