My company uses sharing portals to keep track of our various projects. To be added to these portals, you need to either be invited or ask and be granted permission.

For the project in this case, the ONLY person who can grant permission is my manager, who is on vacation. I know this is a terrible setup but that’s how it is. On Thursday, he sent a mass email saying that anyone needing access to this portal will have to wait until he returns on Monday. [Employee #1] reached out to me via email on Friday.

Employee #1: “Hey, I need access to [Project] portal.”

Me: “Hi, [Employee #1], unfortunately, only [Manager] has this ability. He will be back on Monday.”

Employee #1: “I need access today.”

Me: “I cannot grant access. I’m sorry.”

A few minutes later, I got an email from [Employee #2] with [Employee #1] cc’d in.

Employee #2: “Hey, [My Name]. [Employee #1] is asking for access to the project. I understand that [Manager] is out of office, so could you help?”

Me: “Hello, [Employee #2]. As I just told [Employee #1], only [Manager] has the ability to grant access. I do apologize for the inconvenience, but there is nothing I can do.

A few minutes later, another email came in, this time from [Employee #1]’s supervisor.

Supervisor: “[My Name]. Please add [Employee #1] to the project.”

Me: “Hello, [Supervisor]. Please see the attached email conversations. I have already told [Employee #1] and [Employee #2] that only [Manager] can grant access. There is nothing I can do.”

Nothing else was said about access.

When [Manager] returned, I relayed the conversation and asked him to do it ASAP. He came back to say that [Employee #1] already had access and could not understand why he couldn’t get in. We all got together, [Employee #1] brought his computer and an arrogant expression.

Manager: “So, can you just open the portal there?”

Employee #1: “I don’t have access! I asked [My Name], and she wouldn’t do it.”

Manager: “Right, she can’t. That’s what my email said. Did you read it?”

Employee #1: “Um … well, yes.”

Manager: *Looking at [Employee #2] and [Supervisor].* “Did you?”

Employee 2: “Yeah…”

Supervisor: “Yes, but—”

Manager: “So why did you hound her for something you were told she couldn’t do?”

Employee #1: “I… I needed in.”

Manager: “Open the portal.”

Employee #1: “I can’t! Look!”

He clicks a saved link and turns his computer around.

Manager: “Websites end in dot-com, not dot-con.”

[Employee #1] changed that one letter and suddenly everything was right.

Employee #1: “Sorry. [Manager].”

Manager: “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to her. I think all of you owe her an apology.”

I got three mumbled apologies, and they all shuffled out of the room. [Manager] agreed that I should have the ability to add people and told IT to change it.

I’m visiting a small coastal city in Italy, staying in a little rental apartment above the water. Every morning, I wander down to the same convenience store to grab bread, fruit, and coffee.

One morning, as I’m picking out a few pastries, I look down at the door to see a cat walking in. 

Not just any cat. This one’s wearing a tiny jacket with little side pouches. 

It pads right up to the counter, sits perfectly still, and lets out one commanding meow.

The store owner smiles, pours a bit of milk into a saucer, and cuts off a small piece of meat. As the cat eats, the owner reaches into one of the pouches, pulls out a few crumpled euro notes, and sets them on the counter. 

Then he starts packing: a small wrapped block of cheese, a few slices of meat, and two sauce sachets, all tucked neatly into the cat’s pouches.

The cat finishes, meows again, and trots out the door with a purpose.

Me: “Did I just see that cat… shop?”

Owner: *Laughing softly.* “Ah, yes. She belongs to an old lady at the top of the hill. Too many stairs for her now. The cat has been doing the shopping for five years.”

Me: “Five years? Every day?”

Owner: “Every morning. You come same time tomorrow, you’ll see.”

So, the next morning, I brought my whole family. We wait, pretending to browse.

Sure enough, there she is again. But this time, there’s a smaller cat beside her, wearing a tiny jacket of his own, the pouches a bit too big for him.

The older cat sits by the counter and meows. The little one copies her, slightly squeakier. 

The owner grins as he sets down the milk.

Me: “She’s brought a friend?”

Owner: “That’s her son. He’s in training.”

This story is part of our Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2025 roundup!

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A certain Finnish airline is having trouble with strikes. Our company is doing a recreational long weekend trip to Lapland, but our flights are cancelled less than eighteen hours before take-off.

We decide to make ourselves a Plan B, and take an early next morning train there, and we book tickets. But next, the airline sends us an automated email that we have been rebooked to a flight that leaves 24 hours after the original flight. This doesn’t work for us, because this would cut the trip too short.

I’m not going on this trip, so the next day, while everybody is on the train, I’m left trying to cancel the flights before the flight leaves. After jumping through hoops and hours and hours of waiting on the phone and not getting through and trying chatbots that don’t seem to be working, I call the less crowded English customer service line, because I’m good enough in English, to the point that I don’t have an accent (relevant later, as is the fact that my name is not a Finnish one).

After two hours, somebody picks up, and I explain the situation, the cancelled and rebooked flight, the chat not working, and that I’m not the one who bought the tickets, but still, I am somehow trying to cancel the flights.

Then they ask for the booking reference. I start to list it, but then stop at letter Q, because suddenly I have no idea how to say it out loud. I panic and go through the ABC song in my head really fast and manage to sputter out a “Q” that sounds more like a cat throwing up. I full-on panic, explain that I mean the “O with the weird line”, and rattle the rest of the number.

