My boss told me this story. When his daughter was born, he filled out her registration form. Because he was sleep-deprived from being by his wife’s side through the birth, he made a huge mistake on the form. His daughter’s official birth certificate came back with this exact error, so he had to go down to the appropriate government office to get this corrected.

Father: “Hello. I’m here to correct my daughter’s birth certificate.”

Employee: “What seems to be the problem?”

Father: “It says here that my daughter was born on March 2nd, 03/02, of this year. She was actually born on February 3rd, 02/03.”

Employee: “Sir, we can’t change the date of birth on your daughter’s certificate. This is the information that the hospital provided to us. The only thing we can do is correct any spelling errors.”

Father: “Yeah, you got the form from the hospital, which was filled out by me. I was the one who made the mistake. It’s my fault, but I’m honestly surprised that the registration exchanged hands multiple times and nobody noticed. Also, how do you not have a contingency plan for this?”

Employee: “Sir, we make sure the forms are checked thoroughly.”

Father: “With all due respect, you’re telling me that my daughter was born on March 2nd. I was there at the hospital with my wife on February 3rd. The hospital records can prove that my wife was there on that date, and you’d be hard-pressed to find any entry records for March 2nd. Do you know why? It is still February now, as we speak! March hasn’t even happened yet! Is my daughter a time traveler?”

Employee: “Let me get my supervisor for you.”

I can’t fully remember what happened after this, other than that my boss was finally able to get his daughter’s birth certificate corrected. The bureaucracy was painful, all the same.

When I was in high school, I was once “asked” to babysit a neighbour’s kids. She worded it as, “Your mom said you could babysit for me,” but I later learned that my mom had only agreed to let her ask me. Being a literal child, and a timid one, I assumed I didn’t really have a choice and agreed. I had never babysat anyone before, not even someone near my own age, so I have no idea why they thought I was suited to watch their children.

When I got there, I learned there were four of them: two older girls and two young boys, one still in diapers. One of the boys was running around naked, and nobody seemed to care. I understand that this is normal for young kids, but even the parents didn’t say anything, and I had to ask one of the older kids to take him to get dressed. Their house was a mess, and the kids didn’t try to clean up after themselves at all, even the ones old enough to know better.

All that, I could have dealt with. The worst part was when I learned that instead of leaving to go to a bar or something, as I assumed, the mother wanted me to babysit while she and her friends locked themselves in a room and got high. I have no problem with that in general, but I really didn’t appreciate being in the same house as a bunch of strangers taking at-the-time illegal substances!

I stayed there for three hours, and I had to tell the mother that my time was up and I was leaving because she wasn’t paying attention to the clock. Seeming barely aware of her surroundings, she got up, brought her youngest kid to her bed, and fell asleep with him while the rest of her kids were still awake.

For those three hours, I got a total of $35, delivered to me over a week later — after my mother hounded her — and the woman took it out of her sweaty bra to hand it to me.

There were two further incidents with this woman before we finally got her to stop speaking to our family, including one where she got drunk and threw trash all over our yard in the middle of the night!

The strip mall that I work in has a back alley, which is there so that stores can take trash to the dumpster without going through their front door. It’s not an area intended for customers, since there’s nothing back there except for garbage. There’s nothing stopping customers from going back there, but the area is intended just for store use.

This strip mall has an after-school tutoring business and a karate studio, among several other businesses.

One day, I go to take my store’s trash to the dumpster, and there is a pile of human feces in the dirt near the dumpster. Since this isn’t my store’s problem, it’s not in customer view, I don’t have biohazard clean-up tools, and poop biodegrades anyway, I make the decision not to pick it up. It appears that every other store in the strip mall makes the same decision because the flower bed feces stayed there for a few days.

One day, I’m taking out the trash, and a customer with a child tries to get my attention.

Customer: “Hey! Why is this still here?”

Me: “Don’t worry; it’ll wash away. It’s going to rain tonight.”

Customer: “This has been here for four days, and no one has picked it up.”

Me: “None of us have the biohazard tools to clean it up. It’s safest to leave it here. Dogs poop here all the time.”

Customer: “This isn’t dog poop! This is human poop! My child pooped here almost a week ago, and no one cleaned it up!”

I made up some excuse about how long I was allowed to leave my store, turned around, and left her. I’m too much of a coward to confront someone who isn’t even my customer and who is crazy enough to blame someone else for her son’s poop.

I used to work as a lifeguard at a fitness center. Our policy was that any child who had not passed a swim test must be supervised by their parent or guardian while they were in the water. Many parents tried to use the lifeguards as free babysitters while they worked out or sat in the hot tub or sauna. Most parents would respect the rule when we told them to supervise their kids. One instance when they did not happened on a Saturday morning, which was often our busiest time.

I noticed that a man had left his young daughter — I would guess younger than five — alone in the pool while he went to the hot tub. I was the guard stationed closest to the hot tub, so I went over to tell him the policy.

Me: “Sir, you cannot leave your daughter unattended in the pool.”

Father: “It’s okay. She’s just in the shallow end.”

Me: “Our policy is that parents must attend any child that has not passed the swim test.”

Father: “I can watch her from here.”

That was false; you could barely see the pool when you were in the hot tub.

Me: “I’m sorry, but we need you to stay within arm’s reach of her in case she needs help.”

Father: *Now angry* “Isn’t your job to watch her?”

Me: “Yes, but we need parents to supervise their kids because it’s dangerous for them to be alone.”

Father: “This is ridiculous! I can watch her from here.”

Me: “Again, I’m sorry, but you need to stay near her. If you have any questions about the policy, you can go and talk to my manager.”

He went and grabbed his daughter from the pool and went to talk to my manager. I didn’t see him again, but I was told what went down.

This guy went and yelled at my manager until she cried. She was the best manager I had there and was not the type to cry easily. This earned him a ban from the fitness center.

But the worst part of the story happened when a different manager told him to not come back. She noticed that his breath smelled like he had been drinking — right before he loaded his daughter in the car and drove away. We called the police on him, but I never found out if anything happened.

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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