I have a semi-regular weekly dinner with a friend who’s been suffering from depression and anxiety, to help get them out of the house. Unfortunately, this person can be very intense and draining for me, an introvert. They also don’t believe that “quiet and alone” is how I regain my mental energy, and so they think me leaving to be alone is terribly dangerous for MY mental health. They are always convinced they are correct, especially if they’ve seen a video about something on Youtube, to the point of telling someone who had studied the subject they were “wrong” on more than one occasion. Still, depression, anxiety… so I try to be a good friend and make sure they get some world time.

This is the story of when I realise I need to cut them out of my life to stop myself from spiraling into heavy depression and anxiety trying to help them.

We are having dinner in a pub, discussing what provisions there are in place for victims of abuse; there is a sad amount of abuse in our country, and my friend was a victim of it in another country. Wonderful dinner discourse, but it’s interesting and needed nonetheless. Then, this gem pops out of their lips.

Friend: “[Woman’s Shelter Group] is an anti-men hate group.”

I’m startled, thinking I’ve heard them wrong.

Me: “What?”

Friend: *totally straight-faced* “[Shelter] is biased against men; it won’t let men into the shelters and it’s teaching women to hate men. It’s an anti-men hate-group.”

I just stare for a good half-minute.

Me: “I’m sorry? They have ‘women’ in the name, and we have an overwhelming majority of women needing shelter. I don’t know if they’d be able to find a shelter for men, but they’d try to help. They’re not… anti-men?”

Them: “No, they totally teach those women to hate and fear men; they won’t even make them interact with them. They shouldn’t be allowed!”

Me: “What? I just… Wow. Nope, that’s it. I’m done.”

And with that, I walked out on them and haven’t seen them since. I’d already paid for and finished my meal, so no dining-and-dashing was involved. They sent me some… interesting texts afterward about how it was very rude of me to just up and leave and that I was a bad friend for it. They also ranted that saying a guy was in the “friendzone” was the worst insult a man could receive.

To this day, I don’t know what they wanted out of that interaction, and I support that group more than ever to try and level out that weird, fixated bigotry.

A friend and I have a standing dinner out one night a week. Because I have some funny food habits, we usually go to the same few places, but this time we have branched out to a pizza joint neither of us really knows.

Unlike most pizza places in the city, they have slices under a heat lamp as well as offering full freshly-made ones. They also have a few sides. I order a few slices from the display and a side.

Employee: *Nervously* “I’m sorry, sir, the side will take around twenty minutes.”

Me: “It’s fine. It’s a side; it won’t kill me to wait.”

Once our orders are placed and our immediate food is handed over, we sit to wait. It’s a small place, so it’s hard not to notice when another table starts grumbling about the wait.

We keep waiting, eating what we have. I finish up my slices, and maybe ten minutes later, my piping-hot side gets rushed out to me, as does the large order for this other table. It looks like a minimum order of three large pizzas and half a dozen sides. I would have no reason to notice this if the man had not gotten in the waiter’s face — while he is trying to set this feast down! — to start on a big rant that starts at, “We’ve been waiting half an hour!” and ends at, “We’ve waited forty-five minutes and no one told me it would take so long!”

I get angry. The waiter clearly has no power. He wants to put the food down and probably go back and get a manager to help. I sincerely doubt he was not told about the wait. So, I stand up, and get his attention.

Me: “Hey, you’re complaining about the wait? Well, your food’s here, so sit down, shut up, and eat!”

He turns around, towering over me and angry. The waiter runs off.

Customer: “F*** off! I’ve been waiting an hour for this and they didn’t tell me it would take so long!”

Me: “I agree, they should have told you. But your food is here now, so why don’t you eat?!”

There was an awkward silence. The man still looked pretty angry but did seem to be going to sit down and eat. I left with my friend trailing after. Goal achieved: the waiter had gotten away.

What got to me, though, is that I found a Google review a few days later saying how sad it was that this poor man had been made to wait so long and then have this “large, interfering woman” make a scene with comments that “her boyfriend couldn’t cash.” I was smaller than both the women the man was with… and I’d stand up for my own comments! I know I wasn’t polite, but yelling at the waiter over something he can’t change does not make things better.

