I work in a hotel. We had a guest staying with a woman that he said was his wife (it wasn’t) in a room for a few days. We never saw this lady, and the man said she was ill and kept extending his stay each day to give her more time to recover. At one point, the man came into the lobby.

Guest: “I need to have the sheets changed in my room. My wife soiled herself in the bed by accident.”

The head housekeeper went to the room with fresh sheets. What he found there was disturbing. Yes, the bed was covered in feces, but there were empty plastic vodka bottles strewn about the room, and the place smelled heavily of cigarette smoke, which is not allowed in the hotel. The woman remained in the washroom the entire time the housekeeper was there.

When the housekeeper told us about this situation, I made the decision not to allow them to extend another night if asked. I had already agreed to let him stay that night. The guest came into the lobby later that day.

Guest: “Can I extend my day one more night?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but we’re sold out. You’ll have to check out tomorrow morning at 11:00 am.”

Guest: “I understand.”

The next morning, the man left abruptly at about 9:00 am — without his “wife”. I sent the cleaner up to the room to see what was going on.

At the bottom of the stairs from the rooms, we have a courtyard. In the courtyard, there was a huge pile of the woman’s stuff: backpacks, shoes, garbage bags of clothes, etc. She was nowhere to be found and the room was empty. Assuming the man would be coming back for the clothes and stuff, I sent the housekeepers in to clean the room.

While they were cleaning the room, the woman arrived, walked into the room with a giant bottle of vodka, took off her pants, and laid down on the couch, refusing to leave. It was now past checkout time, so I was called to deal with the situation.

When I arrived, the woman was naked except for an open blouse, revealing a heavily tattooed, sixty-ish-year-old body that had seen some years of heavy drinking.

Me: “Ma’am, I’m afraid I have to ask you to put on some clothes and leave the premises. You do not have a room booked here for tonight, and it is well past checkout.”

Woman: “I’m not going anywhere. I need a nap.”

Me: “Ma’am, if you refuse to leave, I will have to call the police.”

Woman: “You go ahead and call the police.”

She poured herself a drink of straight vodka and shot it back.

I went back to the office and called the police.

Me: “Officer, we have a woman that refuses to leave a room she is not booked into. She isn’t staying here tonight, but she won’t leave.”

Officer: “Is she naked?”

Me: “Ummm… yes. How did you know that?”

Officer: “Oh, she’s a regular. We’ll come get her.”

And that was that. They came and took her away, but the belongings were never retrieved by anyone.

I work as a boom truck delivery driver for a build supply company. For those not familiar with boom trucks, they’re large flatbed trucks with cranes on them to unload material.

This customer has ordered a bunch of heavy decking material for a family member, so it is being delivered on my truck.

When I arrive, the house is one of those units where four other houses were directly connected to each other, so the only way to the backyard is through the house.

The customer thought I could get the material over the roof into the backyard, but my boom doesn’t have that kind of reach, so the only way is to take each piece of material one at a time and go through the house.

Customer: “Just behind my back fence, there’s a cul-de-sac with a little picket ball court. You could drive over to the cul-de-sac and park on the court, and then you could reach your boom into the backyard.”

Me: “Are you sure that won’t be a problem? The picket ball court isn’t private property or anything, is it?”

Customer: “It’ll be fine. If anything goes wrong, I’ll bear the responsibility.”

So, I enter the cul-de-sac, inspect the court to make sure it can handle the weight of my truck, and then pull forward and unload my order into their backyard.

During that time, a few people in the cul-de-sac come out of their houses, watching the show as I boom the order into the backyard. [Guy #1] comes up to me and talks about how amazing it is to be able to deliver something like that while not having to do it by hand.

Everything goes without a hitch, and I fold my boom back up to its driving position as the customers write me a check.

There is a little discrepancy with the total amount, so I phone the store to find out the correct total. As I’m talking to a store worker, this guy drives up in a big pickup truck and yells at me.

Guy #2: “What the h*** are you doing?!”

Me: “I was making a delivery to the house behind the fence.”

