About ten or so years ago, I went to a concert an hour away from me in Indianapolis. I decided to make a day of it, going to several museums and spots around the city. Each time I paid for parking in a garage for two or so hours before going to meander around the area.

Finally, I went to park close to the venue and paid for parking until the time it was free. In total, I probably paid $40-50 for parking throughout the day. I enjoyed the concert, but came back to a parking ticket on my car.

I think, “this is odd,” but I am tired and chalk it up to a mistake. I decided to take photos of my parking spot (both spots on either side were taken) and all the signage and head home for the evening, figuring I would sort it in the morning.

The next morning, I review the ticket, the photo of my spot, and my parking receipt.

The ticket did not line up with the spot my car was located in, and my receipt shows that I had valid parking at the time of the ticket. So, I submit an appeal, thinking this will be easy; it’s obvious that a mistake was made.

The appeal was denied.

The ticket was for the spot that was not paid for, ergo, it stood. I called the office, and the lady said they did not make a mistake as my receipt showed that I paid for spot X-1, and the ticket was for spot X.

I ask about the photo proof that my car was in spot X-1. She said, “Well, you could have moved the car”.

Note that the parking receipt included my license plate number and everything (think ParkMobile-like system). I noted that there were cars in spots on either side of me and that the entire street was full because of the concert.

Honestly, I don’t think they bothered to look at the photo. Even had that not been the case, I had proof that that license plate had a paid parking spot. No matter what, no dice.

I am feeling petty over this $25 parking ticket at this point. So, I called Visa and asked if I could retract the amount I paid for the time that I had parked, since it didn’t count.

I submitted all the evidence and documentation to Visa. Visa, in what was the greatest thing Visa has ever done in my opinion, they agreed that if my parking receipt and transaction number weren’t proof I had paid for parking, then clearly, I had paid for a service I did not receive. And they extended my initial request of cancelling the one transaction to include all the parking spots I had paid for through the system that day, valued at more than the parking ticket. Then they filed a formal complaint on my behalf with a letter explaining why they were refunding me.

I would not have been nearly as satisfied if I had not spent the entire day playing tourist in the city and racking up a large parking bill, all with the same vendor.

Like a lot of people, I collected unemployment during the COVID19 shutdowns. During the time I was getting payments, I carefully followed all the instructions and rules to a T. I was very aware that I was lucky to be able to have this opportunity and wanted to do it right.

So, I was surprised when, five years after I’d been re-hired to my old job (school bus drivers can’t work remotely very easily), I got a letter from my state’s unemployment department that I had been overpaid, and owed money. I continued reading the letter and saw my total owed.

$0.00

I checked my online account, and it had the same information. I needed to repay my zero dollars of overpayment as soon as possible, call to set up a payment plan, or dispute the charges. I called the number, and a very helpful woman told me that it was an error. I owed no money, and I could ignore the letter.

The next month, I got another one.

And another one the next month.

And again.

After the sixth letter, I called again. I was concerned that the department was trying to collect an actual amount and wanted to pay it if I really did owe something. Another helpful worker confirmed that I owed nothing, and the letters should stop soon.

I got three more.

Finally, on the tenth letter, I wrote a check for zero dollars and zero cents and mailed it in the provided envelope.

The next month, I got another letter from the department–this time thanking me for bringing the matter to their attention and assuring me that I owed nothing and would stop receiving letters. I’m happy to say that now, three months later, I haven’t gotten anything from them!

I was a woman of around eighteen or nineteen at the time, and I worked for this small bakery in my town.

The owner was the worst man I’ve ever met; he had no business being around people, let alone managing employees. I was a key holder and the sole cashier of the store really early on. I was left alone to run the place and close it every day. He only gave us half-hour breaks for ten-hour shifts. He was racist and homophobic, and frequently made fun of his employees so his buddies could laugh at us when they visited. I can go on and on about this man, but the best summary I can give is that I saw two people quit on their first day while working for him.

I told him I was leaving three weeks in and gave him a week’s notice. He, of course, complained about how unprofessional I, the teenager, was being. I also specifically told him that I will not work the next Saturday. My last day would be Friday.

