I drive tourists around a large Safari park in South Africa. We get tourists from all over the world, and while I would never EVER laugh at someone’s accent or command of English, sometimes they will come up with something I can’t help but smile at.

Tourist: “When will we see the… how you say?”

Me: “Can you describe the animal to me?”

Tourist: “Like… pony, but looks like… prison?”

Me: “A zebra?”

Tourist: “Yes! When will we see prison pony?!”

That’s what I’m calling ’em from now on!

Our store has this client who religiously comes into the store five minutes before closing. He never wants any help with anything and will spend an hour walking around the store doing absolutely nothing.

He is always just browsing, and he comes at this time because he knows no one else will be there and he wants the store to himself in peace. In the eyes of the staff, he’s a real self-absorbed person who thinks the retail world revolves around him and we are here to serve him.

After witnessing this a few times, and after clearing it with the head office, my manager waits for this guy to show up again, and as expected, five minutes before closing, in walks Mr. Entitled.

The manager walks up to greet him.

Manager: “Do you need any assistance?”

Mr. Entitled: *As per the expected response* “No, thanks. I am just looking around.”

The manager puts his hands on the guy’s shoulders and starts to rotate him 180 degrees. Mr. Entitled is naturally confused.

Mr. Entitled: “What are you doing?!”

Once he’s fully rotated, the manager says:

Manager: “Okay, you have looked around. Now you can leave!”

Naturally, Mr. Entitled was not at all impressed. He made demands and threats about calling the head office, etc., but as it was cleared by the company, no one ever heard anything more about it and he was never seen near closing time again.

When I was doing my articles at a small law firm — an internship to be admitted as an attorney — I was the go-to person for everything at the office e.g. setting up computers, buying stationery, paying bills, going to court, seeing clients, etc. After being admitted as an attorney, I continued doing all this because the secretary only did about 20% of what a secretary would usually do and refused to do anything else. My boss did some shady business (didn’t pay taxes, etc.) so he couldn’t just fire her for fear of her ratting him out. He also never disciplined her. We are not in the US.

Since we worked from my boss’s mother’s house, the secretary also spent about 50% of her day just chatting with his mother and they became fast friends. Guess who was always the evil one that everyone ganged up on? Yours truly. I was made out to be incompetent at my job, and I used to cry a lot and almost became an alcoholic from work stress.

One day, the secretary got really upset with me after I asked her to buy stationery since we didn’t even have staples. After a heated argument, she told me:

Secretary: “You are not the office manager, and you should stop lording it about as if you were!”

Bear in mind that I was her senior both as an attorney and in the number of years I’d worked at the firm. My boss did nothing and rather got upset with me, as did his mother.

I decided then and there that I was done doing both secretary work and my attorney work because I was working roughly fifty to sixty hours per week — the standard was forty — trying to get everything done without receiving overpay. (The unemployment rate in my country was around 30%, and in the legal field, the supply of lawyers exceeded the demand.) The secretary knew this and my boss knew this, but no one cared that I was basically working myself into an early grave.

Cue malicious compliance. If everyone agreed that I was not the office manager, then I would stop managing the flow of the office and only do my attorney work. I stopped paying the bills, buying the stationery, reminding my boss of important meetings, etc.

Within two weeks, the electricity was cut off for ten days because it wasn’t paid and my boss’s elderly mother and the rest of his family had no electricity. We also could not work for those ten days. Once the electricity was turned back on, the phone lines were cut because of non-payment. Again, we could not work. The post piled up. There was no stationery. We couldn’t do service of court documents because our service providers cut us off. It went on for weeks. I simply worked around the issues and sorted my life out. (One example: when the WiFi was off, I used my cellphone as a hotspot for my laptop without telling anyone.)

In the end, my boss and his mother begged me to do what I used to do, but I refused. Since I was focusing more on my actual work, my fees increased, and my pay increased, as well.

Shortly thereafter, I moved away from that office to our secondary office and worked alongside lovely colleagues who all did what they got paid to do. I have been at this new office — the same firm, just a different location — for the last two years.

My mom is a tough cookie with an incredibly high pain tolerance. She’s not one to complain about feeling ill unless it’s really bad. I get up one morning to find she’s not at home. I don’t give much thought to it, thinking she’s running an errand, until she calls me.

