(One coworker and I are finishing up working a dinner at a country club with a dozen adults who have been drinking and very needy all evening.)

Customer: “Thank you both so much for your help this evening; you were absolutely wonderful, and so kind to us!”

(The customer hugs both of us as the party is leaving. After cleaning up the tables, my coworker picks up the check.)

Coworker: “Guess how much their bill was?”

Me: “I’m afraid to ask.”

Coworker: “$1,017.”

Me: “Oh, my gosh! What did they tip?!”

Coworker: “Nothing. At all.”

(I suppose some people think that a “thank you” is enough for servers who live off of tips, even if that was the only group my coworker and I were able to serve all night.)

(My mom and I have just arrived at the emergency room after being sent from a local fast ER over possible appendicitis. While we are getting checked in, an older man arrives.)

Man: “I’m having chest pain and pain in my arm.”

Nurse: “We’re taking you back immediately, sir. Please get in this wheelchair.”

Man: “No thanks; I’m good to walk.”

Nurse: “Please, sir, take a seat in the wheelchair.”

Man: “No, I insist I’m good to walk.”

Mom: “Take a d*** seat in the chair. If you’re having a heart attack do you really want to be walking right now?”

(He sat in the chair and grumbled while they took him away.)

(I attend a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. A student enters the class wearing a shirt with our college name in red and white, rather than our own school colors, blue and gold.)

Professor: “[Student], why are you wearing a [College] sweatshirt in Harvard colors?”

Student: “Ambition.”

(My dad and I are out running errands when we pull into a gas station to fill up. A young couple pulls up nearby and I overhear their conversation. The guy gets out of the running car to pump gas, then the girl leans over and turns the engine off.)

Guy: “Hey, why’d you turn it off?”

Girl: “You aren’t supposed to run the engine while you pump gas.”

Guy: “What? Why not?”

Girl: “I don’t know; those are the rules.”

(They go back and forth for a bit so I decide to intervene.)

Me: “Engines run on combustion. Putting gas in a tank that’s running could cause a fire.”

Girl: “See?”

Guy: *skeptical* “Well, people can believe what they want to believe, but we’ll do it your way.”

I have an old box TV in my room that is as heavy as it is cumbersome. Additionally, it’s wedged high up on a tall dresser into a corner that requires me to stand on top of a desk to move it or reach the hook-ups in the back, so once I’ve hooked something to it, like a DVD player or game console, it’ll stay there for months until I feel like moving it again. At one point I brought the family [Console #1] up to my room and hooked it up to the TV, thinking it wouldn’t be a problem since the console was ancient and I’m the only person who still played its games anymore anyway. Unfortunately, despite having long since forgotten about its existence in the household for months, the second my younger, 15-year-old sister realized that she no longer had free access to it, she decided that she wanted it.

So, she harassed me. And harassed me. And no matter how many times I told her to go play the [Consoles #2 or #3] instead, she just had to have that console, because the only game she wanted to play right just then was on [Console #1]. So, after months and months of her harassment and my refusal to let her play games in my room (she always eats in my bed and spills drinks, despite me telling her she’s not allowed to bring them into my room), I finally gave in and went to unhook it.

First, I almost fell off my desk, because the cat jumped up at that moment and scared the crap out of me. Then, while moving the TV, I accidentally dropped the corner on my hand and painfully crushed some of my fingers. Then, I nearly fell off the desk again, when I panicked and quickly stopped the [Console #1] from falling off the dresser when the cords caught on something and pulled as I moved the TV. Finally, I got the [Console #1] unhooked, moved the TV back into place, and brought it downstairs, where I had to climb in back of the living room TV to unhook the [Console #4] so I had a place to plug in the [Console #1] and get it set up for her.

My sister played a game for all of five minutes, and then decided she was bored of it already. She switched to the [Console #3] and never played the [Console #1] again. I could have killed her.