I work for a company that stores, ships, and sells dental supplies. Warehouse work is physically intense, mentally intense, and often hot and humid despite air-conditioning systems designed to make sure that the supplies don’t degrade.

Most of us workers bring a hearty lunch to heat up in the breakroom and demolish during our lunch breaks. But there was only one microwave and a single two-slice toaster. Despite the staggering of our lunch breaks, this created a bottleneck and often a line for lunch.

So, we all cheered when management announced that they were renovating the breakroom to include more microwaves! And some hotplates!

For a few months, we had to take our breaks in a temporary building that was worse than our old breakroom. It wasn’t air-conditioned, and it was too small to fit everyone who was on break at any given time, so some of us had to sit outside. It held the same old refrigerator, microwave, and two-slice toaster from the old breakroom.

But we put up with it, in eager anticipation of the new breakroom.

Finally, it was time for the unveiling. There was a rack of microwaves built into the wall, there were toaster ovens built into the wall, and several hotplates were built into a counter. 

They’d even knocked out a wall that had separated the breakroom from a former archival room, one we didn’t need anymore with the flip to digital record keeping! It was large, new, clean, and built to serve!

But the joy quickly turned to horror as a voice cried out, “What the heck is this?!”

We rushed over to see what had drawn this man’s ire, closely inspecting the microwaves. There was a strange slot next to each microwave or toaster oven, and there were raised slots by the hotplates.

Etched into the metal beside the microwaves’ slots were words: “25¢ per minute”.

The hotplates and toaster ovens had their own prices, equally unreasonable. The toaster ovens, in particular, were priced in 40¢ intervals.

The cries of shock and horror got worse as we approached the gargantuan refrigerator. It had a card-swipe for credit cards next to the door claiming it would cost us a dollar a day to open the door!

The sign on the fridge even had the gall to say, “Make sure you use the same card every time you open the door so it doesn’t double-charge you!”

We rioted. We actually rioted. The shift leaders and lower management were just as blindsided — and just as unhappy about this turn of events — as we were.

They joined in.

We tore the fridge from the wall and toppled it over to the ground. We ripped the doors off of the microwaves and toaster ovens; we vandalized the coin slots and tore them off of the hotplates.

The single representative of upper management present begged us to stop, but we did not — we could not. It was too loud and angry for him to be heard. Eventually, he called the police on us, and we were forcefully removed from the site.

All work halted for a week. We tried to go in for our shifts, jiggling at the doors, but they remained locked. We wondered if we were fired. Among ourselves, outside those doors, We had a quorum to try to unionize just in case.

Finally, we got a phone call from upper management apologizing for the fiasco. They promised us that no retaliation would occur and that the events of that day would not affect our employment. They asked us to come back into work.

So, we did.

When we returned to work the breakroom was a shambles. They’d hauled out the broken devices but not replaced them. They’d moved the single refrigerator, microwave, and two-slice toaster from the old breakroom and the temp building into the new breakroom to fill the space as a “temporary solution” until they could replace the “damaged devices”.

To this day, that’s still the present state of the breakroom.

I am visiting Saint Louis with a friend and his girlfriend, and we are wandering Laclede’s Landing when an elderly man in a wheelchair starts talking to us. After some small talk, he asks me what my name is. I tell him my name, which is a Biblical name.

Old Guy: “Ah, that’s a great Bible name!”

He turns to my friend’s girlfriend.

Old Guy: “And you?”

Friend’s Girlfriend: “Sarah.”

Old Guy: “Another great Bible name!”

He then turns to my friend, who already has an awkward look on his face.

Old Guy: “And how about you?”

Friend: “…My name’s Dustin.”

Old Guy: “Oh, no, that won’t do.”

He reaches into a pocket on his wheelchair and pulls out a Bible. He opens it to a random page, scrolls his finger down, and shouts:

Old Guy: “Judah! Your new name is Judah.”

Friend: “Ha, well… um, okay.”

We’re not really sure what to say, just trying to be polite. And then comes the last thing I expected.

Old Guy: “So… you guys wanna buy some weed?”

To this day, I sometimes call my friend Judah.

My store has a machine that allows us to wrap our merchandise in plastic wrap. One day while I’m conversing with my manager, we hear a pop/crackle, look over at our machine, and see a small fire along with sparks raining down from the outlet it’s plugged into.

Me: “I’ll grab the fire extinguisher to put that out. Call the fire department and have them send someone out to make sure there isn’t more fire inside the wall we can’t see.”

After a couple of quick blasts from the extinguisher, the outlet fire is out, and I turn off the machine. I turn around to find my manager scrolling through his phone.

Me: “What are you doing? Call the fire department!”

Manager: “I was looking for the phone number.”

Me: “It’s 911! What do you mean, you were looking for it?” 

He proceeds to call the fire department, and they send a team out. They use their thermal imagers and determine that there’s no more fire inside the wall and we’re safe to continue operations. On his way out, the fireman points to the now charred and melted outlet hanging out of the hole in the wall.

Fireman: “Don’t use that outlet anymore. You’ll need to replace it.”

CONTENT WARNING: Bullying, Violent Threats

Back when I first started high school, I was very literal-minded and socially clueless. There was a guy who did a lot of stuff to me that I now recognize as bullying, but because his behavior didn’t match up with the stereotypical bullies you see in cartoons and kids’ literature, it honestly did not occur to me to think of him as a bully. In my mind, he was a harmless annoyance, and I wasn’t nearly as bothered by his behavior as he probably intended me to be. Even when his behavior escalated, I never once considered reporting him to the teachers.

Now, let me take a moment to talk about the knives in our school cafeteria. Those things were notoriously blunt, barely sharper than your average plastic knife. The students made frequent jokes about how useless those knives were. So, when [Bully] walked up to me and briefly held a cafeteria knife to my throat, I was completely unfazed; I highly doubted he could actually hurt me with it. I shrugged off the incident as yet another harmless annoyance and continued with my day.

Thankfully, one of my classmates must have recognized the actual severity of the incident and reported it.

A few days later, I was pulled into the dean’s office. The dean and another staff member sat me down and asked if I was afraid of [Bully]. I was genuinely surprised by the question, and I truthfully told them I merely found him annoying. They brought up the knife incident, and I told them that the knife was extremely blunt, so why would I have been scared? Eventually, the dean accepted that I honestly didn’t feel threatened, and she let me return to class.

[Bully] never bothered me again, and I figured he must have lost interest.

It wasn’t until roughly a decade later that I realized I had probably unwittingly saved [Bully] from expulsion.

I receive a phone call from an unrecognized number, but I’m in the process of searching for a new job, so I answer. I’m sitting with my family, watching television.

Scammer: “Hello, I am calling because your computer has many viruses.”

I make my voice as distraught as possible.

Me: “Oh, no! My computer is infected with viruses?!”

Scammer: “Ma’am, why are you talking in such a tone? It is very disrespectful, and I do not appreciate it. This is a very serious matter!”

I’m surprised because it’s the first time a scammer has immediately gone on the offensive instead of sticking with their script. Even more surprising, he then hangs up on me.

Me: “He hung up!”

Husband: “Can they even do that?”

Apparently so!