I played hockey from the time I was able to stand until a horrific injury at age thirteen caused a stop to my promising hockey career. I was wheelchair-bound for months with an injured leg and had intense physiotherapy until I was twenty. I was able to regain the ability to place weight on my leg, but I now have a limp if I walk for long distances and am considered disabled because of this. Because of this disability, I am exempt from physical education in school. 

When I am fourteen, I am back to walking semi-normally, though I am still attending physiotherapy twice a week after school. I am walking through the hallway one day on my way to lunch when I am stopped by one of the club teachers. She holds out a form to me, which happens to be the hockey team sign-up form. At the very top of the sign-up sheet is my name, crudely written as if a toddler had written it.

Teacher: “Are you well enough to play hockey?”

Me: “I’m not, and I never signed up.”

Due to several incidents in the past where students signed up for teams and activities and didn’t follow through with fees for equipment and uniforms, our school has a strict policy that if these fees are not paid, you will be given detention until you pay the school back.

Teacher: “Okay, I’ll omit you from the form.”

Thinking my friends have pulled a prank on me, I ask them if they signed me up. All of them say no, but a week later, my name is on the sign-up sheet for the ski club in the same crude writing. I am getting suspicious, and I ask my friends again, but all of them repeat that they aren’t responsible for my name being on the sign-up sheet.

I have just gotten back into snowboarding at this point, but I am nowhere near ready to return to doing it on a club level. I go to [Teacher].

Me: “Someone put my name on the ski club sign-up sheet, but I’m not interested. Someone must be signing me up for things without my permission.”

Teacher: “I’ll look into it, and I’ll tell the rest of the athletic faculty that if they see your name, they should ignore it.”

Things seem to be back to normal, but after a few months, I am called to the principal’s office. Sitting there is the head teacher of the athletic faculty, my dad, and the principal. I am told to sit down, and the principal produces a startling amount of forms — each one of them an athletic sign-up sheet with my name on it.

Principal: “Why are you signing up for so many clubs and teams but not following through on them?”

I tell them my side of the story, complete with how I spoke with another teacher about it.

Head Teacher: “You’re wasting people’s time and money. I’ve already ordered three uniforms for you, and you’ve never shown up for practice!”

The principal agrees, but my dad, who has been looking over all the sign-up sheets, speaks up.

Dad: “I can tell [My Name] didn’t sign these. I know their handwriting. If we can prove their innocence here, we shouldn’t be on the hook for the fees.”

The principal believes this is a good idea, but the teacher is stewing in anger. The principal hands me a sheet of paper and a pen.

Principal: “Write your name, please.”

I do so and show him.

Head Teacher: “You must have written your name on those sign-up sheets with your other hand to get out of paying! This must be some prank you’re pulling!”

I shrugged and switched hands, writing my name with my other hand. I turned the paper and showed the principal, my father, and [Head Teacher] my writing. This satisfied the principal, and my father was just sitting with a big grin on his face. 

On the paper were two nearly-identical signatures: one with my left and one with my right. Being ambidextrous, I learned how to write with both hands very early on.

The principal dismissed my dad and me, but my father hung back to speak with the principal and [Head Teacher] before we left. I didn’t know what happened until we got home later that night.

My dad had recognized [Head Teacher] as someone he had gone to high school with, who had bullied him relentlessly. Once I had left the room, my father asked if maybe he could test a theory he had. He placed a paper before [Head Teacher] and asked him to write my name. Humoring my dad, [Head Teacher] did so using his left hand. My father told him to use his right hand instead, knowing that [Head Teacher] was left-handed. 

The handwriting matched.

[Head Teacher] was placed on administrative leave, and an investigation ensued. [Head Teacher] had seen my last name and knew I was my dad’s son because I was born while my parents were still in high school. He hadn’t intended for me to find out about the forms, but when [Teacher] told him that she had spoken to me about it, he doubled down and began signing me up for all athletic clubs, hoping that I wouldn’t find out and would have to pay the fees.

[Head Teacher] was still on leave by the end of the school year, and by the beginning of the next, he had been transferred to a school at least two hours away.

It’s spring break, which means a lot of college kids come into the store to either buy stuff to party, buy stuff to recover from a party, or play pranks to get reactions out of staff for their TikToks.

A group of college guys comes through my checkout with just a cucumber and some Vaseline, obviously hoping to get a reaction out of me. It would be cute if it weren’t so unoriginal.

Customer: “So… how’s your week going?”

Me: “The usual. Just working.”

Customer: “Well… maybe if you’re tired of working you could come to our place and ring these items through again.”

The customer winks while his friends start giggling, one of them badly concealing the fact that he’s recording on his phone.

Me: “Hmm, this item isn’t scanning properly. One moment.”

As a checkout manager, I have access to the store speakers, and even though we have tablets that allow us to price-check on the fly, I decide to have some fun with some old-school grocery store stereotypes.

Me: *On the store loudspeakers* “Price check on the ultra-tiny cucumbers? Price check on the inadequately proportioned cucumbers?”

The guys have stopped laughing now that they realize that not only am I not giving them the embarrassed reaction they wanted, but I am actively turning it around on them.

Me: *To the guys* “Yeah, sometimes a micro-cucumber will accidentally be shipped along with the regular big boys. I can’t honestly charge you full price for something so small and ineffective. To be fair, I don’t think you could even give this kind of thing away.”

The main guy tries to come up with something witty, but settles on:

Customer: “F*** you, b****!”

He storms out, with the other guys following looking a mixture of annoyed and embarrassed. My manager comes over a little later.

