I am on vacation visiting a national park in Hawaii. Among other natural and historical wonders is a beach where sea turtles regularly haul out to rest and sun themselves. You are allowed to get pretty close to the turtles, but there are numerous large signs posted stating that it’s a federal crime to touch, feed, or otherwise harass them since they are an endangered species.

While I am taking photos of the adorable reptiles, a woman and her daughter come over to look at them. While the woman doesn’t immediately do anything to raise alarm, she is talking loudly and being generally obnoxious, so I decide to look at something else for a few minutes and then circle back to the turtles.

When I come back, the woman is being confronted by a rather angry-looking park ranger. Apparently, the lady plopped her daughter on the back of one of the turtles for a photo just as the ranger rounded the corner to the beach.

I didn’t stick around to find out what happened, but I assume the woman was given a fine of an amount in the four- to six-figures variety, if not a court date. The last thing I heard as I walked away was her wailing, “But I thought it was dead!”

I am in a grant-funded part-time position at the high school where I graduated. My job is to manage In-School Suspension for students who need a little extra time away from class but not away from school itself. I do things like make sure they do their work and address their issues. Sometimes, this just means talking to them, or, once their classwork is complete, they fill out forms and write about their options to do better next time.

Because this is a grant-funded position, I am frequently grilled by higher-ups. This particular day, a higher-up comes from the central office to interrogate me on my methods. This sleazeball once made me cry as a student and called me “worthless” because someone dropped the ball on getting me a book for an online course I was taking; online courses were not common for our rural school in the early 2000s) Without the book, I wasn’t able to complete the coursework and was failing. Sleazeball drove to my school from his central office, brought me out of class, and upbraided me in the hallway, causing me to have a meltdown that lasted for hours. I told Sleazeball through tears that I didn’t have the book, but he somehow didn’t see that as an excuse. My teachers, knowing I was a straight-A student, were not happy. They tried to help me and offered tutoring. Since I had a job, I bought the book that night myself instead of waiting for it. The school finally received my book not long after, so I ended up with two. Once I had the book, I had perfect grades and caught up quickly, doing half a semester’s work in a week. My grades were updated and no one said anything further, but I never forgot this sleazeball making a sixteen-year-old girl cry.

Sleazeball shows up in my In-School room, and I have a difficult student — the kind who doesn’t believe in authority and will not hold back when telling you about it. He’s smart, has a tough home life, and doesn’t fall for cheap adult reasoning behind rules.

Sleazeball asks [Student] what he is doing, and what he did to land himself in my isolated classroom. [Student] gives Sleazeball the runaround for a few minutes, telling him every injustice he has seen during his infamous high school career. I watch, contentedly, as Sleazeball tries and fails, time after time, to gain the upper hand. [Student] simmers down, and Sleazeball asks to see me in another office.

Sleazeball: “Did you see how I had to keep out-maneuvering that kid? He was arguing with me, but I couldn’t let him get the upper hand. Had to show him I was the authority. That’s a tough thing for young female teachers like you to learn.”

Me: *Smiling* “Oh, yes. He can be difficult. I’ve been working with him today so he sees we have rules he shouldn’t break because we have reasons.”

Sleazeball: “He reminds me of another student here. When you were in school. Really smart, but lazy. Always breaking rules and full of reasons.”

I continue to smile. I know exactly who he is talking about, but don’t dare to say it. 

Sleazeball: “He had long, dark hair. Always kept it in front of his face. Kept his head down a lot. Boy, he was difficult. What was his name?”

Me: *Trembling* “You mean [Student]? [Student’s Full Name]?”

Sleazeball: “Yeah! Oh, gosh, he would do the same thing. Acts just the same way. Smart, but just so lazy. I mean, really sharp.”

Me: “[Student] is my husband.”

Sleazeball turned bright red and stumbled over his words before making an ungracious exit. Something about, “Well, you know how to handle it,” and, “Good luck.” 

I’ve been in a full-time, permanent position in a regular English classroom at my school for seven years now, and I haven’t seen Sleazeball since.

I work in a restaurant with a bakery. As someone who’s worked in customer service for quite some time, entitled customers don’t surprise me anymore, though, to this day, I find myself asking, “What is freaking WRONG with you people?!”

On this particular day, we were hit hard with a busy lunch rush, and we have a GINORMOUS order for tomorrow, so we need all hands on deck.

Our breads are super-popular; they sell like hotcakes around the holidays. A guy comes up to my register with a literal armful of said breads. I ring him up like usual.

Customer: “Can I get these fancy-wrapped?”

