CONTENT WARNING: Harassment/Stalking

I’m a woman in my late twenties, and I work in a restaurant. I have a male customer, around fifty, whom I have served a couple of times before. He asked me out sometime in early 2020, and I told him no.

The day after Christmas of 2020, this man came in alone and sat in my section. I was hoping that he wouldn’t recognize me this time because I was wearing a mask and I had changed my hair. Unfortunately, he did remember me, but his meal was fairly uneventful.

The issue started when I dropped off his check. As I reached to pick up his payment, he grabbed my hand (during a global health crisis) and said:

Customer: “I love you.”

I was caught very off guard, so I just gave an awkward laugh and walked away to swipe his card and get him outta there. When I walked back with his receipt and card, he asked:

Customer: “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve? Would you like to go out with me?”

Me: “No, I will be home with my husband.“

Customer: “Oh, I didn’t realize you were married.” *Looking at my wedding ring* “Well, he’s a lucky man.”

And he winked. Gross. I told him to have a good night and walked away, deciding I was not going back to my section until he got up because he was creeping me out.

I figured that would be the end of it and I could go on with my night. No such luck. He sat at the table for another fifteen minutes waiting for me to return. I refused to go over there, so I asked other servers to run my food, and I helped run their food to other parts of the restaurant.

He finally got up, but then he went and stood by the host stand for another twenty minutes watching me. At that point, I was feeling super uncomfortable and getting very anxious about him still being there. I finally told my boss what was going on and that I was uncomfortable, so he kept his eye on the customer for me.

When the man finally left the building, [Boss] came to tell me that he’d watched the man get in his car and I could relax.

About thirty minutes later, [Boss] started hovering around my section.

Boss: “You haven’t done anything wrong, but I am going to be spending some time in my section.”

He did this twice, and over an hour after the customer had left, he pulled me to the side to talk to me.

It turned out the guy never left and was still sitting in his car. He had walked into the restaurant twice looking and wandering around and went to the bathroom. [Boss] was worried about me and called the cops on the guy. The cops came in to ask me what had happened, and they asked if [Boss] and I would like to have him trespassed.

Boss: “It’s your choice, [My Name].”

Me: “Yes. After this, I can’t imagine having to see him again.”

The cops pulled the man out of his car and told him he would be arrested if he ever came back to our restaurant.

This incident gave me pretty bad anxiety for a week or two after it happened. Why was he sitting in his car for so long? By the time the cops got to him, he had been at our restaurant for over two hours after he finished eating and paid for his meal. What would have happened if [Boss] hadn’t been watching him? I wouldn’t have known that he didn’t leave. Was he waiting for me to get off so he could follow me, kidnap me, rape me, murder me? Several weeks later, a manager is still walking me to my car every night when I leave.

I’m grateful my manager had my back and took my concerns seriously. But I hate that it went so far. I wish I would have had the quick thinking and the courage to tell him, “DON’T TOUCH ME.” I wish I could be more verbal and stand up for myself sooner instead of having a freeze-and-appease reaction. But I do feel like I learned from the situation, and hopefully, if there is ever another time I’m in a similar situation, I will be stronger.

I was at work as an emergency responder, in a patient’s apartment, when the police showed up. Both officers had snarls on their faces, and one was grumbling to himself. To be friendly, I asked what was wrong.

Officer #1: “[Officer #2] locked us out of the squad car, so now we have to wait for ESU [Emergency Services Unit, also known as SWAT] to let us back in.”

Me: “Oh… that sucks.”

The patient didn’t go to the hospital, so we went back downstairs to do paperwork. Due to the way the officers had parked on the two-way street, we had to wait for them to move before we could move.

Shortly after we got downstairs, ESU arrived. The look on the ESU officer’s face when he reached through the OPEN window of the car and unlocked the squad car was priceless.

My partner and I lost it with laughter. They begged us and ESU not to tell anyone the story…

Yeah, sorry, pal. You did “a dumb”, and we are totally sharing. My only regret is not getting it on video.

CONTENT WARNING: Pet Death

Early on a Saturday morning, I get a knock on my door and open it to find my neighbor and a cop.

Neighbor: “Hey, this officer is here because [New Neighbor] reported that my dog bit his kid half an hour ago.”

He points at a new neighbor who just moved in and is now standing on the street.

Me: “Really?”

Neighbor: “Yep.”

Me: *To the cop* “And he’s absolutely sure it was her dog that bit his kid?”

Cop: “Yes, ma’am. I need to see the dog. Your neighbor says he’s with you?”

Me: “Yep, he is in the garage.”

I then took the cop into the garage and showed him the dog. He left looking furious and went to talk to the new neighbor.

I’m an at-home vet, and I had euthanized my long-time patient — an extremely sick old dog — late the night before and hadn’t had a chance to move him from my garage yet.

Here’s hoping the new neighbor learns from what’s coming.

In the late 1980s, the XO [Executive Officer] on my dad’s ship at the time told the sailors going out on the town that Spanish cops carried automatic weapons — but don’t worry; they use rubber bullets.

After some drinking, one of the sailors decided it would be fun to go down the street smashing the mirrors off of cars. A pair of cops caught him in the act and yelled for him to stop. He didn’t stop but instead ran.

It turned out the XO was wrong about one thing: they were not using rubber bullets. The captain, on being informed that one of his sailors was recovering from gunshot wounds before being processed into jail, decided it was best to leave the sailor to deal with all legal consequences there and that someone else back in Virginia could handle the rest.

This is the same XO who got relieved of duty, on the very same cruise, because he also kept getting arrested in foreign ports.

CONTENT WARNING: Repeated Abuse By Sibling

My older sister was physically abusive toward me. At the slightest — accidental — provocation, she would attack me.

My parents generally laughed it off because I was a boy and she was a girl, and I should suck it up; she couldn’t hurt me that badly. 

One time, she nearly drowned me by holding my head underwater in the bathtub, but it didn’t leave any marks, so my parents didn’t care.

I guess I was the one with all of the empathy in the family; I never hit back since I was afraid I might actually hurt her.

One time, I turned the light on in our bedroom while she was asleep so that I could put my stuff away and go to bed. She leaped out of bed, grabbed something heavy, and smacked me with it. She broke my leg.

The nurses and doctors at the hospital actually listened to my story about how my sister abused me, and all the times she had abused me before.

The doctors got CPS involved. They had my parents move me out of the room with my sister into my own room, and they insisted that any disputes between me and my sister would have to be mediated by a third party, or else my parents would lose custody of both of us.

This helped a lot, and by high school, I had almost forgotten how abusive my sister had been, until the day before prom. She was in college by then, drinking and partying, and often spent the night in my parent’s house rather than the dorm because they cooked and did laundry for her.

That night, she was very drunk, our parents were already abed, and her eyes lighted upon me when she got home. “I always hated you, you little f***er,” she said. And then she attacked me.

I managed to get away and lock myself in my room, but I was covered with bruises, bite marks, and scratches. I was a mess. I thought about stealing Mom’s makeup to cover up the bruises like I had done in the past to dodge awkward questions in grade school, but then, I decided, “F*** it.”

I went to prom covered in open, obvious, injuries. I got my prom pictures taken looking like the victim of domestic assault — which I was. One of my friends encouraged me to let the police know what my sister had done, and I did.

She was arrested, and as she was old enough to be legally an adult, she was tried as one. She went to prison and lost her scholarship.

My parents blamed me for it, so after I left for college myself, I never came back. I don’t know how they’re doing now. And I don’t care.