This happened in 2003. I am male and had one male boss who was in his sixties and about 1,50 meters — five feet — tall. We were the IT-guys at a school.

One day we got a trainee, a lovely and beautiful girl about 18 years old who would be helping us for the next ten months. My boss was notorious for his sexist and creepy “compliments” he gave to women. He already had received several warnings but sadly, there was no way to fire him because his behaviour was just annoying but not considered sexual harassment at that time.

My boss began hitting on the trainee with all sorts of cheesy remarks. The first time I heard it, I immediately told him to shut up or I’d tell his wife. Visibly embarrassed, he left the room and I thought that was the end of it.

A few days later I found the trainee in tears behind her desk. You’ve already guessed it: the boss wasn’t planning on stopping his creepy behaviour. I really felt sorry for the girl because as far as I could judge she could become one h*** of a sys-admin.

That evening I spoke about this to my wife. She had some creepy and sexist remarks from my boss when she sometimes came to school to pick me up, so she could imagine how the girl must feel. Suddenly she began to laugh, took some paper, and wrote some lines down.

She gave it to me and said, “Have your trainee learn these lines by heart. The next time he’s bothering her again, she must say them in a very loud voice.”

The next day I gave the paper to the trainee and told her what to do. She read the lines, began to laugh, and said she couldn’t say those things to the boss. I told her that if she wanted to stay here without the crap my boss was giving her, she had no other options. We could report my boss, and he would get another warning, but nothing would change. The trainee wanted to stay at our school so she began to memorize the lines.

It was Friday, and she said she would study the lines over the weekend. The next Monday we started work and my boss phoned that he wouldn’t come in until lunchtime. Fine. Lunchtime came and the trainee and I went for a coffee in the break room. Most of the teachers and the principal were there, too, so we had to wait in line.

The trainee poured herself a coffee, and as if on cue there was the boss, saying, “Oh, such a hot girl shouldn’t drink hot coffee. I can’t handle you if you’re too hot.” The trainee turned around and yelled at him:

“Now, you listen, you oversexed, over-aged, undersized albino smurf! I don’t want to hear your foul mouth ever again. I’ve had enough of you, creep. Leave me alone or I’ll drown you in the first toilet bowl I can find. It would take just one flush to get rid of the body.”

The room went silent for a moment, and next, there was hysterical laughter and clapping.  

The boss made an exit and the principal went after him. When we came back from lunch, there was a note on my desk that the boss had decided to take some time off to evaluate his career.

The last we heard was that he had applied for early retirement without a goodbye party. I asked my wife where she got those lines from.

She said, “You know how sometimes you only come up with good lines long after the fact? I’ve had these lines prepared just in case I ever met your boss again. I never expected them to work so efficiently.”

When I was young, we always had family get-togethers at our house, which at the time I was told was because we had the biggest house and yard. While that was true, others had houses that were at least big enough to accommodate everyone. It wasn’t until I was around twelve that I found out the real reason: of all the “local” family members we were the only ones that apparently knew HOW to host a party. My grandmother wasn’t physically up to it, which was understandable; my one maternal aunt and uncle lived in a small apartment; and the in-laws were always so busy they’d only ever want to just order catering when the rest of us preferred home-cooked.

Then there was my OTHER maternal aunt, who whenever (for instance) we were grilling, would always insist on getting her burgers “well done.” Come to find out her idea of “well done” was what the rest of us called “complete charcoal.” The fateful day was when she and my uncle got a new grill and invited just us over to help test it out, which I was all for but my parents, not so much. We get there, and they already have the grill going and all the burger on it. No hot dogs, no chicken, no veggies, no anything else, JUST hamburgers. Okay, I think to myself, it’s a new grill so they’re playing it safe.

Then I tried to remind my uncle, who was doing the cooking, that I liked my burgers cooked rare. “No.” Yeah… So, not only did they like to completely overcook their food, they wouldn’t NOT overcook anyone else’s, even on request! The buns they got were ultra-cheap and had the texture of packing peanuts, and they wouldn’t even allow us proper CONDIMENTS, just a small dollop of ketchup in the middle of the bun and that’s it. Because that’s how they liked it, so that’s how everyone was going to eat it.

They never understood why none of us looked as thrilled with the dried out, burnt, flavorless meat-pucks as they did. They also didn’t get why we never went back to a cook-out at their place, or let my uncle anywhere near the grill at ours.

There’s very limited counter space at the checkout of the dollar store where I work, yet, without fail, semi-weekly there’s customers that decide they can pile all of their shopping cart onto it and I’ll manage to pick through it. Sometimes the people making the mountain are quite especially idiotic, and here is one such story.

I worked in fast food before the dollar store, so my speed is bizarrely quick. A middle-aged woman piles her mountain high carts — yes, two full shopping carts — onto the counter, almost appearing to attempt to race my flying hands. While continuing to empty her cart, at times not looking at the counter, and perhaps being blind to it entirely, the customer starts dropping items onto the floor. Eventually, she breaks a bottle of juice on the floor. The woman glares at me instead of accepting responsibly.

I say simply, “Perhaps you can take a rest on emptying your cart, as I now have to mop up the juice before you or another customer is injured.” I then take my sweet time putting up signage and cleaning up the spill. After this passes, it seems her mood has, as well, and she apologizes for her earlier behavior.

Patience is priceless.

A few days before this story happened, I injured my knee and had to use a cane to walk for a week. I got on a bus and sat in one of the reserved seats.

A woman, maybe in her sixties, got on a few stops after me and immediately demanded that I give her my seat. I told her that I was sorry, but that I was unable to do so because of my injured knee.

The woman, as well as most of the people in the bus, thought I was lying, even when I showed my cane. I received some very rude comments from the people in the bus, but I tried to ignore them and pointed out that it would be quite stupid for me to go out with a cane and pretend that I was injured just to avoid giving my seat.

A middle-aged man, who was with the woman, got angry and lifted me from my seat. Without my cane, I couldn’t stand on my own and immediately fell to the floor.

That was the moment that everyone realised I was not lying. The bus stopped, but the driver wouldn’t let anyone off. I was furious; not only had I been taken for a liar, but I had hurt my chin and hit my injured knee during the fall, so I ignored their apologies and called the police on them. They were livid, and they offered me money not to call the police on them, but I was so angry, I still called them.

I had to get stitches in my chin and had to use the cane for an extra week.

Long story short: the woman was not charged, but the man was, and he had to spend a few months in prison.

Many years ago I was working at a city-owned community recreation center. As I was often the first one to enter the building each morning, I had a key to the front entrance and the access code to call to have the alarm disabled. One day I unlocked the door, called the alarm company, and then started to put my keys away, only to realize I’d just let myself in with my own house key!

My next call was to the city maintenance department to report what had happened. The locksmith they sent told us that the tumblers in the lock were so worn that any key of the same make would have unlocked that door, and it was a good thing an authorized employee had been the one who discovered it rather than someone with no reason to be entering the building!