Dear readers,

In our continuing coverage of workers that are essential to keep the world running, (we’ve covered grocery store workers, postal workers, healthcare workers, truck drivers and teachers already!) we enter the hi-stress world of the emergency responders. Calling 911 has always been a life-saver, but in recent times it’s revealed to us all just how important these people are, and where we would be without them.

Enjoy the next 23 stories from our archives about our emergency service staff, and see what else they have to put up with on top of genuine emergencies!

Your Urgency Is Not My Emergency – What defines an emergency is very flexible these days.

Flattery, The Best Medicine – Sometimes you need to choose your battles, as long as they get their medicine!

In(tentional) Sickness And In Health – When you call an ambulance but you really need the police.

The (Brain) Damage Has Already Been Done – You never know when you’ve saved someone’s life – even if you really didn’t.

Driving Miss Crazy, Part 2 – We’re more scared that this person is still allowed to drive.

It Turns Out You Can Be Too Safe – Be sorry for the dispatcher that has to deal with them next!

Pepperoni Pizza With A Side Of Pointless Paranoia – 911 is not there for your pizza concerns!

The Highs and Lows Of Parenting – 911: Parents to a nation.

Rescue 911, Transylvania Edition – They don’t just deal with emergencies, they have to deal with calming down personal emergencies too!

Bugging Out – While we recommend the police checking this out anyway, this reaction seems perfectly reasonable to us!

Emergency Services Must Be Pooped – They would rather scared new mothers call, than not call.

She Must Be High(lands) – We don’t know what Scottish whiskey she was drinking but we want some!

Impractical Jokes – Send the police anyway! They can watch.

A Touchy Subject – This story gives new meaning to being discharged from hospital.

Try Calling Nine-One-Number-Two – Well, it is technically still an emergency.

All Smoke Where There Is No Fire – Maybe she was upset that she didn’t get any fried chicken?

Nine-Dum-Dum – We’re amazed they can count to nine and still add two ones to the end.

Not Very Helpful Advice – Emergency Services need all the help they can get!

Lack Of Common Sense Can Get you Fired – When emergency services NEED to call the emergency services.

Give Them A Dress And They’ll Want A Yard – They actually should send the police for these kinds of calls – to arrest the caller for wasting police time!

Their Demands Are Just Hot Air – You’ll want to call the church about that specific request.

Answering The Call Of Duty – More outrageous that the Police Academy movies.

Cramping Up Out Of Embarrassment – Of all the bad decisions someone could make in a college dorm, this is pretty up there!

And as a bonus, one of our very first posts where we see a list of the painfully mundane questions that a recorded in a 911 line.

911 Grab Bag: Define “Emergency”

We hope you enjoyed this collection of stories! Know any that we missed? Let us know in the comments! Want to submit your own story? Do it here!

Stay safe, everyone!

Today is national chocolate chip day! Honestly, we’re not making these up — ask the cookie monster!

It all started in the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts. Around 1938, Ruth Graves Wakefield was planning to make a chocolate cookie and thought she could achieve this by chucking in chunks of a chocolate bar. Happily for history, the chocolate did not melt and mix with the cookie mix, but stubbornly held together, clumping together in little bits. Today we call these bits chocolate chips!

Because it’s the day to celebrate all things chocolate chip, we’ve munched our way through the archives to find 23 delicious stories to nibble on to last the day. Whether it’s a badly-behaved customer demanding free cookies or some passive-aggressive monster that threw a single raisin into the chocolate cookie mix, we hope you enjoy!

Arguing To The Bitter End – See what happens when Karen demands four dozen free cookies!

My Boss, The Cookie Monster – As if managers aren’t entitled enough, see what happens when cookies are brought into the office!

Head Freeze For Other Reasons – Chocolate math is now a thing. Normal people need not apply.

(more…)

Apparently, it’s Dance Like A Chicken Day! You know the one we’re talking about: tuck your hands into your armpits, pretend they’re wings, and flap about in a fit of lunacy, preferably to a beat — although having rhythm is by no means a requirement!

Originally inspired by the song “Der Ententanz” (Google it, you’ll know it when you hear it), released in the  1950s in Switzerland, few people would know the bizarre cultural impact it would have on the world. Whether you’re having a great day, or a bad day, or just need something to smile about, try to make it a chicken-dance kind of day today!

In the meantime, you can enjoy these 23 stories, selected to celebrate the need to dance — not just like a chicken!

Spoiled – We’d like to propose a new dance: “The Helicopter Mom!”

Day Trippy – Dance to your own beat; just don’t forget your purse!

Disco Stu Does Not Approve – Look, we all love a boogie, but there is a time and place!

So She Thinks She Can Dance – When interpretive dance is too open to interpretation.

Riverdunce – You know you like dance when you think the orchestra is the warm-up act.

The Triforce Of Love – You won’t find a more “aww” story today, or possibly this week! It’s also the nerdiest!

Why Dance Rhymes With Romance – Or maybe this is the most “aww” story. You decide!

G2GBTW – When the cats away, the mice come out to dance.

This Teacher Will Keep You On Your Toes – That’ll teach you!

It Better Come With Champagne Showers – The father/daughter dance will never be the same again.

Snap Dance – Dance is powerful, so get it right!

When Push Comes To Shove, Don’t – Dancing requires the right attitude — and she does not have it.

Some Customers Just Waltz In – It’s a dancing revolution!