Shortly after this story was published, political season rolled around again, and thus the sequel. To clarify for non-Americans, junk mail comes in via non-postal-workers, usually volunteers in the case of political fliers.

I send the usual alert when the first flier comes, a polite message to the political party’s website. It points out that my sign is quite clear and asks for them not to do it again.

Two weeks later, there’s another one from the same party. The fun times begin!

I find a list online of every party member and go through adding their emails to a single bulk email. Once again, I politely inform them that their letter has ended up in my box and that since my first request against this was ignored, I am making sure that I send the message to every person who might be able to stop it. It includes a slightly less polite comment that I feel it shows their lack of commitment to listening to the voting populace and a lack of respect for people’s choices, and that this action will prompt me to try and dissuade others from voting for them.

Forty-five people in all are privy to this email. Some have automatic replies; some don’t. I leave it a few hours, and by the end of day four, members of the party have apologised and forwarded my complaint to the area manager for the volunteers. I thank them and go on my merry way.

Then, the next day, somewhere around 5:00 pm, one of these people emails me back angrily saying that they didn’t want my spam email, and I should know they’re in another part of the country and therefore they don’t have to listen to me or my complaints.

I thank him, too, pointing out that by his very response, he has proven my point about the sign on my letterbox.

I then forward this reply to the four of his colleagues, who also don’t live in my area, but were willing to help and apologise for a mistake by others of their party. I get the feeling number five is going to regret that response very soon.

Related:
Junk Mail: Universally Hated

I don’t like junk mail — I never have — but when I moved into a flat, the number of pieces in my mailbox started to skyrocket. What bothered me most was the constant realtor ads in an area that was mostly renters like me and with rent that was starting to skyrocket.

After a year — and a saga where the mailbox got stolen — I printed out two signs, laminated them, and stuck them on either end of the box so that people had no excuses for not seeing them. The signs not only asked for no junk mail but specified realtor ads and political fliers.

It stemmed the tide, but still, people thought that their political fliers or realtor ad were worth ignoring the sign. One political group even had the gall to tell me, “It’s a campaigning year; we’re allowed to ignore those.” No, you are not. Slowly, the numbers dropped to nothing. Bliss!

The turning point came when the box was stuffed with about five different pieces from multiple companies, and more the next! I contacted them all! Each one, in turn, told me that they didn’t hire their own people but a third-party company. I went to that company and complained politely that my box had a very clear “no junk mail” sign, and if they did this again, I would take stronger action.

Their response?

“You didn’t have a clear sign up!” They also sent a picture of my neighbour’s mailbox, which also had a sign on it, though the “J” was partially covered by the house number. “We’re allowed to put it in when there’s not a clear sign.”

I thought for a long moment and then sent them a shoddy old camera phone photo, which could be read even at the terrible resolution.

“This is the box it was in. And even if it wasn’t, that other box clearly is telling you not to put junk in it, either.”

They very meekly informed me that they would be having a word with their delivery person. I returned to not having junk mail.

The neighbour might have slipped it into my box, but mine was the furthest away from theirs and the only other one that said no junk, so I suspect the company was telling their poor delivery person to ignore the note every so often and tried to pretend I was at fault when called on it.

If you’ve never heard of the “Beep Test,” consider yourself lucky. In New Zealand, some genius decided that a good way to test if children were fit was to make a test where they had to run between a marked distance between the beeps. The beeps would get progressively faster, and the level at which you could no longer cross the line between the beeps was your “fitness level.”

Sounds fun, right?

In my younger years, I had an accident where I’d injured my knee. Nothing permanent, not even a scar, but afterward, I found that I was never able to run as fast as I could before. I’d been a sprinter, but now I was a marathon runner

This meant that no matter how hard I tried, after a certain point, I literally could not run fast enough to get between the beeps! And since that meant a low score, you had to give up your lunch to keep running to get a better score.

My stubborn counter to this was that no matter what, I kept running. I wouldn’t get over the line fast enough, but the fact that I continued to run told the teachers I was fit “enough” for purposes, just not fast enough.

I had to do the beep test at least once a year, as required, but I never had to stay in for a lunch with my direct and stubborn ability to stay running for the whole test.

I continue to be angry in adulthood that someone figured that speed was the same thing as being fit.