While I’m checking out at the bakery, a tired-looking man comes in.

Customer: “Can I get one of your vegetarian cakes with the cheese, and can you write on it?”

Employee #1: “Um, we can definitely do a custom message, yeah, but what was that cake?”

Customer: “Vegetarian?”

Employee #1: “All our cakes are vegetarian. Do you mean vegan? And what’s this cheese?”

Customer: “Oh, d***, I don’t know what it’s called… It’s a vegetarian cake and it has cheese frosting. My sister-in-law loves ’em.”

Employee #2: “Sir… do you mean carrot cake? With cream cheese frosting?”

Customer: “Yes! That. Thank you!”

Employee #1: “Okay, and what’s the message?”

Customer: “Can it say… ‘Thank you for looking after our dumb a**es while we work out how to be parents,’ but make it sound better?”

Employee #2: “Just a guess… How recently was your child born?”

Customer: “Is it still Wednesday?”

[Employee #2] hands the customer a muffin.

Employee #2: “Congratulations! It’s Friday. Why don’t you sit down and have a snack, and we’ll workshop that message?”

About ten seconds later, as I’m walking out…

Employee #1: “Do you think we should wake him up?”

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I was riding in the car with my mom, and a car behind us started tailing us. The car kept trying to get us to move faster than the speed limit. It got to the point where the driver was hitting our rear bumper.

My mom pulled into a car wash and called the police. We waited a little bit while my mom collected herself and then went back on the road.

A few miles down the road, the same car that had been tailing us had crashed into the back of another car, and police were surrounding the driver.

My mom burst out laughing after driving past the accident.

For months, every time I visit my friend in a rather nice neighborhood, I’ve seen this car on an empty street with a basketball hoop in the trunk. I mean that the hoop is mounted in the trunk with the trunk lid removed, and it’s standing vertically at regulation height.

Yesterday, I finally asked my friend the story.

A local dad put up a basketball hoop on the street (it’s an undeveloped dead-end street), so his kids could shoot some hoops — safely, since there was zero traffic on this road. At the end of the dead-end street is a fence bordering a trailer park. The man in the trailer on the other side of the fence reported the hoop, and the police had to get the dad to take it down.

Annoyed that this guy was preventing his kids from playing basketball, the dad bought a car for a few hundred dollars and had the shop down the road weld the basketball hoop into the trunk. There aren’t any parking rules for that street except that a vehicle can’t remain in one place for more than fourteen days. So, every fourteen days, the dad moves the car to the other side of the street. The car still runs — barely — and there’s a mechanic/gas station across the street if he needs one.

Many folks in the neighborhood now come to shoot hoops nightly. The police have left a handful of towing notices on the car, but they have since stopped responding to complaints about its presence. So, it seems the basketball car is here to stay!

My dad owns a small candy store in a small town. I work there part-time to make some money while I’m at school. There is no such thing as corporate, which means he is completely at liberty to refuse service to someone who’s acting entitled, exhibiting bigotry, or generally just being an a**.

My favourite demonstration from him happened when I was working the counter. A woman stepped in, saw me (a teenage boy) working the counter, and started asking for a discount while making very suggestive comments and motions that I’m not comfortable recounting in detail.

My dad overheard from the back room, emerged in a rage, and told this woman to f*** off.

Woman: “You can’t do this to me! I’m a paying customer!”

Dad: “No, you’re not. You’re an a**hole causing trouble with my employee, and he does not get paid to put up with your bulls***.”

Woman: “I’ve spent—”

Dad: “I don’t care how many times you’ve been here, or how much money you think you’ve spent here. If you’re in here right now, that’s because we have something you want. That means I’m the one in power.”

The woman stormed out, and my dad told me to grab a snack and take five.

I work for my dad at his store. I work the front counter and interact with most customers. Also, I look a lot more like my mom. My dad runs a separate business, as well, but anybody who needs to talk to him for either business can usually find him in the office here.

A guy showed up this morning looking pretty ruffled.

Guy: “Is [Dad] here?”

Me: “You just missed him! He is out for the morning doing a couple of things.”

He was very displeased with this information and became very loud and unprofessional. He started looking around the store and eventually came back to the front counter with a piece of equipment that he wanted to “trade” for some work that he apparently did for my dad before. Keep in mind that I know most of my dad’s workers and had never seen this guy before.

Me: “Sorry, but I don’t do any negotiations while he’s not here, and I can’t just let you leave the store with something for free. Normally, he wouldn’t want to take that route, but you’re welcome to discuss it with him once he’s back.”

Guy: “You’re making a big mistake here! You must not know [Dad] very well because he would do this for me!”

He went on for a while.

Me: “I actually do know him quite well, seeing as he is my father. Now, you can either leave or wait for my dad to get back.”

He was pretty speechless; I could tell he felt stupid and regretted his comment. He ended up waiting around in his truck for my dad to show up, and guess what? Dad wasn’t gonna do a trade. It’s almost like I know my boss well.

Apparently, the guy had just worked like two days for my dad and then quit. Plus, the thing he wanted to trade for was way more expensive than what he was owed. (He hadn’t been paid yet because we pay bi-weekly).

I swear, some of the people around here are nuts. But a petty “Don’t you know who I am?” moment made my day.