I’m a cashier at a car dealership. I’ve seen a few cashiers come and go, but this is by far the worst cashier we’ve ever had. 

We recently hired the daughter of one of the technicians to work weekends. She was eighteen, which is the minimum age requirement, but it was not her first job. She started a month or two before she graduated high school, and she thought this would be a great job to have while she was in college. She spent a month training with the head cashier, and everything went well. That is until she got shifts by herself. 

[New Cashier] started to make mistakes, which is expected, but she didn’t seem to learn from them. The biggest issue was that she was not logging her transactions correctly or closing tickets correctly. If the head cashier tried to correct her, she still made the exact same mistakes. I even tried to show her the correct way to do things because we thought maybe hearing it in a different way would click in her brain. Nope.

Sundays are by far the worst day to work, simply because there is absolutely nothing to do. Parts and service are closed Sundays, but the sales department is open, so a cashier is needed. There might be one hour of work scattered throughout the eight-hour shift. The cashiers usually rotate who works on Sunday, but [New Cashier] absolutely refused to work on Sundays simply because she didn’t want to. This girl worked three days a week. The head cashier was furious because she works the most Sundays out of everybody, but the manager refused to make the new cashier work on Sundays.

The store closes at 9:00, but service and parts close at 7:00. Never once during training did [New Cashier] leave before 9:00. On one of her first shifts alone, she left around 7:30 because “No one was here.” When we looked at her stuff from the night before, nothing was closed out correctly. After that, we told her to start closing everything out at 8:00 so that at 9:00, she could leave. However, she refused to start her closing routine until right at 9:00. While it only takes me or the head cashier about twenty minutes to do the entire closing routine, it took her two hours. The sales managers were all mad because they couldn’t leave until she left and none of them live nearby, but no matter how many times we told her to start her closing routine earlier, she wouldn’t listen.

A lot of people will order parts and pay for them over the phone. When that happens, the cashier will put the customer’s receipt and their copy of the invoice in the small window that connects the two departments, and a parts worker will grab the invoice when the customer picks it up. One night, around 6:00, someone paid for a part over the phone. However, the customer did not come before the department closed at 7:00. [New Cashier] saw the invoice still in the window, grabbed it, and shredded it. When asked why, she said she assumed parts didn’t need it. The parts manager had to go up to accounting and make copies of the ticket and receipt they had so he had something to give to the customer.

The title clerk gives the cashiers tags a few times a week. If the customer is local, they will come to pick the tags up. However, if the customer lives far away, we will mail them to the customer. All tags come in a plastic sleeve, and the registration is in the sleeve with them. The title clerk gave [New Cashier] some tags for out-of-state customers one day as she was leaving. [New Cashier] had given out plenty of tags by this point, but this was the first time she was mailing tags to customers. She texted the head cashier, who told her to call the customers and verify the mailing addresses before making the shipping labels. I came in the next morning and found that all of the out-of-state tags had been mailed, but the registrations and plastic sleeves were in the trash can. Thankfully, the cleaning ladies hadn’t emptied the trash out yet, but I had to call the customers and explain that their registrations would be mailed out separately. We asked [New Cashier] why she hadn’t mailed the registrations, to which she said, “I didn’t think they were important.” Not once when giving out tags to people who picked them up did she not give them the registrations.

The cashiers are in charge of getting all of the scanning done. I can usually get it done or mostly done before the afternoon cashier comes in, but the rare time I can’t get it all done, the afternoon cashier is expected to finish it. [New Cashier] struggles with the scanning, and she doesn’t understand why she has to know it when I can just finish it the next day if I can’t get it all done. I even made step-by-step instructions for her, and step one is “open the program.” One day, I was busier than normal, and I barely had time to get everything unstapled and ready to scan. I had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon, and my boss said I could leave thirty minutes early. I told [New Cashier] that she’d have to get everything scanned in that evening. Absolutely nothing was scanned. She didn’t even try, so I had to finish that before I could start on the scanning for that day.

The last straw happened after [New Cashier] had been with us for three or four months, and my manager was debating putting her back into training for the rest of the summer. A customer had a service ticket that was about $4,500. The customer paid with a debit card, but the bank would only let the customer pay about $2,700 with that card and she would have to pay the remaining $1,800 another way. The credit card machine prompted [New Cashier] to accept the partial payment, and on the receipt it printed out, “Collected $2,700.00 Still owe $1,800.00”. [New Cashier] let the customer go. The customer agreed to pay the remaining balance, but it took her almost three weeks to do so.

[New Cashier] quit so she wouldn’t be fired.

CONTENT WARNING: Severe Eye Injury To A Child

I was working in a popular department store in a mall on a busy Saturday afternoon when a man, a woman, and at least seven rambunctious children came into the store.

The man and woman — parents? — ignored their children who ran wild throughout the store breaking things, running into customers, and generally causing chaos. Various staff members repeatedly told both the children and the couple to stop because of safety, courtesy, and store policy concerns and were either ignored or sworn at.

Eventually, store security, store management, and mall security were all involved due to the incredibly dangerous behavior of the children playing, and the family was banned from the mall property itself for life. The family was refusing to leave and police were called in.

