About a decade ago, I was working as an extra on a film set. I’m a woman, and I was in my mid-thirties at the time. I was working with a couple of men who were friends of mine (and they still are). They’re really good folks; I’ve never seen them be anything but kind and respectful.

We were waiting to go on set, having a snack between scenes. I was eating a banana, and my friends and I were laughing about something — who knows what.

The costume lady came over and gestured for me to follow her. I went, thinking there was an issue with my costume. Nope. She wanted to talk to me privately. She whispered that she was concerned about me, and she warned me about the way I was eating my banana. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I remember she said something about me “getting the other extras too excited”.

Even though I wasn’t all that young, I was a little insecure, and I was quite worried about offending. Also, this happened before #MeToo. Being a woman on a film set could be pretty precarious. I ducked into the washroom to finish my banana quietly and then went back to holding.

It never occurred to me that she was being ridiculous and that eating a banana was a perfectly normal, non-provocative thing to do. I just felt really embarrassed and a bit ashamed all day long.

To this day, I can’t eat a banana without feeling self-conscious if anyone else is around.

This was some time ago, maybe around the year 2000. The place I worked at was a warehouse — nothing special. I had to get orders to pull, help with some customers in the showroom, help with shipping/receiving, and so on. My coworkers, on the other hand, were all pretty special in their own ways. One of them really sticks out in my memory.

[Coworker] was very smart, but it was just book smarts; he had no common sense whatsoever. Our supervisor best described him as such: “You could ask him what time it is, and he’d tell you how a watch works.”

One day, I got to work and [Coworker] didn’t come in. After a couple of days of not being at work, he finally showed up, but he had to utilize his bike and the public buses to get from where he lived (about fifteen miles away) to work. I didn’t really care about his reasoning for being out a few days and riding his bike now instead of driving, but he wanted to freely share his experience with everyone at work.

He liked to visit a local bar by his residence — roughly a two-block distance. He usually parked by the bar, had a few beers, and drove home. He was leaving the bar on Friday, and he’d had a few drinks — nothing out of the norm. As he was walking to his truck, he spotted an unmarked police cruiser nearby. He approached their car and started telling the cops in that they couldn’t be parked there and all sorts of other things I can’t recall. He told us that after he told them he lived nearby, the cops told him to just walk home and cool off. They told him to walk home and come back in the morning to get his truck. He mouthed off to them some more, and instead of listening to them, he approached his truck. They arrested him for DUI. He was held over the weekend until he was arraigned on Monday. Then, he had his license revoked, he had to get a lawyer, and so on.

Now that [Coworker] couldn’t legally drive until he could get his license back, he was using the city bus system and his pedal bike to get to and from work. As smart as the guy was, he really was pretty dumb.

One morning, I got to work and it was just pouring rain outside. The downpour didn’t deter [Coworker] from coming in. He still biked to the closest bus stop, put his bike on the front rack of the bus, got off at a bus stop about a mile from work, and biked the rest of the way. When he got to work, he was dripping wet, soaked to the bone.

He reassured us that he had dry clothes to change into in his backpack, which he had wrapped in plastic to keep it from getting wet. It sounded like he’d thought of everything. Off to the restroom he went to change.

A couple of minutes later, out came [Coworker], and he was in his speedo-looking underwear and a dry shirt — nothing else on, just his underwear and shirt. He proceeded to tell us that he’d forgotten to pack socks and pants, so he had to wait for his wet stuff to dry off more before he could put it back on. He then proceeded to walk around the warehouse without pants on and try to work!

The warehouse manager made him go put on his wet pants and told him he just had to deal with them being wet and that he couldn’t parade around the workplace in his underwear.

I worked at a mall shop that sold adult toys. We had a policy that any sex paraphernalia could not be returned after the package was opened, for obvious reasons.

We had someone come in with a vibrator that they had haphazardly tucked back into the packaging. Even with it closed, the smell was intense.

We refused the return, and we had to threaten them with security before they finally left.

And we sanitized the counter really well after that.

Back when I worked the third shift full-time, I had a guy come in not too long before my manager got there at 5:00 am.

Guy: “How much would it cost for you to sleep with me?”

Me: “I’m in a relationship. And there’s not enough money in the world.”

The guy got pissed and started to walk away, yelling back to me on his way out:

Guy: “You’re a slut!”

It’s honestly the closest I’ve ever come to going over the counter after someone. My manager came in shortly after while the guy was still in the parking lot, and she made me sit in the back when he came back into the store so I wouldn’t kill him.

I used to work for a large mobile phone operator. Remember those shortcodes you could text for ringtones and various other multimedia? This dude rang one day going bats*** about these charges on his bill.

Customer: “You’re fleecing me! You’re overcharging me! This is ridiculous!”

And so on. After ten minutes of him screeching in my ears, I finally managed to get the shortcode from him to check the database and see where the charges were coming from.

It turned out that he had downloaded some “adult content” of the mature persuasion. In doing so, he had subscribed himself to their weekly content and subsequent charges.

I could barely stifle my laughs as I told him:

Me: “To unsubscribe, you’ll have to text the words ‘Stop Granny’ to [shortcode].”

There was the most deafening silence and then disconnection.

You’re welcome, dude.