I am leaving my shift at a grocery store, apron on my arm, purse on the other shoulder, leg lifted to enter the driver’s side of my boyfriend’s truck. A customer approaches with a plastic bag in one hand and a pack of chicken thighs in the other.

She demands:

Customer: “Ma’am, smell this.”

I stare in shock for two seconds before saying:

Me: “No matter what is wrong with that chicken, you have to go into the store for a potential refund.”

And then I got into the truck and left, still in disbelief.

I’m a new radiographer, being given a tour of the hospital’s imaging and radiography department.

Resident Radiographer: “This is the archive room. We keep records for all patients for the last five years here. Once a year, they get taken down to long-term archives.”

He shows me all the folders and records, sorted by patient name and imaging method.

Me: “This shelf is all x-rays, and there’s no patient name.”

Resident Radiographer: “Oh, that’s The Book. It doesn’t contain any patient data.”

Me: “Then… what is it?”

Resident Radiographer: “Every time we have to do an X-ray on someone who claims they fell, and an object just happened to insert itself so far up their rectum that they needed to go to the hospital, the X-ray ends up in there.”

Me: “Oh… my… God.”

Resident Radiographer: “It’s sorted by the name of the object. That folder is ‘L’ and is mostly light bulbs.”

Me: “I don’t want to know.”

Resident Radiographer: “Give it a few weeks… working here, you won’t have a choice.”

Sadly, he was right. Inside my first month, I was adding my own page to The Book, and had to ask if I filed it under ‘F’ for Funko Pop or did I file it under the name of the specific character.

An older couple has been shopping in the clothing section for a while. While his wife is in the fitting room, I find myself standing there with the husband.

Me: “I hope you’re both finding everything you need today.”

Husband: “Yeah, but this store is really going downhill.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What issues are you experiencing?”

Husband: “Well, for one, none of you girls working here are young! You’re all in your forties! I want pretty young girls waiting on me when I shop!”

Me: *Disgusted.* “Well, that’s not something that affects your ability to shop here and find the items you need, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

Husband: “It does affect my ability! If I can’t find something I want a pretty girl to find it for me! I know I’m never gonna get to f*** her, but this way I still get her to do what I want.”

I pause a moment, giving my brain time to process those words and determine if he really did just say them out loud, or if I imagined the whole thing. Turns out, I’m awake and lucid, so I decide if he can talk like that, then so can I.

Me: “That’s okay, you human equivalent of the hair and gunk at the bottom of the shower drain. None of us would touch you even if we were hookers with herpes.”

The look on his face was priceless. His wife could hear everything from her fitting room, and she couldn’t stop laughing.

I’m a nurse working in the ward when another nurse angrily walks up to the desk with a tray of chicken nuggets.

Me: “Ooooh! Chickie nuggies? Are they for everyone?”

Nurse: “No. I just confiscated them from a patient trying to smuggle them in. You do not want to know in which of his bodily folds I found them.”

Me: “But… but there are so many!”

Nurse: “Twenty. I never said it was just the one fold.”

My general manager would receive monthly finance reports from me, and it was painfully obvious he wasn’t paying attention to any of them.

To test my theory, one month when margins slumped, I noted the reason as “poor cost control by local management.”

He never said a thing, but his superiors caught on and started an investigation into him.

A week later, he was suddenly fired on the same day as the head of HR was also let go. It wasn’t explained exactly what happened, but I did overhear a supervisor on the phone as I walked past his office:

Supervisor: “Yeah, the bogus company expenses were part of it, but I think it was the graphic CCTV footage of our offices being used as their ‘love shack’ that sealed the deal…”