(My grandma has always had a “my way or the highway” attitude, which has only become more pronounced as she gets older. One day, I’m going to her house to visit her and my grandpa. Since they have a narrow driveway, my family and I always park in the road in front of their house so we don’t block them in. I’ve just parked, and I’m walking up the driveway to the door when the garage opens. My grandma starts backing her car out. I wave, thinking she’ll see me — for reference, I’m wearing a neon green, eye-catching jacket — but she keeps going. I wave even more and yell for her to stop, but she doesn’t even seem to notice. I have to jump into a snowbank to avoid being run over. It’s only after she passes me that my grandma notices I’m there. She stops and gets out of the car.)

Grandma: “Oh, [My Name], I forgot you were coming over! What are you doing in the snow?”

Me: “I had to jump off the driveway so you wouldn’t run me over! Didn’t you see me?”

Grandma: “No, of course not.”

Me: “But… I was pretty highly visible. Weren’t looking behind you?”

Grandma: “I never look behind me when I’m backing out of my driveway. No one should be in my driveway.”

Me: “Um… sometimes people are going to be in your driveway. Like just now. I was in your driveway.”

Grandma: “No one should be in my driveway. There’s no reason to look until I reach the street.”

Me: “There are lots of people who might be in your driveway, Grandma: visitors, the mailman, pedestrians on the sidewalk… Isn’t it better to look than to accidentally hurt someone?”

Grandma: “No one should be in my driveway!”

(She wouldn’t listen to a word of reason. Later that day, I told my parents about the incident. According to my dad, this wasn’t the first time in recent months that she’d almost hurt someone with her lack of driving skills. He managed to convince her to take a driving test that a local hospital administers to determine if a senior citizen is still capable of driving safely. My grandma agreed only to get people to stop bugging her about her driving. She thought she would pass with flying colors. To her great surprise — and no one else’s — she failed and lost her license.)

(I work as a supervisor at a membership store. We have a high turnover rate but a few shining employees manage to stay year after year. One of our cashiers is one example of a good employee: She does not complain about her job, she follows policies, smiles, goes above and beyond for customers, the whole nine yards. But I’ve noticed when she is off the clock that she can be quite cold and prefers to be left alone. This has never been an issue as our company does not try to police what employees do when they are off the clock and out of uniform. Unfortunately, she must reek of retail as customers bother her when she isn’t working. One day, a man approaches her as she is leaving the employees-only area, on her way out.)

Customer: “Where can I find the generic brand [item]?”

Cashier: “I don’t know. I don’t know the new summer inventory well enough to know where they’ve moved things. Why not ask someone else? A manager is right over there.”

Customer: “You know where it is. Tell me, now.”

Cashier: *clearly bothered by his slightly aggressive tone and his obvious refusal to listen to her* “I don’t. Leave me alone. I’m sure some employee up there can help you.” *tries to walk away but he walks in front of her to cut her off* “Go away.”

(He starts yelling at her about “poor customer service” thrown in with some vague threats and I try to intervene.)

Me: “Sir, she is not on the clock. What was the item you needed? I will be happy to show you where it is.”

Customer: “No! Not you! I want this lazy, no-good, millennial, [gay slur] b**** to help me so she learns her d*** place!”

Cashier: *does not look at all surprised and in fact looks quite bored with this situation* “Yeah, I’m going to go home now. See you tomorrow, [My Name].”

(I try to wish her well and hope that is the end of it, but the man grabs the hood on her jacket when she turns and tugs so hard that she falls back and the hood rips. A manager is called and I approach, helping the cashier up.)

Me: “Sir, you have just assaulted someone. Leave or the police will be involved.”

Customer: “I want this stupid [gay slur] to help me!”

(I’m foggy on the details as I step away as the manager steps in to help her while I call the police. Eventually, the man is arrested for assault and taken away.)

Me: “I am so sorry, [Cashier]. Are you all right?”

Cashier: “I guess. I’m just confused as to why he kept calling me gay.”

Me: “Well, whatever the issue was, how about we give you some credit for the cafe for snacks on your breaks?”

Cashier: “I’m fine, [My Name]. Thanks.”

(She’s definitely good at handling these bouts of stress. But as an act of goodwill, the manager bought her a new jacket just like the old one that was ruined and I bought her ice cream from the cafe during her next shift. Thankfully, our company is allowed a backbone. That customer had his membership refunded and revoked, and is now banned.)

(My friend and I are looking through games when I hear this transaction between the clerk and a mother and her child of about nine.)

Clerk: “How can I—”

Mother: “Look. I ain’t got time for any of this bulls***. Just give the kid what he wants but keep it under $50.”

(She then proceeds to leave and sit in an illegally parked car outside.)

