My father is Japanese; not only do I very much look Japanese, but my name is obviously Japanese. For the purposes of this story, let’s say my given name is Yuki and my family name starts with an O. 

I recently got a night shift job stocking shelves at a large supermarket; I work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My first day, one of my coworkers – a very skinny Black man – comes up to me towards the end of the shift.

Coworker: “Hey, you said your name’s Yuki, right?”

Me: “Yeah?”

Coworker: “Okay, I just want to get something out of the way. There’s another Yuki who works here on Tuesdays and Saturdays, Yuki [European family name starting with A]. She’s a rude, lazy little f*** and I hate her guts. I have no idea why she hasn’t been fired yet, but I don’t want you thinking I’m talking about you when I complain about her. I’m gonna call you “Yuki O”, and I’m gonna TRY to start calling her “Yuki A”, but old habits die hard. If you ever hear me talking about Yuki without an O, it has nothing to do with you. Got it?”

Me: “Um, got it…”

Coworker: “Okay. Now, if ANY of the managers come to you saying there’s a complaint about you, you ask if it’s Yuki O or Yuki A. You don’t sign any write-ups based on a complaint from your coworkers unless they have the person who “complained about you” confirm, to your face, that they were talking about Yuki O. Got it?”

Me: “Got it.”

Coworker: “Alrighty. Good luck.”

The reason for the warning became clear very soon. Less than a week into my shift, I had one shift manager frequently coming up to me, saying he had a complaint about me. Every time I asked, “Yuki O, or Yuki A?” he would claim he was “unsure” and drop the matter. [Coworker] was, in fact, called to confirm several times, and he asserted in front of me and [Manager] that he was talking about Yuki A with his complaints.

Then one day, a couple of months into my employment, I was asked to come in on a Sunday. When I arrived, I found myself in a meeting with [Manager], his boss, [Coworker], and Yuki A. (Yuki A, as it turns out, is a very white woman with an impressively dark tan.)

Manager’s Boss: “Thank you all for coming. I’d like to confirm a few things before we get started. Mrs. [Yuki A], is it true that [Manager] is the manager on duty for your Tuesday shifts?”

Yuki A: “Yeah?”

Manager’s Boss: “Mrs. [Yuki O], is it true that [Manager] is the manager on duty for your Monday and Wednesday shifts?”

Me: “Yes, sir, he is.”

Manager’s Boss: “Mr. [Coworker], is it true that you have made several complaints about Mrs. [Yuki A]’s behaviour during her Tuesday shifts?”

Coworker: “Yes, sir, I do.”

Manager’s Boss: “Mrs. [Yuki A], has [Manager] ever come to you with complaints about your behaviour during your Tuesday shifts?”

Yuki A: “Not as far as I can remember.”

Manager’s Boss: “Mrs. [Yuki O], is it true that [Manager] has repeatedly come to you with alleged complaints about your behaviour during your Monday and Wednesday shifts?”

Me: “Yes, sir, he has.”

Manager’s Boss: “That will be all. Mr. [Coworker], Mrs. [Yuki O], Mrs. [Yuki A], you are dismissed.”

As the three of us left, Yuki A turned to me and [Coworker].

Yuki A: “If you’ve been b****ing about me, why the f*** has she been getting a hard time over it?”

Coworker: “I guess we’ll see.”

We did indeed. As I later discovered, [Manager] had been deliberately ignoring [Coworker]’s complaints about Yuki A for upwards of a year, and was all too eager to jump at [Coworker] for the slightest error. When I was hired, [Manager] changed tack and started trying to blame Yuki A’s problems on me, only to be thwarted by [Coworker]’s warning on my first day.

[Coworker] had, of course, gone to [Manager’s Boss] when he started getting asked to verify, with suspicions of prejudice on [Manager]’s part. Faced with complaints about a White worker from a Black worker that were either getting ignored or being misattributed to a Japanese worker, [Manager’s Boss] had every reason to fire [Manager] for his bigotry.

Yuki A, for her part, apparently had some choice words about [Manager] during her Tuesday shifts. She didn’t end up changing the things [Coworker] hates about her before she was fired by [Manager]’s replacement, but it was still nice to know she wasn’t complicit.

I worked for a well-known roadside assistance call centre for almost a decade, and dealt with many “unique” calls during that time period. The most memorable, though, was quite brief:

Me: “Thank you for calling [Company]; how may I assist you today?”

Caller: “I’m on the highway, and my car is on fire.”

Me: *Legitimately very concerned.* “Is everyone who was in the car safe?”

Caller: “Yes.”

Me: “Have you called 911?”

Caller: “No; should I?”

I’m glad he had so much faith in his roadside assistance company, but PLEASE, if anything is on fire, call emergency services first!

My friend and I work at the local waste management facility — the dump. They don’t treat us well or pay us what we’re worth, but the worst has been how my friend is treated.

Most people in our area are pickers/sorters; we stand at a conveyor belt grabbing paper, recyclables, hazardous material, etc., out of the garbage. It’s hard work, and some areas are fast-paced, but we can’t really fall behind because the belt doesn’t stop.

My friend has a different job, where he has to sort through all the cans and other random metal that gets picked up by a magnet, and also sort buckets of recyclables one of the picker groups grabs because their area goes too fast for them to sort them manually. If he finishes both of those tasks, he’s expected to join us in our areas and help until he’s needed again.

