This happened years ago.

In Toronto, there’s a small island airport close to downtown and then the full-on Pearson International. Once every two weeks or so, I’d have to travel for work, so I’d usually book my flight through the island airport since it would be cheaper, and my office was downtown so it took literally fifteen minutes to get there. (There were no real customs or anything; you could show up thirty minutes before your flight departure time and be good to go.) If my flight was at 1:00 pm, I’d leave the office at noon and make it with time to spare. 

One day, I got my expense request denied for the [Rideshare] that took me to the airport because “it was close enough to walk and, as per company policy, taxi/rideshare is only for Pearson.” This was all over $12, and I had been doing this for months.

Okay, fine.

The next flight I booked at Pearson. The ticket was $900 instead of $400, I paid $70 in a [Rideshare] to get there instead of $12, and I had to leave work a full three and a half hours before my flight to make it through check-in, security, etc., to get to my gate in time. Usually, I’d be on some sort of call leading up to my flight, but at Pearson, I couldn’t do any work at all. Sorry, team, I’m unavailable for the rest of the day because of company policy.

When I came by, I was asked why my expense report was double the usual amount I’d put in. It’s because I couldn’t expense a $12 [Rideshare] to the island airport, and I was not going to walk for forty minutes in my suit and dress shoes in the middle of January in the snow.

Two months later, it had cost them over $2,000 more than what I’d normally have spent. Some of the flights in that time were over $1,000 versus $400 at the island airport.

Finally, I got an email one day saying I could take whichever flights I deemed best based on my judgment and that any amount under $700 was auto-approved at the island airport. Now, I get to eat a nice meal and sometimes upgrade myself to premium seats and still fall within budget!

I’m going to share with you some folklore from the city I was raised in. This specific piece of folklore is an establishment named Mystery Pizza. They were the most infamous pizza delivery service in town.

The first thing you need to know about Mystery Pizza is why it was a mystery. The place out of which they operated was hidden. If you could guess where they made your pizzas, you got a prize.

This led to a lot of speculation. The most common speculation I heard was that Mystery Pizza operated out of hardware stores and home improvement stores after hours and that they cooked their pizzas in propane grills.

The truth is that it operated out of the owner’s home kitchen and he valued his privacy. Eventually, he moved it to an “industrial kitchen” that was jointly used by several other businesses.

Another thing that made Mystery Pizza popular was their reputation for offering “weird” pizza. It was true that the owner was willing to put literally anything you asked for on a pizza, but what the stories don’t share is that he would charge you extra if he had to go out and buy a topping just for you.

Still, sometimes people got a craving for Poutine pizza, or Jujubees and marshmallow fluff, or whatever other drunken pizza they demanded, and the owner would happily slap on a ten-dollar surcharge and make it for them.

This wasn’t one of their original offerings, however. It started when they ran a short-term promotion called “The Mona Lisa”, which was a pizza whose ingredients were carefully arranged to look like The Mona Lisa (or if the chef wasn’t feeling up for doing The Mona Lisa, sometimes like other famous paintings).

Eventually, they stopped offering artwork pizzas, and the story got garbled into “any topping pizzas,” which the owner then took advantage of. A friend of mine once got a Tripas pizza, seasoned like the Mexican Tripa soup, but they had to pay $25 extra for it due to the specialty toppings.

The person who owned Mystery Pizza also owned a taxi company called Rainbow Taxi; their one taxi had a distinctive rainbow chequerboard pattern on it. Sometimes it was used to deliver pizzas. Sometimes you’d hail the Rainbow Taxi and find yourself sitting next to a stack of pizzas mid-delivery.

Later, the owner added a second car to his taxi fleet, a student art project he purchased from the University called The Trash Car, which had plexiglass dividers to make it possible to sit in some of the seats while the rest of the car was piled high in, well, trash — mostly paper and plastics. This vehicle was also used both for delivery and occasional passengers.

Eventually, there were changes to the law around food delivery, and the owner was no longer able to deliver food at the same time as driving passengers around. This was, apparently, the death blow to the owner’s profitability (or possibly to his enjoyment), as Mystery Pizza ceased operation soon after.

