As a student, my wife used to live in an apartment block that was built specifically for students. The insulation of the building was extremely poor. When someone walked through the corridor on the same level, it was clearly audible in her studio apartment. During winter, it was next to impossible to warm it up, while during summer, the heat was intense because the architect apparently thought a black building would look nice. And obviously, she could hear every sound her next-door neighbours made. Luckily, her best friend was one of them and she, like my wife, couldn’t stand loud noises.

One day, my wife woke up to the “lovely” sound of her other neighbour’s radio, which was playing quite loud. Since she spent most of the day at home, this made the day quite tense. Several times she walked over and rang the door in the hope that he would turn down the music. He never answered, apparently since the music was so loud.

By night, my wife was obviously fed up. She wanted to go to sleep, which the loud music made impossible for her due to her light sleeping. After some final attempts to get his attention, she decided enough was enough and called the police.

When the police arrived, they couldn’t get him to respond, either. My wife, however, had also mentioned to them that she had tried to talk to her neighbour the whole day, but that he never answered the door, while the music kept playing. She had noticed that it was now taking strangely long for him to reply and suggested that something could have happened to the neighbour. This was enough reason for the police to try and force the door open. They didn’t manage. Another student, who walked by, ironically did. (No, he was no burglar. He just had experience with accidentally locking himself out.)

Now, what on earth had happened to the neighbour? Was he dead? Or just completely stoned? No, nothing of the sort. Turns out, he wasn’t even home that day. And that he had forgotten to turn off the alarm of his clock radio.

This happens before email was a thing, although it is on the brink of becoming mainstream. The fax machines in our office are replaced by a more sophisticated version; i.e. no more thermal paper, an internal memory, and a nice little display. However, it is not clear at first that the machine speaks English.

The first two weeks after they are installed, the remark, “Great, brand new and already broken,” is regularly overheard. The problem? When feeding the fax to the machine, it returns the message, “Storing,” which totally makes sense in English. In Dutch, however, the word “storing” can be translated as “out of order” or “not working properly.”

Related:
Taxing Faxing, Part 29
Taxing Faxing, Part 28
Taxing Faxing, Part 27
Taxing Faxing, Part 26
Taxing Faxing, Part 25

Our store’s policy is to rotate managers every few years. The current manager allegedly pulled some strings to get promoted.

Among all kinds of new rules that she makes up out of nowhere, and implemented immediately, is that all cardboard from stocking has to go on these 2×1-meter-long orange flatbed carts instead of in regular shopping carts.

We start at 4 am and I am stocking the liquor section on the other side of the warehouse from the cardboard hole. All my cardboard is small and doesn’t stack. This rule doesn’t work for me and I just am not having it.

I start my tasks and start chucking my cardboard in a cart anyway. The manager comes by to remind me to use a flatbed. I calmly and rationally explain and demonstrate why it doesn’t work for me. She says to do it anyway.

So, I pick up the cartful of cardboard and place it on the flatbed sideways and absolutely FILL that thing until it’s taller than I am by wedging huge sheets of cardboard in the sides and filling the middle with the small stuff.

Skip forward two hours: I’ve left this absolute monstrosity out during lunch and I am coming back. The manager is yelling into her walkie-talkie for my supervisor to come back and “look at what [My Name] has done.”

I’m in the next aisle straightening something and trying not to laugh out loud. My supervisor comes back and he’s visibly trying not to laugh while the manager screams about writing me up.

He calls me over and I just calmly say, “Well, it’s on the flatbed; I don’t see the problem.”

The manager stormed off and my supervisor didn’t write me up.

I work for a prominent hotel chain as a security guard and bouncer. This hotel hosts a very large annual science-fiction convention. I’m a fan, and I get to meet a lot of authors and artists — including Phil and Kaja Foglio! — and I buy some neat stuff. The con staff do a fairly decent job of keeping things organized.

The biggest problem is some of the fans.

One morning, I get a sort of panicky call from the hotel café about a guest creating a disturbance. I bob and weave my way through the tide of early-rising Klingons, Imperial Storm Troopers, Daleks, Vulcans, and hordes of other creatures and characters. When I get to the café, I immediately discover the problem.

There is a woman there; she is hard to miss. She is wearing an apparently homemade “costume” which resembles mosquito netting… and nothing else. Everything is clearly visible.

She is drunk and/or stoned, combative, and as reasonable as a rabid wolverine with a toothache. And she stinks. She refuses any suggestion to change her attire. It’s only after I have called the police for assistance that she makes an attempt to cover herself. She grabs three cocktail napkins and stuffs them under her mosquito netting until they cover her nipples and genital area.

This is still not acceptable attire for anywhere, least of all a dining facility. She expresses her displeasure at great length and with many profanities, not stopping even after the police repeat the instructions to cover up or leave.

She makes several pointed references to “pigs,” which she thinks is amusing. The police are less than amused and escort the woman out of the hotel in handcuffs. She is issued a summons for public indecency and released to her vehicle after being told not to return to the hotel. Ever.

Not an auspicious start to the day for anyone involved.

At the time of this story, the public transit tickets in my city were low-tech cardboard rectangles, with printed serial numbers as their only security device. At work, we’d occasionally joke about how easy it would be to counterfeit the tickets. I never took it seriously; it cost around $80 per month to commute to work on the bus while our company gave us $400 per month, tax-free, to cover downtown parking.

But one of my coworkers always seemed to bring up the subject of fake tickets. Although he had the reputation of being a man who always looked for an edge, no one believed he’d be that cheap.

Then, one fateful Tuesday, the coworker came in three hours late. He just said “something” had happened on his bus and he didn’t want to talk about it. Then, in the late afternoon, he was called into the manager’s office, and twenty minutes later, he was marched out the door with his personal effects.

It turned out he had done more than just talk about counterfeiting tickets. On that day, the transit police had arrested him as he was about to drop a phony ticket into the bin. His downfall was that he had only copied one ticket over and over so the five he had in his wallet were the same — and identical to several dozen that they had accumulated over a few months. He faced a misdemeanor and a hefty fine.

And, of course, he’d used our company’s high-quality color printers to make them. As luck would have it, we’d had an IT audit the night before. It seemed our printers kept digital records of what was printed and who printed them, and his ID came up associated with the images he’s been forging.

To save less than $1000 per year, he risked and lost a six-figure salary. Talk about instant Karma.