(As I pull up to the bowser at a petrol station, I notice a dark-haired woman in her 30s at the next bowser talking on her phone as she finishes filling up. When I finish and go to pay she is at the counter. There is another customer behind her, and then there is me.)

Attendant: *talking to [Customer #1]* “You are not allowed to use your phone when filling up or around the bowsers.”

Customer #1: “Oh, why not?”

Attendant: “It is dangerous, and if my boss sees you doing it, I can get in a lot of trouble, and so can you.”

Customer #1: “Why is it dangerous?”

(The attendant goes on to explain how a spark from the phone could cause an explosion, and there are signs at all the bowsers warning people not to use their phones. [Customer #1] suddenly sounds concerned and remorseful.)

Customer #1: “Oh, dear, I’m terribly sorry; I won’t do it again.”

(She then picks up her phone she had put on the counter — still connected to a call — puts it to her ear, and carries on with her conversation.)

Customer #1: “Did you hear that? Using a phone at the petrol station is dangerous!”

(She continued to talk on the phone as she got to her car and drove off. [Customer #2], the attendant, and I all looked at each other dumbfounded.)

(This story was told to me by a coworker. The pool where I work is an older chlorine pool; since chlorine is a deadly gas we have an extremely sensitive alarm to warn us if there is a leak. When it goes off, we have to evacuate everyone from the pool immediately until we can determine if it’s a false alarm or not. This occurs as my coworker and a supervisor are trying to get everyone out of the building.)

Coworker: “Ma’am, is that your daughter in the change room?”

Mother: “Yeah, she’s changing.”

(My coworker goes and checks on the daughter who appears to just be standing there. She is joined by my supervisor because they are the last people left to be evacuated.)

Coworker: “Ma’am, she appears to just be standing there. Can you throw a towel over her and please take her outside?”

Mother: “No, she’s changing.”

Supervisor: “If this was a fire drill, would you be letting her change?!”

Mother: “Well, if this was a fire drill, I’d rather she be changed than cold!”

Supervisor: “You realize this is chlorine gas? It’s what they used in WW2! We could start coughing up our lungs!”

Mother: “Hmph!”

(Eventually, they get them outside and it turns out to be just a false alarm, but the mother has one last parting shot.)

Mother: *with obvious sarcasm* “Thanks for the great customer service.”

Coworker & Supervisor: “You’re welcome?”

About ten years ago, I worked in a nursing home. The building was old and while we waited for the new build to start, there wasn’t much money spent on repairs. Needless to say, the old building had some “problems.”

Problem 1: I was working with an intern who had just started. She was unaware of some of the issues we had to deal within the building. She and I walked into a small room where a resident was sleeping. She had thrown up and the room was really smelly. While I grabbed towels and water, the intern tried to open the window. 

When I realised this I yelled, “NO, DON’T! It’ll…”

Then, there was an almighty crash and the sound of glass breaking into thousands of pieces. The intern was standing near the space where the window was, still holding on to the latch.

“…fall out,” I finished.

The window wasn’t to be opened anymore, as staff knew the hinges were so rusted the window would drop out. It had to be replaced, as it was a tad cold in a bedroom without a window. But the smell was gone!

Problem 2: I was working the nightshift and doing my rounds. I was just walking along the third floor hallway when I suddenly heard the elevator arriving. The doors opened and I had a serious jumpscare, as the elevator should stay on the ground floor with the doors open all night. Nobody was supposed to use the elevator at night.

The doors opened and I could see nobody in the elevator at all. The doors closed and I heard it travelling up to the top floor where it opened again and closed. It then went down again and opened and closed again. This apparently happened every night around 3:00 am. The elevator would travel up and stop at every floor, and when it reached the top floor it would travel down, again stopping at every floor. Nobody knew why, not even the technicians who had been called a couple of times, but they couldn’t locate the problem. We called it the elevator ghost.

Problem 3: One wing had sunscreens which were all attached to each other. That is, there was only one button which controlled all sunscreens on that wing. If you wanted to pull them out — or in — you needed to look outside first to see if anyone had their door open. If so, it needed to be closed first. One of my coworkers forgot to check and took out two doors. Both got torn from the hinges and had to be fixed. The boss wasn’t best pleased.

