In Germany, we have mandatory ESL (English as a second language) classes in school, starting from elementary school. All English classes in German schools are catered toward people who only learn English as a second language and don’t speak it regularly outside of school. Even most English teachers only ever learned it as their second language.

As such, my high school was wholly unprepared for me; having spent almost all of my childhood up to that point abroad and naturally growing up German/English bilingual, I am fluent in both languages.

Sadly, my teacher in my final year of high school was not. In fact, she had only recently started teaching, had very little authority, knowledge, or any idea of what she was doing, and made up for it by being as obnoxiously high and mighty as they come. English was the first language you ever spoke and you were, thus, fluent? Nope, that was a lie, and you could not possibly be more fluent than her. After all, she was the teacher.

She hated the fact that I would just read (English) novels in class but would still always be able to answer her questions and fill out our worksheets flawlessly. After just the first week of classes, she had it out for me. When she handed us back our first graded tests later, it really showed: I — a straight-A student — had gotten a D.

But it wasn’t just me; the entire class got an average of two to three grades below their usual results. And that’s when I noticed something on my test: she had marked countless words and phrases on my test as “wrong” or “misspelled” or “made up” — when they were all perfectly correct — and deducted a full point for every single one. I whipped out a dictionary and Post-its and went to work, proving every single mark-up the teacher had given me wrong. I pointed this out to my friends in class, too, and told them to check their own results, and soon I ended up with the entire class’ stack of graded tests to re-correct them.

It turned out that our teacher had, apparently, never gotten past the cover page of a dictionary, and her “corrections” were all blatantly wrong. The class and I went up to her and tried to point out her wrongful “corrections” to her with the help of a dictionary, the Internet, and common sense, but she was having none of it.

We eventually escalated the matter to the head of the language department at our school who then re-graded all of our tests. The average score went from a D- to a B, and my own grade went back up to an A.

And our class teacher was livid when she was no longer allowed to grade tests. She tried her hardest to make my life in her class miserable for the rest of the year, and she never missed a chance to tell me how full of myself I was and how she’d make me come to my senses once she’d get to fail me in my finals. (Never mind that she wasn’t allowed to grade us anymore, especially not on our finals).

I got through the year with her out of spite alone, but I have to say, when I got to rub my fifteen points (full score, A+, for everyone unfamiliar with the German grading system) in her face during our award ceremony at the end of the year — the only one in the entire school who got full score in the English final exams — and watch her stalk off while barely keeping it together in front of all the other teachers, that was a beautifully cathartic moment!

This is about my own wedding and how an entitled mom nearly turned it into her personal circus.

My fiancé (now husband) and I planned our wedding for over a year. We wanted something small yet elegant, with close family and friends. My husband’s family is pretty down-to-earth — except for his aunt, who is known for her over-the-top behavior and entitlement.

Everything was going smoothly until the week before the wedding. [Aunt] called and demanded that we include her six-year-old daughter (my husband’s cousin) as a flower girl. We already had two flower girls, my nieces, who were thrilled about it. I politely declined, explaining that arrangements had already been made.

[Aunt] didn’t take this well. She started a tirade about how her daughter was being excluded unfairly and how we were ruining her child’s self-esteem. I tried to stay calm, but she was relentless.

I thought that was the end of it, but oh, was I wrong.

On our wedding day, [Aunt] showed up with her daughter dressed in a full-blown white, frilly flower girl dress. She marched up to me, demanding that her daughter be included in the ceremony.

I was flabbergasted. My husband and I, along with our wedding planner, tried to reason with her, but she caused a huge scene, saying things like, “How could you be so selfish on your wedding day?” and, “You’re destroying a little girl’s dream!”

My usually quiet mother-in-law had had enough. She stepped in and told [Aunt] in no uncertain terms that this was our day, not hers or her daughter’s. She said that if [Aunt] couldn’t respect our wishes, they would have to leave.

[Aunt] was shocked. She tried to argue, but other family members, who were equally fed up with her antics, supported my mother-in-law’s stance. Realizing she was outnumbered, [Aunt] left in a huff, her daughter in tow.

The rest of the wedding went off without a hitch, and everyone had a great time.

We heard through the grapevine that [Aunt] complained about us to anyone who would listen, but most of the family knew her history and took it with a grain of salt.

I’m grateful for my amazing in-laws who stood up for us, boosting my confidence in our marriage’s success even more.