Unfortunately, the kids were still running wild. As the “father” of the bunch was being handcuffed, I heard two sounds I will never forget. The first was a not-too-loud, odd-sounding pop, followed by the most blood-curdling scream of pain and terror I had ever and — hopefully — will ever hear in my life.

The youngest son in the group had been playing with coat hangers and running; he knocked into something while holding a coat hanger and destroyed his left eye. Unfortunately for the poor child, the family did not have insurance, and they couldn’t sue the department store due to the countless testimonies of witnesses saying it was basically all the family’s negligence that caused it.

A while back, I posted this story about my Cousin Lisa, who’s nearly two decades older and is the best cousin ever. This is despite the fact that she’s technically not my cousin, since she’s related to my married-in uncle and not my parents. Lisa’s so much My Cousin that I never even questioned HOW we might be related until my great-aunt started getting upset that Cousin Lisa was invited to a wedding but way-off relatives I’ve never met in maybe fifteen years aren’t.

What I didn’t tell people is that I also have a younger brother.

When Timmy was in high school, he was a very good soccer player, and his team got to travel interstate for a competition. This involved an entire team of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds traveling alone with only the company of chaperones.

Sometime during this trip, Timmy and several of the other boys snuck out one night and apparently went to a bar… where they proceeded to get drunk. (Yes, Timmy lied about his age.) And then, Timmy got injured. Timmy swears it was a bar fight, but he’s full of it and was probably just being stupid. The chaperones had to take him to hospital to get a cast on his broken arm, his best friend got a concussion and stitches, and when he got home, he was grounded for more than a year.

Up until now, I thought that was all there was to the story.

It turns out, the full story goes like this.

Timmy, his best friend, and his teammates did sneak out. But then, sometime during the night, some kind of miscommunication meant that Timmy and his friend got left behind at the bar when the rest returned to the hotel. Thus, you had two drunk seventeen-year-olds alone in a strange city.

This is when they got injured — alone, drunk, in a strange city. Being very intelligent seventeen-year-olds, they decided that they would not call their parents, the chaperones, or even the police or an ambulance. The reason? They were scared they would get in trouble.

Fortunately, Timmy was drunk enough to make dumb mistakes but sober enough to remember that he had Cousin Lisa’s number in his phone and that she lived nearby. So, he called her.

Cousin Lisa, despite all reasonable expectations, answered a phone call at 2:00 am on a weekday. She somehow understood what Timmy was saying and went to get them. 

It was after picking them up from the side of the street that Lisa discovered they were injured, as opposed to just drunk, so she then took them to hospital, wrangled any paperwork and phone calls with chaperones and parents so that she was allowed to sign the forms for them, and sat with them in the emergency room for hours until they were seen. 

By the time she personally escorted them into the hands of their chaperones, the wee hours of the morning were not so wee anymore. Lisa has confirmed that, since she had a uniform in her car, it was late enough that she just went straight to work.

The kicker is that Lisa did not live in this city. She lived close by, which is to say she lived in another city about an hour and a half or two hours away.

Based on the hospital record and the phone record, she had to have picked them up within fifty minutes of getting the call.

Timmy and his friend were both in VERY big trouble, but Lisa herself has never thought the story worth mentioning until swearing this story is getting retold when Timmy finally gets married. As far as she was concerned, her youngest cousin called a safe adult for help and that’s all that matters.

And people wondered why I’d never questioned how we’re related.

Related:
We Could All Use A Cousin Lisa In Our Lives

CONTENT WARNING: Blood, Childbirth Procedures

I’m soon to be a granddad for the first time as my son is having his first child, and it reminded me of when my first child was born way back. My wife and I did all the childbirth classes, practiced the panting and coaching stuff, and we were feeling good. She was excited just to get the da***ed thing out of her at the end! We had done all the reading and preparation we could. Then, as it happens, D-Day arrived when her water broke at about 4:30 in the morning. No problem; we grabbed her go-bag and headed to the hospital, and we were calm and ready.

It was a hard labour. Contractions started and stopped, she had severe pain (back labour, they called it) and little dilation, and she was not having a good day. Finally, after being induced and getting an epidural, the show started close to midnight. We were in the delivery room, and our doctor asked her if it was okay if an intern — I think that’s what she was — observed. My wife was a medical professional and agreed, though at this point I think she didn’t give a s*** other than wanting the ordeal to be over.

The baby was born, and the doctor asked if I wanted to cut the cord. I declined. He put some plastic ratchet clamp things on and cut it. (It’s not a quick snip like in the movies; it’s tough tissue that crunches as it’s slowly cut through.)

The baby was taken by a nurse for the tests, and my wife was laying there, exhausted, with the rest of the cord still going up into her and attached to the placenta, which essentially had to be “delivered” still. I was hugging her and telling her how much I loved her and what a great job she’d done when the intern stepped in, took the clamp attached to my wife’s end of the cord, and released it.

