Some years ago, I moved from New Jersey to Mississippi. I needed to get a Mississippi driver’s license. In the move, however, my birth certificate had been lost. I went online to order a new one from New York, the state in which I was born. I provided my New Jersey license as proof of who I was.

Cue the maddening runaround. Most of this took place by email. I was told that they could only mail the birth certificate to the address on my license. In New Jersey. I wrote back, explaining the predicament, and kept getting a copy-and-paste reply with the requirements. I was told to get a Mississippi license so the certificate could be mailed there. This would be the Mississippi license that I could not get without the birth certificate.

I emailed again. I got another copy-and-pasted reply that told me I would then have to submit two of the following: a land-based utility bill or a letter from a government agency that showed my Mississippi address. I wrote again, telling them that I was living on family property and had no utilities in my name. And I had no letters from a government agency. The reply I received suggested that I get a Mississippi license so the certificate could be mailed there.

I tried for days to get someone on the phone. When I finally spoke to someone and explained the situation, I was told I had to come to their office in person. When I mentioned the fact that I was about 1300 miles away, they had nothing further to offer.

I kept trying the email routine every few months over the next two years. Things only became more urgent when it was coming within six months of my New Jersey license’s expiration date. Then, luck and a little ingenuity came to my side. I knew that if I went to Social Security and said that I lost my card, they would order a new one and provide me with a letter that said a replacement would be forthcoming. That was my first government letter.

As luck would have it, my boss was friends with [Mayor], a man who had recently been elected mayor in [Town], a nearby town. I went to [Boss], explained the situation, and asked if [Mayor] could help. Of course, he did! Within an hour, I was the recipient of one lovely letter from [Mayor] on [Town] letterhead, thanking me for my support. My second government letter!

I was able to get my birth certificate within a few days.

A place I worked in tech support ages ago was doing a computer monitor refresh.

As such, we had a bunch of old 15″ LCD screens that were being disposed of. A lot of staff asked what we were doing with the old screens. As we were disposing of them anyway, we decided to offer them to the staff to keep at no cost.

The offer was to give one to each staff member who wanted one, and if there were any left over, staff could have another one. This was to be fair to everyone who wanted “free computer stuff”.

One person emailed us saying they wanted as many screens as possible. They said they were involved with a charity that helps the unfortunate. The email said the screens would be “really helpful to them” and “they would love to have these”.

Somehow, they convinced us to give them ten of these screens, when other staff who wanted them got only one.

About a week later, it’s discovered on Gumtree (basically an Australian equivalent of Craigslist) that someone is selling ten of these same screens. What a coincidence.

The photos show some of the serial numbers. These serial numbers are cross-referenced with our disposal records, and all of these serial numbers are for the batch of ten screens we gave to this employee.

The employee is asked why the screens they said they were going to give to their charity are being sold on Gumtree.

They mention that, actually, they never said they were giving them to the charity.

The email was very cleverly written.

They said that they (as in the employee) wanted lots of screens, and they said that the charity would find it “really helpful to them” and “they would love to have these”, but there was no actual mention of giving the screens to the charity or that the screens were for said charity.

It was basically written as I want as many screens as possible. By the way, I know a charity that also wants as many screens as possible.

They were technically correct (the best kind of correct). It was written in a way that you would assume the screens were for the charity, but it never actually said this.

We never said they couldn’t be sold, and technically, they never lied to us, so nothing could be done.

It did mean that old computer hardware was no longer permitted to be given to staff, so it ruined it for everyone.

Related:
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 5
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 4
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 3
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Part 2
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

About eight or nine years ago, a man came to our hotel with a young woman on his arm. They’d just come from a local bar and were looking for a room. I took his card and ID and noticed he was already registered. I mentioned this, and he said he needed a separate room. Reserving my judgement of this dillweed, I ran an authorization on his card and checked him in.

About ten minutes later, a woman called from the other room he was registered to. It was his wife, and she was wondering why there was another authorization done on her card. I told her that he booked a separate room. She paused and softly asked if he was alone. I hesitated, debating whether to blow up his infidelity or to respect our guest’s privacy, but my silence answered her question for her.

A few minutes later, he angrily checked out of the other room and had me call for a cab.

I don’t know what happened from there. I do still feel sorry for the wife, but not for the husband. And you think using a joint credit card to book a room for you and your mistress is a bone-headed move? Try doing it while your wife is in another room in the same hotel.

