A few months ago, I volunteered to plan my mother-in-law’s sixtieth birthday and my father-in-law’s sixty-fourth birthday with a weekend in wine country.

I wanted to take a group of ten to a new upscale restaurant, so I made a reservation months in advance. Because it was also a winery, we arrived two hours early and checked in with the restaurant to see if they could seat us earlier. Despite an empty restaurant, they said they couldn’t. That was no big deal; we understood, and they could be low-staffed, so we went and got some wine and hung out and listened to live music.

Close to our reservation time, I got a text from the restaurant to be seated. It was beginning to rain as we walked over to the hostess.

Hostess: “Because it’s raining and your table is outdoors, I won’t be able to seat your party tonight.”

Me: *As calmly as I can* “I’ve had this reservation for months. I’ve been here for two hours, and I was not told that my reservation was for an outdoor table or subject to cancellation due to rain. I wasn’t given a choice between outdoor or indoor seating. This is for a sixtieth and sixty-fourth birthday party. Could you split us up between multiple tables?”

The manager came over, and they both just kept saying that there was nothing they could do and that it wasn’t their fault… because “we can’t control the weather”.

I snapped a little.

Me: *Sharply* “Well, what you could have done was not reserve a table for a large party that you could not guarantee.”

The manager just shrugged.

We left, and because it was a Saturday at 6:00 pm, there was no way we were getting a table at another restaurant. I had to go to the grocery store and cook a full meal for ten people.

I emailed the manager to ask them if there was any way they could compensate us because our experience was so terrible. I got no response.

After a week or so, I made multiple email accounts and left what was a fairly new restaurant TEN different one-star reviews. In the reviews, I said that you should never book this restaurant if you have a large party. I talked about how they did not try to find us a table at another restaurant, how they had two hours to fix their error, how they booked out a table they could not guarantee, how they didn’t move a table under cover (which there was plenty), and how they didn’t provide any comps or otherwise make any attempt to fix their error. They ended up with a two-star drop in their Google rating because of my reviews. I left one review for every person that did not get a seat.

Several days after I posted, they reached out offering to comp a meal for my in-laws IF “our group” took the reviews down. I refused.

I used to work for a valet company that would contract its employees out to venues needing to host a large number of guests with a limited amount of parking.

We typically worked short-staffed because the company would always have more contracts to fill than valets available. This night was no different, with only three of us staffed for a party on a cold January night next to a lake.

We usually would only find out the details of the party when we arrived for the shift, so showing up early was always worth it to help with planning. Tonight seemed simple on the surface: a party of about 100 people. Since people tended to carpool more often than not, that translated to only about fifty to sixty vehicles we’d have to park. For the three of us, it was looking like an easy shift.

Unfortunately, the weather turned very quickly, and before any guests had even arrived, it began pouring down frozen rain with high winds blowing inland from the lake. This meant that we were having trouble with our key storage, and more importantly, our sign indicating where guests should pull in and expect valet. To make things worse, everyone decided to show up at exactly the same time, meaning that one of us had to stay up front to greet the guests in the driveway while the other two rushed as fast as possible to move their cars up to let the next group of cars into the driveway.

The traffic was terrible and there was about a fifteen-minute wait for people just to enter the driveway. This caused people to start becoming impatient, and the two lines of cars started to get out of control.

In the midst of all this, the wind had blown our sign over into the driveway, leaving the bolts that held the sign to the post sticking up. None of us had noticed this since we were too busy just trying to help people get to their party. That is until this one customer approached the valet stand in a particularly sour mood.

Customer: “Your sign punctured my tire, and it went flat while I tried to pull in!”

Me: *Surprised and confused* “How did the sign puncture your tire?”

Customer: “I ran it over cause you left it in the middle of the driveway! You’re buying me a new tire!”

I was still trying to get other guests in around his now-stricken truck as we spoke.

Me: “Why would you run it over, though?”

Another guest now chimed in.

Customer #2: “Yeah, we had to run it over, too; there was nowhere to go.”

Me: “Okay, well, I’m not sure what you want me to do. No one told you to run over the sign so if you want any help, you’ll have to wait until I’m finished helping the other guests.”

Customer: “This is unacceptable! Your sign popped my tire; you have to replace it and call me a tow truck!”

I had now had enough of this guy’s attitude and told him I’d call my manager for advice. Thankfully, my manager is amazing and doesn’t take anyone’s BS. After I explained the situation to him, he stopped me.

Manager: “Wait. So, he ran over the sign, which was his own decision, and thinks it’s our fault that he couldn’t drive around it?”

Me: “Yep.”

Manager: “So, that’s his own problem. Tell him tough luck, he should learn how to drive, and we’re not responsible for what he does before he even gets to you!”

I returned to the customer with this information and told him that in no way would my boss be reimbursing him for his mistake and that he could talk to the venue about it if he wanted to. He did, and my coworkers and I finished with the incoming guests. About twenty minutes later, the guy came out, defeated, mounted his own spare tire, and went home.

I’m still baffled by the choice of multiple people to just run over an object in the road and risk damage to their own cars.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Cruelty

The uncle in this story is my step-uncle, my grandmother is his stepmother, and the house he evacuated to is his mother’s (my step-grandfather’s ex-wife). This uncle is also a deadbeat with severe alcohol, gambling, and mental health problems he refuses to get or accept help for.

As previously mentioned, my uncle evacuated to his mother’s house just recently because of Hurricane Ida. However, for reasons unknown to all of us, he didn’t bring his two dogs with him despite his mother not having any issues with them coming along. Because of this, they ended up being left alone in a hot trailer for several days that had been half destroyed by the storm without any food or water.

