I’m on my way home by tram on a Saturday night. On one end of the tram, there are two very drunk, loud and obnoxious black young men, and all other guests avoid that area. I’m a female in my twenties looking rather petite and as white as a milk. Since the tram is fairly full except the area near the two young men, I end up sitting fairly close to them and it makes me a bit uncomfortable, but there’s still a door in-between. At the next stop, people get in at the doors and one of the men goes over and tries to talk to them. German is clearly not his first language and he speaks with a heavy American accent.
Man#1 (in German): Excuse me? Could you- Pardon, I want to-
All passengers hurriedly walk past him and pretend not to see him. He walks over to me.
Man#1: Hey, excuse me, can you tell me how many stops there are until we’re at the main station? This is the right tram, right? Sorry to bother you.
Me: Yes, this tram goes to the main station, but I’m not sure how many stops. I think maybe 2 or 3.
Man#1: Thank you very much.
He then walks back to his friend. They resume drinking and yelling and are, frankly, very annoying. When the stop Main Station comes up, I walk over to them.
Me (in English): Hey guys, the next one is Main Station! You need to get off here!
Man#1: Wow! Okay, thanks a lot!
Both them and I get off the tram.
Man#2: We need to go to [different stop], how do we get there? Can we take the next tram here?
Me: Uh, I’m not sure. It’s the right line, but I think it’s the wrong direction. Let me check.
I go to check the schedule.
Me: Yup, you need to go over to the other side. Let me show you where.
We walk over to the right platform (there’s multiple ones).
Me: Here, take [line] in 5 min. You’ll be at [other stop] in 15 min.
Man#1 takes my hand and shakes it.
Man#1: Thank you SO much. I know what I look like, I’m drunk and black and in the best case, people ignore me. But you didn’t just speak friendly and politely with me, you also came over to tell us when our stop came up and now even helped us find the next tram. I want you to know it means a lot to me and I appreciate it.
Me (a bit stunned): Please, don’t mention it! To be honest I was a bit worried about you being drunk. But you were nothing but polite so why shouldn’t I help you? I need to go over there, though, now, my tram arrives soon. Have a good night!
I then go to the waiting area at a different near platform. There’s another drunk young man sitting there. He notices me and comes over.
Man#3: Hey sugar t*ts. How are you?
He sits too close to me and I can smell alcohol, cigarettes and bad oral hygiene. I lean away and try to ignore him.
Man#3: You sooo beautiful babe. What’s your number? Got any plans for tonight?
He leans even closer so his body is touching my arm and his head is on my shoulder. I scoot away from him.
Man#1: Hey, leave her alone. You make her uncomfortable.
I look up to see the two guys from the tram standing in front of me and Man#3, arms crossed and looking angry.
Man#3: Got a problem a*****e? This is none of your business.
Man#2: Are you looking for trouble?
Man#3: F**k you, who do you think you are?
Man#1: It doesn’t matter. This is a good person and you’ll leave her alone.
My two “friends” and the third guy start yelling insults at each other that I don’t dare to repeat and I fear it’s going to get violent, but ultimately, the third guy leaves.
Me: Thank you so much!
Man#1: Don’t mention it. You were so friendly to us. Hey, if you don’t mind, could we wait here with you in case he comes back?
Me: Oh, uh, sure! Thank you very much! You really don’t have to do this, though, your tram will be there soon!
MIan#1: Yours too. We’d really like to make sure you’re safe.
They end up waiting for my tram with me for nearly 15 minutes, missing theirs in the process. We talked about all kinds of tings like why they were in Germany. I still feel a bit ashamed about being when Man#1 first came up to talk to me.8 judge a book by it’s cover!!!

I work in a food-on-the-go retailer in England. A lot of people believe that we sell hot food, but we don’t; we cook the food then put it out on a counter. This means we don’t charge tax, so the food is cheaper, but sometimes it’s cold. I try to warn people where I can, but this takes the cake.
By law, we are not allowed to say food is hot; we have to say fresh.

On this day we’ve been incredibly busy and whilst we don’t have much, everything we do has come out of the oven in the last five minutes. My co worker is in the process of filling to ovens to cook more stock whilst I serve. It’s worth noting I’ve been at work for 8 hours with two and a half more to go, on day 5 of a 7 day run. I’m exhausted.

Three girls come in, looking to be late teens/early twenties. Immediately I can sense the lead girl, girl #1, has an attitude problem. I paste on the smile. Despite saying please, every time she says it is with the attitude of an 8 year old child forced to apologise.