For the record, customers can get their breads wrapped in cellophane and tied with pretty ribbon — for a charge, and when there’s someone around to do it, of course.

For obvious reasons, we stopped allowing customers to wrap their own stuff ages ago. We can’t even sell the ribbon by itself anymore.

Me: “It costs two dollars per loaf.”

Customer: “That’s fine.”

Me: “But there’s no one available to wrap these. We’re all busy right now.”

Customer: “Can you find somebody?”

There’s already a line practically going out the door behind him, along with our half-packed restaurant, to say nothing of the mountain of boxes for our future order. Another cashier has to come to give me a hand.

For the sake of good customer service, and to humor the man a little, I step into the kitchen, where my manager is up to her elbows in sandwiches and salads.

Me: “Is there anyone who can wrap some bread for a customer?”

Manager: *In her best you-gotta-be-kidding-me voice* “We can’t! We’re busy!”

Me: “I know, I know… but he’s not budging.”

After getting the expected answer a second time, I return to my customer.

Me: “I’m sorry. No one’s available right now.”

Customer: “Well, can you sell me the ribbon? I can do it myself.”

Me: “Sorry, the ribbons aren’t for sale.”

Customer: “Can I just take some ribbon with me, and I’ll pay you the difference?”

Me: “No. Too many people were misusing our ribbon, so we can’t sell it by itself anymore. I’m sorry.”

Customer: *Pointing to some of our pre-made gift baskets* “You use the ribbon for the gift baskets, right?”

Me: “Yes.”

Customer: “So, can’t you just give me the ribbon and I’ll pay you the difference?”

Seriously? What part of “not for sale” is this guy not understanding?

Me: “I’m sorry. But the ribbon’s not for sale.”

Customer: “I’d like to speak with your manager.”

Unfortunately, this is not the first time (nor will it be the last, I fear) a customer disregarded my word until my superior told them the exact same thing and they were finally “convinced” I wasn’t bluffing.

With the utmost reluctance, I went to the kitchen A SECOND TIME and got my manager. She wasn’t happy as she walked out to oblige him, and I couldn’t blame her.

I don’t know how it ended, because it was out of my hands by this point. But when my manager came back, she was merely shaking her head with a “why me?” expression on her face. I thought it best to give her a little extra space and focus on my job.

If you absolutely must have a pretty package, that’s what FREAKING ORDERING AHEAD is for! Don’t just waltz right in and take your chances, least of all in a big crowd, and don’t give us the attitude because we can’t give you everything you want at the drop of a hat.

I’m outside in my store’s garden center. I am the only cashier out there — and sometimes the only employee out there at all. I have a small line, but it’s nothing too serious until the woman I’m serving speaks up.

Woman: “You need to call security. The woman behind me has been stealing.”

Startled, I look to the woman behind her, who thrusts her cart forward abruptly, nearly hitting the woman who called her a thief.

Woman: “Can I have six feet distance, please?! That is not six feet!”

Of course, I want to report her if she’s been stealing, but because I haven’t caught her at it, I can’t. The two women begin arguing as I continue to ring the woman out, and I try to figure out if it would actually make things worse to call a manager. I’m worried things may get physical.

Finally, I finish ringing the woman out, but instead of leaving, she merely moves forward enough for the “thief” to push her cart up to the register. Now I’m VERY worried, as I consider a physical confrontation almost inevitable, but I’m still scared of “involving” myself by acting to stop them.

They continue to snap at each other for a few minutes, and then both give each other a haughty glare before falling silent. I continue ringing out the second woman quietly, nearly having an anxiety attack, when the first woman turns around again and holds her purse out to her adversary.

Woman: “Did you want to use my card, mom?”

I almost broke down right then. I’d been terrified that I’d have to intervene in a fight, assuming I didn’t start it myself by calling a manager on them, and it had been a joke the whole time! Once I’d calmed down — long after they had gone — I was furious.

CONTENT WARNING: Attempted Sexual Assault

I was at a restaurant by myself, mostly killing time watching a sports game, when I happened to look up to see a man standing next to a nearby table, slightly hunched over it. It wouldn’t have stood out as anything special to me except the man saw me, got this conspiratory grin, and put his finger up to his mouth as if to shush me before going back to his seat at the table. I had no clue what that was about, so I mostly just forgot about it and went back to my meal. 

I ended up staying to watch the end of the game I’d started and so was there for some time after finishing my meal. It was quite a while later when I was bumped into by someone and so looked over to see what happened. At some point, the man at the other table had been joined by a woman, and that woman had bumped into me as they were getting up to go.

