As with most of us, there are nights that I just don’t have the energy to cook. My husband and I have a rotation of places where we like to eat. We have recently moved into a new house. The day we moved, I called to have pizza delivered but was told they don’t deliver to the address. I was annoyed but said fine and went to pick it up since we didn’t have the kitchen set up and unpacked. We had a couple of others hesitate to deliver as well, but usually, they caved.

One day, after having woken up late and working a fifteen-hour day, I was exhausted and didn’t want to cook. My husband had been wanting Indian food, so I called up the local Indian place that we frequent enough that they know us. I chatted with the girl that took my order and asked for delivery. I knew I’d make it home before the delivery driver made it. As soon as I gave her the new address, she informed me that they couldn’t deliver. So, I said fine. I’d pick it up. The restaurant wasn’t too far out of my way, and the thought of their naan and some butter chicken was all that got me through the day.

When I got to the restaurant, I walked in and chatted with the hostess as my order was finished. It wasn’t particularly busy, but I figured they must be short-staffed, so I said something about not being able to deliver. She looked at me funny and said they could have delivered, so I explained that I was told they couldn’t. She got confused until I told her we had moved, and when I updated the address, the server said no to the delivery. She apologized and went to update the address. Then, the truth came out.

The previous owners of the house would call and order food from there and always disputed the charges with their bank or credit cards the next day or two after. So, the business got tired of losing money and refused to deliver to them any longer.

Apparently, they did this all around town and had gotten our address blacklisted from delivery. I swear, some people are scum! Guess I will have to go into our favorites and show that we live at this address so we can have delivery again.

Since the global health crisis, my boyfriend and I have seen many hilarious posts and videos online about people’s cats crashing Zoom call work meetings, and they always make us laugh. Neither of us has ever had an office job; we have always had the “essential” jobs of retail, food service, and general labor, so we never got the luxury of working from home in our pajamas during the health crisis.

The time comes this year when my boyfriend has to set up his life insurance policy through his job, and they request it be done over a Zoom call so they can go over all the paperwork in real time, since the main office is based out of another state. I’m sure you can guess where this is going.

Neither of us is very tech-savvy, so the hilarity of both of us trying to even figure out how to download Zoom and get it to work is a lovely enough experience by itself. But once the call gets going, everything goes smoothly.

[Boyfriend] is leaning against the kitchen island, going over this important and serious life and accident insurance information with the lady on the other end of the video call, and I’m sitting off to the side quietly sipping my coffee.

Our cat decides that now is the ideal time for some affection. She leaps up onto the counter and, before anyone can grab her, promptly walks across the laptop, stepping on a bunch of keys, and sticks her head directly up into my boyfriend’s face, demanding chin scratches, completely blocking him from the view of the camera with a mass of grey fluff.

The lady on the other end bursts out laughing in the middle of her sentence about beneficiaries in the event of my boyfriend’s accidental demise. My boyfriend also starts laughing (more out of embarrassment) and attempts to move the cat, but she wriggles away, hops back around, and just starts doing circles on the laptop keyboard, making all kinds of fun things happen on the screen along with beeping “error” sounds with each key she steps on.

I’m cracking up by this point, too, and I quickly intervene and grab up the cat and bring her to my lap.

It takes my boyfriend and the insurance lady a minute to regain their composure to resume talking about the serious matter of what would happen should my boyfriend die unexpectedly. 

After the call is over, I am delighted to point out that now we have finally had that hilarious “cat crashing a Zoom call” experience that we’ve always envied from most of the rest of the world.

I found myself between jobs for a time and wound up in my first fast-food job. It was… different. I marked down on my availability that I was flexible all days except Sunday, and they assured me this would be no problem. You can already see where this was going. 

Schedules were posted via a chat app late on Saturday nights, and more than once I caught them attempting to schedule me for the following Sunday morning. I’d gently correct this oversight and go back to bed, though it was very annoying having to keep vigil to find out if I was expected at work in a matter of hours.

Then, one day, I came home from church and turned on my phone to find a number of nasty messages on the app, all from the manager, saying that I was a no-show and would be fired if I didn’t show up ASAP. These were not private messages, either, and neither was my reply.

I told her that I had marked Sunday as my one day of unavailability and that if there was a problem with that, it should have been brought up when I was hired.

Cue the 180-degree turn in attitude! [Manager]’s defense was that no one tells her anything. This sounds like a thin excuse, I know, but given how crazy that place was in every area of “functionality”, I can actually believe she had never seen my paperwork and knew nothing but my name.

At work the next day, she approached me in person, sweet as pie, and said that if I had a problem with the schedule, all I had to do was privately tell her.

Shortly thereafter, she was replaced with a new manager, and a new rule was instituted that only managers could post on the app. I’m sure that rule had nothing to do with someone being publicly called out for crap. I don’t miss that job at all.

Growing up, I had a dog named Salty. Salty loved vegetables of all kinds but especially Brussels sprout leaves. When Salty got older, we got a new puppy, Strawberry, to keep her company.

Strawberry did not like vegetables. She did, however, like equal treatment. She came from a litter of sixteen, and like any kid with siblings, she always insisted that she knew when she had been left out of treats. Any time Salty got a treat, Strawberry would insist on getting her share — even when the treat was Brussels sprouts.

Watching her eat them was the funniest thing because she had the most expressive face I have ever seen on a dog. As soon as Salty got a leaf, Strawberry would come begging, so I would give her one. She would stare down at it in betrayal, as if I had somehow tricked her, and then look back up at me as she licked it up reluctantly and ate it.

This process would repeat for the whole pile of leaves; Salty would wolf her pile down, and Strawberry would give me wounded puppy eyes as she ate every leaf, one at a time, making eye contact the whole time.

I used to work at a fast food place that served deep-fried food.

One day, our manager stopped showing up. We never learned if he got sick, died, or quit, but one of my coworkers also had a key, so we kept opening up the store and selling deep-fried food.

We were unable to contact corporate, however, and as it became clear that the supplies were going to get low, we started grabbing money from the till and using it to buy more food, which we then cooked and resold. 

However, most people paid with cards, not cash, and the money started running out. Eventually, we were just showing up, clocking in, and keeping the doors shut and the lights off.

But that got boring, so we started having little parties. We brought our own food, with our own money, and cooked it in the store for ourselves to eat. We did some good crabs in the fryer with Zatarain’s and Old Bay… but we were poor high school kids and couldn’t really afford to do that every day.

Eventually, we just started clocking in and wandering around town before returning to the store to clock out.

Finally, we were abruptly shut down. Our time cards stopped working. We locked the store up for the last time, my friend with the key left it in the cash register, and we went home. We’ve never been contacted about any of these events. We were never told if we were fired, or what.

The lack of closure bugs me to this day.

It was fun while it lasted, I guess?