Our schedules are written on one of those month calendars, and we’re told to check our schedule at the beginning of each week in case anything has changed.

I called on Sunday to check if I’m scheduled. Nope nothing. I called on Thursday again, just to make sure, since I planned to go out on Friday. Still nada.

Friday evening rolls around, and my manager calls me and yells, “Why are you not here!?”

Being the pushover I was back then (young and naïve), I went in and apologized. I checked the calendar, and she’d freaking crossed someone else’s name out and wrote in mine, but didn’t give any heads up.

She was threatening me with a write-up about “coming in late,” so no longer being a pushover, I called her out on it. She said I “needed to check the schedule more frequently”, but she didn’t write me up, so that was her confessing that she’d gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

After that, my manager did the schedule in pencil so that she could make on-the-fly changes like this and make it less obvious.

The next time I noticed that she changed my schedule after it had been posted (and I had the picture proof), I simply rubbed out the pencil and put it back to what it had been. They were probably short that night, but not my problem, and I never heard anything about it.

I work for the City I live in. Specifically, I work at a facility that is inside a park, but our place is private property, and you have to be authorized to use it. A parkgoer just wanders in:

Me: “Hi, can I help you?”

Person: “No, I’m just looking.”

Me: “Well, actually, this is private property over here, not the park.”

Person: “Oh, it’s okay, I’m a local resident, so I can.”

Me: “No, it’s still private property.”

Person: “My taxes pay for the upkeep of this park, so I can!”

Me: “This facility is in the park, but not part of the park, so no, your taxes don’t. It’s private property.”

Person: “What if I was the mayor!”

Me: “I don’t care if you were the president. It’s private property, and you are trespassing.”

Person: “What if I was Jesus?!”

Me: “Jesus is a resident of Nazareth, in ancient Galilee, so he’s not a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, so he’s definitely trespassing.”

Person: “I’ll be writing to the Park & Rec people about this!” *Walks off with a hmph.*

My dad and I have driven to IKEA to get a few things. On the way there, I got a work call from my boss. I told him I would call him back when I parked up. While on the call, my dad said he would go on ahead, and I would catch up. 

After I finish my work call, my mom calls me.

Mom: “Where are you?”

Me: “In the parking lot, outside IKEA.”

Mom: “Your dad with you?”

Me: “No, he went on ahead. I’m about to go catch up with him.”

Mom: “He just called me. He’s lost. He couldn’t get through to you.”

Me: “Lost? The entire store is a one-way system.”

Mom: “This is your father. The man could get lost in a studio apartment.”

Me: *Sighs.* “That’s fair. Where is he?”

Mom: “I told him to find a couch and sit on it. Give it five minutes, and you should be able to find him by following the snoring…”

Some friends and I are sitting at the boarding gate at the airport. Our plane is delayed. There are a couple of guys in pilot uniforms sitting near us. The gate across from us suddenly opens, and the pilots get up and walk through that one. 

Another passenger near us (whom we do not know) breathes a sigh of relief and says to his family, loudly:

Passenger: “Thank God. I was worried they were gonna be our pilots.”

Passenger’s Son: “Why?”

Passenger: “Oh, come on. It’s soooo obvious they’re DEI hires.”

The passenger’s son shrugs and goes back to playing on his Switch. I involuntarily scoff.

Passenger: *Looking over at me, and saying aggressively.* “What was that, lady?”

Me: “So, you see a Black pilot, and you automatically assume he’s DEI? Pretty racist.”

Passenger: “That’s not racist! That’s just… saying how it is!”

Me: “That’s not how it is. If he’s a pilot, then he’s qualified, end of conversation.”

I make a more-than-obvious motion with my phone, trying to make it look like I’m busy and done with this conversation.

Stranger: “Are you honestly tellin’ me that if you see a Black man flying our plane, you’d be happy?”

Me: “Honey, if I see a Black man flying our plane, I’m putting on lipstick.”

He looked disgusted. His wife told him to “Calm down and be quiet. We’re not doing this again,” and his teenage son was giggling behind his Switch.

I work at a Mexican-themed fast-food place in the drive-thru. It’s my first week.

Me: “Hi, what can I get you?”

Customer: “The naked chicken chalupa.”

Me: “Sorry, that was a seasonal product. We stopped selling that a month ago.”

Customer: “I’m sorry. I just recently had a concussion.”

And then she drove off.

Me: *To my coworker, who heard all of it.* “Should… should I call someone?”

Coworker: “Honestly, not the most worried I’ve been about a customer pulling out of our drive-thru. This one could form complete sentences!”