Boy: “Give me Grand Theft Auto NOW and my dad won’t f*** you up.”

Clerk: “Sorry, buddy, I can’t sell you an M-rated game; you gotta be over 17 to get games like that.”

(The boy, swearing under his breath, walks over to a game rack and starts throwing game after game over his shoulder. Then, he screams and storms out, throwing games onto the floor behind him.)

Me: *to the clerk* “What the holy sweet Jesus monkey f*** was that about?”

Clerk: *shrugs and starts to pick up games off the floor*

(I’m a freelance makeup artist. Given I live in a very small town, there’s only a few of us and if we’re booked for a big event we might struggle to handle, we often call each other to come help and split the money. We all charge pretty much the same rate so it works out great. However, we’re all known for different things being our best work. For example, I’m better known for crazy colourful eye looks, and I get booked a lot by local performers and drag artists because of this. The girl I’m working with at the time of this story is the only one in town that knows how to do airbrush makeup, and she has a portable kit to do it anywhere. While we can both do pretty much anything, there are things we are better at, and when we work together we tend to split up the work accordingly. She is hired to do a full bridal party: makeup for the bride, six bridesmaids, the mother of the bride, and the mother of the groom. It is a lunch wedding and, to avoid having to start at 6:00 am for the photographer to arrive at 11, she calls me. She shows up at 7:30 and starts doing everyone’s complexion; I roll in an hour later ready to do everyone’s eye makeup, brows, and lipstick. The bride is the sweetest woman on earth, as are the bridesmaids. They are all laughing, chatting to us, and offering us food, and the hairdresser is seamlessly slotting in between us and working on hair. The mother of the bride is a sweet lady, too, if a little shy. When I ask her what kind of look she wants, she quietly says, “Oh, I’m not sure if you’ve got a spackle gun in that kit, sweetheart,” which makes us all laugh, and she is amazed at how the airbrush makeup looks on her skin. Around 9:30, the problems start.)

Mother Of The Groom: “This is ridiculous; we’re going to be late.”

(By this point, everyone but her and one bridesmaid has their complexion finished, and I’ve done the rest on four bridesmaids and the bride’s mum. It is simple eye makeup, just a single colour through the crease and some winged liner with lashes and a nude lipstick. We are on track to be finished by 10:30, 10:45 at the latest. The photographer is coming at 11, and the wedding isn’t until 12:30. No way are we going to be late for anything.)

Mother Of The Groom: “I told you makeup was a huge waste of time and money. This is ridiculous.”

(One of the bridesmaids pipes up.)

Bridesmaid: “Mum, you chucked a fit that you weren’t invited to the makeup part of the morning. You’re here now. Suck it up.”

(The groom’s mum goes back to looking like she’s sucked on a lemon while the other makeup artist looks at me uneasily. I shrug and finish up the bride, who squeals happily at the mirror and hops out of the chair to hug me. The last bridesmaid approaches me and quietly asks if I could do her foundation, instead. She has cystic acne on her face and is nervous that the airbrush won’t smooth everything out properly. No worries. She hops into my chair and I start putting regular foundation and concealer on her, trying to match the glowy look we have on the other girls.)

Mother Of The Groom: *jerking her head around to look at everything while getting her airbrush done, frustrating my colleague* “Why does she get proper makeup and we get spray paint?”

Colleague: *cheerfully* “Oh, we’re just getting things done quickly since you’re nervous about the time!”

([Mother Of The Groom] seems to accept that and finally holds still long enough for my colleague to finish her foundation. Since I’m still working on the final bridesmaid, my coworker starts on her eye makeup.)

Mother Of The Groom: “Why are you doing my eyeshadow? Why isn’t she doing it? She did everyone else’s!” 

