In the mid- to late 1980s, my older brother and I were big in going to card shows. We collected sports cards, mainly MLB and NFL, but we also had NHL, NBA, and we even collected sets of cards from Garbage Pail Kids, TMNT, X-Men, and so on. My older brother also worked hard at building a collection of comic books and he went out of his way to get a few decent ones into his collection like the first X-Men and the first Wolverine and the first Batman. Our collection was tens of thousands of cards and a lot of different sports memorabilia — such things as signed rookie cards of Mike Singletary, Walter Payton, Ken Griffy Jr., Robin Yount, and so on.

I was more into video games then, as well. My older brother wasn’t as much, but he liked the idea of trying to collect and build up a video game collection, as well.

The years went on, and in the early 1990s, we had a massive collection of game consoles, games to go with them, and our sports cards. We had tables we’d set up at card shows and we’d sell, trade, and buy. At the time, we had probably amassed over $50,000 in merchandise.

I was about thirteen years old, and I came home one day and everything was gone aside from my Sega Genesis, a controller for it, and a couple of games.

My older brother cleaned us out — all of our sports cards aside from a handful that I had secretly stashed that I really liked, all our sports memorabilia, all his comic books, and all of our video games and consoles… along with $600 I had in my room, hidden away (clearly not well enough).

He took the following game consoles:

• Three NES systems, along with the NES Power Pad, Power Glove, six controllers, and over a hundred games
• Two SNES systems, four controllers, and nearly a hundred games
• One SNES Famicom system, one controller, and maybe half a dozen games we had for it
• One Atari 2600 and every single game
• One TurboGrafx 16, the two controllers, and about a dozen games
• One Gameboy and around fifty games
• One Sega Genesis 32X adapter and the dozen games I had for it

The police got involved, and since I couldn’t officially prove it was my older brother that took all this stuff, I could at least prove that he only took $600 out of my room because he also knew where it was stashed — stupid me for letting him know. The police gave him twenty-four hours to return the $600; otherwise, he was going to be arrested. The very next day, the $600 was returned.

I never did see any of the other merchandise returned. Apparently, my older brother, who was sixteen when this all took place, wanted a start-up fund to get into the weed business.

About twenty years ago, I was working freelance, helping several small local businesses with their bookkeeping and data input. I was used to working in the owners’ houses on old equipment or even taking work home to deal with.

One of my clients knew of a small business whose owner had just decided to computerise their accounts system and had employed a worker who claimed to be an expert in computers and accounts, but said worker had abruptly left them after only a couple of weeks, and it was suggested I might like to take over. As it only involved a few hours each week, it fit well with my other commitments, so I went to meet the business owner.

They showed me their rather old computer, running Windows 3.1, set up in their dining room, and asked me whether that was okay with me, as their previous employee had insisted they needed an office to work in and a state-of-the-art new computer for them to use, which the business could not afford.

As soon as I moved the mouse, I realised there was a slight problem; the cursor hardly moved. I just turned the mouse upside down, removed the retaining ring, tipped the ball out, and scraped a thick layer of gunk off the rollers inside. When I put it back together, it worked perfectly. The look on the owner’s face was great — to see the “load of rubbish” made to work so easily confirmed their poor opinion of the previous employee’s expertise in computers. The computer didn’t need to go online, so the fact that it used an outdated version of Windows did not matter, and it turned out they had made a mess of setting up the accounts, too!

I worked one morning a week for that business for fifteen years until the owner decided to retire.

I am a volunteer in a performing arts theater. We have plays, musicals, music artists, etc.

Like most venues, we have certain disabled spots where chairs have been removed so that they have wheelchair access and no stairs, and they’re set up so that people are able to see the show without any difficulties.

For most other seats, you need to walk up or down stairs to get to or need to walk through the aisle to get to a seat if it’s two to forty seats into the row. Logical, right?

Example #1:

A person buys a ticket for the front row center but they are in a wheelchair and can’t understand why we can’t take out non-removable seats five minutes before the show starts as they are unable to get out of their wheelchair and didn’t tell the ticket office they can’t walk.

Example #2:

A person buys their teenagers tickets to their favorite singer and gets them seats at the center of the theater, up two flights of stairs. The youngest child is in a large motorized wheelchair, and the siblings don’t know what to do as the parents dropped them off so they can have a date night.

Example #3:

A person in a walker buys the cheapest ticket in the theater near the back, up three flights of stairs, or up the elevator and down two flights of stairs, and doesn’t understand why the elevator doesn’t go to their exact seat, which is also not wheelchair accessible.

In all three of these situations, we were able to work it out, but not before a lot of confusion and three unhappy groups as they ended up in the accessible area in the back of the house as the front was already sold out.

On our website, and at the ticket office, both in person and by phone, once you say “wheelchair,” “hard of hearing,” “sight-impaired,” “ADA,” or any type of keyword, they bend over backward to give you the same great show that everyone else has. All of the above “didn’t think it mattered.”

So, please, if you or a family member have a permanent disability or a temporary one, i.e., you broke your leg after you purchased tickets, or your grandparent had a stroke and now needs a wheelchair, CALL THE TICKET OFFICE and let them try to help you.

I work at a small booth in a tourist area. The booth is part of a larger marketplace that opens at 10:00 am. This particular morning, the bus system was running late, so I didn’t show up to open until 10:15. Additionally, my boss wanted me to do last night’s register report. Before we open, all of our merchandise is covered by bedsheets and the lights are all off. I kept it this way while I did the report so no one would think that we were open yet, as customers were around looking at other booths.

As I was sitting there, a man and his daughter walked up and started picking up the bedsheets themselves to look at our stuff. I didn’t notice until they walked up to the register, which was very obviously off and still covered with a bedsheet, as well.

The guy tried to hand me what they wanted to buy without even acknowledging me. I started to explain that we were not open yet, and before I could ask him to give me a few minutes, he threw the merch down on the bedsheet and stomped off.

The part that really upsets me is that he emailed the company and tried to say that I was an hour late — my timestamp says otherwise — and refused him service. Thankfully, my boss was understanding.

I used to work in a superstore. One day, I watched one of my favourite staff members get taken out in handcuffs.

She had been taking price tags off of clearance items, putting them on normally priced items, and hiding the clearance items under low shelving. Management figured her out, but they let her keep going until it reached the point that they could charge her for it.

She was fired and charged with some level of larceny, and I never saw her again.