I work for a retail garden center in my hometown, and wear a denim vest bearing our logo. After work one day I stop at a local drugstore to pick up a snack, while still wearing my work vest. I was standing in an aisle contemplating when an elderly customer approached me:

Customer: Excuse me, can you tell me where I can find *some random item*.

Me: I’m sorry Ma’am, but I don’t work here. I work at *retail garden center*.

Customer: Oh… Well, do you have your water plants in stock yet?

Me: Indeed Ma’am, we do.

Customer: Wonderful! I’ll be in next week!

Me: Sounds good, Ma’am.

(Customer wandered away, hopefully to look for someone who actually worked there)

My friend and I have traveled to another city for a martial arts camp, taking a long-distance bus that left very early in the morning, the tram, and then a local bus. Right after we get off the local bus, I check my pocket out of habit and notice my phone isn’t there. I usually keep my phone in my pocket, but being a neurotic person, I usually double-check it’s still there before I exit the bus. But of course, this one time that I didn’t…

I frantically check and re-check all my other pockets and my sports bag, hoping in vain I’ve just misplaced it and trying to hold off a full-blown panic attack. I ask my friend to call my phone, but of course she just ran out of battery. My panic is growing, because it’s Sunday, so even if someone turned it in to lost and found, I cannot get it back the same day – which is a big problem as I need to return home the same day, because I have no place to stay the night and no money to afford one, as I’m a broke student. So needless to say, I cannot afford to replace my smartphone either, and even if I could, it’s very important to me as lots of my stuff is on it. I cannot even buy a bus ticket to return home without it. My friend suggests we head to the camp location and figure things out there, as the camp is about to start. But I notice in the map at the stop that the bus route ends and turns around just a little further from our stop, so I decide to wait for the bus to come back on the off-chance that someone had found and turned in my phone.

As soon as the bus stops and the front door opens, I ask the driver (different guy this time) if anyone’s turned in a phone and begin to explain the situation. I have hardly finished the question before the driver hands me something – my phone! I thank him profusely as I step out of the bus.

As the bus leaves, I burst into tears out of relief. I don’t know which passenger or driver found my phone and decided to turn it in, but they saved me from a much bigger catastrophe than they probably realized. To this day, I’m grateful for the honesty of the people in this country – and perhaps karma, as I’ve turned in my own share of found cellphones.

(I’m at work, and my coworker has a restraining order out on a crazy ex girlfriend, though I don’t know this at the time. She keeps calling his cellphone, but of course he doesn’t answer. So she starts calling his workplace, and I answer.)

Crazy Ex: “Yeah, I need to talk to [Coworker].”

Me: “One moment. May I ask who’s calling?”

Crazy Ex: “…[Name].”

(I go and get him.)

Me: “[Coworker], [Name] is on the phone for you.”

Coworker: “No! Say that I’m not here!”

Me: “Ok?’

(I get back to the phone.)

Me: “Sorry, [Coworker] is gone.”

Crazy Ex: “…now listen, here sweetheart, I want to you to give me him! RIGHT NOW! I know he’s there. So stop the bulls***!”

(Her voice has risen to a screech, and I’m alarmed.)

Me: “Maybe try his cellphone?”

Crazy Ex: “I already called his cellphone, he won’t answer, that why I’m bothering with b***hes like, now give me him, or do I have to go there myself?! Hm?!”

(Not wanting her to show up and make a scene, I’m at a loss for words. Finally, I say the truth.)

Me: “He doesn’t want to speak to you.”

Crazy Ex: “I didn’t ask you that! I don’t care about that! Now–”

Me: *interrupting* “This phone line is a business line, and needs to be open for business only. Personal calls are not allowed.”

(She begins screeching obscenities at me, so I hang up. My coworker peeks around.)

Coworker: “Sorry about that, she’s crazy. I have a restraining order but it does no good. Just hang up if she calls again.”

Me: “You should do something about her. She sounded unstable.”

(She does keep calling but I hang up. Later, she does come around and make a scene, but the police got called and she was arrested. My coworker switched jobs and never heard from her again. Some people.)

[I’m what you would call the “teacher’s pet” in my freshman year World History class. I ace all his assignments, sit at the front of the room, and generally just love to learn as History of all kinds is my favorite subject. I finished my World History final two classes prior and am now finishing up my French I final when my history teacher knocks on the door to the French class.]

Mr. N: Excuse me, Madame G, I need to interrupt your class for a moment.

[She allows him to.]

Mr. N: I just want to say that of all my students, only [My name] aced the entire test, even the extra credit questions.

[I’m flushing at this point, highly embarrassed but also proud of myself.]

Mr. N: [My name], if you want to apply for honors’ history, I’ll have your recommendation letter ready at the end of the day.

[Fast forward to the following school year. I’m now a sophomore and have stayed behind to catch up on an English assignment I missed. Mr. N is still teaching and I decide to pay him a visit since I finished early. He’s in the middle of doing an after school make up test with another kid who has failed it, yet again.]

Mr. N: [My name]! Come here and tell him what prejudice is.

[Considering we are surrounded by prejudiced people every day, I am surprised this kid doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t understand what it means, which is inhibiting him from understanding the rest of the test. Keep in mind, Mr. N doesn’t like long-winded responses. Short but sweet was how he taught us to respond to questions.]

Me: It’s a type of bias against certain people, while you show favoritism toward other people.

Mr. N: There you go. And she hasn’t been in my class in a year.

[The last I heard, he was still teaching at my old high school but it’s been five years since I’ve checked. He was, and remains to be, the only teacher that ever saw the potential in me and nourished it, harvesting it into a nugget of positive feeling that I still recount to this day when I’m feeling bad. Thanks Mr. N!!!]

I was working in a call center on the email team. One evening I received an email from my boss, who was at our corporate headquarters doing testing, asking me to change the status of several hundred test accounts asap. I replied saying I was on it and printed out 6 or 7 pages of account numbers. About 15 minutes later…

Supervisor: Did you see the email from [boss]??

Me: Yes, I replied and am working on it *shows her the pages*

Supervisor: *snatches the pages out of my hands* YOU NEED TO LEARN TO DELEGATE!! DELEGATE!! DELEGATE!! *hands me back the completed pages, the page I was working on and one other page and left with the other 3*

A few minutes later I had finished my page and a half and went to collect the other pages so I could email the boss back and tell the accounts were reopened and ready for her to use. The first person had only finished half of their page so I took it back to my desk and finished it. I then went in search of the other two pages and found them both on the desks of coworkers who hadn’t even started them because they “were busy” (neither was on the phone and they were chatting with others when I walked up). I took both sheets back to my desk, finished them and emailed the boss. About an hour later the supervisor came back to check if I had finished my pages yet so she could let the boss know. I guess I understood the concept of ASAP better than she did and I would have had them done a lot faster if I hadn’t had to stop to go track down the pages she had handed out to people who either didn’t understand the concept of ASAP at ALL or she hadn’t bothered to tell them it was an ASAP project.