I am a security guard, and I worked shoplifting prevention for a highly publicized and hugely popular annual Midnight Madness sale that has always drawn a large and sometimes rowdy crowd.

A huge line had formed at the door before midnight, waiting for the store to open. Among the first in line was a woman of about my age — mid-30s — who was obviously disabled with cerebral palsy. She wore a heavy-looking brace system on both legs and partway up her torso and walked using two canes. Because of the disability and the braces and canes, she walked a little slower and less steadily than able-bodied people. We were chatting while everyone waited for the store to open and I warned her that some people get pushy during sales like these.

A few minutes later, the store unlocked its doors and officially opened for the sale. The disabled lady began walking in, heading for the store’s scooters. She was doing just fine until a scuzzy-looking chick wielding a baby carriage like a weapon came up from behind her and started pushing and yanking at the disabled woman, who looked like she was going to fall because of the aggressive baby-mama shoving at her.

I ran over. I took the disabled lady’s arm and told the baby-mama that she had no right to shove another customer.

She retorted with, “These [mentally disabled slurs] have no right to be here, holding up the line!”

At that point, I saw red. The disabled lady was not mentally impaired, and even if she had been, she still had the right to be there and the right to be treated with respect and not called a hideously bigoted term.

I said to the disabled lady, “Would you like to press charges for physical assault against this jerk?”, and she said no. At that point, the baby-mama started screaming obscenities at me and at the disabled lady.

I took baby-mama by the arm and escorted her and her stunned-looking toddler in the baby carriage out forcibly. I told her that she was not welcome back tonight or at any other time. At that, she dropped the trailer-trash obscenity production and started whining about how the store I had just banned her from was the only one within walking distance of her apartment and how was she supposed to get groceries now?!

I said to her that she should have thought of that before assaulting a disabled person and making an absolute embarrassment of herself with the screamed obscenities and the bigoted comment. She whined at me a few minutes more, until I said that I’d be happy to call the police and explain what she did and said to them. She took off fast after that, dragging the baby carriage and the stunned-looking toddler along with her. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I am working the self-serve checkouts, and a little old lady asks me for help. As I check her out, she doesn’t say much, just clarifying that it is credit and she wants to sign. There are no problems with the card, so I go to help out another customer, leaving the lady to make her way to her car.

As I finish with the other customer, I turn around to see the little old lady tearing out of the car park in her pimped-out Hummer, windows down, screaming, “F*** yeah!”

My coworker and I both break down with laughter for the next ten minutes.

I’m working at home. My wife and daughter are also in the house; my daughter is studying in her room, right next to the front door.

We have a wooden front door with a really loud brass door knocker. Although it’s a 100-year-old, three-floor house with thick walls and floors, the sound of the knocker easily carries everywhere.

For some reason, many delivery drivers choose to ignore the knocker and rap gently on the glass of the door, instead.

At lunch time, I wander out of the living room where I have been working to find a Missed Delivery card through the letterbox. Cue mental face-palm, as I have been sat within 20 feet of the front door since about 8:00 am.

When I visit the courier’s web site and enter the tracking details, I get a message that says, “Sorry we missed you; we’ll try again tomorrow,” complete with a photo of our front door, large brass knocker front-and-centre.

Nice to know they really tried to get my attention.

There’s a particular music cruise I’d really like to go on, but there are no single cabins and none of my friends have the money to join me. Thinking it’s worth a try, I post a personal ad online, asking if anyone out there might be interested in also going on this cruise and splitting the cost. I post it in the non-romantic, women-seeking-women section of the website.

The next day, I receive an email that reads, “This is totally absurd. It’ll cost you $2000 to fly to Florida for this one thing! What a waste of money.” The email signature contains a decidedly male given name. 

It’s a slow day at work, so I write back, “Dear [Emailer], you’re getting ripped off on flights if you’re paying $2000 for Vancouver to Miami six months in advance.”

He emails back almost instantly, “You’re wrong!”

I respond, “Nope! See attached screenshot of a flight for less than a quarter of that. Also, why are you creeping around a personals website reading the W4W/platonic ads? Do you get off on giving women unsolicited financial advice or something?”

The email I receive back calls me a number of unflattering names, though perhaps the most baffling one is “dunce.”

(Reader, I blocked him. And yes, I did find someone to go on the cruise with me, and we had a great time.)

A few years ago, I took a trip to NYC with my mom and my cousin. It was a girls’ weekend to celebrate my cousin’s upcoming wedding. We spent the morning shopping and stopped in a family-owned Italian restaurant that was recommended to us. The woman who greeted us was the chef, and her elderly mother who’d started the restaurant was behind the register. There were only five tables in the whole restaurant and we were currently the only customers. 

We’d been seated and were chatting about what we wanted to do that night when my cousin suddenly stood and pointed behind my mom and me. Black smoke had started pouring from a staircase in the hallway that lead to the businesses above that one. Thinking the floor above us must be on fire, my mom ran to the back to grab the chef, while we tried to convince the elderly Italian woman, who it turned out spoke no English, to come outside. She couldn’t see the smoke from her place behind the register and kept swatting us away and scolding us in Italian. 

Finally, my cousin physically picked the lady up. Yes, it was as awkward as it sounds, but thankfully, she was a tiny lady and my cousin was strong. We got her outside and she finally saw the smoke, which was now also streaming out of the windows of the floor above her restaurant. My mom and the chef made it outside right behind us, and the mother and daughter began speaking rapidly in Italian. 

My mom took her phone out to call the fire department, but someone else must have already done that because we heard the sirens coming our way. The fire truck rounded the corner, crushing the front end of a cab in the process. That was something else to see on its own. The passengers in the back of the cab started screaming in panic, and the driver just sat there looking bored, like this happened every day.  

Thankfully, no one was hurt. We didn’t find out what had caused the fire, but at least it didn’t spread beyond the second floor. The chef thanked us for helping them, and her mother kept hugging my cousin and kissing both of her cheeks. The rest of the weekend was uneventful compared to that afternoon, and I’ve always wanted to go back and see if that restaurant was still there.