Guy #2: “You can’t park your truck on that! That’s a brand-new court; you’re gonna f*****’ wreck it! That’s private property!”

Me: “I was following my customer’s instructions; they were the ones who told me to park here.”

Guy #2: *Still yelling* “Well, you’re gonna pay for that if there is any damage!”

The customer pokes his head over the fence.

Customer: “Calm down. I’ll be the one to fix any damage.”

Guy #2: “I don’t care! This truck shouldn’t be here!”

The next little bit is a blur because I am on the phone and everything is going from zero to 100.

I remember the customer yelling:

Customer: “Talk to me like that and I’m gonna hop over this fence and kick your a**!”

The two are just throwing obscenities at each other, threatening to kick each other’s a**es, with the customer’s family yelling at him to stop.

[Guy #1] is now standing in front of this irate guy, holding his arm out in front of him, trying to keep things from turning into a fight.

Finally, [Guy #2] gets back into his truck and drives off. [Guy #1] comes over and tries to get the customer to calm down.

Guy #1: “Pay no attention to that idiot. He lives several houses down. He shouldn’t have gotten involved. He’s one of those people who are more brawn than brains. I’m head of the community this cul-de-sac is in, and I have no problem with what you’re doing. The court is fine. It was an interesting show, though! However, if you ever need anything moved in like this again, come to me; I can give you official permission.”

Customer: “Thank you. I’m sorry for how things escalated. And I’m sorry I didn’t know you were the one to go to for permission!”

The customer and [Guy #1] then both apologize to me for what happened. I just laugh.

Me: “Hey, keeps my day interesting.”

And we all wished each other a good day.

As I was leaving the cul-de-sac, I passed the house where [Guy #2] lived; he was standing on his porch. He gave me a very low-effort, almost defeated wave, so I smiled at him and gave him a very energetic wave as I drove by.

In college, I worked at a large chain store that happened to be going out of business, so there were massive closing sales. During the evening, while I was sorting some clothes in the women’s department, a very pregnant woman and her mother walked past me.

All I heard was, “Oh, my gosh, I think my water just broke!”

Naturally, I whipped my head around to face the women, since that’s not a line you hear every day and, sure enough, the woman’s pants were wet and a pool of clear, yellowish liquid had formed at her feet.

My first response was, “Oh, wow,” because my mouth reacted before my brain with amazement at the whole situation.

Me: “Do you need an ambulance to the hospital, or do you want to take your own vehicle? Or would you like to call someone?”

And to my shock, the pregnant woman’s mother said:

Mother: “We’re going to shop around for a bit longer. These sales are too good to pass up!”

The daughter whose water had just broken and was leaking onto the floor… agreed!

So, they kept shopping and looking around, tracking amniotic fluid everywhere they went, and finally made their way to the cash to check out.

Meanwhile, my coworkers and I were scrambling to find the Wet Floor sign, but it was MIA, so I had to stand near the area where the woman’s water initially broke and direct customers to walk around the fluid.

They checked out and left to go to the hospital. At that point, the woman was definitely going into labour and was waddling (more than a pregnant woman usually would) to get out of the store.

As soon as they left, we broke out the cleaning supplies and started sanitizing.

I’d like to point out that when my coworker checked them out, she said that they weren’t even buying anything baby-related — all women’s clothing. I’m not judging because she could very well have had all her clothes and everything ready for her baby.

But is a store closing sale really so important that you’ll keep shopping even after your water has broken?

I ran a comic and card store in the 1990s. One fine afternoon, I was doing some organizing and straightening up, and I saw an SUV pulling up in front of my store. The mother driving proceeded to drop off her two kids and drive off.

“Not a big deal,” I thought. “She must be going to park and will be right in.” Well, I was wrong.

After a few minutes, I asked the older kid where their mother was.

Older Kid: “She went shopping.”

My store was in a strip mall and a supermarket was on the other side of the mall.

After thirty minutes, I started to get a little annoyed as I had to go to the post office and I couldn’t toss these two out; they were six and seven years old.

