A kid comes up to the counter to buy a book. After tax, he’s short by 82 cents. I can see no parent in sight, so I take out my wallet and give him a dollar.
Two minutes later, his mom comes up with the receipt and asks where his change is. I politely explain that I gave him a dollar to cover the remaining amount. All I get is a cold stare as she briskly walks off without saying thank you.
I get an application for an internship, which I’m a little surprised by since we filled that months ago, and we took it down from the employment page. After looking, however, I realize that while the link to the intern listing was removed from the page, the intern listing itself, which was its own page, was never taken down. I respond, explaining and apologizing for any inconvenience, saying we’re not hiring but I’ll keep his resume on hand.
My email includes a signature with my business number. Almost immediately, I get a phone call. It’s the kid I replied to — and I do mean “kid,” since he’s only 17. He very smugly informs me that it doesn’t matter because we have the listing still searchable online, ergo we owe him a job or he’s going to sue us for false advertising. He finishes it up with, “So put me on with your hiring department.” Pause for emphasis. “Or else.” All of this is delivered in the absolute smuggest, most confident tone I’ve ever heard.
I kind of sit for a moment in stunned silence at how brazen this kid is, before I go, “Well, gee, I guess you got us there,” then burst out into genuine laughter and hang up. He immediately sends a very prissy and outraged email to my boss demanding I get fired, who also thinks the whole thing is hilarious. The kid continues to email us threats of legal action on and off for the next month, which we all take turns reading aloud in various dramatic tones. That was a few years ago, and I still wonder if he ever remembers doing that and cringes now, or if he’s still that same entitled jerk. Hopefully for everyone around him, it’s the former.
This takes place about ten years or so ago. It’s the fifth of December. It’s a holiday called Sinterklaas, originally a children’s holiday where they get presents, but at this point of time I still celebrate it with my parents for the fun, even though I’m already a teenager.
We have this big bag of presents, with most presents bought by my parents, a few by me, and also some by my grandmother. Since I was little, my grandmother has handed Sinterklaas presents to all her children to put in the bag for them and their children.
We haven’t realised it yet, but most likely at this point my grandmother is already suffering slightly from dementia and the first few quirky things have started to show up. One of them is the gifting of odd presents that don’t seem to fit.
That is also what happens this Sinterklaas. My dad opens a present that was clearly from my grandmother — we can clearly see it from the wrapping paper; my parents and I used the same stash of wrapping paper, but my grandmother had her own to use, of course. The gift is a can of deodorant spray. Now, my mother has been pushing my dad to use deodorant for years, but he has always refused. He’s always been that smelly man you meet on a hot day. My mother and I give each other an awkward look because we both realise that is not the best gift my dad could have gotten, and my dad puts it down and forces out a, “Thank you, Sinterklaas.” After the unwrapping, we talk about it, and we conclude my grandmother has forgotten my dad doesn’t use deodorant.
My dad, however, is not one to waste gifts, so he says he’ll use it only on special occasions or very hot days. At first, he does this. We expect him to stop when the can is done. Indeed, the first few months after the can is finished, there is no other, but all of a sudden another one pops up from a different brand.
Now, quite a few years onward, my dad is using deodorant every day. My mother and I talked about it recently and we realised that with my grandmother’s most likely dementia-induced, misguided gift… she actually got my dad to see the use of deodorant. We can’t tell her this, because now her dementia has gotten quite bad and she doesn’t take in any new information anymore, but my mother and I certainly are very grateful for this.
I was hired as an early-morning stocker at a retail store and to help customers on the floor for a short time after the store opened. One morning, the maintenance person, who hangs ceiling signs as part of their duties, called off and there was a new sale starting, so a number of signs needed to be placed. One of my coworkers and I were called upon to hang those signs using a schematic that didn’t match the layout of the store, and equipment we were unfamiliar with. Also, the store had very high ceilings and the ladder was taller than any I’d ever been on — the store had no lifts or platform ladders — and I’m uncomfortable at heights, as was my coworker. We were through about half of the signs when the store manager approached us and “told” (yelled) us that most of those we had placed were not in the right place and needed to be moved, so those had to be redone, in addition to hanging the remainder of the signs.
As a result of our inexperience, the task, which should have been completed before the store opened, was not. Shortly before we finished, my coworker, who was part-time, had to leave, so I completed the project on my own. I was getting ready to take the ladder and equipment to the back of the store when I was approached by the manager and chewed out, loudly, in front of customers, for not doing the job quickly enough and having to redo some of the signs that were originally placed. I told the manager I would speak with him in the stock room after everything was put away, and he told me I needed to respond that very moment. I refused.
When the supplies were put away, I called him to meet me and told him I didn’t appreciate being reprimanded in front of customers, that I was not going to stoop to that level of irresponsibility and lack of respect, and that I had considered walking out when he originally reprimanded us, but because I needed the job and he needed someone to hang the signs, I had stuck it out in spite of being afraid of heights, and being given a task with a faulty schematic, unfamiliar equipment, and little instruction. I also told him that if I ever heard him reprimanding employees in front of customers again, especially for something that was not in their control, I wouldn’t hesitate to report him to corporate.
He never really apologized, but one day when he started to call me out on the sales floor for a misplaced promotional display — which someone else had set up — all I had to do was raise my eyebrows and say his name to get him to stop and walk away. Also, I rose quickly from stocker, to floor associate, to cashier, to lead cashier, to layaway supervisor, and then to merchandiser before I quit four years later. Sometimes it does pay to confront the boss.
When I was fourteen we had a fire late at night that destroyed the roof and attic of our house. Thankfully, nobody was hurt, because our neighbours saw the fire and alerted the fire brigade. We found out that the fire was caused by lightning striking the overhead power line. The city was in the process of taking down the lines and putting them underground. Our house still had the overhead line, but they had already cut the grounding.
Since it was their fault, they were responsible for putting up a new roof. They had almost finished it one Friday but left the roof ridge open the entire length of the house. My mom asked them about rain, but they said that due to the slant of the roof it wouldn’t rain inside. Also, the forecast was good and they were finishing the roof on Monday.
Lo and behold, on Sunday one of the worst summer storms of the year happened. We were in church and came home to rain pouring down the open roof. We didn’t have enough containers, so we got all our woollen rugs and spread them under the opening to catch the water and prevent it from soaking through to our bedrooms. My mom and I spent two hours wringing woolen rugs into tubs and my twelve-year-old brother tried to carry them downstairs and outside to empty them. We called the guy in charge and he told us not to bother him because the rain had seeped into his basement and he was busy.
They did repair all the water damage, but a little help during the crisis would have been appreciated.
