I drive passenger trains for a living, a job I love, but of course, it has its own set of problems. And a lot of those problems are people.

One day, I stop at a station for people to get on and off, but we are also waiting for a meeting train (single track railway, except for stations, of course). Then, I spot a man in his fifties calmly getting down from the platform on the other side of the station. Despite me loudly blowing the horn — both to get him off the track and to warn the other train — he just walks over the three tracks and then climbs up onto my platform.

Me: “Why did you do that? It’s really dangerous — also illegal!”

Passenger: “My back hurts, so I can’t take the stairs.”

And then, he just walked away from the station. To clarify, yes, there are stairs that lead to a tunnel under the tracks, but there are also elevators, as well as a nicely sloping path, all of which would be better for someone with a backache than climbing up and down a metre-high platform edge and walking over very uneven crushed rock, plus tracks. Just as a bonus, cargo trains regularly drive 100 km/h on the middle track.

I am cutting up some wood for a customer. Their kids are playing with some kind of colorful tennis ball thing. One of them throws it and it lands behind the saw in my woodcutter.

Me: “Sir! Please ask your children to stop doing that! It is very dangerous to play like that while I am cutting wood.”

Customer: “Sorry. Boys being boys, eh?”

I wisely do not respond and I continue cutting, but the customer is now staring at me expectantly. He does a little cough.

Customer: “Could you pass the boys their ball?”

Me: “Not without risking my life, sir.”

Customer: “Well, I’m okay with that.”

Me: “Well, shockingly, sir, I am not.”

I work in security. I arrived at my post today to find a new directive on how to handle packages. Basically, if there’s no name associated with the delivery and none of the three listed managers know anything about it, turn the delivery away at the gate.

“Why has this come about?” you might ask. Well…

A couple of days ago, in a large city in Texas, USA, at 01:45, a man delivered a briefcase to the door guard at a media station. He claimed it was for the newsroom. The guard who accepted the briefcase is a subcontractor of the same national company I work for, and I guard another location of the same media conglomerate in a different state.

Later, the station got a call that it might be a bomb.

As my site supervisor was telling me the story, I was thinking, “Get as much information from the caller as possible. Then, make an overhead page for evacuation, call 911, call the supervisor, and go through the building making sure people are out. Meet the bomb squad, take them to the briefcase, and get the bleep out of there myself.”

This guard in Texas decided to open the briefcase. Yes, really.

Luckily, it wasn’t really a bomb.

The guard has been “reassigned” away from that post and is likely to be fired from the major, national, well-known guard company.

I’m driving my car with three friends inside. We’re coming back from the club late at night. The interior of the car suddenly begins to fill up with smoke, so we pull onto the shoulder and bail out of the car.

Good thing, too, because very rapidly, while I’m dialing Roadside Assistance, the whole car goes up like a Roman candle. It’s burning merrily, making popping noises. One of my friends calls 911.

The EMS arrives first, followed by the police and the firefighters. I give a statement to one of the officers and then take a ride to the hospital to be monitored for toxic smoke inhalation. 

The stay in the hospital is not pleasant, but they eventually let us go. I return home… to get a citation delivered to my door by courier. It says it’s for improperly stopping a vehicle, but the actual law cited is about not putting your hazard lights on.

I. See. Red.

First, I go to the city government to discuss it. The lady behind the desk asks:

Lady: “Would you like to take a plea deal? I can reduce the fine to zero if you plead guilty.”

Nope. Not doing that. I am not guilty of any crime and I refuse to plead guilty. I am going to make this city spend its money to prosecute me. I set a trial date with the lady behind the desk. She seems taken aback by my vehemence.

The trial date arrives, and I show up in court with a bunch of records, including a video from my phone of the car burning. I’ve spent quite a lot of time gathering records and tracking down witness statements. I have not spent any time studying court etiquette, case histories, or how to speak in court correctly. I probably should have.

The officer who cited me does not show up in court.

Several other traffic cases are being heard on the same day. One by one, they approach the podium, the judge talks with them some, the prosecuting (and sometimes but rarely defending) attorneys talk some, and a judgment is made. No case seems to take more than about thirty minutes.

It’s my turn. I approach the podium and I’m quickly sworn in.

Judge: “So… can you tell me more about this citation? Something about emergency lights?”

Me: “Well, your honor, I figured that being brightly burning — that is to say literally on fire — probably was a clear enough signal that my vehicle was in distress.”

The judge thinks for a moment and then turns to the prosecuting attorney.

Judge: “Are you aware of any particular facts from this particular case?”

Attorney: “Nothing that isn’t written in the brief, sir.”

The judge reads the brief again for a moment. He glances back up at me.

Judge: “Well. It sounds like you’re innocent, then. Have a nice day. There’ll be some paperwork for you to sign.”

And that was the end of it.

This story is part of the Editors’-Favorite-Stories Of-2022 roundup!

Read the next Editors’-Favorite-Stories Of-2022 roundup story!

Read the Editors’-Favorite-Stories Of-2022 roundup!

I work in a warehouse with heavy machinery, so it’s definitely not a place for kids. We have two sit-on electric forklifts that can lift up to 3,000 pounds, and the forklifts themselves weigh nearly five tons each.

I’ve seen drivers come with their big sleeper cabs, and sometimes they have someone or even their family riding with them, so I don’t question when I have a driver show up with a full semi of heavy pallets of tiles and his wife and five-year-old daughter are with him.

The pallets of tiles on this truck are pushing 2,700 pounds. Combined with the weight of my forklift, I’ve got around 12,000 pounds of weight, and I can get the forklift up to almost ten miles per hour.

Driver: “Is there a restroom my kid can use?”

Me: “There are a couple of restrooms right inside the office that she can use.”

Then, I go about unloading the truck. I take a pallet off the truck, and as I am leaving the dock area and heading into the warehouse, I come across a main intersection. When you come across one of these, you honk the horn on the forklift and take it slow because you can’t easily see what might be coming from the left or right until you clear the garage door.

I move a handful of pallets off the truck and into the warehouse, and while I am doing it, the mom is standing well off to the side at that main intersection, just watching.

I make another trip through the intersection with a pallet of tiles, honking the horn as I’m approaching the intersection. Just as I cross through the garage, I slam on the brakes as the young child goes dashing across the front of the forklift. I’m only going a couple of miles per hour, but slamming on the brakes causes the pallet to slide almost completely off the forks. It’s within inches of crushing the little girl as her mom just stands there and just watches her kid running around.

I glare at the mom.

Me: “This isn’t a f****** playground. Why would you let your kid just run around a dangerous place? I almost f****** killed her!”

I just keep my dagger stare on her as she nonchalantly saunters across the front of my forklift, takes her daughter by her hand, and calmly walks her out. I go and find the driver.

Me: “If I see your wife or kid out of the cab any time while I’m still unloading your truck, I will refuse the shipment, and you can explain to your dispatch why you’ll have to bring the material 2,000 miles back to the facility.”

The wife and kid stayed in the truck and we had no other issues. It still makes me upset to this day when I randomly think of this situation that happened almost twenty years ago and how some parents are just so clueless or uncaring.