Mom: “I’m at the doctor’s. I need you to pick me up and take me to the hospital.”

Trying not to panic, I rush over to our local doctor in my car. When I go in, my mom is lying in their small clinic room, pale, sweating, and vomiting. The doctor explains that she came in complaining of severe abdominal cramps. The doctor offers to call ahead to the hospital so that we don’t have to wait in triage. I get my mom into my car and rush her to the hospital. In my (albeit non-expert) opinion, it sounds like her appendix is about to burst.

I rush into the ER and get them to bring mom in using a wheelchair. She’s getting worse by the minute, and I’m trying not to panic as I fill in her details. I call my dad, but he’s at least two hours away for work. Mom gets seen in triage and admitted.

Once we’re in her room, we’re told we need to wait for the doctor. Mom is still vomiting and in agony. The nurses refuse to give her anything without the doctor.

An hour goes by. Two. Three.

I’m frantic. I know that this is an absolute medical emergency, and there is no urgency being shown. The nurses brush me off when I tell them they need to get a doctor immediately.

Eventually, the doctor arrives, giving some bulls*** excuse. My mother is still dry heaving in pain, so I fill him in and say that I think she has appendicitis. He looks at her with little interest and asks if she ate anything weird. (No, we all ate the same things.)

Doctor: “Could it be an ectopic pregnancy?”

Me: “For God’s sake, she’s menopausal and had a hysterectomy two years ago, which is on her d*** chart! It’s her freaking appendix!”

Mom: “Doc, I’ve had two kids, and this is worse than the pain I felt during labour.”

Doctor: “Hmm… I think you may be being a bit dramatic. I’ll give you something for the vomiting and send you for a scan.”

He leaves. Thirty minutes later, the nurse administers the nausea medication, which has no effect, but at least Mom’s given fluids.

It’s another hour-long wait before they’re ready to do the scan and another forty-five minutes for the results. Mom’s pain is worse when the doctor comes back.

Doctor: “I don’t see anything suspicious on the scan, but seeing how much pain you’re in, I think we’ll have to operate and see what’s going on.”

They prep Mom for surgery and wheel her off. At this point, I collapse with worry. My dad has since arrived, so he and I go home, waiting for the hospital to tell us she’s out of surgery. By 7:00 pm, we get called back.

Mom has done a total 180; her colour is back, the vomiting has stopped, and she’s feeling relief despite having just had major abdominal surgery.

Me: “What was wrong?!”

Mom: “The doctor hasn’t told me yet. Guess we’ll find out.”

The doctor walks in about forty-five minutes later, looking sheepish, to say the least.

Doctor: “Ma’am, it turns out you weren’t overreacting. Your appendix managed to twist itself and had become gangrenous. You literally had a gangrenous bowel. There’s nothing more painful. I’ve never seen anything like it. We actually took pictures to show our colleagues.”

My mom was less than impressed with the doctor who had brushed us off. She was back home the next day. Trust your gut, people.

Back in 2011, I went to Africa to volunteer at an animal park. One of the areas I helped out with was a drive-through space with a pride of lions. People could drive their cars through to look at the lions, but there were rules. No cars with soft roofs (i.e., a cloth convertible top) or open roofs. Windows had to be closed at all times. Stick to the path. And so on.

Of course, people would try to break the rules, so a staff member would drive around in a truck to keep an eye on things, and sometimes volunteers would ride along to help look out. Most of it was fairly minor — cracking a window for a camera or trying to drive off the path to get closer to the lions. Except for this:

My volunteer coworker and I were in the backseat of the truck, looking out our respective windows, when suddenly my coworker gasped loudly. The staff member and I turned to look, and she was pointing toward a car that had stopped only a few feet away from the male lion.

They had two windows fully open: one for their camera and the other to DANGLE THEIR BABY OUT THE WINDOW so they could get a photo of the baby and the lion.

The staff member immediately jumped out of the truck and scrambled over to them. He briefly spoke to them. Then, they pulled the kid (and the camera) back inside, closed the windows, and drove off. When he came back, we asked him what he had said to them.

Staff Member: “I just told them that if they didn’t want their baby anymore, I had much kinder ways of getting rid of the kid than offering them up to the lions as food.”