I’m a volunteer firefighter and first responder. When I receive an alert, I HAVE to respond if at all possible, no matter where I am or what I am doing. My state has laws that generally protect emergency services volunteers from facing punishment from their employers if they miss work due to an emergency, as long as proper procedures are followed.

I have a regular job as a custodian at a factory. The factory gets new managers after being bought out by a larger company, and while things seem to go relatively smoothly at first, it becomes more and more apparent that the new managers are mostly concerned with the factory’s profit margin at the expense of employee well-being.

One day, I receive an alert while at work. I clean up my equipment as quickly as possible, tell a coworker who knows that I’m a firefighter, clock out, and leave for the emergency.

I’m gone from work for about two hours, and I return after the emergency is taken care of to resume my shift. When I get to the office to clock in, my new manager is waiting for me.

Manager: “Where were you?”

Me: “I had to respond to an emergency. I’m a volunteer firefighter and first responder with [Department], and we had a call. Everything is clear now, so I’m back to finish out my shift.”

Manager: “You can’t be taking off without permission. I’m going to have to issue a written warning.”

Me: “You realize that’s against [State] law, right?”

Manager: “Don’t play games with me. You left work without permission. That’s not allowed, and it warrants a written warning.”

Me: “I’m not going to sign it, but I will be going to Human Resources about this.”

Manager: *Scoffing* “You do that. See what they say. Meanwhile, I’m filing that you refused to sign a written warning for leaving work without permission.”

I did go to Human Resources, who very quickly recognized the potential blowback from my manager’s threats. The HR representative assured me that everything would be taken care of, so I went back to work. While I was gathering my equipment, I heard my manager being called to HR over the factory’s loudspeaker system. HR chewed him out REALLY thoroughly about it and threatened him with a few state labor violations if he carried through with any form of punishment against me.

The new manager and I both still work at the factory, but he no longer speaks to me. He also doesn’t try to interfere if I get called out due to an emergency alert, so it seems like he at least learned that lesson.

As a teenager, I used to volunteer as an assistant for our youngest kids’ church, ages three to six. I’ll admit that this was more out of a love for kids than faith, but I still enjoyed my weekly time with the munchkins.

I did a number of things during the class, but one of them was to help hand out snacks during our mid-class break — usually nothing more than a handful of goldfish, pretzels, or similarly convenient snack foods. The kids always clamored for them, but I insisted that no one got their snack until they said please.

It usually took a quick prompting from me to get my pleases, but on the off chance a child said please without prompting, I always made a big deal out of how polite they were. I not only gave them their snack first but made sure to tell them I was giving them extra for being so polite. This didn’t mean much — any kid could get seconds if they asked, anyway, and most did — but to a little kid, it still felt like something special.

Despite coming to my class for years, most of the kids didn’t pick up on this pattern, and pleases were usually dragged out of them. However, one young girl figured it out quickly. It took about a month before it clicked, but once it did, she would always make sure to toss out a please before I’d even finished approaching the table. She seemed to be doing it only because she knew it meant she got her snacks sooner, along with some praise, but I didn’t mind; she was still a good role model for the rest of her table.

Several months later, the church was having an outdoor potluck. I was in line not far behind this girl and her mother. I heard more than one please from the young girl as she asked for the food she wanted to be plated.

Churchgoer: “Oh, aren’t you the sweetest? You’re very polite.”

Mother: “Oh, yes. She’s gotten very good about saying please in the last few months. She’s a great girl.”

I watched the girl beaming up with the same eagerness for praise she got every time she got her compliment and first dibs on snacks in our classroom, and all I could think was, “Mission Accomplished!”

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Language

Our library is being represented at our city pride parade. We have a kiosk at the pride celebration site and we’re offering library memberships and card gained with a simple form plus advertising the fact that we host drag queen reading hours at a time when the government is coming down hard on these for some reason.

As is sadly expected with any pride event, there are the groups of counter-protesters who are going around being offended that it’s legal for this community to be happy. One such group approaches our kiosk, and their leader speaks up.