Problem 4: We were having a fire drill and one of our residents had to be “evacuated” from his room. As the “fire” was further down the hall, we got him to the top of the hall, only to realise the evacuation chair was missing. Someone thought it wasn’t needed and had had it removed. As it was a drill, we joked with the resident — a relatively young guy — about throwing him off the stairs. The fire department just carried him down, but a new chair was needed in order to pass the drill.

There are quite a few more stories; some deserve their own story completely.

Related:
Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head

About ten years ago I worked in a nursing home located in a very old building, in desperate need of a new building. The build finally started and problems to the old building were patched up, not fixed.

I was working a night shift with a coworker when, around 2:00 am, a long-awaited thunderstorm arrived. We made a bet where we would have to mop up water, as the roof was leaking. Up until that night, it wasn’t too bad, just a bit of a nuisance. That night, it changed.

We made our way to the top floor where we didn’t find any water. So, we went down to the main hall, which was a more recent addition to the building. We found a giant puddle near the bar area and started mopping it up. The rain intensified and it was pouring down quite badly. From the window, we couldn’t see a thing other than rain.

At around 2:20 am, I got a call from a resident up on the top floor. At first, I heard nothing but water gushing. Then I heard this:

“Please… I’m drowning!”

I could hear the anxiety in her voice, so my coworker and I rushed up to the top floor and into her apartment. We found the resident in bed, scooted as far as she could to the left. Keep in mind that this resident couldn’t move without help, so this must have been a massive feat for her.

Water was literally pouring down into her bed. Everything was soaked, including our resident. My coworker and I moved the bed away from the water as quickly as we could. Half the ceiling had collapsed onto the bed, miraculously missing her head. The other half was hanging by a thread. My coworker ran to turn off the electricity as water was gushing out of the sockets and from the lamps. In the living room, the ceiling hadn’t yet collapsed, but the weight of the water was very visible. We managed to get our resident out of her room before the whole ceiling collapsed. My coworker made a bed for her in another room, which would be occupied the next morning, and I moved the resident to a shower room to get a nice hot shower.

The resident said to me, “Well… I bet you didn’t expect that when I called.”

“No, not really,” I replied. “I thought you were joking about drowning.”

“I wasn’t.”

“No, I know now. But I’m glad you didn’t drown in your bed.”

Then, the resident laughed and said, “That would’ve made a nice headline. Woman drowns in bed.”

“I wouldn’t have had a clue how to tell that to your children,” I told her, also laughing.

We got her into bed and checked all five other rooms on the top floor. No water was found in any of the other rooms, although we didn’t turn on the electricity on the top floor that night. We did call the fire department to check the roof and we called our boss, who wasn’t pleased we called her at 3:00 or 4:00 am, though she was glad the resident was okay. The fire department found a large hole in the roof, just above the resident’s room. It took two weeks before the resident could return to her room.

I have worked as a lifeguard over the summer for several years. One part of the pool is a water slide. The rules for the slide are that people have to be over 42 inches and must be able to swim on their own. One lifeguard is always at the bottom of the slide just in case, but we aren’t allowed to catch kids. They have to be able to get out on their own.

One day, there’s a dad with his three kids at the pool. I am working the slide, and I chat some with the very polite dad as his kids climb up the stairs to the slide. His youngest son is terrified, but he eventually ends up going down. He panics at the bottom, though, and starts drowning. I immediately scoop him up and help him up the stairs.

Normally, we would tell them they can’t go down anymore because of the rules, but I don’t say anything because I don’t know if he can swim and he just got scared. The kid goes back up, still scared, but not as much. I end up having to save him a second time.

I tell the dad, “Hey, your son needs to be able to swim on his own for this ride. He can go again a third time, but if I have to save him, he won’t be able to go down anymore.”

The dad blows up. He starts cussing at me and telling me I’m not doing my job correctly, and meanwhile, his kid is going down the slide for a third time. I am ignoring the dad at this point, and I scoop up the kid who is drowning for the third time in a row. The dad starts yelling at his kid, too.

He says, “You’re gonna have to handle your own s*** because she doesn’t give a f*** about you!”

I just kind of stare at him, like, yeah, I just saved your drowning six-year-old son, but I don’t care at all? The guy ends up going to my managers about it, who tell him I did exactly what I was supposed to. Good times.