Best Try The Duet Yourself Checkout – Feel free to sing and dance, but it’s not free!

Customers To Keep You On Your Toes – No one is entitled to a dance.

Just Take A Deep Breath And Psy – For one month in history, this was the only dance in existence!

Kick Off Your Sunday Shoe Store – If you play music from that movie, you’re asking for it.

Hey Mr DJ, Put My Record On – Dancing is an art, but it’s also a science.

Revenge Is Sweat – I call this the karma dance!

At Least It’s Not Hot For Teacher – Do ya want me to dance?

Give Dad A Break – There’s no dancing around this dad joke.

Misunderstanding The Free Market – Dancing is beautiful and so are all the dancers.

He Can Hop Along Back To Jerksville – Jerks can’t dance, they just jerk around.

We hope you enjoyed today’s roundup! Remember, it doesn’t have to involve chickens, you don’t even have to dance, but do something to make you smile today. Any other roundups you’d like to see, let us know in the comments! Got your own story to tell? Share it with us here!

Stay safe, everyone!

Dear readers,

In our continuing coverage of workers that are essential to keep the world running, (we’ve covered grocery store workers, postal workers, healthcare workers, and truck drivers already!) we enter the classroom, and meet the teachers! We’ve gone through our archives to find twenty-three teacher stories that show how they have to juggle lesson plans with helicopter moms, homework assignments with lazy students, and figure out how to say goodbye to that work/life balance!

This Teacher Will Keep You On Your Toes – The penny drops after the eaves.

Home Doesn’t Always Work – When the biggest obstacle to homework is whoever runs the home.

Natural Born Politician – We are “positive” we have all been on this field trip.

Dumbed If You Do, Dumbed If You Don’t – Being a teacher makes you wonder who was the one teaching their parents?

Time To Teach Time Travel – Teacher job applications contain “Must be able to break the laws of physics.”

Try And Litre Down Gently – Whoever said milk is good for small kids didn’t meet this one.

Losing English Patience – Look, some teachers just want their sandwich. Okay?

Smoke-And-Tell – Parents beware, teachers know all your secrets!

Teachers Make A Difference – Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean teachers aren’t working.

The Smoker Of Two Evils – No one said art had to be pretty… or healthy!

Algebrawwww – Mathematicians have discovered the equation of love!

This “Real Man” Requires A Substitute – For this teacher, there can be no substitute.

Like Two PIs In A Pod – No one said teachers couldn’t be comedians. Maybe they should…

A Bit Young To Be So Off-Color – Hopefully, he doesn’t provide a color sample!

Defiance Is The Best Teacher – Anyone that can handle thirty five-year-olds can handle a “Karen.”

This Apple Doesn’t Foul Far From The Tree – We’re going to teach the f*** out of those kids!

It Was A Stache-steroid – Even Chuck Norris had a teacher.

OH-nly If You Wis-H2 Deto-Na-te – This is a once-in-a-lifetime lesson!

The Lion, The Witch, And The Tannenbaum – A good teacher can admit when they’re wrong.

Love’s Languages’s Lost – Teaching is a labor of love, in any language! (愛)

Trick And/Or Treat – This Halloween, teachers can celebrate the sudden abundance of toilet paper!

Completely Immersed In The Lesson – A good teacher lays it all bare!

Limping Through College – Also, feel sorry for the school librarians that have to deal with the same vacant brains of some of the students that teachers do.

And finally…

This Little Piggy Went To H*ll – a bonus story about how teachers need to vent just like the rest of us…

We hope you enjoyed this collection of stories! Know any that we missed? Let us know in the comments! Want to submit your own story? Do it here!

Stay safe, everyone!

Dear readers,

In our continuing effort to recognize those who keep the world running even as large parts of it shut down, (we’ve covered grocery store workers, healthcare workers, and postal workers!) we turn our attention to truck drivers. They provide essential services to make sure your grocery store is stocked with fresh produce, your pharmacies have medicines, and your hospitals have medical equipment. They are the reason so many of our lives are as comfortable and convenient as they are, and they don’t stop even when the rest of us have to.

We’ve compiled eleven stories from our archives of times when someone behind the wheel of several tons of moving vehicle deserved our respect.

So Trucking Nice – They’ll get you where you need to be, because they always know how to get to where they need to be.

A Key Moment In Solving This Problem – Wrong key, right driver!

The Death Of That Sale – We forget that trucking is a very dangerous job, and this woman in particular needs to be reminded of that!

Honk Twice For Bird Barrage – If you’re driving thousands of miles, you develop a dark sense of humor.

Blinker And You’ll Miss It – When truck drivers obey the law, it can be an annoying reminder to those who don’t.

Just Reading This Is Tire-ing – There’s no helping some people, no matter how far you drive.

There Are 20,000 Problems With This Order – When you have tons of potential disaster behind the wheel, you don’t take any risks!

Wait An Extra Hour For The Bigotry Bus – Technically not a truck driver, but a driver we still want to celebrate!

You Just Got Ownered – This story gets towed to a completely different place!

A Serious Error In Judgment – We think it’s amazing that an item ordered from the other side of the country gets to our front door — sadly, not everyone is quite as impressed.

Trained To Take Trains From High-Vis Staff – Truck drivers have to know where they’re going, even when they’re not driving!

We hope you enjoyed this roundup. Please let us know in the comments! If have your own story to share, submit it here!

Stay safe, everyone!