I try not to get too political, but it should be noted that this leader is a woman wearing a MAGA pin on her jacket.

Protester: “Shame on you! I can’t believe my tax money is paying for you to promote this s***!”

Me: “Well, I’m a volunteer so you’re not paying me at all, really.”

Protestor: “You’re poisoning the minds of our children with this! How am I supposed to explain to my child why this is allowed to happen?”

Me: “I don’t know, how did you tell your child it was allowed for the president to grab them by the p*ssy?”

Protestor: “That… that’s not gay!”

Me: “Got it. So non-consensual sexual abuse is okay because it’s heterosexual? Reading age-appropriate books to children in drag is not okay because… the reader is homosexual? Ma’am, you can just say “because I’m a homophobic bigot” and save yourself using all those words.”

Protestor: “Shame on all of you! You’re all gonna burn in Hell!”

The group of protestors (all of them had the same hairstyle too!) turn away to go try to ruin someone else’s day.

I used to volunteer with the Administrative Manager of Volunteer Services at a local hospital. Due to the new hospital tower being built, some departments were getting shifted to new quarters.

As part of a pre-packing process, [Manager] and I swept through the office, rummaging, trashing, and cleaning things. As an “Eh, why not?” I delved into the fridge where [Manager] usually stashed her microwavable lunches and sorted through the various things looking for expiration dates.

I received quite a large fright when I found three salmon dinners that expired in 2008. It was 2011! I threw them away so quickly there was a sonic boom behind them.

I told [Manager] about the long-expired food and she was freaked out. Apparently, she had bought them the previous week!

[Manager] had me tear off the expiration dates so she could return to the chain store where she’d bought them. The lawsuit if she had gotten sick or killed by that expired food would have been far too little too late, no matter what the settlement had been. Normally, I am against whining at employees and storming my way up through the chain of command, but this one was a legitimate complaint with honest-to-God consequences.

I mean, really? YEARS past the expiration date, and they kept it on the shelf and sold it? 

Our best guess was that the retail employee who stocked just kept shoving the dinners into the back every time they restocked, and nobody went through to pull expired food off the shelf.

After the move, I asked [Manager] what had happened. She told me that she had gotten something half-mumbled by a manager and a refund before being brushed off. 

She returned a few days later and did a bit of digging in the frozen section, only to find several other expired frozen foods, some over five years past the expiration. Clearly, her complaint hadn’t been taken seriously and nobody had bothered to get the store checked. She subtly put them all back exactly where they had been “hidden” before.

Then, she filed an official complaint with their corporate hotline. The entire store ended up being closed down and then reopened under new management. She said that other than a few faces, she didn’t recognize anyone on staff anymore.

Years ago, I volunteered with our local LGBTQIA+ community center as its executive assistant. As such, I helped assemble the center’s annual awards ceremony to honor volunteers and advocates within our community.

One year, the Board of Directors decided that, in addition to the certificates we created and printed out for honorees, we would also obtain official certificates of appreciation from the office of our state’s governor. It was a surprisingly easy process: log onto the governor’s website, find the section for ordering letters and commendations, fill out your contact information, give the name of the person being honored and why, and specify when you need the certificate.

As per the Board’s directions, I was purposely vague about the reason “why”, since our state’s government was (and remains) staunchly homophobic and transphobic. Under the justification section, I merely wrote, “In recognition of [Honoree]’s volunteer work and advocacy in the service of the people of [State].”

The certificate requests were accepted without question and sent to our offices in plenty of time for our event.

Fast forward to the night of the ceremony, where we presented a certificate to one of that year’s honorees: the leader of our state’s largest trans advocacy group. She came on stage and gave the certificate a bemused look as we handed it to her.

Honoree: “I’d like to know how you managed to get me a certificate of appreciation from the governor, considering I’m suing his a**!”

Indeed, her group was part of an ongoing lawsuit against the State over a series of civil rights violations against trans people. Everyone at the ceremony had a good, hearty laugh about putting one past the State for once. Maybe the folks at the State need to pay more attention to who gets a certificate with the governor’s name on it. Then again, let’s not give them any ideas…