When my brother was in high school, his best friend couldn’t have matches or a lighter in his hands without using them on anything at hand. He always made sure he had either one with him to experiment with when he was bored.

His sixteenth birthday party took place in a wooden shed (!) and my mother denied my brother permission to go. Some serious rows, tantrums, and name-calling followed, but my mother put her foot down. When asked for a reason, she told him that for sure the fire brigade would be involved and she wanted him to be safe and well. Being sixteen, my brother didn’t see the danger and my mother was wise enough to make sure he was otherwise occupied the day of the party.

The day after the party, a school day, my brother came home to tell us that the shed had burned down, and he asked my mother how she knew that would happen. He never admitted it, but in the end, he was glad he wasn’t there for the fireworks.

Years ago, my wife had to have major surgery, and afterward, she got a MRSA infection. I couldn’t take any more time off work, so one of our friends said she could come up and help. We paid for her plane ticket and everything while she was up with the idea that she was supposed to help my wife with her medical needs while I was at work. Here are some of the things that happened:

1: Almost every night when I came home from work, the lady would be sitting on the couch. I would ask if my wife had eaten all day and taken her meds and do her infusion of antibiotics. Every night, I was met with the same answer: “Oh, I forgot,” or “Oh, I haven’t done it yet.” It was supposed to have been done hours before.

2: When I was home at the house, she would dominate my time. I would be trying to help my wife bathe or use the commode or dealing with her antibiotics and other meds, and our friend would interrupt. “I can’t get the TV to work.” “When are you making dinner?” “The dog is acting like she needs to go outside.” All the while she was sitting on her butt not doing anything.  

3: The last day, when I told her she was leaving, I came home and I found her sitting in the dark with the TV on super loud. I went to check on my wife to find out she was crying in pain because she’d had no meds since I’d left. In addition, she had peed herself and the bed because she couldn’t get up fast enough and couldn’t get the friend to come help her because the friend was on the phone.  

After I cared for my wife, I got livid. I turned off the TV and took away the remote and told her to pack her things. I was going to arrange for her to fly home that night. She actually had the nerve to get mad at me; she said that I wasn’t being a good host and that she had come up for a nice visit only to be ignored by me and my wife. I couldn’t even come up with a response to that one, just stood with my mouth open. After I got her out of there and got someone different to care for my wife during the day, things went much better and my wife recovered.

A few years later, my wife had to have another surgery. And this lady found out and called us and asked me if I wanted her to come up and help my wife again like she did the time before. I simply told her that her type of help almost killed my wife last time and I didn’t think we’d be needing her this time, and I hung up.  

I don’t even understand the type of “friend” who thinks this is an okay situation.

My friend and I have gone to a large ethnic grocery store looking for something we are not sure is actually there.

My friend decides to ask someone if they actually have the item we are looking for. 

He asks the first person he sees in a uniform. She is quite helpful, however, she doesn’t know if they have the item.

As we go to check out what we are purchasing, we see the same person in the checkout line. The uniform she is wearing is from a local fast food restaurant. 

My friend, realizing that he asked someone that didn’t work there for help, immediately apologizes to the person. He then says, “I feel bad. I never wanted to be ‘that guy’ from Not Always Right.”

My mum was on a train with my niece, her granddaughter, who was about six at time. A man got on who was wearing a medieval jester costume with a life-sized sword and shield. He was nice enough to let my mum take a photo while he posed, so I got to see myself how impressively realistic his costume was.

My mum is by nature an extremely friendly person and started chatting with him, and he enthusiastically told her about how he was a dragon slayer off to a renaissance fair.

During the time they talked, which was only around five or ten minutes, whenever my mum looked at my niece she was exactly the same: leaning right back in her seat, wide-eyed, silently staring at him, white as a ghost. Any attempt at engaging her was a lost cause for that train ride. You know those stories about children excited to meet someone from a fairy tale? Not this kid.

Mum later explained to me that she realised my niece was so shocked because suddenly all the stories that she’d been told through books, movies, and storytimes had just become true. There was a jester with a sword and shield catching the morning train and he was off to slay a dragon? There was going to be a whole fair of medieval people doing medieval things in Melbourne? She just couldn’t handle how real it had all become.