But the legends, rumors, and mysteries around it continue to this day.

When I was a teenager, in the spring of 1991, I was in the ATC (Air Training Corps) as an Air Cadet. This youth organisation was part of the RAF (Royal Air Force). I had the opportunity to fly in an F4 Phantom, and I wrote about it in this story.

Naturally, I was given a thorough safety briefing before the flight. Here’s a tale of caution I was given should I end up in a raft in the ocean, waiting for rescue.

The raft also includes a transmitter that Air Sea Rescue would use to home in on you. It starts automatically and transmits a cone shape directly up. Signals go out in all directions but not directly above the transmitter. As the rescue team gets closer, the signal gets stronger and stronger until the signal disappears completely. At that point, they know they are directly overhead, so the helicopter hovers and a member of the team is winched down.

This transmitter is extremely important because, even though the raft is a really bright colour, it is also extremely small compared to the sea and can easily be missed, especially if visibility is poor.

I was told in no uncertain terms to not mess with the transmitter aerial. And definitely don’t do what this person did.

He tried to be helpful.

He was in such a raft, awaiting rescue, and before long, one of the Air Sea Rescue helicopters came into view, so he pointed the aerial at the helicopter, rather like one would shine a torch.

The pilot, detecting that they were in the cone of silence, hovered, and the winchman was lowered. No one was there. The search resumed.

At this point, the man in the raft had let go of the aerial, so it was possible to try the search properly…

…until he tried being helpful again. And again. Several more times

All in all, what should have been a quick rescue took several hours longer than it should have. And that was only because the rescue team, realising what the helpful idiot was doing, tried to sneak up on where they thought he might be so he didn’t try and help further — but when you’re in a bright yellow, large, and very loud helicopter, that isn’t the easiest of jobs.

When they did eventually locate him, the winchman really wanted to punch him!

Related:
A Flight Of A Lifetime

I work at a popular fast food restaurant in a smallish rural town. The work is hard, but the people are awesome and management always has our backs. Unfortunately, I have a number of health problems that can go from zero to ICU in seconds. My coworkers know this and take great care of me with no judgment. I can’t begin to explain how utterly foreign and refreshing this is.

Several months ago, I had an episode. I was working in the drive-thru and vaguely remember suddenly not knowing what to do with the register, and then I was being gently guided to a chair while my coworker called an ambulance. My general manager stayed with me and told me I had nothing to apologize for; I was freaking out with guilt.

The hospital kept me for a few days, checked things out, adjusted some meds, and made a dozen follow-up appointments. They were very happy that everyone reacted so quickly because my blood pressure had spiked to dangerous levels. One nurse thought the machine was broken because it was so high.

People at work checked up on me and asked if I needed anything. Even though I was so sick, it felt amazing to be believed and taken care of. When I got back, they told me I suddenly went quiet and they rushed back to find me staring blankly at the screen. They jumped into action and gave my headset to a coworker.

The icing on the cake was that the customer I was speaking to called the store later — but not to complain! It was a lady from a local school and we were in the middle of a large, complex order. She said I was doing a great job and getting everything in and being so nice when the line went silent. She asked if I was okay! They didn’t give out details but said I had a medical issue and would be fine. She even asked them to send me her thanks and best wishes.

Having seen, been through, and read about so many horrible situations, this was mind-blowing. Good coworkers and good customers are out there.

This story is part of our end-of-year Feel Good roundup for 2022! This is the last story in the roundup, but we have plenty of others you might enjoy!

Read the next Feel Good 2022 story!

Read the Feel Good 2022 roundup!

When I used to man an outsourced mailroom for a telecom corporation, I occasionally had to open letters to find out to which department they had to go. One occasion was a bit too sweet, to the point of being so naive that I feel worried for this person.

Letter: “I still owe your company €50 for [service]. I have put the money in this envelope.”

And indeed, the money was in there. Baffled, I just put it in the box for the department that seemed right, hoping they would be as honest as I am.

Please, NEVER send cash money by mail to such a big corporation! There is no way of tracking it. Anyone less honest than me might have just pocketed the money and thrown out the letter and you would just have been €50 poorer without any result.