I was a lifeguard for six years at a municipal pool in my hometown. We had clear-cut rules, like a required swim test to go to the deep end (swim the width of the pool without touching the ground and tread water for one minute) and no life jackets in the deep end. This was upheld for everyone; swim team stars and visitors alike had to pass the test, and pass again if there was doubt. It was a small town, so the lifeguards knew who was who and it was a simple system.

Over the Fourth of July weekend my last year there, we had a family come into town. They had this a boy who was maybe four, five, or six, who insisted he could swim fine enough to go to the deep end. I told him he had to pass the test first.

Mother: “We’re from [City], and they let him swim in the deep end there! He can swim fine!”

Me: “I don’t care. Rules are rules; he has to pass the test here.”

She huffed and went and sat in the observation area. Her son failed the test more than once with more than one lifeguard.

The kid still ran right to the deep end. Naturally, he swam out to the middle, where none of the tools we use to drag people to the side can reach, and just his face was above the water. Then, he started moving his arms to push himself under and back up, since he wasn’t able to touch the ground, and started paddling frantically but not moving anywhere.

Where I was trained, this is active drowning. I was on the floor, so I jumped in and swam the kid to the side as he kicked me and yelled to his mom. I put him on the wall and said he had to stay in the shallow end. I got out, and the mom got in my face yelling.

Mother: “Why would you do that?! He was fine. That’s just how he swims.”

I simply told her that was active drowning and the other floor lifeguard backed me up. She took all her kids and left — not without getting the number of my boss, who just told her, “Sorry my lifeguard saved your kid.”

I’ll never forget that. I kept my training for nine years, and that was the first and only time I had to jump in after someone (we usually could mediate another way but mostly all the kids that came were very good swimmers because they were there daily), and the only thing the parent had to say was, “Why would you do that?”

This story is part of our Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup!

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Want to read the Fourth-Of-July-themed roundup? Click here!

A few years ago, I was in a large home improvement store. I had a regular shopping buggy as well as a lumber cart, both filled with materials for whatever remodeling job I was doing at the time. I did have a T-shirt on that matched the aprons worn by employees, but I most definitely did not work there.

As I was going down one of the aisles with both of my carts, an elderly gentleman stopped me.

Man: “Do you work here?”

Me: “I don’t, but I’m happy to help you find what you need.”

We walked a couple of aisles over, leaving my carts in the aisle where we met. As I was explaining the difference between two similar products, another customer came up and was obviously waiting to talk to me. She needed help deciding what kind of doorknob she needed for a storm door, which I gladly helped her pick out.

I was finally able to get back to my carts to finish gathering supplies when an actual employee approached me.

Employee: “Now that you’re done helping customers, do you think you can get all this junk put back on the shelves?”

Me: *Laughing* “No, I’m good.”

The employee got red in the face.

Employee: “You need to put all this crap back or I’ll call the manager.”

At this point, I realized that I was once again being mistaken for an employee.

Me: “Go ahead and call him.”

The employee punched some numbers into his phone and started talking to whoever picked up.

Employee: “The new guy has two carts full of random stuff in aisle [number] and is refusing to put it back on the shelves.”

The manager quickly came to the aisle we were in. I figured at this point everyone could have a good laugh at the misunderstanding. I was wrong!

Manager: “You will take these items and put them back where they belong, or you will be terminated!”

I tried explaining that I didn’t work there but was further verbally abused by the manager.

Manager: “I saw you on the monitors wandering around the store talking to customers when you should’ve been putting all this back where it belongs.”

At this point, I decided I was done with that particular store and just walked out, leaving about $4,000 worth of merchandise sitting on the two carts for someone to put away while loudly telling the manager, “I DON’T WORK HERE!”

I was on a plane, flying from North Carolina to Los Angeles. A man and a woman boarded with four children, aged roughly four to eight. They hadn’t booked seats together, and they made a stink to get people to switch seats with them to get the six to sit together.

About an hour into the flight, two girls started skipping and running from the middle of the plane up to the cockpit and back repeatedly. They got bored of it and sat down eventually.

Maybe three hours in, a boy started sprinting from one end of the plane to the other incessantly. Many passengers complained. A flight attendant got him to stop. That lasted fifteen minutes, and off to the races he went again. Somebody else complained and he stopped… briefly. Now, a male flight attendant had enough, escorted the boy back to his seat, and forcefully told the parents to control the kids.

This is where I took my headphones off due to the yelling. The father was LIVID at being told to control his kids. He was screaming about having four kids and only two adults. He was screaming about the flight attendant touching his kid. He threatened to sue multiple times. Finally, the attendant yelled:

Attendant: “Put your f****** mask on and sit the f*** down!”

The dude lost his s*** even more.

Father: “I have your information! I will find you and I will shoot you!”

That’s the moment I knew my night was going to suck.

It took a while, but eventually, all of the attendants gathered and restrained the guy. A little while later, the pilot told us we had to turn to Albuquerque and land. We stayed on the plane and local police escorted the guy and his family off of the plane. As I was one of few that wasn’t wearing headphones when everything happened, they got my information, then sent the FBI on and interviewed me.

After that, we were told there was no fuel truck available to top us off, so they had to send one in. Then, the maintenance guy who needed to sign off on the plane was at home and had to be called in. We eventually got going and made it to LAX about two hours late.

