It’s my dad’s birthday. Every year, during normal circumstances, my mum will pay for dinner at a restaurant of my dad’s choice as a present. As the restaurants are currently closed because of the crisis, this is, of course, impossible. Instead, my dad searches for restaurants that deliver. After quite a bit of bad reading skills on my dad’s part, which is a whole different story, he decides on a restaurant.

Immediately when we get the box, we realize something is off. The restaurant did not deliver fully-finished hot dishes, but what I can only call a puzzle box. There are vacuum-sealed bags, plastic boxes in different shapes and sizes, and one set of plastic plates taped together. With this come instructions on how to piece everything together and how long to heat these things. My dad, disappointed by what he got, slinks off and leaves my mum and I to piece together what we have to do.

And that’s when the second problem comes to light. While the instructions are fairly easy, the ingredients are not clearly marked and the pictures are discoloured and a bit blurry. On top of that, one of the pieces does not match what’s shown on the picture at all, though the restaurant assures us it is the same.

And that’s not the worst of it. There are pieces missing. And not just small pieces. My mum’s entire appetizer is missing apart from one tube of goat cheese cream, and her main course is missing the thing which structures it all and a tube of its own flavoured creamy stuff.

My mum calls the restaurant and they send us more food, but they send two pieces of something we already had, another double, and also most of the abovementioned stuff, apart from the watercress for my mum’s appetizer. On top of that, while preparing, we realize there are more pieces missing — the apple slices for my crepes and the truffle sauce for my mum’s main dish — but by that point, we are done with the restaurant and just want to eat.

I do look on the website to see if they mention anything of the meal being pieced together like that and they do, all the way at the bottom, under the header “Allergies and food restrictions.”

I get that restaurants have to find a way to survive in this troublesome time, but this was very poorly executed. This was a fairly high-class restaurant, too, and the food wasn’t cheap. We ordered food for only three people and this much was messed up. Even though my dad enjoyed that restaurant before, I doubt he’ll ever want to do business with them again.

I work in an office and we have an issue with a client. We haven’t received a payment, so he sends me proof of payment. I contact the bank, but they can’t find the transaction listed. 

When I talk about it during a coffee break, a coworker I barely know and who just started asks if she can see the proof of payment. I don’t know what she can do with it, but since it’s a very large sum, I grasp every straw I can get. 

She takes one look at it, and within ten seconds:

Coworker: “This has been faked.”

Me: “What? Huh? What do you mean?!”

Coworker: “This screenshot has been edited.”

She looks nervous and uneasy, but she points at the big bar on the top.

Coworker: “This bar is missing a few pixels; here, it doesn’t match up. This description is a different font from the rest of the text here. And this zero is slightly lower than the other numbers. There’s also a slightly different hue of white here and here. If you move a bit over here, you can see a few digital brush strokes.”

Me: *Baffled* “How did you spot that?!”

Coworker: “I… ehm… I used to do art on the computer. Pixel art… eh, game sprites. Just for fun. It’s kind of… my thing.”

I don’t get why she was embarrassed but I didn’t press that any further. She saved us a lot of money!

This story is part of our Best Of 2021: Readers’ Choice roundup!

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When my aunt and uncle get married, around 1970, my uncle makes the unfortunately typical male assumption that my aunt will be doing all the housework, even though both of them are working full-time jobs as nurses. My aunt is a modern woman and is not happy about this. She decides to address the issue in a way that is still legendary in our family to this day.

One morning, my uncle is getting ready for work and wants to put on a clean shirt… only to discover that there isn’t a single shirt in his wardrobe, and he is running low on other items of clothing, as well. He goes to ask my aunt about it.

Uncle: “[Aunt], where are my shirts?”

Aunt: “Well, [Uncle], are they your shirts or my shirts?”

Uncle: *Puzzled* “Mine.”

Aunt: “Then why, pray tell, do you assume I would know anything about them?”

Uncle: “Well, haven’t you done the laundry?”

Aunt: *Pointedly* “And why exactly should I be the one doing the laundry?”

Uncle: “Well… you… I mean…”

My aunt gave her husband a good talking-to about how it was unfair of him to expect her to do all the housework on top of her job, just because she was a woman. He agreed to share the chores from then on, and their marriage was a very happy one after that. But my aunt did let him deal with the enormous pile of accumulated laundry to drive home the message.

This story is part of our Best Of February 2021 roundup!

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I’m manning the till at the drive-thru. A car with a cop in it turns up.

Cop: “Hey, I’m not ordering anything. I just took out the drunk driver, but his car was already in the queue. So I’m just driving his car to get it out.”

I’m at a chain bookstore, browsing a section near the door where an employee is arranging a display of the biography of a famous former football player and coach, which just came out. Said former football player recently thought it was funny to say, “Sieg Heil,” after an interview between a journalist and a German-speaking football trainer which was broadcast during a football-themed talk show where he was one of the guests.

What this has done for his popularity is evidenced by the following exchange between the bookstore employee and a man who notices the display upon entering the store.

Customer: “I really don’t think you should have those out, not after what that guy said on TV.”

Employee: “Corporate decides on our displays, sir. But to be honest, you’re not the first person to make a remark like that.”

I don’t think that biography is going to sell well anytime soon.