I’ve been teaching for a long time. A LONG time. Many of my students’ parents were my students, and in a couple of cases, grandparents. I have no tolerance for BS anymore.

The school provides buses for all students, even the ones who live in the house across the narrow road from the entrance to the school parking lot and on the adjacent property to the school, as every time the district has tried to cut courtesy bus service for students close enough to walk to school, the parents have been up in arms.

And still, the parking lot is full of parents dropping off their children every morning, with the official traffic study showing roughly half of the students being brought in by parents.

It is routine for parents to drive at highway speeds, the fastest clocked this year is 50mph, and to go around vehicles trying to park, in the parking lot, at a school. Often passing on both sides.

Last week, I had a parent in a Maserati (a not uncommon personal vehicle here) pass between me and the stall I was turning into, while signalling, to do a bootlegger turn rather than drive the additional few feet to the turn around. Again, not uncommon. The parking lot is painted with tire scars.

I stopped.

He was blocked.

I got out, went to his window, and told him that I was happy that he found a car that properly compensated for the size of his genitalia, but given that it is a school, not a Formula One course, he should drive appropriately. I can say these things. I’m old, and I’m retiring. His response is unprintable and may constitute a criminal threat, but it proceeded no further at that point.

It took less than an hour, though. I was called by the Assistant Principal to explain why I was being disrespectful. I told her to look at the video; it’s the 2020’s, and there are cameras everywhere.

I have heard no more about it. No follow-up, apology, anything. But I expect no less. Or more.

I work in a store a little larger than a regular corner shop, and a little smaller than a supermarket, so from my position at the tobacco counter, I can see customers coming and going.

I see a customer walk in with no basket or trolley, and within minutes, he’s walking back out. It’s very obvious he has a bottle of wine down his trousers (he wasn’t THAT pleased to see me).

I watch him (through the glass doors) casually walk out into the car park, up to his car, open the door, pull the bottle out from his trousers, place it inside somewhere, and close the door before walking to another shop using the same car park.

What I did not see him do was lock his car.

Being a slow day, I walked outside to his car, opened the door, and found the wine under the seat. I picked up the bottle, returned to my shop, and placed the bottle on the shelf. I then got back to the tobacco desk just in time to see him walk back to his car, open the door, and look under his seat.

The procession of facial expressions that followed provided literal minutes of entertainment.

I run a charitable event at my work (interior design firm). We usually put on a carnival to raise money for charity and raise awareness of our company/establish ourselves in the community/attract customers (but all the money goes to charity).

I stood up at the carnival and gave a big speech about the importance of the charity and how the cause was personal to me and my family (it funded cerebral palsy research that particular year, and my father lives with it).

I was very visible throughout the whole event, sharing my story, raising money, and running carnival booths, etc.

Fast forward a couple of months. I bumped into someone while in line to get coffee who said they’d met me at that event last year. We ended up starting a pleasant conversation, so we sat outside to drink our coffees together.

In hindsight, she seemed a little… “off”, a little tightly wound, but it didn’t register over such a brief encounter.

She mentioned how she had been so glad to see a large-scale cerebral palsy charity event and hadn’t seen us do any events since.

I had started to explain the yearly nature of the carnival and how we pick different charities, but she (unintentionally) cut me off, caught up in her own emotions, as she began to recount a moving story about a sibling who suffered from the condition.

I was telling her how terrible that was and how I completely understood, (in reference to my own experiences).

Before I could really get into talking about my own story, she checked the clock and said she didn’t realize how much time had passed, and she needed to go, but she appreciated the work I did and my support in listening to her, etc.

She began fumbling in her purse for her keys. Then, as she was leaving, she said, “And here’s a little something to support your work,” producing something folded in a napkin from her purse and leaving it at my side.

I’m an interior designer, so I had no idea what she could be talking about in terms of supporting my work, but we were seated just by the street parking, so she was gone too quickly for me to ask.

I unfolded the napkin, and to my shock, she had slipped $100 into the napkin. I was dumbfounded with confusion as to why this perfect stranger would give me any money to “support my work” in commercial interior design, without getting anything designed in exchange.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I eventually realized she must’ve come to the carnival and assumed the charity itself had put on the event, so she thought I worked for them, not an interior design firm.

It took me ten to fifteen minutes to realize, so it was far too late to try and catch up to her, and all we’d exchanged were first names. I didn’t even know where she worked.

So, without any hopes of tracking her down, I figured the best thing to do would be to just donate the money to the charity. I did, and that was that.

Fast forward a few more months. Somehow or another this woman came to realize I don’t work for the charity but am in fact in the for-profit sector (I think it is because I was featured in an online ad that the firm’s been running).

