After my wife and I got married and moved into our townhouse, we got a dog. I’ve always loved huskies and so did the wife, so we got ourselves a Siberian husky.

We’ve been living in the area for about a year now, and I take my dog on daily walks. The weather dictates how far we walk. My dog loves everyone and wants to meet everyone. Most people in the area recognize my dog and me as we’re walking.

One day, a resident of the neighborhood stops us as we are walking and my dog is more than happy to say hi!

Neighbor #1: “I saw your dog running around the neighborhood the other day. Good to see you got him back.”

Me: “No, he’s never off-leash. There’s no fenced yard here. Any time he’s outside, he’s with me and always on a leash. Huskies love to run, and you’d be hard-pressed to get him back if he starts running.”

Neighbor #1: “Oh… Well, I could swear it was your dog. Looked just like him. Have a good day!”

We continue our walk.

A few days pass, and I have another quick conversation with a different resident as I’m walking my dog.

Neighbor #2: “Your dog has been running around the neighborhood on the loose and causing problems. He’s been chasing rabbits and other neighborhood dogs.”

Me: “No. My dog is never off his leash. I don’t appreciate you making wild accusations and not minding your own d*** business.”

The person looks really offended that I’d speak to her like that, and I went go my way.

So far, multiple people have told me they’ve seen my dog outside running around all willy-nilly, causing havoc. Sadly, it sounds like someone’s husky got loose and is just running around the local neighborhoods. 

The next day, a third person approaches me as I am walking my dog and has a similar story. I explain to them it’s not my dog and go about my business.

A few days pass and I don’t get harassed, and I figure it’s over.

My husky and I are walking down a sidewalk when, all of a sudden, I hear the front door open on one of the townhouse units I just passed. My back is to the door as my dog and I are walking away.

Lady: “Hey!”

I don’t respond to “hey”. If someone wants my attention, they can be respectful and use something more like, “Excuse me, can I talk to you?” or the use of “Sir”. I don’t give jerks the time of day. I keep walking, ignoring her.

Lady: *Louder* “Hey! HEY!”

I continue to ignore her.

Lady: *Louder, almost yelling* “Hey, you! HEY!”

I continue to ignore her.

Lady: *Screaming now* “I’M TALKING TO YOU! YOU! HEY! WHAT THE H*** IS YOUR PROBLEM? ANSWER ME! HEY!”

I continue to ignore them and keep walking. I hear their door slam shut. My dog and I finish our walk and enjoy the rest of the night.

The very next day as I’m walking, we happen by the same townhouse unit where some lady was screaming at me. The lady steps out of her townhouse when she sees me walking.

Lady: “Hey, I was yelling for you the other day. Why didn’t you answer me?”

Me: “I don’t like to encourage rude behavior, and I don’t answer to ‘hey’ or ‘you’. If you want someone’s attention, do it respectfully. I don’t owe you any kind of answer if you’re going to continue to be rude and disrespectful.”

She looks a bit stunned, almost like I slapped her in the face. She doesn’t seem to know what to say next and I don’t care. I keep walking and start to turn away from her.

Lady: “Your dog has been running around loose harassing other dogs!”

By this time, I’ve turned completely away from her and I’m walking down the sidewalk.

Lady: “Hey! What are you going to do about it?”

I ignore her and keep walking.

Lady: “Hey! You!”

I give her a middle finger as I’m walking away, and I yell back”

Me: “I’m not going to do a g**d*** thing about it.”

I heard her door slam shut and that was the last I ever had to deal with her.

I don’t know what happened to the husky that was running around loose, but I do hope it was safely found and returned to the family it got away from or at least found a new home.

Huskies are good at escaping and running, so don’t think they’re safe in your fenced-in yard if you don’t have a nice tall fence. Even then, they like to dig and could possibly go under the fence. So, please keep a close eye on your husky if you ever get one, and understand that they need a lot of exercise and shed like crazy.

It’s never a boring day when you’re working tech support at a call center. Odd things range from folks simply not knowing they have to power on a computer to them raging at you because there is no power at their location due to a power outage and their computers aren’t working.

However, some stories really make you wonder what the party on the other end of the phone is thinking.

Since I am the lead Tier 2 tech, I handle the “high importance” escalated calls, and then I get to dictate where the escalated call goes from there, and if it’s something I know no one else can handle, I take care of it.