Girl #1: I want a hot pizza.
Me: We have this margharita slice! It’s just come out of the oven. Do you want to –
Girl #1: I want a fresh one please.
Me: My colleague can put some in for you, that’ll be ten minutes wait though.
Girl #1: I’m not waiting ten minutes. Can you put that one in a bag so I can feel it?
Me, holding my smile: Sure!
I hand her the pizza in a bag; she barely touches it, looking away all the time.
Girl #1: That’s not good enough. I want something hot. Hot, hot, hot, what’s hot hot hot, what’s just come out?
Me: I’m sorry but nothing’s hot hot hot. We don’t sell anything hot, I’m afraid; due to tax reasons, this isn’t a hot counter.
(I rest my hand on a part of the counter so she can see it’s not hot)
As you can see I’m not burning myself. We have food in the oven at the moment, the thing coming out the soonest –
I fumble my words a little and go ‘bleh’, trying to get a hint of a smile,
– The thing due to come out the soonest is the pizza, in ten minutes, or you can have that hot one there!
I’m a little brusque, but I’m still very polite and smiling the whole while. This girl is giving me the dirtiest look I’ve ever received.

Girl #2, quietly: We can go to the other [shop] up the road.
Girl #1: Nah fuck this
She turns to leave. To my utter shock, Girl #2 pipes up at full volume – looking at her friend, not me.
Girl #2: Rude bitch!
Girl #3 turns to look at me, jaw dropped. I’m sure I look just as alarmed, Girl #1 looking back at me as if she thinks it was me that said it. I hold my hands up slightly in surrender, but to my relief, she storms out. The other girls follow her.
I’m still not sure if the ‘rude bitch’ comment was aimed at me or not, but to my relief, the next customer agreed that I wasn’t the rude one in that situation!

I come into work one day just before 6am, which is when we open. Upon arriving, I see an empty car parked in the drive-through lane window, THE WRONG WAY. As in, somebody has driven up the exit, then parked up outside the window and LEFT THE VEHICLE, blocking the drive-through completely I then enter the restaurant to see a young woman arguing with the usually very nice and friendly manager on shift.

Woman: Your sign says you open at 5am! Why weren’t you open? (No it doesn’t – the sign says we open at 6. It is possible she’s confusing it with our 5am breakfast menu time, which we have as the drive-through is 24 hours.)

Manager: Madam, you’re parked in or drive-through and need to move your car-

Woman: Why weren’t you open?!

Manager: Madam, you are blocking the road and-

Woman: I want breakfast!

(I had to leave at this point so I wasn’t late. As the drive-through was moving later on I assume she eventually moved. I asked my manager about her later on and he sighed and said she’d continued to try and argue with him before she got thrown out.)

This happened about forty years ago to my co-worker when she was nine years old.

When she was seven, my co-worker had to go into care (for those of you who don’t know, that means she became a ward of the state). She went to live at an orphanage in the north of England, where there were about ten kids between four and fourteen. It looked all right on the outside, at the very edge of a road leading to the countryside, but that was where the niceties ended.

The staff there were horrible. They changed around roughly every six months or so, but they were mostly ignorant of the children; stubbing out cigarettes on them and taking away the television just because they wanted to were the most common ‘games’ they played. The floors were littered with McDonald’s boxes, fish-and-chip wrappers and beer or coke cans. I think the staff also brought alcohol bottles into their office. Physical punishment was not uncommon.

The children were either sad saps who cried all day or took advantage of the ‘care’ they received to make a mess of the place or go out at all hours. Several doors were replaced due to dart holes, scribbling or being smashed. The staff there just let them run wild and were incredibly cheap. My co-worker said that the clothes they brought for the children were often about two or three sizes too small so that they wouldn’t have to bother too much food. Kids were also sometimes locked in cupboards so that the staff wouldn’t have to see them cry.

I could tell you a lot about what happened to her over her five years there, but this one sticks out the most.

It was Christmas. The three members of staff working there (two men and a woman) left the ten children there, between the ages of five and sixteen, alone on Christmas Eve evening so they could go to a party being held in town. The oldest of the kids there told my co-worker and a ten-year-old boy with what would probably now be called ADHD to cook for them. When they burnt it, the older kid slapped them about the ears and kicked the boy in the small of the spine.

My co-worker looked over at the other kids for help, but two were drinking in the armchairs and the other was this weepy seven-year-old who rocked in the corners talking to herself.

I also need to mention that the house owned a dog, three cats and a budgie. The oldest kid made my co-worker and the other boy pick up the pets’ mess while they went out for Chinese. When they came back, my co-worker asked, ‘Can we have some?’ and the kid answered, ‘No. You ruined dinner. Why should we?’

