I was looking to rent a basement room in a large older home. The owner of the place lived two hours away, so a person renting a different room in the home was asked to show me the place. I was optimistic since it was a spacious room and a private bath for a reasonable price.

Other than the lack of natural sunlight, the basement room looked great. Unfortunately, it didn’t sound great. I could hear a TV playing old sitcoms at a ridiculous volume coming through the walls, presumably belonging to someone renting another room. 

I was saved from having to ask about the TV because when I looked into the closet, I found a note taped up inside.

Note: “Yes, the TV is always that loud, even at 3 AM. No, the Landlord will not do anything about it.”

The man showing me the room seemed surprised by the note and uncertain how to respond. All he could say was he hadn’t had issues with the TV, but he also confessed he lived two stories up and so wouldn’t be aware of what happened in the basement.

When we got to the private bathroom, I found another note hidden in the shower stall itself.

Note: “Hope you like freezing cold water because that’s all you will ever get here.”

I found one last note taped hidden away next to the power box.

Note: “Computer, Space heater on low setting. Any other electronics: pick two at most. A space heater on high setting will never work. Enjoy winter.”

The man showing me the house begrudgingly admitted that these last two notes were fairly accurate, the old house couldn’t handle modern electricity demands without flipping a circuit breaker, and the water heater couldn’t keep up with the demands of everyone in the home.

I politely informed the man I’d decided not to rent this home, at which point he confessed they had already taken down other similar notes; the ones I’d found were simply tucked away in places no one had looked recently to notice. He confessed the landlord would no doubt force him to remove all the notes so the next person who came to see the home wouldn’t see them. At least I got a fair warning, but I feel sorry for the next people to consider the room.

I was delivering pizza on a night when we were getting light snow. About two inches (five centimeters) had accumulated, which wasn’t much to me, but to native Virginians, it was un-drivable conditions.

I delivered to a house in a fairly well-off area. The customer’s order came to $16, and he paid with a $20 bill and told me to keep the change. Not bad, tip-wise.

As I was walking back to my car, I was putting the cash in my folded bunch of bills. We kept larger denominations in the middle, and $1s to the outside. As I was putting the $20 bill in the fold, I noticed that there were actually two $20 bills. Now, I could’ve been greedy and kept it, but the guy was nice, and he probably mishandled the bills because it was cold weather.

I returned to his door and knocked.

Me: “Excuse me, sir. You accidentally gave me $40, not $20.”

I started to hand him the extra $20.

Customer: “No, that’s yours. I don’t want to drive in this crap, and I appreciate that you can.”

I made a note in the computer when I got back to the store so that future drivers would know what a nice customer he was.

I’m a network engineer working on a team in an office, and I’m a man. We just had another network engineer join our team, a woman. It’s her first day, and our boss (also a woman) and I are talking about the new engineer. Coincidentally, she and I used to be coworkers on another team years earlier.

Me: “I was so surprised when she walked in. I’d forgotten her last name, or I would have realized it when you made the onboarding announcement.”

Boss: “She seems pretty good. I knew as soon as I saw her that I was going to hire her. There are so few women network engineers. Every time I get an applicant who’s a woman, I always immediately hire her!”

I didn’t know what to say to that. She just admitted gleefully to gender based discriminatory hiring practices. My new teammate had won out over the other applicants because of her gender, and had I been competing against any female candidates when I was hired months earlier, I wouldn’t have gotten the job.

It’s one thing to encourage people to pursue careers in fields that might have been considered gendered roles in another time, but discrimination isn’t ever going to be a solution to discrimination.

I’m walking out of a store to my car out front. There is an SUV with two people waiting in the back seat. One appears to be an adult woman reading a magazine, and the other is a little girl of about nine years old. The girl is staring out the open side window and… seems to be daring herself to flip off strangers.

I notice it as I walk to my car. I think I see the child flipping me off in the corner of my eye. I turn my head and look at her, and she’s just sitting there watching me. So, I turn my attention to my car and then snap my head back at her. I caught her that time. I’m looking directly at her while she’s giving me the finger. She quickly puts down her hand, but I know what I saw.

I’m shaking my head and laughing at the situation as I get into my car. The girl has nervously sunk down in her seat, so only the part of her head from her eyes up is visible. She’s clearly watching me, worried I’ll get her in trouble.

Still laughing, I roll down my window and tell her, “Yep, I saw that.”

The girl then slid down lower until she was completely hidden from me.

Boredom and a young mind are a dangerous mix.

Years ago, when I was doing network operations, we got an alarm for a data center that had a problem with the sprinklers. These days, data center sprinkler systems are loaded with inert gases like argon or nitrogen, but back then, it was water. We called someone to head into the office to work on the issue.

After that, we had to reach out to the facilities manager. As I am in Richmond, Virginia, and the data center was in California, I was calling them at about 5 AM. When the guy picked up (VP level), he read me the riot act and hung up. 

I called him back and stopped him when he began to rant:

Me: “I just need to give you the message, and then you can hang up. Your data center is flooding, and water is pouring on the server racks.”

VP: “Holy s***!”

Me: “I have facilities on their way to the site, and we are pulling the appliance list to notify the application owners.”

VP: “I’m in a car with a bunch of friends on the way to a football game.”

It’s 5 am their time, but California’s traffic is legendary.

Me: “Would you like me to call the CISO (Chief Information Security Officer, his boss)?”

VP: “…Yeah.”

Me: “Will do. Enjoy the game.”

He later contacted our department to apologize to me and talked me up to my boss.