I work as the resident technician at [Office Supply Chain]. I repair computers for our store’s customers. Our uniform is khakis and a black polo with a lime green collar and the company name and logo on the chest.

I get off shift and head over to [Electronics Chain] to look at DVDs. While I’m there, I spot a regular customer of mine. She is an odd duck, but she’s very sweet and used to being treated like crap because she dresses like a drag queen, even though she is just a little old lady in Maine. She just likes the weird clothes and outrageous makeup and nails.

Regular: “I know you don’t work here, but I can’t get anyone to help me!”

I’m not doing anything important, and she has bought hundreds of dollars of stuff from me over the last few months, so I start my sales questions. I like to know what people are looking for, what they intend to use the product for, and what their price range is. Often, people insist they need one thing, but they actually need something completely different, and it’s easier to ask rather than do exchanges.

We go to the computer section and I try to find an associate while helping the customer. We hop on a demo laptop and I do a [Electronics Chain] search for things she might be interested in. What she wants doesn’t appear to be in stock, so I switch over to the [Office Supply Chain] site to see if we have it in stock. We do have it.

Me: “I’ll meet you at [Office Supply Chain] as soon as I finish buying my DVDs. Maybe twenty minutes?”

She leaves and I get into line.

All of a sudden, I get yanked out of line by a man I’ve never seen in [Electronics Chain] floor manager attire. He proceeds to drag me to another register, and I’m thinking this is a rude way to open a new lane. He pulls me behind the register.

Floor Manager: “Open up and start ringing up customers!”

I just have a stupid look on my face as I don’t know what’s happening. I try to say that I don’t work here, but he isn’t listening. A couple of people are staring at us from other lines.

Me: “I can help if you really need it, but I don’t know how to work your system and I really shouldn’t be handling money because I don’t work here.”

The manager gets all huffy, obviously not really listening. He punches in his code to unlock the register and walks off. I turn to look around, bewildered. A few people are snickering. The cashier in the next lane looks at me.

Cashier: “What the h*** was that?”

Me: “I have no clue. I need to speak to a manager.”

A call goes out over the speaker system and the same manager comes back and yells at me for not working. I ask for his boss. He throws a tantrum, but the cashier calls the general manager on her own as she obviously sees that her floor manager is off his rocker.

The general manager comes over.

General Manager: “What are you doing behind a register?”

Me: “I don’t know; I’m just trying to buy two movies.”

General Manager: “You shouldn’t be trying to check yourself out.”

Me: “I’m not trying to!”

The floor manager kept spouting off that the new hires were awful. Then, it clicked for the general manager. I laid out the story, including how the register was unlocked for me and how I could have just emptied the register and taken off.

The general manager laid into the floor manager, pointing out my uniform from a competing store with a different color scheme. The floor manager realized how stupid he had been and was told to wait in the general manager’s office.

I got my stuff rung up and paid for at the register they had stuck me at, and I headed back to [Office Supply Chain]. All in all, I spent an hour at [Electronics Chain].

It was a funny story to tell the lady waiting at [Office Supply Chain]. My boss even had me log back in to ring her out and said he would log me out in an hour so I’d get paid for the time I spent making a sale in my off time!

I worked as a hostess during college at a big chain restaurant that had a huge staff. My location was the management training location for our region, so we had a lot of new managers cycling in and out. Most of them were promoted servers or bartenders from different locations and had no management experience prior to this.

I never loved working at this location as a lot of the new managers were on a little bit of a power trip (kind of comes with the territory as new managers), so after a year of being berated for issues that were completely out of my control, I finally got a new job and put in my two weeks. I handed it directly to our general manager, thanked her for everything, and was set to leave on good terms with the company.

Fast forward two weeks. I received a notification that my schedule was set for the following week. I called the restaurant and reminded the on-duty manager that I was no longer an employee and they would need to put someone else on to fill my spot. They apologized and moved on.

Another two weeks passed, and I got the same notification. I once again called the restaurant to remind them. They apologized again. Before I hang up:

Me: “Make sure you make a note of this because I’m going out of the country next week and I won’t be able to call if this happens again.”

They agree and we end it there.

This is where it gets dramatic. I’m on vacation in Spain, and I get a string of angry texts from a new manager at the restaurant reminding me that I’m five minutes late and that if I don’t arrive in the next five minutes, I’ll be written up. I text back.

Me: “Sorry, I know you’re new, but I put in my two weeks over a month ago. I don’t know why I’m still on the schedule.”

New Manager: “Although that may be the case, it is absolutely unacceptable that you are missing a shift you are scheduled for, and if you don’t come in, you will be written up and in bad standing with the company.”

Me: “I am out of the country. I’m sorry for your situation, but I am no longer an employee and there is nothing I can do to help.”

I then received a string of at least fifteen messages back to back. And let me tell you, they were the most unhinged messages I’ve ever read. They went from calling me unprofessional to an arrogant brat. Mind you, I never worked with this woman; she started after I left. She accused me of lying and being lazy, saying that if you quit a job you need to give notice and I should be ashamed of what I have done to the restaurant.

Of course, I took screenshots of the conversation and sent them to one of the other managers. Last I heard, [New Manager] was suspended and then demoted back to her original position at a different location. It was definitely for the best.