I’m allergic to lactose. It’s something that just sprung out of nowhere when I was about twelve which meant I got to experience the delights of products with lactose before it was very rudely taken away from me. One item taken was pizza.

Since I lived in a really rural area, the non-lactose/dairy option for pizza was just… no cheese whatsoever, which is just sad and messy. As such, I don’t have pizza anymore. I’m visiting my friend in London in the Before Times and we get to her flat late in the evening only to find that the cooker has noped and isn’t working. As such, we head on out to find a food place.

Friend: “Probably not gonna like this suggestion, but there’s this really nice independently owned pizza place that does lovely pizzas…”

Me: “A no-cheese pizza is a sad pizza. But often pizza places do pasta so… potentially an option?”

Friend: “I can’t remember if they do or not. I don’t get pasta normally so I can’t help, but we can stop on in and see.”

We head on over and go into this place and get seated pretty quickly. It has a shared table setup and we’ve been sat near a guy on his laptop. We’re browsing through the menu:

Me: *Sadly* “Ah, no pasta. Just pizza.”

Friend: “Says they’re customisable, though, for dietary requirements. Just have to ask.”

Me: “Once again, [Friend], a no-cheese pizza is a sad pizza.”

Laptop Guy: “I agree. You vegan? There’s vegan cheese.”

Me: “Oh, I’m just allergic to lactose.”

Laptop Guy: “‘Just allergic’? Not sure those two words belong together. But if it’s an allergy to just the sugar, there are a few options. Personally, I recommend the lactose-free mozzarella. It’s extremely similar to regular mozzarella in texture and taste.”

Friend: “Oh, have you tried the other cheese options?”

Laptop Guy: “Yeah, I taste everything that gets put in here. All the workers do, excluding anything that goes against their dietary needs.”

Friend: “What do you do here?”

Laptop Guy: “I’m the owner.”

It was a good pizza.

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I work in a fast food place. [Coworker] had been working there for at least a couple of years before I started. I don’t know why he stayed, as he constantly complained and did as little as possible. That part kind of annoyed me, as everyone else had to do more work because he didn’t want to. I started to look forward to the shifts he wasn’t on.

Being a store in the middle of nowhere, I guess they struggled to find replacements. Most of [Coworker]’s petty rule-breaking was overlooked and he got away with what he wanted — starting late, taking extra breaks, not cleaning on his rota, etc. The only thing I saw him getting in trouble for was taking food.

The management didn’t care if you took the (cooked) leftovers. If an order was made wrong, they looked the other way, and part of the employee benefit was that you got some food free every day.

But this wasn’t good enough for [Coworker]. He had to push the boundaries. As soon as the manager’s back was turned, he would be cooking himself whatever he wanted.

One day, some senior guy was walking around. [Coworker] didn’t know or didn’t care. As usual, he did as little as possible, and right before his break, he made himself a burger, packaged it up, and walked past everyone to the break room.

Senior Guy: “Where are you going with that?”

Coworker: “It’s my lunch.”

Senior Guy: “Did you pay for it?”

Coworker: “No, it was a return. [Manager] lets us eat the returns.”

Senior Guy: “Okay, but you can’t have the return you process yourself. Who served the customer?”

Coworker: *Pauses* “Okay, fine, it’s not a return. But it’s only extra cheese and bacon. It’s basically the free one we get anyway.”

Senior Guy: “The policy is there for a reason. Please pay for the sandwich.”

Coworker: “It’s only a piece of cheese, and what? Two pieces of bacon?”

Senior Guy: “It’s not about the cost; it’s about the rules everyone follows.”

Coworker: “Screw this job. This whole place will fall down without me.”

He quit, and the place didn’t fall down. In fact, we didn’t really notice him gone. [Coworker], of course, thought he was the victim in this and acts like he was some star employee, fired only because of bureaucracy. I make sure to point this out as we are friends on Facebook.

Every month, I report the company figures to the senior team. Every month, someone doesn’t have the information for me and I have to chase them, but as I’m not in their departments, they never prioritise it. [Coworker] is the worst; his report is never in the same format twice, and I often have to go back to him for more or correct info.

This month, however, despite chasing, I have had nothing at all from him.

Me: “Hey, [Coworker], could you send me the [monthly report] when you get a chance, please?”

Coworker: “I’ve not done it yet.”

Me: “Wasn’t it due last week? I mean, can you send it over when you do get to it, please? I need it for the 2:00 meeting.”

He ignores me. I’m busy for the rest of the morning, and after lunch, I try to find him, but he is late back. It gets to 1:40.

Me: “[Coworker], could you send that report over, please, mate? I need to prep it for my meeting.”

Coworker: “Oh, I didn’t do it. I figure if you need it, then you should probably do it.”

Me: “It’s a sales report; you’re the senior sales engineer. I wouldn’t have a clue where to start looking for the information!”

Coworker: “Not my problem.”

Me: “Fine. I will have to state that the report hasn’t been done.”

Coworker: “No, don’t do that! Fine, I will send something over.”

Seconds later, he emailed me the nine-page report. I figure he lied about not doing it. But as I updated my slides, I noticed that all the numbers were identical to the previous month’s. I queried it with [Coworker], but he told me defensively that the figures were right!

I finished the report with seconds to spare. I immediately got pulled up by the entire management team about how bad my data was and how I clearly didn’t do my job properly. I had to admit that the sales numbers were provided by [Coworker], and I did query them and was told that they were correct.

[Coworker] was called in for a very awkward half-hour. He kept sticking to his guns of nothing being his fault and being corrected again and again. He let slip that the report he had been generating for the past nine months hadn’t been done properly at all. As it was a senior-level report and shared with investors, they hit the roof.