When my grandmother found out about this, she was livid. She and my step-grandfather essentially forced my cousin — one of my uncle’s adult children — to drive out there, pick up the dogs, and give them up to the first animal shelter he could find with working facilities. Apparently, the poor things were extremely dehydrated and hungry. They were also filthy and ridden with fleas and ticks, but we strongly suspect they already had these issues prior to the hurricane.

As soon as my grandparents got water and power back to their place, my grandmother drove out and adopted both of the pups. Apparently, my uncle has since been begging her to return them to him, but she refuses to do so after what he put them through. Both she and my step-grandfather have even gone so far as to threaten him with getting the police involved should he try to take them. These are all decisions that everyone in our immediate family — barring my uncle, of course — wholeheartedly supports.

I had various work/study jobs while in college in the 1980s. After being a computer lab aide for three semesters, I was promoted to student programmer. I was later promoted again, and I was tasked with running backups for the administrative computer, a DEC VAX/VMS. This entailed loading and unloading reel-to-reel magnetic tapes after I’d started the backup procedure.

For the two hours that this took, I would return to my office space and do homework. This would happen after working hours for the professional staff of the college. Nobody would be using the VAX except for the cafeteria because they needed to log students’ accounts when they bought food on their meal plans. This being the 1980s, the terminal in the cafeteria was hard-wired to the VAX with a quarter-mile cable.

On my third night in my new position, I’d started the backup. After I’d unmounted and mounted a few tapes, a thunderstorm rolled into town. A lightning strike hit the student center, and the direct connection cable sent a high-voltage spike right into the VAX. This caused the backup to stop, and some equipment in the computer room started squealing. I had no idea what to do; I’d only been given the basics of starting and stopping the backup.

I found an emergency list that had the computer department director’s home phone. I called and explained what had happened. He came down and contacted the local DEC technician and a few of the full-time programmers. The technician determined that the lightning strike had basically fried the electronics card that attached the cafeteria terminal to the VAX, which then sent errors all through the computer.

I was in the room with the director when the tech casually mentioned that he’d have to order the replacement parts and that the damage was around $10,000. The director then turned to me and said in a serious voice:

Director: “We’ll have to make arrangements for this to come out of your paycheck.”

“Holy cow!” I thought. “How am I going to pay that off? I only make $4.50 at this job.”

I was close to an anxiety attack when the director realized I was not getting his “joke”.

Director: “We have insurance for this, [My Name]. Don’t die on us.”

It was then that I started to learn the level of jokes that adults pull on each other. Nineteen was just a little young to get the immediate humor.

My neighbor and I live in a split condo — him on one side, me on the other. We equally take care of the shared front steps, both our walkways, and both our driveways. He has a snowblower, and I go along behind him and shovel what it cannot get.

We also do the driveway of the neighbor across the street because he’s elderly. This particular snowstorm today is what we call “heart attack snow”. It’s all slush and yuck, and it’s hard to move. Even the snowblower is clogging every two minutes. It’s just pure slush.

I should note that I very much become an “I don’t care what you think of me” person when someone manages to push my buttons. I’m 5’2” tall, but my friends like to joke that I’m “ten feet of spite in a five-foot package”. I’m not outright spiteful in this story, but it gives you an idea of why I acted the way I did.

We are in the middle of doing the elderly neighbor’s driveway when a woman walks up with a condescending look on her face. She looks to be in her forties, so not elderly.

Without so much as a “hello”, she starts screaming at us.

Woman: “I need to go to the store! Why have you not dug me out first?!”

Me: “We are not hired—”

Woman: “I need you to dig me out. Now!”

Neighbor: “We are not—”

Woman: “No! You will shovel me out! Now!”

Me: *Finally raising my voice* “We do this because he is elderly! It’s not a job. Do you see a freaking uniform or snow removal company logo on us?!”

Woman: “So?”

Me: “You going to pay us?”

Woman: “Why would I do that? Does [Elderly Neighbor] pay you?”

At this point, I’ve hit my limit. I try to splash cold water (figuratively speaking) on her logic.

Me: “So, you expect us to shovel you out, for free, and make you a priority, just because you screamed at us?”

Woman: “Well, you should not shovel out anyone if you won’t help everyone!”

[Neighbor] is off with his snowblower by now, just doing what we came to do, because it’s still snowing and we want to be done for now.

Me: “The man is eighty years old. It’s called ‘being a decent human being’. You’re—”

Woman: “Well, you—”

Me: “No. Shut up when an adult is talking.”

Woman: “You—”

Me: “No! I said be quiet when adults are talking! You clearly never learned how to say ‘please’. If you were in trouble, we would have helped. Instead, you could not use your adult words to speak like a proper person, so go f*** yourself. Now, get off this property before I ask the owner to call the cops.”

The town police station is literally four buildings down from where I live, so response time for an elderly man calling about trespassing would be lightspeed.

I walk back to [Neighbor].

Neighbor: “What did you tell her?”

Me: “I pointed out that she should learn to ask for favors like an adult, is all. I felt I was very reasonable, and I hope she took it to heart.”

We spent another thirty minutes doing our elderly neighbor’s driveway, and we could see the woman glaring at us from her living room window the entire time.

It’s been two hours since we finished, and I can look out my window and see that her driveway is STILL unshoveled. But I’m not going to help someone who acts like my sole reason to exist is to make their life easier.