One evening, a fare came up on the screen in my taxi. I could see that I was supposed to do some shopping, but that I had to go to the customer’s address first to get the specifics.

When I arrived, I started the meter, went to the door, and rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a man wearing nothing but an adult diaper. He spent the entire thirty seconds I was there with one hand roaming around inside the front of that diaper.

The man told me that he needed a bottle of vodka and a bottle of cola. Somewhat grossed out, I just turned around and went back to my taxi. Then, I called my taxi company and explained why I was unable to complete the fare I had been given and suggested that none of my colleagues would be interested in that particular one, either.

I worked at a superstore where we wore red shirts with tan pants. We often had customers approach us when we were off the clock — trying to buy food for lunch, shopping after work, etc.

Management told us to wear another shirt under our red shirts to avoid this; it never helped.

I once had someone yelling at me to help them while I had a cart full of stuff and my purse as I was buying stuff after my shift.

My first job out of college is working for a startup company. There are times when I am literally the only employee. It is overwhelming, to say the least, but the vice president agrees to take me under her wing.

I immediately start noticing some very obvious red flags, but even though I know some of the garbage she is spewing is wrong and not true, it slowly eats away at my self-esteem. When I have been employed with the company for three years, the global health crisis hits. At this point, I am ready to leave having realized how poorly she has affected my mental health, but due to the hiring freeze, I am forced to stay.

Her abuse begins to skyrocket from there, and then she tries to cover it up by isolating me. At one point, she tells me I am not even allowed to talk to my own mother. She insists that I must continue coming into the office — while everyone else works from home — and continues to expose me to the illness. I drive home crying literally every night.

Luckily, things get better, and one of the other managers sees how horrible she is to me. He insists, rather than firing me as she wants, that he will take over my managerial duties. I begin to flourish under him. Six months later, though, the PTSD symptoms start to set in and I am diagnosed with c-PTSD. My new manager knows about this and supports me as I go to therapy and get on a regime to lessen the symptoms.

Unfortunately, my new manager ends up leaving the company for a better opportunity (which I can hardly blame him for). Fortunately, the owner realizes how well I can do when I am not under the vice president and decides to make himself my manager.

Meanwhile, because I had been pulling her weight for three and a half years and haven’t been for a year, she tries to make “amends”. She “apologizes for her part” in a vague statement that overlooks what she has done to me and takes me not completely rejecting it as an invitation to start calling me at all hours of the day again and asking me for ideas to handle her other subordinates.

Prior, my new manager made it abundantly clear she was not to ask anything of me. With him out of the picture, she thinks she can get away with it. Luckily, before he leaves, he has a talk with both her and the owner, and the owner sides with him — not to the point of firing her, unfortunately, but my exposure to her is minimal and I do not have to pick up her calls, so that is great! And any time she manages to trap me alone, I tell her that I would like to discuss it with the owner — which she is none too happy about as she is trying to mine me for ideas — or tell her to ask him instead.

Meanwhile, the health crisis unwinds and I begin the job search again. Prior to doing that, I ask for a long-overdue raise. In the past, anytime I implied that I should probably ask for a raise, it was met with guilt-tripping and gaslighting on her part. She’d tell me how I “deserved” it but we “didn’t have the money” and it was selfish to think only about myself. Without her standing in the way, I am able to negotiate a 10% raise and five more vacation days within three weeks.

Using that raise that finally puts me at industry standards and the skills I learned over the past year not under her, I manage to find a better job! It is a real shame, though, because I liked my coworkers and loved the product. But after years of being told I should be grateful because I know my abuser and the type of abuse I will receive, I had to put myself first for a change.

Years ago, I was flying to Florida. As I was walking through the airport in Boston, I saw a family walking single file, each one with their own rolling carry-on bag. The last one was a boy, apparently six or seven years old, and plainly feeling very grown-up.

It turned out they were on my flight. They were a couple of rows ahead of me, and both the boy and I were on the aisle. As soon as the seatbelt light was turned off, he opened his bag. It was full of action figures — you have to bring the essentials.

He was also a very social little guy, so everyone within a couple of rows had met him by the end, so I very easily heard him as we were landing at Miami. He looked out the window, sighed, and said, “Oh, well, back where we started.”

It’s flat, it’s got planes… close enough.

I work for a fairly large company. Typically, once a year, we have a regional leadership meeting, and management from each location has two or three people attend. These meetings are usually Tuesday to Thursday and are held at a fairly nice resort-type hotel. However, the meeting schedules do not allow for much enjoyment of the facilities. They have always been scheduled so that there is a “travel day” on Monday, though, so that if folks want to bring spouses or families for the weekend, they can have a little relaxation prior to the meetings.

A few years ago, the meeting was changed and we were flown to California so we could visit the company headquarters. Fewer people took advantage of the extra days due to the expense of paying for flights for family members, but there were a few. My co-manager and I were friends and decided to fly out early and do some sightseeing. As typical, we booked our own reservation for the “extra” days since that part is not covered by the company.

Imagine my surprise when an email went out to the group that advised that they did not want us staying at the host hotel for personal stays prior to the meeting because they were worried about possible billing errors. Sadly, several people actually changed their hotels because of this.

I sent an email reply and advised that I was an adult and I would not let the company dictate my choices as it was my money and my time off to do as I wished. I suggested that the hotel probably wouldn’t appreciate them actively discouraging us from spending additional days there. I also pointed out that if the hotel was so poorly run that they didn’t think they were capable of keeping our separate personal stays separate from their large corporate event, maybe we should consider holding the event at a different facility.

I did, however, offer that if they wanted to reimburse me for the extra time — at double pay since it would be on my scheduled time off — and expense it would take for me to repack my belongings, switch hotels, and unpack again, I would consider it.

I got a reply email that simply said that it was fine for me to keep my reservation as it was. But I still shake my head that they somehow thought they could dictate how I spent my time off just because I chose the same venue as the event.