After an hour, I had to go to the bathroom, and I couldn’t leave them alone on the floor as they might damage something. At least they were well-behaved, but I couldn’t risk it.

After ninety minutes, I got mad. I looked in the parking lot for the SUV but couldn’t see it from my door. Of course, the parent didn’t even give her kids a couple of quarters to play a video game.

After two hours, she pulled up and honked, and the kids went running with me right behind.

Me: “That will be $20.”

Mother: *Sneering* “For what?!”

Me: “Babysitting — $10 an hour for two hours. I’m giving you a discount because the kids were so well-behaved.”

Mother: *Snorting* “This is a store for kids.”

Me: “Yes, a store. You didn’t even give your kids a quarter to play a video game. I had things I had to do and couldn’t get them done because I couldn’t leave with them here.”

Mother: “There’s nothing here I want them to buy! We won’t be coming back.”

Me: “That wouldn’t bother me in the slightest, since you don’t respect my business enough to not just leave your kids here.”

Their father did bring them in a few times after that. The shame was that the kids did like me, as I treated them with respect and didn’t just throw them out.

Their mother did tell people how rude I was, but these people knew that I could be sarcastic but never rude. She was known to be a pain in the a**.

You may wonder why I didn’t call the police, but this was the nineties, and that wasn’t really done at the time. Parents did leave their kids places sometimes. The other reason is that I didn’t get along with the city particularly well for various reasons.

Currently, in Scotland, I work for a large national chain supermarket in one of their stores, on their checkouts. I have been doing this gig now for nearly four years, and it has its ups and downs like all jobs.

One night, I am on my usual 5:30 pm to 10:00 pm shift, checking out customers, discussing the health crisis, and just shooting the breeze like normal.

At around 9:40 pm, a man in his late fifties or early sixties comes in and purchases around £14 worth of general stuff, such as milk, bread, and some tinned soup. He taps his card on the machine, and I get an error on the screen along the lines of, “Cannot process card; make sure card is on reader.” The general fix or workaround for that is if the customer puts in their card and then their PIN when prompted, and then it goes through.

If you use contactless payment over a certain number of times per day, like five, or you haven’t used it in a while, the bank puts a little mark on the account requiring the customer to put their PIN in to make sure it’s them using the card.

The customer puts in his PIN, and I get an error saying, “Alternative Tender Required. Please Use Other Payment.” When this error appears on the screen, this normally means that the account associated with the card either has no money in it or the customer does not have enough in that account to meet the total.

Me: “Do you have another form of payment, such as cash or another card?”

Customer #1: *A bit embarrassed* “I only have £2, and I don’t have any other cards. What’s the total?”

Me: “[Total]. If you go outside and take a right at the exit, there are three cash points you can go to and check your account up. I’ll keep your stuff aside for you and you can come back to get it.”

Customer #1: “Okay. I’ll be right back; I need to get the bread, at least.”

I store the transaction and keep the stored transaction receipt with his items so I can recall it when he comes back.

A woman in her mid-forties has been behind the man the whole time (socially distanced, obviously) and has heard what happened. I scan her stuff — only about £10 worth.

Customer #2: “How much were that man’s items?”

Me: *Checking the receipt* “[Total].”

Customer #2: “I’ll pay for it. Just stick it through.”

Me: “Are you sure? You don’t have to do that.”

Customer #2: “I feel sorry for him, with his age and all. I don’t want him to go hungry, so I’ll pay for it.”

Me: “Thank you so much, on his behalf.”

She pays and leaves. She passes the man as she’s coming back, a couple of checkouts down from me, and says nothing to him.

As he approaches, I grab his stuff, give it to him, and point to the woman walking away.

Me: “That woman there with the white coat just paid for your entire shopping for you; all of your items are paid for.”

He is shocked that something like this has actually happened to him — that a stranger would be so kind to do that for anyone, let alone him. I notice a slight tear forming in his eye when he realises that he does not have to pay.

Customer #1: “I’m going to thank her!”

I watched as he quickly walked away and caught up with her at the exit.

Sometimes you need things like this to remind you of the good out there.