A couple of weeks later while with her again, my mum tried to explain, “You know that man was just dressed up to pretend and play? He wasn’t actually a dragon slayer.”

In the most despondent voice, she replied, “I don’t believe you.”

I worked in fast food for four years. When I began, I had a dream of moving through the ranks and on up to corporate like my parents and their friends did. I’d like to think I was one of the most helpful employees in that store.

For the brief few months they tested out “employee of the month,” I did get the award once. I took the undesirable shifts — opening the store on weekdays and late night on weekends — and I filled in whenever I could if an employee called out or asked me to take their shift. They trusted me enough to do bank runs, get merchandise from other stores, fill in at other stores, and basically be a fill-in-manager answering calls and doing refunds when the manager on duty was working in the back room. In the four years, I only went home sick once and called out sick once.

The one time I called out sick, I started feeling ill around 9:00 pm. I had a 5:00 am shift the next morning, so I wanted them to know right away I wasn’t going to be able to make it. I was still living at home with my parents at the time. Every one or two hours I would wake up, get sick, call the store — it was open 24 hours in the drive-thru — receive no answer after a few minutes of ringing, and go back to sleep. With all the commotion I made during the night, my dad would also try calling the store, but neither of us could get an answer.

Finally, at around 4:30 am, the overnight manager picked up. I explained that I was very sick and would not be able to make it in. She was very angry, yelling at me for calling out right before my shift when it was too late to call around for replacements. I explained that both my father and I had tried to call the store multiple times throughout the night, but nobody answered the phone. She insisted that the phone never rang once, and that she would write me up as a no-call no-show.

I later found out that the overnight crew likes to blast their heavy metal rock music over the speaker, so I’m thinking that’s why she didn’t hear it. As there wasn’t much I could do, I went back to sleep and recovered over the next day. About a month later, the overnight manager transferred to another store as their assistant manager, so I was a little happy I wouldn’t have to see her again.

Or so I thought. Our store manager retired — fun fact, she had also trained my dad when he was my age — and guess who came in to replace her? Yep, the overnight manager. I was hoping I was such an insignificant part in her career that she wouldn’t remember me, but unfortunately, she did.

I had been trying to be the best employee I could be. I was able to do just about every position successfully except maintenance and lunch/dinner grill (making the sandwiches). The previous store manager had recognized my ambition and skill and had me training to be a crew trainer — an extra $0.50 an hour, whoopee! — to then hopefully be a shift manager. The only part I needed to be signed off on was lunch/dinner grill.

There was a catch, though: I needed to work lunch/dinner grill with the store manager. I was scheduled almost exclusively for breakfast shifts, and on the odd week they scheduled me during dinner, I was only a cashier and the store manager wasn’t working then. So, for about a year and a half, I saw some newer, less experienced coworkers become crew trainers and shift managers while I never moved.

The last straw was when one coworker, in particular, was promoted to shift manager, even though she stood around on her phone all day when customers weren’t around, whereas I was constantly waiting on customers, making food and drinks, restocking, and cleaning. She had somehow gotten chummy with the store manager and was given preferential treatment despite the fact that when customers did come, she never wanted to take their orders or prepare anything and only wanted to bag the food and pass it along.

I was beginning to feel worn out and unappreciated, and I believed I was going nowhere. In the four years I worked there, I only made $0.75 an hour above minimum, where I started — and I had gotten the highest raises every period. I decided to take a week-long staycation. I still worked three other part-time jobs; I just wanted a week where I didn’t have to wake up at 3:30 am every day to work on my feet for eight hours to then go to the other jobs.

In the week leading up to my scheduled week off, I was talking to some of my coworkers and something clicked. I wanted to quit. I decided to turn my week off into my resignation. Word quickly spread, and my coworkers were coming up left and right hugging me goodbye and telling me how much they would miss me.

In a NotAlwaysWorking moment, I texted the assistant manager the news and asked if she had received my letter of resignation when, in fact, I had not written one. By that time, however, everyone already knew I was leaving, so it wasn’t a surprise to her. She said she didn’t have it but was sure it was just tossed by another manager. She wished me the best, and I turned in my uniform when I picked up my last paycheck. I haven’t looked back since.