My phone rings; a Tier 1 tech is looking to escalate a call. I answer the phone.

Me: “What’s the ticket number and issue?”

Tech: “I haven’t made a ticket yet because I have no idea how to classify the issue. The store owner says they’re working with the FBI and needs to talk to a senior tech.”

Me: “Okay, give me the store number and transfer the call to me.”

The call gets transferred and I open a ticket, categorize it best as I can, and start getting all the important info from the store owner.

Owner: “I’m calling because all my store locations have been hit by some malware that steals credit card info and the FBI needs to know what ports your software works off of, so I’ll pass the call to the agent here.”

The phone is handed to the agent on site. He gives me his information and tells me a couple of things that I note on the ticket in my system.

FBI Agent: “I need to know what ports your software works on for Internet connectivity for processing credit cards.”

Me: “Okay, hold just a moment and I can pull that info up for you.”

I flag down my manager and tell him of the issue, and he gives me the okay to give the information out. I pass along the information to the FBI Agent, and then I speak with the store owner again.

Owner: “The FBI says I need to remove the malware from all my stores, but I’m not sure what the best method of that would be.”

Me: “Your best option would be to have all new hardware setup at all your stores. We don’t handle malware removal because it’s nearly impossible to do remotely. We would need hands on the actual computers to try and handle any malware removal, and because we don’t actually specialize in such as task, we most likely wouldn’t be able to guarantee that we could even remove any or all malware that is causing your problem.”

Owner: “I’d like for you guys to try to remove the malware from my eight store locations.”

Me: “I can’t stress enough that doing malware removal remotely isn’t going to work. We’d bill you $200 an hour for doing this, and it could be multiple hours of work across multiple stores. You’d be looking at thousands of dollars for malware removal that we cannot guarantee. Looking at the number of stores you have and the hardware that would need to be replaced, I can guarantee you that it would be cheaper to replace the hardware. Once we get the old hardware, we can work on pulling data from the computers on our end and make sure there’s no lingering malware compromising your data and then send that data back to you.”

Owner: “I’d still like for you guys to work on doing the malware removal.”

Me: “Okay. I’ll make notes of our conversation and your approval to do malware removal work. We’ll keep you updated when things are done.”

Oh, joy. Now I have to waste countless hours trying to do malware removal remotely across multiple store locations. I make a list of a bunch of anti-malware programs and the like. I’ve now got a slew of programs to use to try and remove the malware from the owner’s eight store locations. I know this isn’t going to work, but I’ve been tasked by my manager to do the work on all the store locations.

I inform my manager that this’ll take a few days to do on my own, and we then inform the store owner to expect an update in about seventy-two hours.

I log the time I start working on things. I can only do three stores at a time, and I’m working on them while they’re still in operation. I’m remoting in at these store locations, copying over programs and running them on the server computers, restarting them, taking the systems down for chunks of time, etc. I end up spending a full day’s work on three stores, monitoring, running programs, making notes, and doing more troubleshooting.

After a couple of days, I’ve got most of the stores done, but as I told the owner before, remote malware removal is a waste. I call the owner up and make it known that all work at all the stores is finishing up. I get connected to the FBI agent for this case so they can follow up with things on their end.

They run their software and confirm that all is how it should be. However, the FBI agent asks me about a handful of ports that are flagged as being open after all the work I did. He said those ports shouldn’t be open and shouldn’t be sending and receiving data through them. Clearly, the work for remote malware removal wasn’t good enough — just like I told the owner, it wouldn’t work and would be a waste of time and money.

There were eight stores and nearly eight hours of remote work for each store. The store owner was billed for over $12,000 for the remote malware removal that didn’t work, just as I had explained to them. All they needed to do was replace the HDDs and flash cards for their computers and registers. It would have cost around $1,000 and they would have been back up and fully functional within twenty-four hours.

It still baffles me to this day that the store owner wanted us to remotely work on malware removal after I strongly told them multiple times that it wouldn’t work and it would be a waste of their money.

I work at a small-town grocery store stocking shelves, bagging customers’ groceries, and carrying them out to the customer’s car.

One of our frequent customers, an elderly man, has come in to shop. I bag his groceries and bring them out to his car, which he has backed into his parking space.