Manager: “That weird price check you called for earlier… spring breakers?”

Me: “Spring breakers.”

Manager: “Ah. Very good. Carry on.”

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I live in a ground-floor apartment near the downtown area. My only door opens directly outside, and I have a small light over the door. My street is very dark and has very few streetlights for a street so close to downtown. I like to leave my door light on so I can see at night.

Some college student starts making a habit of punching out my light. He’ll walk past my apartment with a group of drunk loud people, and he’ll punch out my light. I don’t ever get a good look at him, but he always has short black hair with frosted tips.

I basically have to buy a new lightbulb every day for about a month, and I’m getting extremely fed up with this. So, I do something a little naughty. I go to a home goods store and buy an “’insect zapper” lightbulb.

“Insect zapper” lightbulbs were a bit of a short-term fad, and I remembered them being sold by the local home goods store, but by the time I go in, these things are hard to find! According to the manager, they discontinued sales due to liability issues!

It takes a lot of work to find one, on clearance, hidden in the back, and the manager almost refuses to sell it to me because it’s dangerous, but I convince him that I understand electricity well enough that I won’t kill myself.

I install it in my door light with the hope that the moron will electrocute himself, but if I admit this fact to anyone, it could leave me open to being charged with a felony. Booby traps are very illegal.

It doesn’t take long before the light bulb breaker takes the bait. I’m not there for the event, but I get home one day to find the light bulb smashed.

A few days later, the cops are at my door asking pointed questions about my light bulb.

Did I know that the zapper bulb was potentially dangerous? No, if it was dangerous, why would it be available for sale?

Someone could have gotten hurt very badly by touching the bulb, and it was exposed in a public space? I didn’t know that hanging over my doorway twenty feet away from the sidewalk was a public space, and I certainly didn’t know that someone could have been hurt.

Someone was hurt? No! Are they okay?

He had to go to the hospital?! Oh, no! I hope he’s all right!

Did I know that he would touch the light bulb? No. How can I predict someone’s behavior?

I’ve been making police reports all month about my lightbulbs being smashed? Yeah, I have, but this wasn’t a lightbulb; it was a bug smasher.

Do you think that the person who touched it is the same person who smashed the lightbulbs? How would I know? I didn’t witness the event. Does he have short black hair and frosted tips? Oh, he does? Yeah, that’s the person who’s been smashing my bulbs.

Did I deliberately install a dangerous bug zapper to hurt him? No. I would never. I had mostly given up. The bug zapper doesn’t even project much light. I didn’t think he would even notice it. I also thought that the wire cage would protect it.

The attorney general declined to press charges against me, but the lightbulb smasher came after me in civil court for his hospital bills. I responded with a countersuit for the cost of all of the bulbs he smashed.

In the end, the judge threw out both his claim and my counter-claim with no option to re-file.

And my front door light was never smashed again. I feel comfortable sharing this story online as the statute of limitations for booby-trapping my lightbulb has expired.

I worked at a high-end steak house for years. I live in the South, so when someone orders tea, you ask them if they want sweetened or unsweetened tea.

I was waiting on a table of four businessmen, and I went to take their drink order. All ordered a drink from the bar, and three of the four wanted water, as well. The other gentleman ordered tea.

Me: “Sweet or unsweet?”

Customer: “Just as sweet as you are, sugar.”

Ugh, gross. So, I brought him an unsweetened tea.

Me: “Here. It’s just as sweet as I am.”

The look on his face when he sipped it was priceless. The laughter from his colleagues when they figured it out was also priceless.

And my tip? About fifty percent and more than $100. Not bad for a four-top!

Honestly, they were a fun group, and I’m glad we could all get a laugh!

Years and years ago, I worked as a bank teller. Ninety percent of my job was just cashing cheques and being a living ATM. This was back when pennies were still in use.

One day, this guy comes in.

Customer: “I need a lot of pennies — a ridiculous amount of pennies. [Local Business] screwed me over, and I want to pull the classic: pay for something with an inconvenient amount of loose change.”

He’s super excited to explain how this business screwed him over. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s pretty clear even in his telling that it is perfectly fair he is being charged this money. He’s practically giggling as he explains how inconvenient it will be for the people he’s paying.

But here’s the thing. Maybe this works down in the States, but in Canada, there is a very reasonable limit to how much you can pay with change. The payee is allowed to reject any loose change payment over a certain amount.

Thinking I might be able to save everyone involved a bunch of hassle — myself included — I explain this to my customer. The guy isn’t having it. He just keeps saying:

Customer: “Pennies are money, so I’m allowed to do it, and you’d better give me my pennies!”

At this point, I figure it’s not really my problem what he wants to do with his money, and I get to work.

He wants a few hundred dollars in pennies. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s like 300 pounds. It’s so many pennies that I have to tell him we don’t actually have enough on hand. We have to make a special order for him. There’s a small fee, but he doesn’t care.

A few days later, he happily loads up boxes and boxes of pennies and leaves.

A week later, he’s back — only now, he’s dragging in a hockey bag of loose pennies. I guess he spent some time opening all the rolls just to make it harder.

Customer: “[Local Business]’s owner refused to accept my payment. So… I’d like to deposit this bag of pennies back into my account, and I’ll bring the rest in later.”

Me: “Sir, we only take rolled coins; you’ll have to do that first.”

I’m not sure when Coinstar machines came out, but my small town definitely didn’t have one.

I missed the man’s return, but I heard that he eventually came back after going through the trouble of rerolling all his money — a lot of trouble to get right back to where he started.

If only he had listened.