[Coworker] and I were sent out of the room before the shouting began.

[Coworker] didn’t lose his job, but I think he got demoted as he suddenly took a new job in the company. We have a new senior saleswoman who seems to know exactly what she is doing.

In Year Eight, all the girls in my school had to have what we called the “cancer jab”, which was administered during school hours. Logically, I knew I needed this jab to vaccinate against something and that not having it would be bad, but emotionally, I was a wreck.

I’d never had a jab without my dad present before, and on the day of the jab, I found out they weren’t using the painkiller cream I was used to. Combined with a rather severe phobia of being “stabbed” by needles — thanks, egg donor — and the rumours going around about the pain and numb arms other students were experiencing, I was not exactly looking forward to my class being called for ours.

Eventually, the time came, and we were led to a room of the school we had never been in before. There was a row of chairs and nurses, and they were calling out names in alphabetical order, which meant yet more waiting because my name was in the middle. I was trying not to watch the others get their jabs and trying to convince myself that I was not going to freak out. I had it all sorted out in my head. I was going to sit in that chair, the jab would magically just happen without me freaking out, and then I could leave.

This plan fell apart the moment I sat down. The nurse had to ask me questions rather than psychically knowing I had this phobia and wanted to just be stabbed quickly so I could leave. I answered all the questions, albeit kind of curtly, despite not seeing the point in most of them. Like, I was twelve; of course I wasn’t pregnant. Why would you even ask that? In hindsight, I know that all the nurses were kind and professional and non-judgemental the whole time, but Kid Me didn’t understand that yet.

After what felt like an eternity, the nurse asked if I was ready for the jab. Nope, I am not ever going to be ready to be stabbed, thank you very much. This question pretty much started me spiralling into a meltdown. Most of what happened next was a big fuzz of panic in my memory until my best friend came over and held my hand. Her class was called sometime after mine and she walked over after getting her own jab, so I’d been here a while.

Another nurse came over and tried to talk to me, and the first stood quietly far too close, and my friend was trying to be reassuring, and I “knew” I was being watched by all of the other students and maybe the other nurses, even though I couldn’t focus on them to check if they were actually looking. It was all far too much, but at least I could vaguely see and hear by then, even if the time between hearing words and understanding what they meant was far too long. The nurses also occasionally spoke to my friend, but I couldn’t focus on what they were saying.

I kept getting asked if I wanted the jab and I kept choking out that this was very much the opposite of what I wanted but I knew I needed to have the jab, though nowhere near as eloquently. Eventually, the other nurse told me that they could not force me to have the jab, but if I didn’t have it, then they’d have to tell my dad that I’d refused it.

I did not want them to tell my dad. I was supposed to have this vaccine, so refusing it was a bad thing to do. I didn’t want my dad to know I was being bad because that would lead to lectures and not being allowed on the game consoles. So, I managed to pull myself together enough to stop rocking while one nurse held my arm still and my friend kept her grip on my hand. And then, while my eyes were squeezed shut and looking in the opposite direction, the other nurse administered the jab.

It didn’t hurt as much as it should have. I still felt it, so I know I had the jab. But it confused me because there was supposed to be so much more pain. I knew what needles felt like; I had memories as recently as five years earlier where the entire memory consisted of pain and hurt and dread and screams. This couldn’t be over yet. I kept asking the nurses if it was really done, and they were all reassuring smiles and sent me on my way.

Someone asked my friend to escort me to room F11. There were quite a few autistic kids in our school, so we had a couple of rooms just for us, and this was one of them. My friend was allowed in with me even though she usually wasn’t, and we just sat there together until I’d calmed down and then talked until the school day ended.

Thankfully, my general phobia of needles has lessened to the point where I haven’t freaked out this bad in years, though my phobia of the specific kind of needle the egg donor used is still bad enough that I cannot physically say what kind it was.

I’m waiting for some building materials to show up. People can’t always tell which house is mine so I’m waiting out the front. I’ve been there for quite a while when I spot a woman walking up the path in my direction. She goes from staring to seeming quite angry.

Woman: “What exactly are you doing? “

Me: “What exactly is it to do with you?”

She seems to be taken aback by this.

Woman: “People standing around on street corners have everything to do with me!”

Me: “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

She goes from angry to ballistic. She goes to swing her bag at me but it falls short. She half-screams, half-grunts at me.

She makes a lot of noise… and then the lorry turns up. I open up the gate and try to guide the guy to reverse in, but she jumps behind the lorry, blocking it.

Now the lorry is stuck, the road blocked, and traffic quickly backing up. The lorry driver tries to reason with her, but the beeping and shouting of drivers do nothing to help. Eventually, police are called, and after a few attempts, they manage to move her out of the way.

Policewoman: “What is this all about, then?”

Woman: *Gestures at me* “It’s his fault and the lorry driver’s.”

Policewoman: “They did what?”

Woman: “Well, I… Him. Him! He was looking into people’s homes, and then the lorry driver tried to run me over.”

Lorry Driver: “I’ve got cameras front and back. Nothing like that happened.”

Policewoman: “Come on and sit in the back of my car. We can talk down at the station.”

She seemed to settle, but then in a move that surprised everyone, she pulled away from the policewoman and lunged at me. Thankfully, the other officer managed to grab her before she could hurt anyone.

They called me a few days later and explained that if I didn’t want to press charges, nothing would happen. I asked what on earth happened. It turned out that the woman had gotten herself into a bit of a state of watching a lot of true-crime TV and not sleeping. She convinced herself that she was going to catch a criminal that day.