Then they ask me in a slightly amused tone in Finnish:

Customer Service: “All the names on the reservation are Finnish. Do you also speak Finnish?”

Me: *Mortified, and for whatever reason still in English.* “Yes.”

The norm these days seems to be that customer service is being outsourced to cheaper countries and is only available in English, so I presumed it was the same in this case…

I posted this story. And because good things always come in threes, and bad things always come in twos, it’s time for the story of the second time my family went to Las Vegas.

This time, at least, I was over twenty-one, but the group was larger: I brought my girlfriend, my brother brought his girlfriend, my other brother brought his wife, and my sister brought her boyfriend. So, in addition to the six people in the family already, we had four more people for a total of ten. And the one thing that we could all agree on was “how cool would it be to see the Grand Canyon?” So we decided to organize a trip to the Grand Canyon for all of us, but due to conflicting schedules, my oldest brother and his wife could not make it.

They were the lucky ones.

To keep costs down, we took redeye flights into Vegas. By the time we checked into our hotel and got to our rooms, it was 2 AM. In our infinite wisdom, we determined that we would go to the Grand Canyon on the first day of the trip. Get it out of the way, you know?

The bus picked us up at 5 AM to take us to the gathering point. That’s three hours of sleep.

We milled around the bus terminal for about an hour (thankfully, there was free coffee and donuts), mostly still feeling like we needed another ten hours of sleep. But the bus eventually picked us up and we climbed on board. The trip would take us over the Hoover Dam in about an hour, and we would stop there to do the tourist thing for about an hour before continuing on. Total travel time to the Grand Canyon: about five hours. Excellent, an opportunity to sleep.

Quoth the bus driver: “No one sleeps on my bus. If you sleep on my bus, I sleep on my bus, and that’s bad for all of us.”

And if you’re wondering, yes, he DID call people out when he saw them nodding off.

The Hoover Dam was pretty spectacular, but we were all feeling the exhaustion already. Surely it would be worth it: the Grand Canyon is one of the natural wonders of the world!

By the time we got there, we were all exhausted beyond reason, to the point that I got the Call of the Void looking at the Grand Canyon. It was truly amazing, breathtaking, and scary. It was now about 3 PM. I think. It’s a little fuzzy on the memory.

We were at the Grand Canyon for about ninety minutes (I think), and then we clambered back on the bus, where the no-sleeping rule from the bus driver was less strictly enforced, but still enforced if he saw too many people asleep. We figured, no problem, we’d be back to our hotel by about 8 or 9 PM, and we could sleep.

As the sun fell below the mesas of Arizona and the world grew dark, we realized that was optimistic.

I still don’t know the route we took to the Grand Canyon. I don’t know how we got there, how we got back, what took so long, or how time seemed to stretch and contract at the same time to make everything a nightmarishly torturous experience.

What I do know is that we got back to Vegas around 11 PM.

By this point, my brother and his girlfriend were sitting far away from each other, evidently to avoid getting upset at each other. My sister was curled into a tiny ball – legs up against her chest, arms around her legs, head down – and her boyfriend was across the aisle from her. I found out later that she was so tired and angry that she was trying really, really hard not to lash out physically (she is not a violent person, but she was pushed well beyond her limit). My parents? Passed out. I was still struggling along, and my girlfriend was asleep on my shoulder. Surely, surely, we were almost there.

The bus driver dropped everyone off in order, from one side of the Vegas Strip to the other. And it was our (un)lucky day: we were the last to be dropped off.

We finally managed to get off the bus and into the hotel at midnight. No one said anything. We just went to our rooms and passed out.

We STILL tell this story twenty years later, not because it’s a fun memory, but because it’s an example of how something so wondrous can be surrounded by absolute Hell. And it’s kind of funny.

And the kicker? The reason that my sister was ready to absolutely destroy someone? Around 9 PM, another passenger on the bus asked the driver if there was an advantage to going to the part of the Grand Canyon we had to, the long trip.

“If you’ve never been there before,” he said, “not really. The shorter trip or the longer one will get you an amazing view either way. I recommend the shorter trip to new people. It’s only about five or six hours.”

Our cruise has just passed the halfway mark, so we’re returning to Florida the same way we came. I’m greeting passengers as they enter the restaurant for breakfast.

Me: “Good morning, [Passenger]! Would you like your regular table?”

Passenger: “Sure, I’d love to—hey! What gives! You changed it!”

Me: “Changed what, sir?”

Passenger: “I liked that table because it gets the sunrise! But now the sunrise is on the other side of the ship!”

Me: “Yes, sir, we’ve turned around since yesterday, so—”

Passenger: “Put it back!”

Me: “Put what back, sir?”

Passenger: “The sun! I want the sunrise at that table!”

Me: “I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir. However, if you want to enjoy the sunrise, you can take a table on the other side of the restaurant. I can get you a table—”

Passenger: “No! I want that table! And I want the sunrise!”

Me: “As I said, I’m afraid that’s impossible, sir.”

Passenger: “This is terrible customer service! I’m going to complain to Guest Services!”

Me: “You are welcome to do that, sir.” 

I know someone in Guest Services, and told them that later on today they were likely to get “a real doozy” and that they should practise their explanations as to why [Cruise Company] cannot control the literal sun.