(My colleague reminds her of the time and keeps working. I finish up on the final bridesmaid around the same time my colleague finishes up on [Mother Of The Groom], who jumps out of her chair without a word and announces she’s going back to her room to change. Sure enough, we’re finished with half an hour to spare. As we’re packing away our kits, the bride and the bridesmaid who told [Mother Of The Groom] to simmer down apologise for [Mother Of The Groom]’s behaviour. It’s apparently not the first thing she’s exploded about even today, let alone in general about the wedding. Having worked with difficult mothers in wedding parties before, we wave it off with a few jokes. The bride asks if we have anything else on today and no, we don’t, so she asks if she can pay us to stay on and do final touchups before the ceremony, and maybe put some lip-gloss on to the flower girls when they arrive to make them feel part of it. We agree and just move our kits off to one side and plan on going down to the hotel buffet to grab some food in the interim. We’re downstairs eating about an hour later when two bridesmaids come bolting through looking for us. One of them is stammering apologies, and the other one is just begging us to come with them. We all race back upstairs to find a crying bride in the hall and a VERY angry bridesmaid trying to console her. We can hear shouting from inside the room. When we open the door and go in, we find that my kit has been opened up and my eyeshadow palettes are scattered across the desk. [Mother Of The Groom] is crying and screaming at the bridesmaid who is her daughter, who is LIVID and gesturing wildly and yelling back. Apparently, [Mother Of The Groom] had decided she didn’t want the airbrush makeup and had washed it off. She also didn’t think that the tasteful brown eyeshadow we’d given her was right, and had broken into my kit and dragged out my eyeshadow palettes. Honestly, if she’d only done that I would have just been cranky, but oh, no. She’d found my water-activated stage makeup and had attempted to use that to give herself blue eyeshadow. This stuff DOESN’T work unless you get it wet, so she’d just gouged massive holes into a bunch of colours trying to make it work. There were clumps stuck to her face. She’d also attempted to use my foundation kit to put her complexion products back on, but had shade-matched herself wrong and applied it with her fingers, since my sponges and brushes were in a locked part of my kit. In the process, she’d knocked over the foundation bottle and it was EVERYWHERE. The angry bridesmaid finishes yelling; [Mother Of The Groom] is still crying and screaming. Suddenly, the groom walks through the door and stares at the carnage. We’re trying to salvage what we can from the bits of my kit she’s trashed and clean up foundation. The bride is now locked in the bathroom, crying.)

Groom: *eerily calm* “Shut up, Mum.”

Mother Of The Groom: *stops yelling* “What did you say to me?!”

Groom: “I said shut up. I knew you would do this. [Sister Bridesmaid] knew you would do this. [Bride] insisted we let you come to the getting-ready part because she wanted you to feel a part of today. Well, congratulations; now you aren’t part of it at all. You are not welcome at the wedding.”

([Mother Of The Groom] tries to argue, amps up her crying, and everything. [Groom] stands his ground like an absolute champ. After a few minutes, she huffs off, still screaming and crying. An older guy in a suit enters the room right as she leaves, having been screamed at by her in the hallway, too.)

Older Guy: “Well, then, if you kids were ever wondering why I didn’t stay married to that hag… that’s why.” 

(We dragged the bride out of the bathroom and redid her entire face. We got her to the church five minutes late, but by the time we were done, she was laughing and giggling with her friends again. The groom’s dad shoved a handful of $50s into my friend’s hand and said he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and to replace the makeup in our kits his ex-wife had trashed. Ninety-nine out of a hundred weddings go off without a hitch in the makeup process, but this one absolutely took the cake. My friend and I wound up at our cars putting away our kits, staring at each other asking, “Did… Did that really happen?” Wackiest wedding day ever.)

This story is part of our Not Always Right Most-Epic Stories roundup!

Read the next roundup story!

Read the roundup!

Our science teacher was pretty relaxed and mellow. In the four years he tried to teach us the principles of chemistry and physics, I only saw him mad two times. One of them involved another teacher.

He entered the classroom seething mad and told us [Other Teacher]’s key to the cupboard and storage room with chemicals and materials had been taken away and he was never ever to touch the school’s equipment again. 

He did say some things not to be said about other teachers, especially not to your teenage students, but he was beyond mad. The show was not around at the time, but what happened could have figured in a Seconds Before Disaster episode. 

[Other Teacher] performed a small experiment regarding the electrolysis of water, basic stuff. This means an interconnected two-tube system was hooked on to a generator, sending a current through the water and splitting it into its components: hydrogen and oxygen. Those gases amass at the top of each tube. First of all, the generator used for the current was set on AC instead of DC. No harm done at this stage, if he remained vigilant. 

The chemical formula for water is dihydrogen oxide, meaning that for each oxygen molecule, there are two hydrogen molecules. As a consequence, in one tube should be twice as much gas as in the other tube — invisible but you can see the “void” space. [Other Teacher], however, failed to notice that due to the AC, the volume in both tubes was the same. The next step — students are fond of this — to prove the hydrogen, you are supposed to tap some of the gas in an upside-down test tube — hydrogen is lighter than air — and to light the gas. It will result in a small “poof.”

[Other Teacher], for some reason, did not take a test tube and let the gas escape from one of the tubes and lighted it directly. If you hold a flame next to hydrogen and oxygen, they want to come together, resulting in a “boom” rather than a “poof.” As the tube contained a mixture of both, an expensive piece of equipment made out of glass exploded… onto the first two rows of students, who luckily remained mostly unharmed or had only minor scratches. He was lucky.

For some reason, our very strict principal did not see it as a reason for dismissal but [Science Teacher], who was also responsible for the material, revoked his privileges. He had to fight the principal but he won that one.