Both of my parents were born in Yugoslavia (in what is now modern-day Serbia) and migrated to the USA. My dad can speak English fine, but my mom has trouble speaking it, so my dad and I use Serbian most of the time.

I take the bus to school, and of course, there are a lot of people who also take the bus. I get in, pay, and then take my seat. About two stops later, the bus stops at a train station, and a parent gets on with a kid in one hand. They get on the bus, pay, and take the two seats across from me. It is fine for the first few minutes as nothing is going on.

I decide to call my dad to tell him that I am almost at school. As I said, my dad and I use Serbian most of the time, so we converse in our language. Once the conversation is finished, the kid across from me tries to get my attention.

Kid: “What were you saying?”

Me: “I was just talking to my dad.”

Kid: “You talk funny.”

Me: “Oh, that’s because we were speaking in our language.”

The kid’s mother joins the conversation.

Mother: “Well, your language is not what we all speak around here. We speak English, and you will, too.”

Me: “Ma’am, my family isn’t from here. We are from—”

Mother: *Cutting me off* “I do not care where you are from. English is what we speak, so speak it!”

Me: “I understand that you speak English, but my family has a hard time speaking it, so I’d rather use our language so they can understand me. Besides, what we were talking about is of no use to you.”

Mother: *Sighs* “Why can’t you d*** Russians get the hint that your language is not what we want to hear you speak? If you cannot speak English, then just go back to Russia! We would do better without you commies all over our land!”

Me: “First of all ma’am, my family is Serbian. Second, we are not communists. And third, it’s not a crime to speak another language.”

Mother: “THIS IS AMERICA, AND WE SPEAK ENGLISH, SO DO IT OR GO BACK TO YOUR D*** COUNTRY!”

At that point, I put my earbuds in and just let her go on.

When we got to my stop soon after, I got up, and before I walked out of the bus I looked at the lady and said, “You big b****” in Serbian. The face she gave me was priceless.

My company decided to move from our current location, which was really easy to get to, to a “business park” that was hard to get to. When we were moving, I told my manager that on my first day there, as I was trying to figure out the buses, trains, etc., I may be late.

I got off the train and asked someone where I could find the address and where to wait for a bus if it was far.

Station Employee: “Unfortunately, there’s only one bus there in the morning, and you just missed it.”

Me: “Okay. How do I get there walking, then?”

It was three or four miles from the train station, in a town I had never been in before.

I started walking. Maybe halfway there, already about an hour late, I stopped at a payphone, called my manager, and told her the situation.

Manager: “Stay where you are. I’ll come get you.”

She pulled up soon after, and I got in her car. Then, she began to lecture me.

Manager: “This can’t be a recurring thing. You can’t be late again, or we’ll have to revisit your position.”

Considering I had never been late before, and this was a brand-new location that I was trying to figure out how to get to… yeah, get bent.

Me: “I did warn you that on the first day at the new location, I would be feeling my way and might be late. Now that I know the bus and train system for this location, it won’t be a problem.”

[Manager] acted like I had REALLY put her out. I also want to mention that she was only the office manager because she had created the role for herself so she no longer had to be the receptionist, the role I was now filling. 

We had to type up contracts. We also had a shared drive that we uploaded them to when we were done. We put our initials at the bottom so if they needed to be revised, whoever needed revisions or corrections would send it back to us.

[Manager] thought she was all that and a bag of chips. But, though I didn’t know it at the time, she wasn’t good at her job. She had to type up these contracts. She was constantly sending contracts back to me telling me there were errors in my work.

Since these contracts pretty much all looked the same (just the contractee name somewhere in the first paragraph was slightly different) — meaning that it wasn’t super obvious that this wasn’t one I did over one someone else did — you looked for the initials at the bottom to see who did it and that was that. I would look them over, find the errors, correct them, and re-upload them. 

Now, since [Manager] was sending two or three of these back to me a week, I was checking them over with a fine-tooth comb because I KNEW I wasn’t making that many errors.

That same week, I got another back saying there were errors. I was getting ticked. I knew what I had uploaded was correct, and I’d even had another coworker check it before I uploaded it. There couldn’t be any errors, but here one was. I couldn’t understand it.

At the same time, I was due for my review, and [Manager] took great pleasure in acting like she had done me a great favor when she told me:

Manager: “I’ve arranged a raise for you; you will now be getting [amount].”

I looked at her blankly for a moment.

Me: “Um… that’s what I’m currently getting.”

Manager: “No, you’re not. Your salary is [amount about $2,000 lower].”

Me: “No, my paychecks show [amount].”

Manager: *Yelling* “That’s not possible!”

She stormed out of our review and never finished it.

I’m guessing that the lower amount was what she had been making before moving to the office manager position, so she was ticked that I was making more.

I was also getting really tired of the commute since it was taking me two and a half hours one way to get to and from work. And the cherry on the top was that the bus that only ran once in the morning only ran twice in the afternoon, and the last one was at 5:00 pm, which was my end time. I would throw on my coat and run as fast as I could across a huge parking lot and a really busy street that came off an expressway to try and catch it and pray it would be a bit late (in the middle of winter with snow everywhere). If I missed it, I had to walk down the side of the expressway (no other streets were available) for a mile and a half to get to an actual sidewalk and a real street and then walk the rest of the way to the train station, meaning my two-and-a-half-hour commute became closer to three and a half or four hours going home, so I was getting home at around 9:00 pm.

