I work from home, but my job has hard deadlines, which means I have a lunch break from 12:00 to 12:30 pm within my eight-hour workday.

A few times a month, I splurge on restaurant-delivered food via a delivery app where a “worker” will go to the restaurant, pick up the food, and deliver it to me. They’ve been great in the past and have a large number of restaurants to order from… until recently.

I order early in the morning to get it out of the way, specifying delivery from 11:45 am to 12:15 pm.

One day, I ordered burgers and fries. The driver showed up at 11:15 am, forcing us to eat lunch early because that’s not really something you can reheat. I complained to the company and got a small “refund.”

I thought everything was fine, and it was a one-time mistake… until today.

I order early again, pizza, to be delivered from 11:45 am to 12:15 pm. The app has a tracking feature that shows where my driver is. At 11:30 am, I see he’s right outside my house, despite the fact that I gave an instruction to not deliver before 11:45 am. 

I go to the door to get the food, mad, only to find the driver sitting there in his car. I open the door. He sees me. He then drives off. I check the app and see that he drove down the road and stopped.

Fifteen minutes later, he drives back, parks, and delivers the food. I take the food but refuse to thank him as I usually do. They’re lucky the tip is calculated when the order is placed, because he wouldn’t have gotten a dime from me.

It was Halloween and the local theatre was playing The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

My best friend and I dressed up. He went as Rocky and I decided to dress as Frank N Furter. We went all out.

When we arrived at the cinema, the usher told us that there was a half-hour wait before the screen would open to allow us inside. The film did not start for forty-five minutes.

My friend and I waited in the coffee shop past the ticket check with all of the other Rocky Horror fans, when I noticed that some people were going into the screen we had been directed to. I made a comment and my friend dragged us after the people so we could choose some good seats before they were taken.

We pushed open the doors — my friend in his golden hot pants and body glitter, me as a sweet transvestite — to a completely full theatre, waiting for the tail end of the season’s most popular action movie.

Rather than turn tail and run, my friend suddenly clapped and remarked that he hadn’t seen the film. He pulled me into a seat and I slowly sank deeper and deeper as we watched the last ten minutes of Looper.

So many people turned around in their seats to catch a glimpse of us in costume, and whispered to one another, that no one could hear the dialogue for the end of the film.

When the film ended, we stayed in our seats and watched Rocky Horror without an issue. When we got chatting to one of the ushers as we were leaving, they remarked that they had seen us slip into the theatre, but thought that the reactions we would get were too funny to bother stopping us.

I work the overnight shift at an emergency vet. We get some interesting calls.

One night, I answer the phone and it is a very drunk man, slurring his words. He explains that it’s his anniversary, he and his wife have had a few bottles of wine, his cat was “faxed” yesterday, and now her guts are hanging out.

I tell him to bring her in and I give him the number of an animal-friendly cab company we recommend. Then, I go to let the doctor know what is on the way. He laughs and says it’s probably just a minor dehiscence and the subcutaneous fat is showing — quick sedation and we sew it back up and the cat will be fine. So, the tech starts prepping the surgical room while we wait.

The phone rings again. It’s a drunk woman, who explains that it’s her anniversary, she and her husband have had a few bottles of wine, their cat was “spaded” yesterday, and now her guts are hanging out.

I give the exact same instructions I gave the man and go tell the doctor that the same cat is coming in twice. We all laugh at how Mister either didn’t tell Missus he had called or they were so drunk they forgot he had called.

About half an hour later. a cab pulls up and the driver brings in a cat carrier, warns me that the passengers are totally wasted, and then helps them stagger inside. The tech takes the cat out of the box and the doctor was right; it was just a minor dehiscence with exposed fat.

While the doctor is explaining what we want to do and how much it will cost and getting approval, a second cab pulls up.

These owners are significantly less drunk; I’m still glad they didn’t drive, but they can carry the cat in on their own. The tech is busy prepping the first cat, so I take them to an exam room, take the cat out of the box and… Oh, my God, that’s a liver! This cat ripped out all her sutures and there are intestines just hanging out of her body.

The second cat gets into surgery first, both sets of owners have a fun conversation in the lobby while they wait, both cats make a full recovery, and we all learn that not all drunks are exaggerating. We also have a lot of fun wording the notes to send to the cats’ usual veterinarian, trying to diplomatically tell them to adjust the way they tie their knots without outright blaming them for what happened — both cats had been allowed, against doctor’s orders, to climb up to the top of a bookcase and jump down.

One day, I decided to buy and put a bumper sticker on my car. The bumper sticker read, “Politicians are like diapers. They need to be changed often and for the same reasons.” 

Sometime later, I was with my parents at a store and I saw a bumper sticker that I got my mom to buy me. This one read, “Don’t steal. The government hates competition”. 

Fast forward a few months later. I’m at the mall just browsing around and after an hour or two, I head out to my car. As I get close to it, I see a piece of paper that was placed under the driver side windshield wiper. At first, I think I’ve gotten a ticket but when I look at the paper, I read, “Congratulations! I love your bumper stickers.” 

To whoever put that note under my windshield wiper, glad I could make your day.

My best female friend is a waitress at a small restaurant. Just another waiter and the owners man the kitchen. My friend is very obviously of Asian descent and her coworker has been harassing her, telling her that he has never slept with an Asian girl and that he wants her to be his first. My friend repeatedly reports him to the owner, but he just tells her that she can live with it.

I’m at her restaurant waiting for her to finish her shift when her coworker makes yet another inappropriate comment. My friend, red with anger, approaches him and hits him as hard as she can in the groin. The guy is in so much pain he can’t breathe, and my friend grabs his hair and pulls him towards her and says, “If you ever talk to me like that again, I will make sure you’ll leave no kids behind.”

By this moment, one of the owners has come out to see what’s going on, and quickly realises what happened. He shouts at my friend that she can’t do that, and that her coworker is in so much pain he can’t even breathe. Her answer? “If I can live with his harassment, he can live with the pain.”