He thanks me and drives away. I go back into the store, bag another customer’s groceries, and carry them out to her car. She happens to have parked right next to the elderly man’s space, which is now empty.

As I wait for her to create space in her back seat, I notice out of the corner of my eye that the elderly man is backing into that now empty space again… right where I am standing. There is no time for me to move. I end up jumping into the air right when the back of his car smacks me right on my hip. Fortunately, I don’t fall and the groceries in my arms are safe. My whole body just got shoved over a bit while I was in the air.

The elderly customer gets out of his car and says, “I forgot something!” and walks back into the store.

Apparently, he didn’t realize he had just hit me with his car.

I’m working as a delivery driver for a pizza place. I take an order to an apartment where the slip says to call when I get there. Of course, upon arrival, I call the number.

No answer.

The apartment number is on the slip, so I go upstairs and knock on the door. No answer.

I alternate back and forth between calling the number and knocking loudly on the door. I even yell out:

Me: “[Restaurant] pizza is here!”

In the end, I call the number five times. No answer. In desperation, I also try texting to see if that works. Still no answer. I call my manager and ask what to do, and they say to bring the pizza back.

An hour later, when I’m on another delivery, I get a text back.

Customer: “Can’t hear texts; that’s why I said to call.”

This takes place about twenty years ago. I’m in my early twenties and working a basic warehouse job — driving a forklift, shipping/receiving, packing orders, and so on. There’s nothing special about it.

The owner of the company is a decent guy. He’s always walking about, interacting with employees, and being generally light-hearted.

One of the lazier employees finds out that we have a warehouse opening, and he talks to the warehouse manager about hiring him to help in the warehouse. So, the manager sets up a meeting, conducts an interview, and then eventually hires the guy.

The new guy is decent. He seems to be hardworking and can follow instructions. The guy is diabetic; it runs in his family. This shouldn’t be a problem for anyone that is diabetic and they work on following proper guidelines to ensure they’re healthy. However, this guy wants zero to do with it. He doesn’t monitor his blood sugar; he just carries around candy in his pocket and eats it if he feels lightheaded. He loves to party and just doesn’t take care of himself.

After maybe six months of [New Guy] working, we’ve noticed he’s hard to find at times. We look for him outside (since he smokes) and we check all entrances, but we can’t find him. We check the bathrooms — sometimes he’ll sit in a stall for an extended period of time — but we don’t find him. We wander the warehouse, checking every corner, checking up in spots we store packing material to see if he’s found a place to nap — past employees have done this — but we don’t find him.

We double-check the parking lot to see if [New Guy]’s car is gone. Nope, his car is still in the parking log. We wander the warehouse again, yelling out his name, rechecking outside of the building and the bathrooms, but we cannot find him.

We’ve now spent forty-five minutes looking for [New Guy] and he’s nowhere to be found. The warehouse manager tells us to just get back to work, and if he shows up, he shows up. I continue to work on my tasks.

About half an hour later, one of the other warehouse guys tells me that [New Guy] was seen climbing down the racking from a pallet and that the warehouse manager caught him in the act. The manager took the pallet down from the top of the rack and found out that the new guy had hollowed out the inside of the pallet to sit inside of it and sleep. The pallet had forty-eight boxes on it; [New Guy] had taken out the boxes in the center except for one to act as a seat to sit on and built up the outer layer taller. He had then put the pallet on the top of the rack.

Aside from thinking that that’s pretty impressive, I also know the owner will be pissed about it because he was even out helping us look for [New Guy].

[New Guy]’s punishment is none of my concern. All I know is that the warehouse manager doesn’t fire him on the spot.

I go to lunch and I am sitting in the break room when in walks the owner. He gets his lunch out and starts making small talk with me.

Owner: “Did you ever find the new guy?”

Me: “Yes. Apparently, he hollowed out a pallet and was sleeping inside of it up on the top rack.”

Owner: “What? He was sleeping?”

Me: “That’s what I was told.”

His face turns bright red and he takes in a deep breath and yells.

Owner: “DID YOU FIRE THE F***ER?!”

Me: “Sorry, that’s not my call. You’d have to talk to your warehouse manager about that.”

The owner stood up and marched out to the warehouse.

Surprisingly, the new guy wasn’t fired, but I never asked why they kept him. But it wasn’t too far down the road that the guy ended up getting fired for not coming into work for three days straight without calling in.