I was working at Disneyland Paris, in one of the stores outside of the parks. An old lady, visibly a little confused, was wandering around. With a colleague, I asked if she needed help. She wanted to buy toys for her grandkids, and it was pretty clear she had a somewhat mild yet concerning case of Alzheimer’s.

The store was fairly quiet, so my colleague and I took almost half an hour to decipher how many grandkids she had and what they liked. She was extremely pleasant and nice all the way through, just confused and slow. She bought a few hundred euros in toys and thanked us profusely.

It was awesome by itself, but a day or so afterward, my colleague and I both got called into the manager’s office to get congratulated. The lady was the mother of one of the highest corporate employees, and she couldn’t stop talking about the nice girls who helped her. That felt extra awesome!

I parked my car in a multi-level parking deck attached to a shopping center. There were only about five levels, but I don’t trust my sense of direction, so I made sure to consciously check and memorize the number of the level I was on when I entered the building.

When I returned, my car was gone and instantly replaced by panic.

I’m too socially anxious to talk to customer service or call the police or anything, so I paced around the parking deck for a while, back into the building, back to the parking deck again, and back into the building, panic constantly increasing. And then, I noticed that the level number I’d been looking at… was changing. After way too many seconds of confusion, I realized it was not actually the parking deck level, but the elevator’s display showing which level it was currently on — so I had carefully memorized a totally random number.

I found my car on the next level, where I had left it.

I work in retail. We had this customer who came in once a month on Friday nights. He always stayed for half an hour after closing, and he rarely bought anything. We were not allowed to kick him out, so we had to stay until he left.

Then, the higher-ups started complaining about overtime.

The result was that we had to send full-timers home early on the weekends after that customer’s visits.

In the summer of 2006, I was between jobs, so I sold my soul and worked for FIFA as a volunteer during the World Cup. I ended up in an information booth in the city centre of Nürnberg. It honestly was great fun, and all the visiting fans were really nice, especially the English. We were very happy about that since we had been warned to be careful of English hooligans.

Some of the England fans had come by car and parked in the city instead of out by the stadium. A few of them ended up at our booth because they couldn’t find their cars after the match. They were quite proud, though, that they had written down the name of the street they had parked on. They showed us a piece of paper that had “Einbahnstraße” written on it. We then had to explain that this wasn’t a street name, but a sign saying, “One-Way Street.” We did manage to find their cars, though.

Two days after the England game, a man in his early twenties stumbled up to our booth. He had gotten so drunk after the game that he had fallen asleep in a bush and missed his plane back home.

Since he didn’t have any money, we called his mum and then took him to Western Union to pick up the money she had sent him. We then booked him a flight and took him to the airport.

His mum sent us a thank-you letter for looking after her son.

All of them were absolutely lovely. It just goes to show that one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch.

I work for a chain grocery store. I recently got my appendix out, but I’ve been cleared to return to work for light duty.

I’m walking between duty stations when I see a customer who’s clearly reading a blog on his phone. He’s leaning against the cart, nose in the phone, scrolling with one hand. He’s near the end of the aisle.

To get where I need to go, I need to go either around the back of the aisle or across the front of the aisle in front of him. I wait a little bit, staring at him, to see if he’s going to move. He doesn’t seem like he’s going to move.

I’m achy, and I don’t want to walk around to the back to cross the aisle, so I start to cross in front of him.

Bad decision! He starts moving forward again, abruptly, as I cross in front of him. He catches me right in the side with the cart and knocks me over. His phone goes flying out of his hand, and he also falls over behind the cart.

I scramble across the ground and grab his phone. I notice it’s showing NAR.

He’s apologizing profusely to me as I lever myself up and hand his phone back to him. I feel really bad inside, but I tell him it’s okay so that he’ll stop following me around apologizing, and I go to the back to talk to my manager. My manager authorizes me to leave.

I first visit an urgent care clinic but am soon sent by ambulance to an emergency room

I turn out to be bleeding internally because the cart got me in just the wrong way to tear open something related to the appendectomy. The hospital is able to fix it, and Workman’s Comp will pay for it, since it’s an accident that happened at work.

Ultimately, I think I’m going to be okay, but I’m off work again while I recover from this.

Anyway, NAR readers: please don’t NAR and shop.