I also had an experience where there was a robbery during my job interview. Unfortunately, mine didn’t go nearly so well.

I was interviewing for a position as a cashier at a gas station. While I was interviewing in the back room, we heard shouting from up front. It was some sort of customer complaint.

The manager waited until the shouting was over, then went to the front and started chewing the cashier out over, essentially, being yelled at by a customer. This was already a pretty big red flag, but the shouting customer returned with a gun, held it on the manager and cashier on duty while I cowered in the interview room, robbed the place, and left…

And then the manager started chewing out the cashier EVEN HARDER for giving in EVEN THOUGH THE MANAGER WAS RIGHT THERE AND ALSO GAVE IN.

I left before the manager finished his rant.

This is a story about my father and his obnoxiousness.

When I was a kid, he used to have a habit of purposely hogging up a parking spot when another car was waiting for him to leave. It didn’t matter if they were honking, rude, or otherwise being impatient. Having a car signal that they were waiting for him was enough to make him put his car in park and just… sit there, not even trying to look busy.

Sometimes people would even come out of their car and to his driver’s side to ask if he was leaving or scream at him about WTF he was waiting for, but he never gave them a reply. He’d just smile at them through the rolled-up window and wave.

He’d claim it was because he “didn’t like being rushed”, but I could tell he enjoyed waiting until he was “ready,” which translated to “whenever the other car got tired and left,” as he’d immediately zoom out right after.

I absolutely HATED it. It would make us late to events or delay us from getting home, and it was scary whenever a red-faced stranger would yell with our whole family in the car. He didn’t care; he would just sit there being smug for no good reason.

That was until one day in my early teens.

We had just gotten out of church (ironic, right?) and had gotten lucky, having parked on the curb right in front of the church. While mingling out front with everyone, I noticed a flower van parked a few spaces away. Every time a car left, it would scoot forward and take their spot. We had heard about there being a funeral service later that day, and I put two and two together and realized they were waiting for our spot in the front.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have said anything – I seemed to have been the only one who noticed, my parents were wrapping up their conversations, and I had zero faith in my dad being a decent person at this point – but I thought if I told my mom, she would be able to shepherd our family away to the car and leave before my dad noticed what the van was doing. Unfortunately, my mom immediately turned around and told Dad, “Hey, we should leave. There’s a lady dropping off flowers for the service later.”

Of course, this just encouraged my dad to strike up a new conversation to stay long enough to see the van actively move forward behind our spot so he could make a show of corraling the four of us to the car, turning it on, then sitting there, staring smugly at the rear view.

I turned around in my seat and made eye contact with the lady driving, who gave a polite smile, which made me feel even worse, so I just sank into my seat and prepared for however long this pointless power trip was going to take.

It only took what felt to be a minute or two before my dad wordlessly pulled out and drove off, which was surprising. More confusing was the silence when my mother asked what was wrong. I hadn’t noticed, as I was sitting right behind him, but my dad had completely lost his smugness and refused to say anything back home.

He never did that habit again. I had thought maybe the coach had arrived or the priest had come out, or maybe he just realized what an absolute dickhead he was being right in front of a church. I never knew the true reason until a few years later.

My maternal grandmother passed away. It was the first death our family really faced, and we held the funeral service at that same church. My parents had (thankfully) divorced since then, but my dad was still invited to pay his respects. Our funeral directors (a husband-and-wife duo) were welcoming everyone who passed by, and when my dad got through the entrance, the wife shook his hand, made eye contact, and BEAMED, stating, “Oh! I remember you! Hi!”

Never in my twenty years have I seen my dad go so pale and speedwalk away from another person. Turns out, the female director was the driver from that day and put the fear of God into him.

How?

By smiling at him. Somehow, or maybe coincidentally, she was able to make eye contact with my dad through the rear-view mirror and smiled… unblinking. Her smile gradually grew wider and wider, her eyes doing the same, the entire time until my father drove away and couldn’t see her anymore. My mom told me she saw the range of emotions happening to my father that day, from smug to a weird mixture of confusion and fear. He finally told her what happened the day afterward because he wasn’t able to process how absolutely bizarre it was. She had thought he was overreacting, but when she saw the wife’s reaction to my father, she understood what he meant by her “crazy eyes.”

Despite the gloomy day that was my grandmother’s funeral, my mother admits that seeing my father crumple at the hands of a seemingly sweet older lady was a highlight of hers.