I worked in retail for five years in a neighborhood of filthy rich people who thought the world was their oyster. Every few months, we had a coupon sale in the store for a coffee brand that is very popular here. I drink it every morning. The coupon made it substantially cheaper than what it would cost without it. And naturally, people flocked to the store and bought it every day the sale was going on.

There was one woman who would come to the store and shamelessly present me with three coupons for three containers of coffee. We only allowed one use of the coupon per customer.

She was so determined. We would tell her no every time. So, she would take just one and then come back in the afternoon after a shift change to buy the rest.

It’s like she needed it.

I remember how we used to joke about how it was so embarrassing for her to do it. What was so special about that coffee that she bought so much of it?

We never knew, and at some point, she stopped coming at all.

Now, after working for eight years in the high-tech industry and writing code for a living, I’m sad to say I have become just like her. When there’s a sale on that specific coffee brand, I purchase multiple of them. The difference is that I mobilize other people to buy it for me: my mom and a friend from work.

Working in retail was the best thing I did in my life to understand how to talk to people. Thank you again for all you do for us, retail workers!

Back about twenty years ago, a vegetarian friend was on a bus tour of Russia. At one point, the whole group had a banquet. All the other tables had food piled up. The vegetarians were at a table together, and in the middle was a large pot of soup. One member of the party dipped the ladle into the soup, and it came out with a whole chicken!

They complained to the waiter, explaining that they don’t eat flesh, so the waiter removed the chicken from the pot and walked away.

End of story, they did not eat that night. Hopefully, they had snacks back in their hotel rooms!

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Assault Of Minor (Prior to events of story)

I used to work at a thrift store, and we got a new employee, [Creeper]. He was hired to be a truck driver to go around doing furniture pick-ups.

[Creeper] seemed to be a good-natured kind of guy. He tried to be friendly. The problem was that he was a little too aggressive about it — too friendly and too eager to make friends, particularly toward the younger female employees.

[Gay Employee] rode with [Creeper] once and made it absolutely clear that he would never get in the truck with [Creeper] ever again. Apparently, [Creeper] had views that were not LGBTQ-friendly, and [Gay Employee] didn’t feel comfortable or safe listening to the Bible-quote-laced diatribes [Creeper] would go on.

[Tough-Looking Employee] ended up with that job, and even he utterly loathed [Creeper] within a single trip. According to [Tough-Looking Employee], [Creeper] would talk with customers for upwards of twenty minutes at a time, aggressively pushing an invitation for them to join [Creeper]’s Bible study group. [Creeper] would then completely empty the truck, rearrange furniture, then go to the next house, Bible study invite, empty the truck, rearrange the entire truck for the newest furniture, and move on. [Tough-Looking Employee] said it was a study in pure frustration to try to get [Creeper] to knock that off, to no avail.

Finally, [Creeper] and [New Guy] left for a pick-up. They only had three houses to go to, so due to our need for coverage, both were scheduled to do a Donation Door shift in the afternoon. This was under the belief that an hour per pick-up was perfectly reasonable, plus some travel buffer time, seeing as how each pick-up was within the city limits. They turned three houses into a seven-hour trip for a few couches, chairs, and/or tables per house. 

They missed their door shifts completely, and [Assistant Manager] was forced to beg a couple of staff members to do an extra door shift to cover. Now, for [Assistant Manager], most staff would grab a pickaxe, give it a twirl, and ask which mountain she would like moved and to where. While a second door shift wasn’t something any of us liked, we would gladly do it for her. However, the point was that she never should have had to ask to cover [Creeper]’s lollygagging. ([New Guy] was clear; he wasn’t the driver, and short of bashing [Creeper] over the head and taking command of a large vehicle that he was unfamiliar with, he couldn’t do a whole lot to kick [Creeper] into gear.)

They both showed up near the end of the day, and [Supervisor #1] got into it a bit with [Creeper], basically calling him out on taking seven hours to hit three houses for a small load of stuff. He went into a moaning fit full of excuses. [Supervisor #1] told him that his goofing off was completely unacceptable before coming upstairs. She was almost to the top when both she and I (my area of sorting was near the stairwell) heard a very loud crash. [Creeper] had thrown something or knocked something over in a fit of pique. [Supervisor #1] did not go back down to investigate.