Another older child (a girl of around fourteen who was often half-asleep most of the time and when looking back may have been addicted to prescription painkillers) said, ‘Oh come on, let them.’

The oldest kid let them, but didn’t let them wash their hands. Remember that they had been picking up dog mess.

The oldest four kids (the kid who made them make dinner, the stoned girl and two fifteen-year-olds who got into fights with the staff and were beaten with belts because of it) spent the whole Christmas Day in the staff bedroom watching 18 certificate (R-rated) horror movies, with boxes of sweets and chocolate strewn over the floor.

My co-worker and one of the little boys, who was probably only six or seven, went along to the house where they knew the staff members were partying to try and get them to come back. This was at about seven in the morning. Two of them were too drunk to even realise they were there and the third one gave them a wrapped present from under that house’s tree and told them to get lost. My co-worker felt bad about taking it, but this was the first kind thing they’d ever done for the kids (at least as far as she was aware), so they took it back. It was a copy of Encylopedia Britannica, if you were interested.

The toilet broke later that day and one of the fifteen-year-olds threw up in the bath, so the bathroom was unusable. When night fell and the staff didn’t return, my co-worker asked another girl a couple of years older than her if she wanted to get the police. The girl said she wouldn’t because this was how she ended up in this situation and was afraid of going someplace worse.

When the older kids were finally bored of the horror movies (or at least had run out of movies to watch) they banged on the bedroom doors with a saucepan to get the little kids to get up at two in the morning. The older kids (or at least the sixteen-year-old and the two fifteen-year-olds; my co-worker thinks the stoned girl was in the bathroom again) told the little kids to tidy up their mess and clean the carpet. The mud-stained, sick-stained, dog mess-stained carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in almost a year.

The staff returned at half ten. I think the men still had a hangover and the woman went into the back garden to smoke. They gave the kids presents, though, mostly stuff they’d stolen from other houses where they had partied. Video cassettes, tape cassettes, a china vase and a tin of cat food.

My co-worker said that was the worst Christmas she ever had. When she went past the orphanage in the car with her boyfriend in 1993, she saw that the place was for sale. She asked in town about it and heard that the staff had either retired or gone to jail for shoplifting from an off-licence. She has no clue what happened to most of the kids she knew there, except that the boy with ADHD had gone on to study law.

(Awhile back I used to work for a popular fast food restaurant. My manager was unbelievably lazy and would spend the days belittling and screaming at employees while he sat in his office playing with his phone. His wife would always come in occasionally to hang out for a bit or pick something up. Note she is an extremely beautiful woman and would always playfully flirt with me. On this particular day she comes in when I’m at the register and the manager is in his office.)

Managers wife: “Hey there (my name) how are you doing?”

Me: “Oh you know, greatest day of my life. Anything I can help you with?”

Managers wife: “Oh I just needed to pick up some stuff from (manager).”

(I already know what she’s talking about and offer to go in the back and grab what she needs.)

Managers wife: “Oh don’t worry I can get them, don’t want you to overwork those strong arms.” *gives a wink*

(I shake my head laughing as she walks to the back and go back to work. Not long after I hear raised voices from the office, after about 10min, while I’m in the kitchen, I see her frantically walking out of the store. Not even a sec later my manager comes around the corner.)
Manager: “(My name), my office now!” *stomps back to office*

(Nervously I walk to the back. As I enter his office he’s in his chair glaring at me with his face redder than a tomato.

Manager: “You’re fired, leave your apron and get the f*** out of my store. I don’t ever want to see your face here again.”

Me: *not knowing any better* “Uh, may I ask why?”

(My manager then proceeds to pick up his monitor from the desk and heave it across the room, which then shatters against the wall next to me. I freeze up completely, in complete shock, half from fright and half because it’s the most physically demanding thing I’ve seen him do in months.)

Manager: “Don’t you f***ing play stupid with me! I just heard you out there flirting with my wife! Don’t you ever come near me or her again! Get your f***ing pathetic a** out of here or your head is going to break against the wall next!”

Me: *again not knowing any better* “But I wasn’t…”

Manager: *darts across the room and punches me hard in the face* “GET OUT!”

(I swallow my tongue and quickly escape the store. On the way out I can hear more things shattering. I imagine you’re probably wondering why I didn’t call the police for assault. Well, as I was leaving the store I ran into his wife who was crying at her car. She noticed the blood and swelling on my face and proceeded to apologize excessively. Still in shock, I wave it off and tell her it’s not her fault. She then offered me a ride home. Best part? That very night we started an affair which has lasted after their divorce to this very day. I don’t feel a shred of guilt since he was very abusive in their relationship. Not long after, he got fired and charged with assaulting another employee.)