I BEGGED [Manager] to let me leave five minutes early so I could catch the last bus.

Me: “I could take a shortened lunch or come in earlier to make up for it.”

Manager: “No.”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was her doing a “power move”. What I should have done was go to the big boss (a nice guy) and ask him, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

So, I started looking for a new job, and I found one pretty quickly that was much, much closer to my home and I’d only have to take one bus for twenty minutes. It was near the end of the year, like a week before Christmas, so I was starting at the beginning of the new year. I went and told the big boss that I was leaving and cited that the commute was too much and I was constantly missing the only bus that got me to the train station due to my hours. He said he understood, as I was the only one who took the bus, and wished me well.

Now, the fun part! After I left, it was discovered that what [Manager] had been doing was taking any contracts I had done, changing my initials to hers, and giving me her incomplete or messed up ones, changing her initials to mine as if I had f***ed them up. When this was discovered — because I guess the quality of her work had suddenly gone waaaay up due to her stealing my work — she was demoted back down to receptionist. Karma!

I regularly catch a bus from a stop that is nearest to a big, international hotel. On this day, a bus is just pulling up and I notice a man in a suit, desperate scrolling his phone. I recognise that he is trying to work out if this is the right bus, and I know the bus will almost certainly be gone by the time he does.

Me: “Where are you going?”

Man: “Heathrow Airport.”

Me: “Ah…”

I furrow my brow, because though Heathrow is only about 3 miles away, there is no direct route, and I am trying to work out which is the best way.

Man: “I’ve been told to catch the 490 bus.”

Me: “Ah, yes, then this is your bus. You’ll need to get off it two stops after I get off, and the 490 leaves from the same bus stop.”

Kudos to whoever suggested this route; while it’s not the most direct or fastest, it is the simplest and the cheapest. An older woman at the bus stop has also overheard.

Woman: “Don’t worry, I will show him where to get off.”

He sits beside her, and they start chatting.

Woman: “Where are you from?”

Man: “Brazil. Rio de Janeiro.”

Woman: “Where’s that?”

Man: “South America.”

Woman: “So you are American?”

Man: *Kindly.* “Sort of.”

Woman: *To me, apologetically.* “We just didn’t learn any of this stuff in school. I had to learn from my children and grandchildren.”

And the two of them fall into a discussion, her asking smart but uninformed questions “So you speak Spanish?”, and when I get off the bus, he’s drawn a sketch of South America, and is giving her a short history of European colonisation. She is listening, rapt.

I was happy to witness this, and a little sad that she didn’t have the education she deserved, though she was making up for it now, at every opportunity.

I need to run an errand and realize that the bus would be more convenient than BART, the local rapid transit train that goes under the bay. The bus was going to go directly from point A to point B for me and had soft, cozy seats.

So, I was on a bus that went from the Embarcadero in San Francisco all the way to UC Berkeley, thinking about how nice this was, when we stopped at the first stop in the East Bay, at a shopping center.

The patron who embarked on the bus was in a wheelchair. He started a fight with the bus driver, a young Black woman, for trying to ensure he was safely settled. She couldn’t drive unless he took one of a few acceptable options.

This started a bus-wide fight due to a number of concerns. Everyone wanted to get to their destination and were shouting at whoever was responsible for preventing that in their eyes. Most people were mad at the man, who was white, for being racist and for picking a fight in general.

I was exhausted. I considered trying to defuse the situation by listening to the man and telling him that his needs matter until he calmed down enough to cooperate. As far as I could tell, he was digging his heels in because he didn’t feel like his agency was being respected, and he felt he had the right to determine and communicate how to keep his body safe.

Regardless of his other actions, I could understand the motivation. I have chronic pain and mobility issues. It can be infuriating when nothing is in your control, you hurt, and strangers are denying you control or agency. 

Since everyone was yelling, threats were being exchanged, and this guy was very riled up, I decided it was beyond my capabilities to defuse.

I got off the bus and went to one of my favorite dinner spots in the area, thinking of catching the next bus after dinner.

When I came out, the same bus was still stuck at the bus stop — but with added cop cars.

I walked a few blocks and hopped on a different bus. I guess the bus from SF wasn’t faster than BART after all. I was much more exhausted this way. At least I had a nice slice of pie at the dinner place.

The UK is going through a record-breaking heatwave, with temperatures hitting 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), which for us is A LOT.

I’m working at a train station when a passenger with an accent (either US or Canadian) comes up to me covered in sweat and anger.

Passenger: “For the love of God, turn on the AC!”

Me: “Sir, we don’t have any AC”

Passenger: “Ha… ha… very funny. Seriously, it’s hot as h*** out there, and my train isn’t for another thirty minutes!”

Me: “Sir, I’m sorry, but we don’t have any air conditioning devices installed at this station. We have a large fan blowing by the entrance if you’d like to stand there until your train arrives.”

Passenger: “Wait… you’re serious?”

Me: “I’m afraid so, sir.”

Passenger: “No… no AC? But…”

He looks around at the sad scene. Everyone on the platform and in the station is an image of sweaty misery.

Passenger: “…but… how?!“

Me: “Easy. It’s only hot enough to be this uncomfortable for a couple of weeks of the year, so our building relies on central heating a lot more than any kind of air conditioning. This particular station was built in the Victorian times before air conditioning was a thing. Also, if there was any air conditioning at this station, I’d be bloody standing right next to it!”

The poor passenger conceded that I had a point. I told him to come back during winter and he could try out our amazing central heating instead!