This is a story often told by my father and his friend. When they were sixteen, my father’s friend had tuned and put all sorts of extra gear on his moped, most of it illegal. The moped was therefore able to drive way faster than was legal.

One day, my father’s friend was stopped, and the moped in question was taken by the police. Now, my father’s friend was the son of a posh English lady — note that this took place in a small, coastal village in Denmark, where foreigners were not common — and he went home and cried to his mother that the police had taken his moped without any cause. His mother always believed everything he said.

When the night fell, my father’s friend and another of my father’s friends jumped the fence to the police warehouse where the moped was stored. They quickly uninstalled all the illegal stuff, thus making the moped perfectly road-legal once again, and slipped out, unnoticed.

The next morning, my father’s friend and his mother marched down to the police station, where the mother started yelling at the police for taking her poor, innocent son’s moped and demanded that they give it back. When they informed her that it was illegal, she demanded to see it. Then my father’s friend, his mother, and two policemen all marched out to the moped, which was now legal. The police gave back the moped and apologised to the mother. She never did find out that he had broken into the police warehouse to fix it.

I was enjoying a beer with my husband at a local pub near a well-respected university when we overheard two local, college-age girls discussing languages. One girl was from Israel and her American friend was asking which dialect of Hebrew she spoke. The Israeli said, “Just Hebrew.” Her friend kept repeating her question and went on to explain how folks in different countries, like Mexico, have different dialects. My favorite example she gave was the “Guacamolans” and how they speak differently from other Mexicans. It took everything we had not to laugh out loud.

The doctor office where I work has lost two front desk receptionists at the same time without a two-week notice. While we are looking for someone to replace both of them, there’s only two of us left to take on the workload of four. That leaves me stressed out until we find the replacement, since my workload has increased substantially.

One day during lunch, I go to a nearby convenience store to pick up some almonds for snacking. I stand at the cash register for a good three minutes, clearing my throat and looking around for somebody to check me out, because I’ve had a god-awful day already, and I really want to have that snack for those days when I can’t even get a lunch. Finally, a sulky woman comes to the front register and immediately complains, “I’m tired of working the register. You people should just stay home.” In a foul mood myself already, I make the statement that I can leave the items there for her to put up later, or she can just check me out, which is part of her job. She takes off her apron and tosses it down, saying, “I don’t even need this job.”

A week later, my office manager is conducting interviews and I see the same woman sitting in the lobby. My suspicions are confirmed when my manager meets with her for one of the front desk positions. After she has left, my manager comments that she is unsure about the candidate and I relate what happened at the convenience store. I also tell my manager, “Maybe she had a bad day, but if she is willing to quit like that, she will leave you in the lurch.”

My manager hired her, anyway, and when she found out how many patients we dealt with in one hour — 30, to her five customers per hour — she quit.

I am in sixth grade when this happens and we are doing end-of-year testing in our first-period classes. I am very happy with this because my first-period class is Intro to Spanish, which is taught by a very nice teacher. The first day of testing goes by without any problems, but when I get to class the second day, I find out that my Spanish teacher is gone and my math teacher will be supervising us in her place.

My math teacher that year is not overly sadistic, but he acts like he knows everything and that the people who taught us math in elementary school are idiots. He is also the type who picks favorites, gives us only three bathroom passes per trimester — using any more gets you a lunch detention — forbids any socializing at all during regular class time — for example, if you turn around in your chair you get lunch detention –and gives you lunch detention if you needlessly disrupt class more than three times a week. His classes can be fun sometimes, and he does teach useful stuff, which makes me feel kind of guilty for disliking him, but I just do not like him at all.

During the time period where everyone is working on the huge test we are fine, but when everyone is finished, he decides to turn on a movie. The movie that he chooses is one that I have recently seen and I am terrified of because a scene involves something I have a phobia of, so I go to ask him if we can change the movie because I’m scared of watching it. He refuses. I keep asking him, but he keeps refusing and turns on the movie. I get multiple questions about why the movie scares me on my way back to my seat and I simply answer by saying that there is a scene that really scares me. Fast forward a bit, and we’re almost at the part that terrifies me. Because it’s close to the end of class, I ask to use the bathroom and get permission to leave the classroom. I spend the rest of the class in the bathroom. Faith in humanity crushed.

The next day, my Spanish teacher is back and, since the class is done with the test, she goes to turn on a movie. I ask her if we can switch to a different movie, and when she asks me why, I explain and some of my classmates explain how scared I looked while the movie was on and how I had to go to the bathroom to calm down. This catches me off guard because middle schoolers aren’t usually the kindest and because I’m probably the least popular person in the class. The teacher agrees to not watch the movie and chooses a different one, which I enjoy.

Then, when class is about to end, I am handed a small hall pass that is only issued for when students need to serve lunch detentions. I see that the room I’m supposed to go to for lunch detention is the one my math teacher’s class is in, so at lunch, I go in and ask my math teacher why I have lunch detention. He tells me that it’s because I used up my three bathroom passes for his class for the trimester and that I used a fourth the day before. He gave me a lunch detention because I used the bathroom in a class that wasn’t even his. Faith in humanity crushed again. I serve the lunch detention and go on my way, wondering how my math teacher could possibly think this was acceptable, but as I write this I wonder if he gave me lunch detention because I didn’t want to watch the movie.

I work in a theme park renting out strollers and wheelchairs to customers. Customers pay a fee, and when they return their stroller or wheelchair they get a deposit back.

A customer comes in wanting their deposit for their wheelchair. The problem with this is I saw them return a wheelchair earlier to a different coworker. They claim they never got that deposit. They have a receipt for renting a wheelchair, but it is really windy and our receipts are literally littering the ground, so anyone could grab one.

I had a $200 variance the day before and I don’t want another one. I call my manager and it escalates to my supervisor, who decides that a five-dollar deposit isn’t worth this much trouble and just gives it to them.

Hope they spend their $10 well!