[Friend] is doing a two-person job, literally. When he takes a day off, they need one fully dedicated worker and one person who switches between picking and helping them. Everyone he’s trained who tried to do it alone has said that it’s a two-person job and nobody should be expected to do it alone, but [Friend] is because he’s capable of keeping up.

The guy who had the job before him couldn’t even keep up; he would dump half his buckets back on the conveyor belt if he got behind, which meant the pickers in other areas had to sort them and we’d get hit with a wave of stuff that made us rush. In the year since he started, [Friend] hasn’t dumped a bucket once. They even closed up the hole that the last guy used to do that.

We also have deep cleaning days once a month, where we don’t run anything and just clean everywhere. For months, [Friend] (and I, once I got hired) was the only one volunteering to do one of the hardest, most back-breaking, most boiling-hot-in-the-summer jobs, which was also super important because if it wasn’t done, the machines would break down.

Despite all of that, [Friend] hasn’t received any raises or bonuses. When he brought up that other people worked far less and made more, he was told, “They’ve been here longer,” and, “You’re young, so you can just do more than them,” and, “Everyone finds their own pace.” He didn’t mind the pace or amount of work — he likes going fast — he just wanted to be recognized and rewarded for it.

So, he tried to stop doing the extra work he’d been doing, going into our work areas to help us when he was done with his own tasks. Instead, he would use that time to watch movies on his phone; he had enough free time to watch an entire two-hour movie on most days. But the big bosses noticed it on the cameras, and he was told he wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. He also got reprimanded and had a performance bonus removed because he would wear an earbud while he worked, even though he was one of the only people without a radio to listen to.

During cleaning days, both of us started getting in trouble for not cleaning — after we spent three-quarters of the shift working our butts off, while other people swept the same pile of dirt for an hour or “supervised”, aka stood around in groups while one or two people actually cleaned. The two of us could finish a job in two hours which used to take twelve people four hours.

On one cleaning day, [Friend] got in trouble for goofing off by shooting a few people with a water gun. Sure, it wasn’t exactly professional, but it was all in good fun, and the only reason the incident was even noticed was that someone else sprayed a guy who [Friend] knew to avoid. That guy retaliated by spraying two people in the face with a bottle of concentrated sanitizer. Both of them got the same punishment.

So now, we’ve slowed down on cleaning days and get less done, and we find easier jobs to do to take up our time. And [Friend] no longer does the extra work because he’s too busy standing at his spot waiting for one can to drop every minute. He’s finally “found his pace”.

When I was in high school, I was once “asked” to babysit a neighbour’s kids. She worded it as, “Your mom said you could babysit for me,” but I later learned that my mom had only agreed to let her ask me. Being a literal child, and a timid one, I assumed I didn’t really have a choice and agreed. I had never babysat anyone before, not even someone near my own age, so I have no idea why they thought I was suited to watch their children.

When I got there, I learned there were four of them: two older girls and two young boys, one still in diapers. One of the boys was running around naked, and nobody seemed to care. I understand that this is normal for young kids, but even the parents didn’t say anything, and I had to ask one of the older kids to take him to get dressed. Their house was a mess, and the kids didn’t try to clean up after themselves at all, even the ones old enough to know better.

All that, I could have dealt with. The worst part was when I learned that instead of leaving to go to a bar or something, as I assumed, the mother wanted me to babysit while she and her friends locked themselves in a room and got high. I have no problem with that in general, but I really didn’t appreciate being in the same house as a bunch of strangers taking at-the-time illegal substances!

I stayed there for three hours, and I had to tell the mother that my time was up and I was leaving because she wasn’t paying attention to the clock. Seeming barely aware of her surroundings, she got up, brought her youngest kid to her bed, and fell asleep with him while the rest of her kids were still awake.

For those three hours, I got a total of $35, delivered to me over a week later — after my mother hounded her — and the woman took it out of her sweaty bra to hand it to me.

There were two further incidents with this woman before we finally got her to stop speaking to our family, including one where she got drunk and threw trash all over our yard in the middle of the night!

Last year, I was lucky enough to get some money, which meant I could buy myself an electric scooter. As I don’t drive, being able to get around town on my own was quite the experience.

One day, I decided to take my scooter out to a fast food place so I wouldn’t have to pay for delivery. I ordered on my phone, drove over, and went inside to get my food. It was in the middle of the health crisis, so there was nobody else inside.

I told the cashier that I was there to pick up an order. Without any more information, she went to the back and put some stuff into a bag. Maybe I was their only pickup? Then, while I watched, she put the bag on a counter and left.

Thinking she was just getting something from a part of the kitchen I couldn’t see, I waited… and waited… and waited. During this time nobody else came in, and it didn’t sound like they were busy. Finally, she came back out, grabbed the bag — without adding anything to it — and put it on the counter in front of me. Then, she tried to hand me a piece of paper.

Employee: “Here’s the address.”

Suddenly, I realized what happened. I’d taken my helmet in with me so it wouldn’t be stolen. 

Apparently, she saw it and assumed that anyone coming in on a scooter or bike must be a third-party delivery person. Why she made me wait so long if I was meant to be delivering, I’ll never know.

After I shyly pointed out the issue, she was very apologetic and got me my proper food. Thanking her, I went back out to my bike and checked that I had everything… and realized she didn’t give me any of my dips.