[Supervisor #1] went to [Supervisor #2] and talked to her about [Creeper]’s temper, as [Creeper] left yet again for a late lunch. On a lark, [Supervisor #1] and [Supervisor #2] went to public records and did some snooping to see if [Creeper] had any prior arrests.

Answer: Yes. He had been convicted of the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl and spent ten years in prison. He had gotten out of jail three months before his hiring.

[Supervisor #1] and [Supervisor #2] printed the information they found. [Supervisor #1] compiled the papers as evidence to give to [Store Manager] the next day. [Supervisor #2] grabbed me and told me what they had found, and I obligingly wiped the browser’s search history for them — literally minutes before [Creeper] came back from his break.

All was played cool as [Creeper] finished out his day and left. Staff were called and interviewed, and we learned all about what [Creeper] had done to make female employees uncomfortable.

He hit on me but claimed to be “a nice guy” in an incel way — describing how he was a follower of Christ and God had decreed that he deserved a good woman to be his devoted wife. (I was in my mid-thirties, but I have a baby face that makes me look like I’m in my twenties. [Creeper] was in his fifties.) I wasn’t afraid of him even before the horrible revelation, but I was sarcastically, cynically, uninterested. Unconsciously defensive behavior, I guess?

He hit on a female employee who had turned old enough to drink alcohol only a few months before. She was all kinds of “nope” about hanging out with him, too.

He even hit on one of our youngest newbies who had literally walked the stage out of high school two weeks before. She was also all kinds of “nope”.

Even the older women were very uncomfortable around him.

Anyway, the story has not yet come to an end. We’re still on the same day of the revelation that he was a convicted pedophile. We kept asking one another why [Store Manager] hadn’t done a background check!

[Creeper]’s shift ended at 4:30.

[Supervisor #2] left at 5:30.

At 6:00 pm, [Supervisor #2] called back. I picked up the phone, and [Supervisor #2] was highly anxious. She said that she had seen what looked like [Creeper], who should have left already, still in the parking lot. He was just sitting in his car for hours, staring at the building. She was deeply concerned for [Supervisor #1] and me, as we were closing the store together. Note: she did not approach [Creeper] in any way; she just left like she wasn’t paying attention and then drove home to call us and give us the heads-up. She had already called [Tough-Looking Employee]’s cell phone and asked him to stay with us all until we left the premises. His shift ended a bit before ours, but he willingly agreed to stay with us to keep us safe. ([Tough-Looking Employee] was the real MVP right there.)

At 6:15, I asked [Tough-Looking Employee] if he would go out and “look for carts” in the parking lot and just have a look-see to see if [Creeper] was still out there. [Tough-Looking Employee] caught on immediately and went outside. He came back five minutes later to state that, yes, there was a vehicle with someone in it who looked a lot like [Creeper] just loitering in the parking lot. [Tough-Looking Employee] told me that he looked at the person with the kind of “I see you, I’m aware of you, points-to-eyes-points-to-other-person” look before coming back inside.

At 6:30, [Tough-Looking Employee] went back outside to check again for “carts” and reported that the vehicle with person-who-looks-like-[Creeper] had moved on and we were in the clear.

The store shut down as usual. [Tough-Looking Employee] went out the back door first, looked around, and reported that we were still clear. We all headed for our vehicles, climbed in, locked doors, and waited for each other to pull out of the parking spots. Nobody left until we were in a conga line heading for the exit to separate.

The next day, more details came out. Apparently, [Store Manager] did interviews, but it was [Regional Manager]’s task to do background checks as the final step before hiring, which they didn’t see fit to do. 

[Store Manager] lost her s*** at [Regional Manager]; due to their negligence, this was a storm of truly epic lawsuit-and-PR-Nightmare-Fuel-worthy proportions, and the wheels were promptly turned to getting [Creeper] outta dodge. Not only was he creeping on female staff, but he was representing the company while pushing “Bible Study” on customers, going into their houses, and interacting with their families. Oh, yeah, and he was a convicted pedophile.

Thankfully, [Creeper] was let go as “Not A Good Fit For The Company”, using his tiff with [Supervisor #1] as one reason and his lollygagging on pick-ups as the second reason. We were very alert after hours for a while. Thankfully, he never appeared again after being let go.

We didn’t know or think of it then, but in all honesty, we should have called the police while he was sitting in the parking lot. His behaviors were deeply concerning, and the fact that he had been recently released from prison and was now lurking outside our workplace long after hours should have garnered a lot of attention. 

Live and learn.