She left a message on my work phone, half angry, half embarrassed, saying she was “willing to forgo holding me accountable” if I paid her back in full.

The problem is, I didn’t have the money anymore; I donated it! I explained this to her, but she wanted proof.

I left her a message (she didn’t pick up when I called) explaining that the company ran a carnival event to raise money for the charity, but that we aren’t the charity ourselves, and that I absolutely did donate her money to the charity so she could rest assured.

I didn’t hear anything back for about three days.

On the fourth day after I’d left the message, the police showed up at our firm’s headquarters. We’re almost all working remotely because by this time, COVID was in full swing, so they unduly terrified our teenage receptionist.

I was also scared half to death, because I had to have a serious meeting with my boss in which she asked if I had misrepresented myself as a charitable worker and collected donations in a personal capacity, because of the claims this woman made to our business.

When I explained, my boss blew her off, and that’s when she got the police involved.

This woman called and said we were masquerading as a charity, scamming people out of money, so the police came to confirm we were operating a legitimate business. They saw nothing out of the ordinary, obviously, and that was that.

Or so we thought.

Fast forward to a week later. My boss got a letter from a lawyer (I don’t know exactly what it said), but it accused us of scamming this woman and demanded that her money be returned.

I wish I could have just provided proof of the donation, but I have thousands of emails, I delete most of them, and I could not for the life of me find the confirmation email that reflected my donation.

So, instead, my boss made another $100 donation to the charity, took a screenshot, and sent it to the lawyer. We haven’t heard from her (the lawyer) since, so I don’t think she was wild about representing this woman in the first place.

We have still gotten a couple wild phone calls from the woman saying since the date on the $100 donation is so recent, it means we still had the money, and we should’ve returned it to her when she asked (why, if she wanted to donate it to charity anyways?).

Anyways, my boss explaining we donated it the first time, and this was a second donation to assuage her concerns, has not helped.

Eventually, we just blocked her number.

In high school, a few friends and I worked at a local chain restaurant. We were fully able to run the day shift, but had never really broken down the equipment and closed up for the evening.

One particular night, a few of the night shift had called in sick, so we were asked to pull a double and close the restaurant, which we did. We essentially worked from 10 AM until after midnight. My three friends and I, and a manager. We were really tired but felt that we had done the right thing and helped out the company.

The next day, the four of us came into work on another day shift. The day manager pulls us into her office, one by one, and informs us that she would need to write us up because we hadn’t properly cleaned and filtered the fry grease. Regardless of our leaning in for a double, having never closed or been trained on closing procedures, and having been given permission by the night manager to leave (meaning all closing work had been completed).

After a quick chat with my friends, it was agreed that I was going to push back on the write-up, and if the day manager insisted on writing us up, we would quit.

I informed the manager that we were collectively not going to sign the write-up slips. Her alternative threat was that we would be fired, to which I informed her that if she insisted on writing us up for helping out, pulling a double, not being trained, and having been released by the night manager, then we would quit. Collectively. Immediately.

She responded with “If you don’t sign the write-up, then you will be fired.”

A staring contest follows, and I eventually break in with an “Okay, I guess we are fired then.”

We turned in our hats, quit symbolically, and left. It was really, really amazing. My friend quit mid-burger prep, and my other friend simply walked off the cash register in the middle of taking an order. We clocked out and walked out the back, leaving only the day manager in the restaurant, with customers in line and at the drive-thru.

Later that same day, we decided to return to our place of prior employment… to have dinner.

The night shift must have still been sick, as the entire restaurant was staffed with managers from nearby restaurants (same chain), including our day manager, who was now pulling her own double, and the night manager who had released us the prior evening. There was nothing better than eating our burgers and watching the management staff fail at every station and knowing that their pride, lack of rational flexibility, and threats had resulted in one of the most righteous meals we ever ate together.

We were all employed at the next chain restaurant down the street in a matter of days. It’s been nearly thirty years, and I remember that stand-off, her ultimatum, and our walk out like it was last week.

I worked at a place where you couldn’t be colorblind because you were reading schematics and identifying connectors of varying colors. There were hundreds of tiny connectors in one array.

Somehow, by the grace of God, this guy got hired. Either they forgot to implement the colorblind test, or he successfully guessed his way through it.

He trains for a week and is put on the line to build $20k cables for missiles. Yes… missiles.

His very first connector, he spent all day on, soldering and connecting and signing the paperwork and the steps, and then gave it to quality control for inspection.

It was one of “The most f***ed up examples” of a connector anyone had seen.

The next day, the guy admits he’s color blind and asks whether he can keep the job. He’s let go because he cost the company $20k.

The connector was put on display in the HR office to drive home the importance of sticking to hiring procedures.