CONTENT WARNING: Antisemitism

About twenty years ago, I was working at a bookstore. I was organizing books in the children’s section when an older man approached. I don’t remember if there was any kind of endcap or display that might have prompted this comment, but I do know it was the first thing he said to me.

Customer: “You know, the Holocaust was actually good for the Jews.”

Me: *In complete shock* “What?”

Customer: “Yeah. Before that, everyone hated them, but there was so much sympathy cause of the camps, so they’re doing much better now.”

Me: “I don’t think the Jewish people see it that way.”

Customer: “They should. It’s much better for them now. They should thank Hitler.”

Me: “I… need to get some stock from the back.”

Mostly, I just wanted to get away from him, but I saw the store manager in the back, so I told her what he’d said.

Manager: “As long as he isn’t bothering any customers, he’s fine.”

I was still pretty young and inexperienced at the time, so I didn’t do anything else, but I think about that encounter all the time, especially as more and more antisemitism shows up in the news and across social media.

I worked in retail for over twenty years, but nothing in that period beats the time when I was a teenager at a grocery store and the most amazing coincidence happened.

I am bringing some shopping carts back to the corrals at the front of the store. I see an older gentleman waiting patiently for a parking space close to the store entrance as someone else pulls out. As soon as the space is free, another car pulls in super-fast and a bunch of women get out.

The gentleman winds down his window and calls to them from his car.

Gentleman: “Excuse me, I was waiting for that space. I have trouble walking, y’see—”

Customer: “I don’t see your name on it.”

And with that, they stroll inside the store, and I am left feeling sorry for the man as he finds a spot a little further away and goes into the store.

I complete some other duties, and then I am back to corralling another set of carts to the front when I see both sets of customers exiting the store.

The women load up their items, and the driver takes her keys out of her pocket. As she does so, a $100 bill falls to the floor and is blown a few feet away from them toward the store. None of them notice.

The gentleman does.

He picks it up and looks at it, then at the car full of the women as they are pulling out, then back at the bill, and then at me. He realizes I have seen the whole thing.

Gentleman: “I don’t see their name on it.”

He walked away. The women pulled out. I said nothing.

This story is part of the Editors’-Favorite-Stories Of-2023 roundup!

Read the next roundup story!

Read the roundup!

This was some time ago, maybe around the year 2000. The place I worked at was a warehouse — nothing special. I had to get orders to pull, help with some customers in the showroom, help with shipping/receiving, and so on. My coworkers, on the other hand, were all pretty special in their own ways. One of them really sticks out in my memory.

[Coworker] was very smart, but it was just book smarts; he had no common sense whatsoever. Our supervisor best described him as such: “You could ask him what time it is, and he’d tell you how a watch works.”

One day, I got to work and [Coworker] didn’t come in. After a couple of days of not being at work, he finally showed up, but he had to utilize his bike and the public buses to get from where he lived (about fifteen miles away) to work. I didn’t really care about his reasoning for being out a few days and riding his bike now instead of driving, but he wanted to freely share his experience with everyone at work.

He liked to visit a local bar by his residence — roughly a two-block distance. He usually parked by the bar, had a few beers, and drove home. He was leaving the bar on Friday, and he’d had a few drinks — nothing out of the norm. As he was walking to his truck, he spotted an unmarked police cruiser nearby. He approached their car and started telling the cops in that they couldn’t be parked there and all sorts of other things I can’t recall. He told us that after he told them he lived nearby, the cops told him to just walk home and cool off. They told him to walk home and come back in the morning to get his truck. He mouthed off to them some more, and instead of listening to them, he approached his truck. They arrested him for DUI. He was held over the weekend until he was arraigned on Monday. Then, he had his license revoked, he had to get a lawyer, and so on.

Now that [Coworker] couldn’t legally drive until he could get his license back, he was using the city bus system and his pedal bike to get to and from work. As smart as the guy was, he really was pretty dumb.

One morning, I got to work and it was just pouring rain outside. The downpour didn’t deter [Coworker] from coming in. He still biked to the closest bus stop, put his bike on the front rack of the bus, got off at a bus stop about a mile from work, and biked the rest of the way. When he got to work, he was dripping wet, soaked to the bone.

He reassured us that he had dry clothes to change into in his backpack, which he had wrapped in plastic to keep it from getting wet. It sounded like he’d thought of everything. Off to the restroom he went to change.

