I work at the front desk of a hotel, checking people in and that kind of thing. I clocked off and handed everything off to my coworker, who seemed a bit off for the night. I thought, “Oh, well, whatever. We all have off days,” and carried on.

The next day, when I showed up for my shift, my manager called me into her office and asked if I had noticed anything off about my coworker the night before. Turns out he was smoking crystal meth in the employee bathroom and was high as a kite for his entire shift. My boss knew immediately upon seeing him that he was majorly tweaking.

The moral of the story, kids, is don’t do crystal meth at work. (Obviously, don’t do it ever, but come on. Seriously.)

(While my enormously large mountain dog looks like an actual teddy bear and is extremely gentle and well-behaved, he likes his personal space and doesn’t care for strangers’ attention. Therefore, I never take him to public places if I can avoid it. On this day, however, I am forced to take a two-hour train ride with him. In an effort to get strangers to keep their distance, I dress my dog in his custom yellow harness that has the words, “DO NOT TOUCH,” written on it in large black letters. Besides that, he has a yellow ribbon – international symbol for “I need space” – tied to his leash. At the train station, we wait calmly in the furthest corner of the platform until the coast is clear. As we make our way toward the pet car, I see faces in a different car pressed against the window, staring at us. I ignore it, get in, and find our designated seats: a normal aisle seat for me, and a low platform where the window seat would normally be for the dog. I spread the dog’s blanket on his seat, and he settles down with his head on my lap. I casually stroke his ears, and as I wait for the ticket inspector, I rest my eyes for a moment. Out of nowhere, I feel air move around me, and the warm weight of my dog’s head on my lap is suddenly gone. I open my eyes to see a mother with two young children, one of who is eagerly trying to reach the dog over my lap.)

Me: *blocking the access to the dog much as I can with my body* “Whoa, hey! Don’t do that.”

Strange Mother: “My kids want to pet the dog.”

Me: “Sorry, he doesn’t like to be touched by str—”

Strange Mother: *scoffs* “That’s not true. I saw you petting him just now.”

Me: “As I was saying, he doesn’t like to be approached or touched by strangers. I’m sure you can see the large text on his harness and that he has pulled as far away from you as possible.”

Strange Mother: “Nonsense. All dogs like to be petted. I don’t understand why you’re being like this. My kids have a long trip ahead of them! Just let them pet the dog already!”

Me: *thinking to myself, “Are you for real?!” but trying to avoid a conflict and making a scene* “He does not want strangers to touch him. Many dogs don’t. I’m afraid you’ll need to find something else to do to pass the time.”

Strange Child: “Muuuuum, I want to cuddle the doggy!”

Me: “Sorry, sweetie, you can’t.”

Strange Mother: ”Yes, you can. Just call for the dog like this.”

(The mother suddenly lunges at my dog, almost punching me in the process, and starts going, “Here, doggy, doggy,” aggressively at him. The dog lets out a startled growl. The mother shrieks and jumps back. Her children start crying. Everyone is now staring at us.)

Me: *in complete disbelief* “What the h*** are you doing?”

Strange Mother: “The dog tried to bite me!”

Me: “He certainly did not.”

Strange Mother: “Liar! That dog is vicious! How could you bring such a beast on public transport?!”

Me: *getting mad despite myself* “Are you kidding me? The dog was minding his own business when you came here, all entitled, acting like he is some toy for your kids to play with. I asked you way more nicely than you deserved to leave him be. You basically assaulted us both, and now you think you’re the victim because you got growled at? Most other dogs would have taken a bite out of you for doing something that stupid!”

Strange Mother: “You can’t talk to me like that!”

Me: “I can, and I will. You need to leave.”

(The mother threw a few insults at me, and then finally grabbed her wailing children and left the car. It took a good ten minutes of distractions and several treats for my dog to stop panting anxiously and to calm down, but thankfully the rest of our journey was uneventful. I’d had my share of people overly eager to pet my dog before, but never someone who wouldn’t take a polite no for an answer. Even though my dog seems unscarred by the incident, these days I am even more reluctant to take him out in public. The thing that gets me the most about the whole thing, though, is the idea that a mother would insist on letting her small children approach a large, unfamiliar dog when specifically warned the dog was not friendly.)

(I work at a family-run pizza shop on a busy Saturday night. The owner is helping to take calls and she receives one from a drunk customer complaining. She says she will wait for the customer to come to the store to talk to him. Five hours pass, and he is a no-show, so the owner heads home while we lock up. Ten minutes after she leaves, a car comes screeching into the parking lot and a man steps out. He almost immediately begins to berate our cashier as our remaining customers watch.)

Customer: “Where the f*** is that b****? She said she’d be here for me! G***d*** liar.”

(I step in to save our poor cashier, and I can smell the booze on him from across the counter. The cashier, meanwhile, is calling the cops to tell them about the man driving drunk.)

Me: “You must be [Customer]. She did wait for you, sir, but you told her you were on your way hours ago. She could not wait any longer for you, but I can help if you lower your voice for our other customers.”

Customer: “F*** you, you Nazi piece of s***. You and that b**** are just a couple of [anti-semitic slur] crooks. This whole place is full of Nazis. Give me my money, you [homophobic slur]!”

