Where I live, when you’re unemployed, you can receive benefits from the government if you’re compliant with the guides set by the agencies. My ‘activity’ is working in a charity shop; I don’t mind it, but there’s plenty of heavy lifting due to the volume of donations – mostly furniture – and you deal with quite a lot of elderly and vulnerable people.

This occurs in July of 2021. My state has had a resurgence of a certain potentially deadly virus, and everyone’s a bit on edge because the government is doing all they can to prevent it from spreading further than it already has. I wake up feeling quite sick; I’ve got the symptoms of said virus. I immediately book in with my doctor, who does the test for it straight away before ordering me into self isolation. She also writes me a certificate for the government activity, so I don’t get penalised.

I think it’s all okay; I email the agency with the certificate attached and basically crash. I’m feverish and nauseated, and I drift in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day. And then, that afternoon, I get a call.

It’s the agency. And they’re not happy. Why?

Apparently, it isn’t the ‘right kind of certificate’. The agent stresses that she’ll accept it this time, while at the same time having a go at me for not doing the right thing, that I’ll only be covered for that day and that day alone – thankfully, this happens on a Friday and as the store isn’t open on the weekend, I’ll have some time to recover – and if I don’t go on Monday my benefits will be suspended.

But here’s what gets me. After having a test for the illness, it’s a government mandate that you go home and self-isolate until you get cleared. According to the mandate, I wouldn’t have needed a certificate at all, because legally, I wasn’t allowed to go out once I presented with symptoms.

On Saturday I received my results and it was negative; but I do have a nasty strain of flu. However, while I got a bit better over the weekend, I still feel like absolute s***, still having hot and cold flashes, still have the nausea and body aches. On Sunday, my chest started to burn and ache, which is concerning because the last time I had the flu this bad, I got sicker and then got bronchitis, which then led to fluid around my lungs and weeks of antibiotics. But I have to return on Monday, regardless of how I feel.

I get having to be compliant with the government. I get that receiving benefits comes with proving that I’m still trying to get work, that I’m willing and able to get out and do something. But I can’t see how it’s fair that they made a big deal of me not having the ‘right sort’ of certificate to prove that I’m sick during a global health crisis, when it’s the illness causing said global health crisis the doctor feared I had.

And, now, I’ll have to go to my activity, where I’ll again be dealing with the elderly and the vulnerable, still with this nasty strain of the flu. It may not be the certain illness spreading around the globe but it’s still something that can severely compromise immune systems and make people more susceptible to other certain global illnesses.

All because the doctor took priority in testing me and ordering me home to isolate right away instead of wasting time writing the ‘right sort’ of certificate.

I have various social media accounts. Some are personal, some are author accounts. I received a private message on my author Instagram account. As the account is meant to promote my work, there are no pictures of me on it, just posts promoting my books like quotes or pictures of the book, art of the characters etc. However, my account name is an obviously female name, as opposed to being a unisex name. This is important because one day I received the following message:

Man: “Hey baby you’re hot I wanna to get to know you better sexy mama.”

I’m married, but even if I were single, such a message where the sender hadn’t even properly bothered to check my profile or pictures would have been an immediate turn off for me. It made me suspect that he had sent the exact same message to any account whose owner he could identify as female, rather than because he was genuinely interested.

I replied with a brief “No thank you”.

In hindsight, I should have just ignored the message, because not long after, I got the following response:

Man: “Wow, calm the fuck down. Why do women overreact to everything? Learn to take a fucking compliment. You sound high maintenance and kinda stuck up. Get over yourself. This kind of bullshit is why Feminazis like you are single all the time.”

I immediately blocked the user. Later that day, I got the exact same message from the same guy on my personal account. I blocked him immediately and reported him.

Me: (Supervisor), here’s a woman’s lost ID from the parking lot. Also, there’s a pair of women’s underwear out there, too.

Supervisor:…

Luckily, no one else was there, but we still put the ID at customer service and dealt with the random underwear with tongs.

My partner has two kids, aged 4 and 7, that are currently staying with us for a week.
Today I made them hotdogs for tea, and retreated upstairs to crash on the bed while he supervised the eating.
At some point he came up to the bathroom, and when he went back downstairs the four year old had vanished!
As he was calling the kid, I just heard this tiny little voice whisper from UNDER THE BED:
“I don’t like the sausage…”

I think i nearly died from trying not to laugh!

I have a coworker who is a bit on a power trip but hasn’t a clue what it is we actually do. Not because they are by any means stupid or incapable, but because they only want to hear themselves talk and everything else is inconsequential. They are only kept around because they know a lot of people.

After forty-five minutes of discussing new changes to our software, with them being oddly silent (aka checked out), the team lead decides to end the Zoom call.

Team Lead: “Ok. No one has anything else they want to discuss so let’s end the call here.”

Bad Coworker: “That sounds good. [Boss], are you on the call?”

Note: You can literally see WHO is on the call. It takes all of a second to see that there are four people on the call and he is not one if them.

Bad Coworker: “[Boss]? [Boss]? Are you there?”

Team Lead: “Uuuhh… He isn’t here.”

Bad Coworker: “Oh well. We should make sure he has what he needs for his upcoming talk. So I need you to make sure he has what he needs, ok?”

Team Lead: “Alright. We will talk to him when he gets in.”

Bad Coworker: “Make sure he has a working version. Does he have a working version he can use right now?”

At this point I am rolling my eyes because that is literally what we have been talking about for the last forty-five minutes!

Team Lead: “Uuuh, he will by the end of the day with new changes?”

Bad Coworker: “Ok good. Because we really need bullet proof code for this. He needs something bulletproof. You understand?”

Team Lead: “Yes.”

Bad Coworker: “We cannot go sending him blind you understand? When is the best time to go over and talk about this so we are prepared?”

Team Lead: “Let’s do it tomorrow morning.”

Bad Coworker: “Perfect. Because I really want him prepared.”

Team Lead: “Ok.”

Bad Coworker: “Is there anything else we need to discuss?”

At this point, I was really restraining myself not to just hang up the call. In total, they wasted ten extra minutes of everyone’s time on this unnecessary power move to seem “large and in charge”. (Their words.)