Now I didn’t want to work Saturday because that was ‘Sandwich Day’, the day the entire building stops making cookies and pies and makes sandwiches so they can be shipped off for other businesses to sell. It was always the most stressful day because there was too much work and too few people to do it. Also, because the owner, instead of lounging at the front of the store, had to work with me, and he had no respect for personal space. How close he insisted on getting bordered on sexual harassment, and no matter how many times I brought up how uncomfortable I was, he ignored or interrupted me.

So… I wasn’t going to work Saturday.

Well, in my last week, I reminded him of this a few times, but he never seemed to get it. One day, I asked him when I should give my key back, whether I should leave it in the store on Friday night or some other time. He interrupted me and said I should give it back at the end of my shift on Saturday.

He was convinced that my last day was going to be the dreaded ‘Sandwich Day’ instead of Friday. I chose not to correct him.

I locked up as usual on Friday, slept in the next morning, and wandered down to the bakery to give my key back.

I walked in, and it was chaos.

Customers were lined up, and an employee who usually worked in the back was trying to man the cash register (and failing). The owner had gotten off his a** for once and was rushing around, making hundreds of sandwiches, red in the face and swearing under his breath. I waved at him, but he made a point to look away from me. I put my key on the counter and walked out.

He actually had to sell the bakery a few months later, something about running out of people “willing to work.” I know I wasn’t the catalyst to that particular development, but it’s nice to know I helped.

My jobs have always been geared towards data entry, as that’s what I am best at. I’ve always typed very fast and love finding new keyboard shortcuts to save me time and just be more efficient overall (not a brag, trust me). Because of this skill, I have always excelled in prior roles that utilized it. That is, until my current career.

I have been with this company for almost three months now. As with a lot of data entry jobs, this one has a weekly productivity that you must meet. By week two, I was meeting productivity once I grasped the role. This fueled me to try to get even faster. I learned the programs I was to be using and used simple keyboard shortcuts to toggle between programs, close them, used Excel formulas to concatenate and vlookup repetitive information that others usually type out every time, etc. You get the idea. If there is a way to save time, I will find it.

We got the team productivity email yesterday, and I see that I tripled what is expected of a single employee in an entire week. My numbers skyrocketed to levels that haven’t been reached before.

Now, here’s the really fun part.

Rather than getting any sort of praise (this company has felt anti-praise since I started) or being asked how I did it, I get an email from management stating my numbers are “concerning” and that they’re essentially opening up an investigation to see if I cheated somehow. I even received a screenshot of others’ numbers in one specific area, with management stating it’s impossible to have that much of a lead over those who have been here for years (my numbers were in the 800’s while the second highest was 300 in the week).

Today, my boss calls me and says she’s been spending the day checking my work, and so far, everything has been accurate. Mind you, this “investigation” didn’t start with her; she was just asked to check my work and was reporting what she found. But it’s all accurate. She says I can continue with what I am doing since she found no problems.

Now, I learned quickly that this isn’t the type of place to be praised. There is zero incentive for anyone to go above and beyond if it’s just going to be questioned. Now, to clarify, I fully understand that if something seems off, a company is going to want to check and ensure I am understanding the work and entering it properly, especially with a new employee.

But to email me stating it’s concerning and impossible prior to even checking my work is where I have the issue. I shouldn’t have even needed to be told it had to be looked into. They were told my numbers were accurate, and there has been radio silence since. No apology, no praise, no “how did you do it?” in hopes I can show the rest of my team so we can get caught up one day.

So, with what little knowledge of Excel I had, I made a spreadsheet that tallies my accounts as I go so I can pace myself, and I am now alerted as soon as I meet that goal so that I can stop working without going over.

I did add just a tiny bit more wiggle room to my spreadsheet so as not to accidentally go under productivity to where they would have reason to use corrective action, but just ever so slightly above the bare minimum.

If they’re going to treat me like a bare minimum employee, they’re going to get a bare minimum employee.

We were visiting Spain, and we were in a very large department store. We saw something we wanted to buy and carried it to a counter. We were the only customers in sight, and there were two saleswomen behind the counter talking to each other rapidly in Spanish.

We waited patiently while they did tasks at the counter, still chatting. They never seemed to notice us at all. Finally, having finished their tasks, they kissed each other on the cheeks and walked off in opposite directions, leaving us still standing there.

We burst out laughing, put down the thing we wanted to buy, and left.