Me: “That is enough, sir. You can either leave now, wait for the police to come, or have our driver, the former Marine, escort you out physically. Either way, you have been barred from this restaurant.”

(He cursed a few times, called me and everyone else a Nazi again, despite me being Hispanic, then spun out of the parking lot. He was pulled over a block later by the police.)

I work night audit at a hotel. Most of the time it’s a fairly mundane, quiet job. On this particular night, we are at something like 10% occupancy, which means paperwork will be light and I’ll likely have several hours to just chill. I’m setting up my papers for the night when I get a call from the bar staff, who are still going through their closing procedures. We have glass elevators, and the bar is directly across from them; the bartender says she just saw a man and a woman get into a physical altercation in one of the elevators.

I radio for security; meanwhile, the woman has come back down to the main floor, but states that the man in question has stolen her purse. Apparently, he tried to convince her to come back to his room with him, and when she declined he tried to force her from the elevator, but only managed to get her purse out with him. He then set the purse on the ground outside the elevator and told her to “come and get it.” She smartly refused and returned to the main floor.

We all look at each other incredulously; it’s so slow, and the man was at the bar for several hours, so we know exactly which room he’s in. Our security guard goes up to the room. The man is right there, and at first denies having the woman’s purse until the guard points out that it is literally sitting in plain sight on the table. The man lets the guard take the bag, and the woman insists she doesn’t want to get anyone in trouble, but given that several people who witnessed the altercation state they don’t feel comfortable with the man still being in the hotel — including myself — the police are called.

I can’t say for sure what happened up at the room, as I can’t leave the desk per policy, but a bit later the man is escorted through the lobby in cuffs, and with a freshly torn shirt. The police urge the woman to press charges, as apparently, from what they saw in the room, “he had no intention of ever letting [her] leave,” but to my knowledge she never does.

So, the police are cleaning up that mess, my guard is taking statements to write up a report, and the excitement is over, right?

Wrong.

Suddenly, two women come barreling through the front doors, and upon seeing the officers, go straight to them. At first I think they are here to plead the case of the man who was arrested, but nope. They are actually in no way related to the earlier events. They had received some distressing texts from a friend and had been driving around all night trying to find her car somewhere. And wouldn’t you know it, it was in our parking lot.

Now, technically speaking, I am not allowed to give out room numbers without the guest’s express permission. But, having overheard the gist of the texts they are showing the police, and with the assurance that it will be the officers going to make the welfare check and not the women themselves, I make the decision to break with policy and give them the woman’s room number. And a good thing, too, because apparently she has pill bottles everywhere and is barely conscious on the bed.

She is wheeled out on a stretcher, but does make a full recovery.

And that’s the story of how I didn’t get to even touch my paperwork until three hours into what should have been a nice, quiet shift. To this day, if anyone starts to say, “This will be a nice slow night,” I tell them off for jinxing it.

(I work part-time in the children’s area of an “upscale” gym. The problem with children’s areas in gyms is that some people treat them like daycare, leaving their kids for HOURS when you know they aren’t working out that whole time. One boy is there almost every day, and is always a problem no matter how we approach him. He steals toys from other kids, tries to intentionally break things, ignores my coworkers and me, etc. It also doesn’t help that he is twice the size of other kids his age, and he knows it. I am told his mom has been notified, but nothing has changed. One day, he goes way too far and physically harms a smaller child. I sit him in “time out” to wait until his mother picks him up.)

Me: *to the mom when she walks in with one of her friends* “Ma’am, I’m afraid we need to talk to you about [Child].”

Mom: *ignores me, keeps talking to her friend, and holds out her member card to check her son out* “I’m telling you, [Doctor] is amazing! You can’t even tell they aren’t real!”

(She is clearly talking about her newly augmented breasts, which most definitely do not look real. She’s wearing designer workout clothes, has worn a bunch of diamond jewelry to a GYM, and doesn’t even look like she’s broken a sweat despite being there for three hours.)

Me: *fed up* “Ma’am? Ma’am!”

Mom: “What? I’m here for [Child].”

(I don’t want to discuss this in front of her friend, but have a feeling I don’t have a choice.)

Me: “Yes, I know, but we need to discuss what your son did to another child today. He physically harmed him.”

Mom: “Oh, I’m sure they were just playing and it was an accident.”

Me: “Ma’am, he punched and kicked another child who is half his size. I don’t think the other boy’s parents will consider that an accident.”

Mom: *has already stopped listening to me and is talking to her friend again* “I can get you a referral if you want, they have—”

Me: “MA’AM! What are you going to do about your son?”

Mom: “Excuse me?”

Me: “If you can’t address his behavioral problems, he will no longer be allowed in the children’s area.”

Mom: *now she’s heard me* “Who do you think you are?!”

Me: “I’m trying to tell you that you need to address this serious issue with your son.”

Mom: “Don’t you tell me how to raise my child!”

(She grabs her son’s hand and leaves. Right when they get to the door, the kid looks back and actually SMIRKS at me and my coworker.)

Coworker: “Did that just happen?”

Me: *facepalm* “Yes, yes it did.”

Coworker: “No wonder he has problems; his mom cares more about her boob job than taking care of her own kid.”

(I turned in my notice a week later.)

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