A couple of minutes later, out came [Coworker], and he was in his speedo-looking underwear and a dry shirt — nothing else on, just his underwear and shirt. He proceeded to tell us that he’d forgotten to pack socks and pants, so he had to wait for his wet stuff to dry off more before he could put it back on. He then proceeded to walk around the warehouse without pants on and try to work!

The warehouse manager made him go put on his wet pants and told him he just had to deal with them being wet and that he couldn’t parade around the workplace in his underwear.

I have had a very long day, so I’m not in the best of moods. I dyed a young customer’s hair blonde a few weeks ago, and she returns today, looking a bit upset.

Customer: “Something’s gone wrong with the dye job!”

Me: “It looks okay to me. What issue are you having with it?”

Customer: “But my hair always comes back the old color! Look at the top!”

Me: “Yes, it will do that as it grows out.”

Customer: “Can you do anything to it that will keep it blonde forever?”

Me: “Head over to the other side of downtown. There’s a big university there; they have a genomics lab. They’re more qualified than I am.”

Customer: *Totally oblivious* “Thanks!”

She heads for the door, getting out her phone.

Customer: “Genomics? That’s the name of the salon?” 

I ended up taking pity on her and calling her back to explain what genetics is and why we can’t solve her hair issues. I still don’t think she understood, but I managed to go home not feeling like a d**k. I’ll save that for the stupid customers who are ALSO badly behaved.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Cruelty/Death

This is just a collection of my experiences with chickens throughout the years. It begins at age eight. Unbeknownst to me, my dad has always bought a live chicken to cook for dinner on Chinese New Year. I just have never seen the chicken before, since I am usually off playing with my cousins. This is the first time I see it, but my brother knows this and decides to mess with me. This is before noon.

Brother: “Hey, [My Name]! Look, Dad finally got you a pet!”

Me: “Woah, really? Oh, wow! A chicken!”

Brother: “Yeah. Cool, huh? Why don’t you name it?”

Me: “I’ll call him Tony!”

And so I spend the next few hours playing around with Tony and chasing him around the backyard. Come dinner time, my brother mentions something to me.

Brother: “Hey, have you noticed where Tony is?”

Me: “Oh, yeah! We forgot to feed him! Where is he?”

Brother: “On your plate.”

It takes me a few moments to realize what he means. When I do, I excuse myself from dinner and leave to go cry in my room while my brother busts a gut laughing. Rest in peace, Tony.

The next story takes place at age thirteen. I am now fully aware of what I have come to call the yearly chicken sacrifice. I make sure I don’t interact with the chicken before its time is up, and I make sure to not waste any of the meat so as to not let its death be in vain. My brother has realized I won’t fall for the joke again and has given up on messing with me. This is just pure bad timing.

My brother is helping my mom with the food. I’m probably goofing off.

Brother:  “Hey, can you tell Dad to come inside? It’s almost time to eat.”

Me: “Yeah, sure.” *Goes outside* “Dad, it’s—“

The scene before my eyes is flailing chicken legs and feathers flying everywhere as I see my dad drowning the chicken in our backyard sink. I compose myself enough to say, “It’s time to eat,” before running inside. My brother asks what’s wrong and after I explain what, he starts laughing like before, while I put on headphones and try to drown out my surroundings.

Now I’m sixteen. I have taken a vacation with my dad to China with a tour company, and we end up at a rustic farming village. The other tourists in our group are all old men, so my dad is having a blast while I have no one to interact with. I spot a nearby chicken wandering in and out of the building, so I just watch it. Eventually, I get curious and decide to approach it cautiously and pet it. Right as I befriend the chicken, the owner of the hostel notices me.

Owner: “Hey. What are you doing, girl?”

Me: “Oh, I just wanted to—“

Owner: “Oh, you want chicken for dinner? Sure! Free of charge, just for you!”

Me: “WAIT! WHAT? NO—“

The owner grabs the chicken and dangles it by the legs.

Owner: “Hey, [Chef]! Chicken soup tonight!”

My dad and the group of tourists cheered and thanked me for getting them an extra dish for dinner. That night I couldn’t bring myself to eat the soup. I mourned for the chicken and thought about how it might’ve lived a few more days if I just hadn’t gone to pet it.

Later, when my dad and I video chatted with my mom and brother back in the USA, my dad told the story of how I had inadvertently killed a chicken. Cue my brother laughing his butt off once again. Rest in peace, Tony, water chicken, and China chicken. I remember you all fondly, and a little traumatically.