Seeing me looking at them, the man came up to me with a cocky grin on his face and said, in a voice that sounded both as if he was bragging and inviting me into some sort of joke:

Man: “We’re just heading back to my place to relax.”

He put an extra emphasis on the word “relax” which made it clear that was not at all what he was intending.

Now, I will fully admit that I’m not the most observant guy out there — far from it — but even I couldn’t fail to miss just how creepy and off this man was behaving. That caused me to pay enough attention to both of them to realize the women looked… off. She seemed a little confused, and she seemed to be having trouble walking as if dizzy. She almost seemed drunk except that when I looked at her glass on the table it appeared to be a soda. I stood up.

Me: “Ma’am, are you feeling okay?”

She looked slightly confused even as she said she was okay, in a voice that also sounded a bit off.

Hearing me listing all these symptoms, I’m sure this all sounds super wrong, but I need to stress that while all the symptoms were there, they were all very underplayed. She seemed very slightly confused, very slightly unstable. Every individual symptom was so minor it would be easy for anyone to dismiss it if they noticed anything at all, and even taken as a whole, I likely would have written it off as her having gotten slightly inebriated if the guy wasn’t still grinning at me as if he was proud of what was happening and otherwise doing everything he could to make me feel something very bad was happening here.

Eventually, even I managed to connect the dots and realize that the man may have just finished slipping something into this women’s drink right when I was looking up. I didn’t witness that, but he seemed to think I had. The only problem was that I still wasn’t sure if that was true. Again, I stress that all the symptoms were minor enough at this time that I couldn’t be certain that they weren’t my own imagination due to her date giving me the creeps. I had no definitive proof anything was actually happening, and I really wasn’t sure if, from a purely legal standpoint, I was allowed to physically intercede given my lack of evidence. Still, I couldn’t just sit by and do nothing given my suspicions.

Me: *To the woman* “Would you like me to give you a ride home?”

Man: *Offended* “No! She’s coming home with me. She’s mine.”

Again, I really wasn’t sure I had a legal basis to do anything, so I just directed my question to the woman.

Me: “Ma’am, you don’t look well. Could I please take you back to your home?”

She didn’t give me a definitive answer, looking unsure what she wanted herself. Meanwhile, the man got increasingly aggressive. I got a distinct vibe that he thought I was trying to steal her away so I could be the one to take advantage of her, as if it never occurred to him that I might just not be okay with a woman being assaulted like that.

This made me more confident that my guess that he had done something was right, but I still wasn’t sure what I legally could do if he just escorted her out of the restaurant without her giving a clear answer that she didn’t want to go with him. Luckily, the man screwed himself over by being too aggressive with me, as this drew attention and eventually the manager, another woman, came over to ask what was wrong.

This is when the man started to look concerned. Before I could give any real answer, the man said:

Man: “Nothing’s wrong. I was just going!”

He high-tailed it out of the restaurant, leaving the woman behind.

After the manager offered to speak somewhere a bit more private, I told her what I suspected. She looked outraged.

Manager: “I’ll make sure to save that man’s credit information and everything else about him that we can, in case the police call. I’ll also have the staff save the rest of the woman’s drink somewhere so it can be tested.”

That had never even occurred to me.

Eventually, I ended up giving the woman a ride back to her apartment, and as time passed, her symptoms grew worse until it was clear that she must have been slipped something. I tried to explain what I thought happened during the drive, but I wasn’t really sure she was retaining it, and she ended up falling asleep, still fully dressed, in her bed at the apartment not long after I got her there.

Not sure what to do after that, I wrote her a very long note explaining everything that had happened, telling her the manager of the restaurant had saved everything in case she needed evidence, and giving my own contact information if she needed to reach out to me. Then, unable to think of anything else I could do, I let myself out, making sure the door was locked as I left. 

I never heard back from the woman. In fact, I never even learned her name. I honestly have no clue whether she pressed charges or what happened to the creep that drugged her. In retrospect, I likely should have called the police immediately and maybe had them take her to a hospital, but I’d been uncertain enough about my suspicions at first to not be sure I should waste the police time on it, and by the time it became evident, I guess I had already committed to driving her home and didn’t reevaluate my options. That was a clear mistake on my part that I regret now.

But worst of all to me is realizing how close I came to missing the signs. If the creep hadn’t been so certain that, just because I was another guy, I’d be okay with his drugging his date that he went and basically tried to brag about it on his way out, I would have never picked up on it. It’s scary how close he came to getting away with it.