I loved working in the bakery department of a large, upscale grocery store. My job was the customer side, performing at a fast pace while packaging baked goods to fill the shelves, attending to customers, taking custom orders, answering phones — all the tasks you’d expect.

A pleasant young man was hired, and I trained him. He absolutely loved interacting with customers and was a smiling “people person” who was liked by his coworkers — until he wasn’t. He made it a point to work as much on the customer floor as possible, either restocking or arranging product. He would engage everyone who passed by, whether they were shopping or just passing to the next department.

Many times, he’d ask what they were looking for and walk them to the product — at the other end of the store! This left the rest of us to pick up the slack with packaging of tons of product, phones, orders, etc. He schmoozed the customers and many times spent twenty minutes talking to one. Then, he’d move on to the next one. He was getting the stink-eye from his coworkers, but he really thought that was “his job” — and who gets in trouble for making customers happy?

After we complained to the bakery manager, he also wondered how he could rein someone back who got so many compliments from the customers. He was like a personal shopper for the bakery!

The front crew decided to talk up his “skills” to management to maybe get him transferred to another department. Not surprisingly, it was decided that his great customer skills would be perfect for the front end, with sooooo many great comments about how helpful he was. He became a cashier, and not just that, but he became the assistant manager — jumping over thirty cashiers with more seniority who coveted the job.

Now he had a full plate of tasks that couldn’t wait and that he had no experience with, he had unhappy resentful cashiers who didn’t make his job easier, he had to schedule breaks and lunches according to union laws, and he floundered big time.

After six weeks, he begged to be sent back to the bakery, but he’d jumped unions with the promotion and he’d timed out to be able to go back. So, he became a regular, non-star cashier in the trenches. Now he had close supervision, benchmarks for items rung per minute in place, and no time to schmooze the public. He actually worked out fine — but not as happy. He’s still a smiling face and a pleasant person with great customer service skills… but I regret nothing!

I suffer from a high red blood cell count, so my doctor recommends donating blood. I go to the donation center, but while filling out the paperwork, I see that one of the prescriptions that defers you is similar to one of my prescriptions. I quickly Google the difference and see that I’m probably safe to donate, but I don’t want to rely on Dr. Google.

I approach the intake nurse.

Me: “Excuse me, this says that isotretinoin is disqualifying. I’m on tretinoin, which I know is different, but I don’t want to cause a miscarriage or something. Can you confirm that I can donate?”

The nurse pulls up Google in front of me.

Intake Nurse: “You’re on the cream, not the oral form, right? Yeah, it should be safe.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve had this experience, but it’s the first time I was asking about someone else’s safety, so I hope she was right!

I used to work at a furniture store. One day, I had horribly bad luck, and my bank account got hacked and all my money went missing (that’s a saga for another time). Because of the time when I realized stuff was missing, I had to wait until the next day to go to my bank’s branch and take care of the onsite stuff. I’d already been planning on going to work late the next day because I also had a doctor’s appointment.

With everything going on — and the fact that my manager had already made me come in on my day off — I decided I didn’t want to go in the next day at all and deal with my manager and customers.

I go to my manager toward the end of the day.

Me: “Can I take tomorrow as my other day off? I have my appointment in the morning, and then I have to go to the bank to handle this stuff, so it’ll probably be early afternoon before I’m here anyway.”

Manager: “I don’t want you taking all day off. Just come in whenever you can.”

I didn’t even try to argue because she wouldn’t have listened. I just decided I was going to take my time with everything. She told me to get in whenever I could. She would have no way of knowing that it didn’t take me six-plus hours at the bank (Petty? Possibly. Did I give a single, solitary f***? NOPE.)

Apparently, my body had other ideas.

The next morning, I went to my appointment and then to the bank. It was just before lunch by the time everything was done. I decided that I didn’t want to spend money on fast food or anything, and I was still trying to stall going to work, so I went home and made lunch. I took about two bites and promptly ran into the bathroom and threw it all up.

Once I finished, I decided that I was not even going to walk into work super late, and I texted my manager.

Me: “I’m not feeling all that well. I’m not coming in at all today.”

Manager: “I really need you in.”

Me: “I literally just threw up, so I’m not coming in.”

Manager: “Fine. See you tomorrow.”

I cleaned up the rest of my lunch and put it in the fridge for later, got into my pajamas, and curled up and watched TV. I didn’t have any other issues, so I’m pretty sure I was just stressed beyond belief. I did make it in the next day and had to deal with my manager side-eyeing me all day. I got another job as fast as I could.

In 2008, I moved to a new town, and my place of employment was no longer within reasonable driving distance. As such, I began haunting the local mall and individual locations around town trying to gauge what was available versus what was within my experience level. I found a few places that met my approval, and I filled out some applications.

For most of these stores, all I needed to say was that I’d like to be a cashier. In one larger store, however, I needed to also choose a section of the store that I’d be cashiering for. I chose clothing and thought that was the end of it; I’d either get hired or not.

Not long after, I received an email reply from them.

Reply: “Thank you for your application to the position of manager of the jewelry section at [Store] in [Town I’ve never heard of].” 

It went on as an otherwise typical rejection letter, but I seriously want to know how they got “jewelry manager” out of “clothing cashier” — and for a town I hadn’t applied in. 

Out of curiosity, I looked up the town. I got one single response, which was in Washington state. I live in Massachusetts, roughly 3,000 miles/4,800 kilometers away.

To this day, I have no idea how they managed to make this mistake, especially since the application had to be filled out electronically in-store and you couldn’t apply to more than one store at a time.

For several years after college, I didn’t have a primary care physician. I was working, and I had insurance, but finding a doctor was a big hassle I didn’t feel like dealing with.

This all came to a head in 2009 when I was about to get married. My husband-to-be and I had not been sexually active, and I wasn’t on birth control. I needed birth control. I called the local “find a doctor” line, and they assigned me to a doctor. (She became the primary care physician for both of us until her retirement. This story isn’t about her; she’s wonderful.) But the soonest I could make an appointment was literally during our wedding.

So, I went to the local walk-in clinic. I was in good health and younger than thirty, and all I needed was a prescription for hormonal birth control.

I was upfront about what I was looking for. The doctor who saw me grilled me about my sexual history. (Virtually none.) He grilled me about my relationship with my fiancé. How long, was there any abuse, etc. (No. My husband of now fourteen years is the sweetest man.)

He insisted I take a pregnancy test, despite the fact that I told him I couldn’t possibly be pregnant.

And then, after this very embarrassing, intrusive visit… he told me he couldn’t prescribe me birth control. Why? No reason was given. He knew the whole reason for the visit was to get birth control, and rather than just say up front that he thought birth control was for, I don’t know, women with loose morals or something, he put me through an hour of irrelevant questioning just to tell me no.

And then he charged me for the visit.

(Happy ending, other than the misery of the visit: I found a family planning clinic that got me in within a couple of days, and they did want to do a pap smear since I’d never done one, but they didn’t ask me any extraneous questions or demand I pee in a cup when I told them I couldn’t be pregnant, and I got my birth control in time for it to be working before the wedding.)