If you have ever seen the loose end of a garden hose whip around when it’s under pressure, you have some idea of what happened, except it was blood being sprayed everywhere. The poor intern tried to grab the end but she just couldn’t. The doctor stepped in, caught it, and put the clamp back on in a matter of seconds.

I was standing there, sprayed with blood, and I’m sure my eyes were as large as saucers (as were the intern’s). This was not in the childbirth videos we’d watched in the classes.

I remember squeaking in a frantic voice, “Is that supposed to happen?” The doctor said not to worry, but I heard him say quietly to the intern, “I’ll talk to you later.”

The baby was fine, and Mother was fine (she was so drained she didn’t remember the hose incident at all), but I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the doctor had his talk with the intern.

If there’s a moral to the story, I guess it’s that if you’re a noob thinking, “What would happen if I do this?” it’s maybe best to ask first.

I’m happy with the outcome: a great son and a strangely funny story.

I’m a foster home for dogs attached to the local pound. Sadly, that means a lot of dogs that make their way to my house have frankly seen some s*** and are not the friendliest of animals when they first arrive. I am known in our community for taking on the worst cases and mostly getting really good outcomes. I work from home at my part-time job, so people usually attribute it to the extra time I have to help the dogs adjust. I’ll tell anyone who will listen that it’s not me; it’s my three permanent dogs.

My first dog is a massive Doberman/cane corso mix named Silly. I got him when he was a year old — his name was Brutus back then — after his owner was arrested for dealing drugs. He came to me emaciated, constantly growling and snapping, with an untreated broken tail that had healed crooked and looked like an absurd flag sticking out of his butt. After a lot of hard work, he is now living his best life as a part-time scarf. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a 60-kg (132-lb) dog try and drape himself across your shoulders for a cuddle, but it’s an experience.

I think Silly does ambassador work for me; he’s always the first one to try to befriend the new dogs, showing them the best napping spots and refusing a treat unless I give all the other dogs a treat, too. If a scuffle breaks out, he shambles into the middle of it all and breaks it up. You don’t have much option but to move out of his way when he lumbers towards you. I haven’t heard him growl in years, but he is a big fan of lifting his head when the others are acting up and letting out a deafening bark, at which point the others all settle down. He is truly King Silly at my house.

My second dog is a golden retriever/lab mix named Butters. He is our playtime rehabilitation specialist. He failed out of being a service dog for being too dang friendly, and I wound up with him instead. I have seen numerous dogs come into my care who either never knew what a ball was or have forgotten. Worry not; Butters will show them! Every time I get a new dog come through, after meeting said dog, Butters digs and snuffles through the multiple toy baskets and produces what he believes is this dog’s ultimate toy. I have no idea what his criteria for choosing is. All I know is that every time he’s done it, that dog has figured out how to play within a week and that is, in fact, their favourite toy.

Butters is a big fan of chasey and loves a game of fetch, but he will also turn into a giant cat over a laser pointer. It’s hard to ignore his excitement and gentle good nature, so the others almost always join in. It’s lovely to watch a stray who was terrified of their own shadow turn into a giant overgrown puppy playing with Butters, who will play tug of war with anything but treats the new dogs so gently and always lets them win.

My third dog is a German Shepherd mixed with something round— either a pitbull, a staffy, or a boxer. He’s got long fur and stumpy little legs and a wee bit of bobblehead syndrome; despite being built like a barrel, his head is still too big for his body, and he looks a tiny bit like a child’s drawing of a dog. I only have him because an elderly man’s children bought him for their dad for companionship and he couldn’t keep up with caring for him, so instead, we go visit the man once a week so he can see his old owner.

He is the group therapist and I affectionately call him Doctor Timber, though he’ll answer to Doc or Timber. More than once, I have found him sitting quietly with a new recruit who is watching Butters act like a fool with the other dogs but is too scared to join in. He doesn’t mind if you want to sit down and not participate; he’ll sit right down with you so you aren’t alone. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him sleep alone when we have a new dog in the mix; he’s always snuggled up either next to or in their bed with them so they won’t be lonely in the night. His favourite thing is when we get puppies in. They firmly become Doc’s little shadows within a day as he teaches them how to dog.

I once had a dog come in who had been beaten severely by his previous owners and was snarling at everyone and everything who came near. This was the closest call I have ever had with a dog biting me. I have been bitten a bunch of times — it comes with the territory — but this one was simply so scared that he couldn’t calm down enough to stop. I’d climbed onto my kitchen counter to create some distance. Doc came charging in, and I tried to scramble down to separate them — I didn’t want Doc getting hurt — but whatever Doc said in “Dog” was enough. By the time I got onto the floor, the barky, snarly mess had stopped, and I was looking at a very scared but very contrite bull terrier who wouldn’t look at me but came shuffling forward to lay next to my feet and look ashamed of himself. Doc never touched the dog, and the dog never touched him, but he certainly made him chill out. 

Any time anyone says I do the best work with difficult dogs, I laugh. I don’t do the work; I just have the thumbs to open the food, the credit card to pay the vet, and the car to go to the dog park. I am, at best, the office manager of my trio, who are healing dogs one intake at a time!

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