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.

I’m in an ice cream shop, and another customer is there with a teenager, I assume is her daughter.

Customer: *Places order.*

Employee: “Okay, ma’am, your order number is six… seven.”

Customer: “Oh no!”

Customer’s Daughter: “Oh yes!”

I work in an older library. On the first floor, there’s a niche in the very back with a couple of study desks and chairs. The second floor extends almost to the back wall, with a gap that means someone can stand in the final aisle of shelves on the second floor and look down into that niche on the first floor. Incidentally, the way the walls are shaped means that any sound made in that niche carries up to the second floor with crystal clarity.

One day, I went up to the second floor to pull holds, and heard someone having an extremely… unfiltered… conversation. As I walked towards the back of the second floor, their voice became louder and louder, and I could tell it was because they were sitting in the first-floor niche on their phone. The various patrons I passed had pained expressions.

I walked to the final aisle of shelves, leaned down, and pinpointed the talker.

Me: “Ma’am?”

Woman: “And then that mother-f***** had the f****** gall to say to me that I was a w****, so I told him where he could stick his—”

Me: “MA’AM!”

Woman: “Hang on, someone’s being an eavesdropping little b****.” *She starts looking around.*

Me: “Up here, ma’am.”

She looks up and sees me.

Woman: “I am trying to have a private conversation!”

Me: “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure you are. Just be aware that from where you’re sitting, your conversation can be heard by everyone on the second floor.”

Someone In The Next Aisle: “I want to hear where she told him to stick it!”

The woman swore violently and ran out, yelling “THEY HEARD EVERYTHING!” into her phone. Murmurs of “thank you” followed me all the way back to the front of the floor.

I’d heard my dad curse in the past, but just the word “dammit” or its variations. The first (and only) time I heard him use the “f”-word was the following joke:

My dad snuck up behind me when I was standing in our apartment hallway. He poked me in the back with his index finger, like he was mugging me at gunpoint. Then he said:

Dad: “All right, you sticker! This is a f***-up!”

Admittedly funny, but I was so in shock by his f-bomb that I forgot to laugh.