I stayed in the hospital for three nights after giving birth to my son. When my partner came to take me home, we couldn’t find my shoes anywhere. We searched almost every place I had been whilst in the hospital.
My trainers were found by a nurse, under the bed in the birthing room.
I went home barefoot.
(I am restocking the department after a busy weekend when a very cute little girl taps me on the leg.)
Little Girl: “Excuse me, sir?”
Me: “Oh, hello.”
Little Girl: “I’ve lost my Daddy.”
Me: “Okay, wait here. What’s your Daddy’s name?”
(She tells me her father’s name and I’m about to contact my colleagues to see if they can locate the father. However, before they do, a woman who is close by the whole time and looks to be the little girl’s mother comes up to us.)
Mum: “What are you doing bothering this man, sweetie? You’re not lost; I was right next to you!”
Little Girl: “Yeah, but I wanted Daddy!”
(I laughed while the mother sighed in exasperation.)
I work in an office for a large engineering company, it is a fairly laid-back office and the staff are all quite nice, for the most part. One of my coworkers looks like he has been picked out of a catalogue for 1950s suburban America. He has a set routine which, from what I can tell, never changes — the same lunch every day, skittles league every Thursday, a walk to the library with his wife to change their library books every Saturday, and a suit with waistcoat and tie everyday. (During the summer I am usually in shorts and baggy hoodies during the winter; it’s not a customer facing position so no one cares.) But he is a good worker and amiable enough.
Recently, his wife has been in the hospital — minor surgery but enough to keep her at the hospital — and he has mentioned several times that he hopes she is home soon as he is nearly out of the frozen meals she had prepared for him. Assuming that he is just anxious about his wife, I decide to offer to have him round for dinner one day. I explain that if he is happy with vegetarian food, my husband and I — both males — would be happy to have him round. I give him the address and let him know that dinner will be around 7:00 pm but if he is a bit earlier that’s no problem.
He turns up at 6:00 pm, brings with him a pack of steaks, complains that 7:00 pm is too late to be eating, comments that it is rude to have the TV on “with company present,” wanders into the bedrooms of our flat, complains that he “doesn’t really eat foreign food” when served vegetarian spaghetti bolognese, leaves half his dinner, wanders off to help himself to a drink from the fridge, complains that he doesn’t like the beer we have, complains that his wife didn’t leave him enough frozen food, complains that she isn’t around to “look after the house,” complains that he is still hungry, and is generally rude. At 10:00 pm, and after many awkward silences and Oscar-worthy yawns, we have finally had enough and manage to corral him out the door. Minutes after it has closed he knocks with a bag of laundry and makes it clear that because I had invited him around he expected me to do his laundry, as well!
He is only in his mid-50s, so I am unsure where this sort of attitude has come from, but apparently, the gender revolution is something that passed him by. If I were his wife, I would be signing up for all the elective surgeries they could offer!
I was walking past the reception desk in my local library and overheard one of the librarians actually on the phone, calling my wife at home, asking her to let me know that a book I had reserved was ready to pick up.
The look on his face when two seconds later I turned up at the desk and said, “I hear you have a book for me?” was priceless.
(I’m 18 and staying at a friend’s house the night before I get an early coach to the airport. This is my first time getting a flight alone so I’m pretty nervous. I pack up early and book a ride through a well-known taxi app. My friend lives on a road that has one main section with two smaller roads coming off of it but they’re all named the same street and just numbered as if it’s one road. As this can be confusing, I’ve made sure my location is clearly marked for pick up on the app and have left extra time. Despite this, the driver is still late and won’t answer his phone before eventually showing up.)
Driver: “What are you stood down here for?”
Me: “This is where I arranged pickup from, see?” *points to his phone screen on the dash*
Driver: “Well, it wasn’t showing that a minute ago. Anyway, coach station, right. I’m not going the way this thing tells me. Google Maps is rubbish; it always takes you the slow way.”
Me: “Right…”
(I’m a bit concerned but don’t want to tell a taxi driver how to drive, and the city can be a bit strange if there’s roadwork that Google doesn’t know about.)
Driver: “Where are you getting a coach to, then?”
Me: “The airport.”
Driver: “The airport? Why aren’t you driving there?”
Me: “Oh, I can’t drive.”
Driver: *laughs* “Good! That’s for the best. Women are terrible drivers; it’s best they keep you off the roads. Every crash I’ve been in was caused by a woman driver. I don’t know why they’re allowed. Don’t you think, when they’ve shown with all those tests that women are worse at driving, that they should have to pass a harder test?”
Me: “I actually did a psychology degree, and the tests really don’t show that women are worse drivers. The spatial experiment studies show that—“
Driver: “Now, now, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m just saying it’s good you can’t drive. Anyway— Oh. Where are we? Oh, blast it, I took a wrong turning. Hang on.”
(He drives hurriedly, and pretty dangerously at times, in a really random route. I’m getting a bit nervous because I’m close to being late for my coach even with the extra time I’ve allowed.)
Me: “Um, I think you need to take a right here.”
Driver: “Don’t you worry. I know what I’m doing. I was only kidding about being lost.”
(He ignores me and carries on straight, ending up opposite from the coach stop with four lanes of traffic between me and my coach, which is already at its stop.)
Me: “I can’t get out here!”
Driver: “Ugh. One second, then. We’ll turn around. Is that your coach?”
Me: “Yes!”
Driver: “Calm down! We’ll make it!”
(He turns the car around and goes down the road I indicated before, just in time to see the coach pull out of its stop. I stare at it in shock.)
Driver: “Oh, dear. Well, next time, be sure to be where you booked the pickup for; we lost a lot of time messing around.”
(I wordlessly got out, still in shock, as he got my bags out and then left me at the side of the road. I ended up having to get the next coach at a cost of another £25 and barely made it to the airport in time for my flight. I already have an anxiety disorder and was too anxious to deal with customer service so I didn’t make a complaint, though did give him a one-star review.)
