I’ve recently gotten a job as a student assistant at a local chain of health care clinics. One of my first duties is taking the paper forms that patients fill out when they come in to get vaccines and copying the needed data into the company’s online databases. Since most of the forms are from drive-thru vaccination events, the first couple of questions ask about the color, make, and model, as well as the number of recipients in the car to ensure workers bring the right number of supplies to the right car.

One form starts out normal enough: the patient has a Kia Soul… but seventy-three recipients in their car!

I initially thought they put either their birth year or age in the wrong spot, but it turned out that they were born in the 1950s and were currently in their mid-sixties. I have no clue what they thought that question was asking unless they really need to contact Guinness about a world record!

Sporadically when I would collect data from one of the machines at work, it just wouldn’t be there. It was weird; even the manufacturer came out and said it was all working fine.

Annoyingly, this meant that, instead of spending an hour a month downloading the data, I had to do it daily. It did, however, narrow down when it was happening.

It turns out that the power supply was fed through the wall from the break room. Despite having a fridge in the way and big signs on the wall and the plug itself saying, “Do not unplug,” someone was unplugging it whenever they pleased. It was an old building and there was no place to run a permanent connection.

Memos went out, the manager warned the staff, and some went on the night shift to catch the person. But it just kept happening as soon as they went back on the day shift. Even when they promised no disciplinary action would be taken, still no one came forward and no one would say who it was.

Our customer could (and sometimes did) ask for some data at any time; it was an issue waiting to happen.

It was only by chance that I went to the machine and found it off one day. I rushed to the break room and found a baby pink, bedazzled phone charger still sticking out of the wall. We finally knew who it was. There was only one woman on the whole night shift, and she confessed when presented with her charger.

Her excuse? She saw the signs, but no one came to her personally and told her not to, so it couldn’t have been bad enough to stop.

The guys on the night shift were sweet on her, so they just let her do whatever she wanted and would never dream of reporting her.

I was on a business trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and one morning I was down in the hotel restaurant having breakfast. I was sitting at a table by myself when this group of four or five little old ladies came in and sat down nearby.

One of them came over to me and started asking me something, but she was speaking Chinese, which I don’t understand. She was gesturing at one of the chairs, so at first, I assumed she was asking if she could take it over to her table, and I tried to gesture back and say, “Please go ahead.”

But then she brought out her cell phone and started miming taking a photo, and I realized she must want me to take a picture of her and her friends!

I nodded yes and was about to get up and go over to their table when, suddenly, the lady handed her phone to her friend, pulled out a chair to sit down next to me, and started posing for the camera! And she and all her friends proceeded to take turns getting a photo with me. 

I was incredibly confused but just smiled and went along with it. Then they thanked me and went back to their table. 

I’ve never been told I look particularly like any celebrity, and I’m definitely not the kind of exotic “foreign”-looking white person that might get a lot of attention in Asia — I was certainly not the only non-Asian person in that hotel! — but I can only assume they must have mistaken me for… someone.

I definitely got a kick out of the thought that, for whatever reason, meeting me made these little old ladies’ day!

One summer, a friend of mine is going to the Jersey shore one day with his family and is driving along a highway that New Jersey state police are well known to patrol heavily. He makes sure to do the speed limit. Sure enough, a state police cruiser does eventually end up behind him. My friend thinks nothing of it. After a mile with the state cop behind him, a sports car suddenly passes on the left, doing at least ninety. The state cop lights up, of course, and my friend pulls over to let the cruiser pass. To his shock, however, the cruiser pulls over behind him instead, and after a short discussion, the officer hands my friend a ticket for speeding.

My friend fights the ticket, but despite his dashcam footage proving he was doing the limit the whole time and the officer even admitting my friend was doing the speed limit, the court sides with the officer and forces my friend to pay the speeding fine. Naturally, he is frustrated at first, but he then decides that if the State of New Jersey is going to be petty, then so is he. When he writes the check to pay the fine and court costs, he writes it for exactly two cents more than the total amount of the fine.

A month later, my friend receives a check in the mail from the State of New Jersey… for two cents. He gleefully puts the check through the shredder, knowing that the state’s checkbooks are going to no longer be balanced — or at least further unbalanced since other drivers have undoubtedly overpaid the state before him. He has also started taking a different, less heavily-patrolled highway to the shore, and hasn’t gotten another ticket since. The state continues to send him two-cent checks, which continue to go right through my friend’s shredder until the state stops sending them about a year later.

I was surprised to be fired. I had done nothing wrong, my performance was good, I was always on time, and I got along with everyone. Even my manager didn’t know about it until he called me to ask where I was.

After a few weeks, I got a phone call asking me to come back. They also reluctantly agreed to pay for the time “off” I had. It took a lot of pushing and favours to find out what had happened.

Turns out the owner’s daughter, who worked on site from time to time, slept with a guy at the office. For whatever reason, he fell out of favour with her and she gave my name and description. It was only when she came on site and asked why he was still there that they realised the wrong person was sacked.

I started to look for another job as soon as I got my backpay. I’ve never looked back.