It is Cinco De Mayo, and as we’re a well-known Tex-Mex place, we’ve had a busy day. (I know, I know, CDM is more an American thing than a Mexican thing. I just serve people tacos…)

Customer: “I’ll get the taco combo, but… uh…”

He leans in closer and whispers.

Customer: “Can I get that white people spicy?”

I try not to laugh, and I assure him that we will make it mild. We bring the meal out to him, and I note that he is struggling after the first bite, drinking cold water as he goes.

Customer: “I thought you said this was mild!”

Me: “It is, sir. The salsa is extra mild — and also on the side, sitting there untouched by you. You’ve just eaten a bite of corn taco and unseasoned ground beef.”

The customer noticed that I was right and immediately calmed down. The placebo effect is a crazy thing…

In Germany, we have mandatory ESL (English as a second language) classes in school, starting from elementary school. All English classes in German schools are catered toward people who only learn English as a second language and don’t speak it regularly outside of school. Even most English teachers only ever learned it as their second language.

As such, my high school was wholly unprepared for me; having spent almost all of my childhood up to that point abroad and naturally growing up German/English bilingual, I am fluent in both languages.

Sadly, my teacher in my final year of high school was not. In fact, she had only recently started teaching, had very little authority, knowledge, or any idea of what she was doing, and made up for it by being as obnoxiously high and mighty as they come. English was the first language you ever spoke and you were, thus, fluent? Nope, that was a lie, and you could not possibly be more fluent than her. After all, she was the teacher.

She hated the fact that I would just read (English) novels in class but would still always be able to answer her questions and fill out our worksheets flawlessly. After just the first week of classes, she had it out for me. When she handed us back our first graded tests later, it really showed: I — a straight-A student — had gotten a D.

But it wasn’t just me; the entire class got an average of two to three grades below their usual results. And that’s when I noticed something on my test: she had marked countless words and phrases on my test as “wrong” or “misspelled” or “made up” — when they were all perfectly correct — and deducted a full point for every single one. I whipped out a dictionary and Post-its and went to work, proving every single mark-up the teacher had given me wrong. I pointed this out to my friends in class, too, and told them to check their own results, and soon I ended up with the entire class’ stack of graded tests to re-correct them.

It turned out that our teacher had, apparently, never gotten past the cover page of a dictionary, and her “corrections” were all blatantly wrong. The class and I went up to her and tried to point out her wrongful “corrections” to her with the help of a dictionary, the Internet, and common sense, but she was having none of it.

We eventually escalated the matter to the head of the language department at our school who then re-graded all of our tests. The average score went from a D- to a B, and my own grade went back up to an A.

And our class teacher was livid when she was no longer allowed to grade tests. She tried her hardest to make my life in her class miserable for the rest of the year, and she never missed a chance to tell me how full of myself I was and how she’d make me come to my senses once she’d get to fail me in my finals. (Never mind that she wasn’t allowed to grade us anymore, especially not on our finals).

I got through the year with her out of spite alone, but I have to say, when I got to rub my fifteen points (full score, A+, for everyone unfamiliar with the German grading system) in her face during our award ceremony at the end of the year — the only one in the entire school who got full score in the English final exams — and watch her stalk off while barely keeping it together in front of all the other teachers, that was a beautifully cathartic moment!

An angry older woman skips the line to storm up to me at the customer service desk and demands the store manager. I call him over while I serve the customers actually patient enough to wait their turn. The manager arrives and introduces himself.

Customer: “I should call the police on you! I caught my son with cigarettes, and he said he got them here! You should all be ashamed!”

Manager: “I’m very sorry, madam. We always ID for tobacco purchases, so I can’t explain why that happened. Maybe he was carrying a fake ID?” 

Customer: “And now you’re accusing him of having counterfeit documents?! I am reporting you to the Better Business Bureau and complaining on your Facebook page!”

Manager: “Do you know when he made the purchase? We can check the camera footage and see if we can figure out what happened.” 

She gives us a short window when her son was here this morning, and from the terminal at the customer service desk, [Manager] is able to isolate the purchase.

Customer: “That’s him! See?! You just sold him the cigarettes without any issue!” 

Manager: “Ma’am… first of all, we can all see that he clearly presented ID, but second of all, if that is your son, then he’s an adult.”

Customer: “He is an adult when I say he is!”

Manager: “How old is he?”

Customer: “That’s not the point! The point is that you sold them to him, and you didn’t even get my permission! I do not allow him to smoke!”

Manager: “Ma’am, if he’s over twenty-one, which he clearly looks to be based on the video, then he doesn’t need your permission to buy cigarettes — or anything for that matter. He’s an adult, and we have done nothing that the Better Business Bureau can do anything about.”

Customer: “Then I am still going to blast you for this all over your Facebook page! I’m going to complain on every post! You need to do something to make sure this doesn’t happen again!” 

Manager: “[My Name], can you go get some popcorn from the snack aisle, please?”

Customer: “What?! Why? I’m not asking for popcorn!”

Manager: “Oh, no, it’s not for you; it’s for us. If you’re going to go on to [Store]’s Facebook page to complain that we should have called you for permission to sell cigarettes to your twenty-one-or-over-year-old son, then those comments are going to be very entertaining.” *To me* “[My Name], get the family size. I have a feeling I’m going to be reading them for a while…”

My (former) boss was absolutely insane, and what she did to another employee caused a mass quitting at my workplace.

I worked at a salon and spa. We had a coworker who, admittedly, had a personal life that was nothing less than a disaster and she made awful life choices. However, she was ALWAYS at work on time and was extremely talented, so we just listened to her trainwreck stories and moved on.

Then, her boyfriend moved out; he just left while she was visiting family out of state, taking their dogs with him. She was obviously devastated and called out for a few days in a row.

I was a manager, and I didn’t care that she called out because it was out of the norm for her to call in. Having heard many stories of the chaos that was her life, I just took it on faith that her life had finally taken a sudden left turn that she couldn’t just spring back from, and she needed the time. Eventually, everyone snaps and just needs that space, you know? Despite being a wreck, she was still reaching out to me occasionally to check in, and I just kept telling her to take the time she needed to put herself back together and do some proper self-care.

On day three of her calling out, [Salon Owner] entered the fray. Now, let me make this as clear as I can: what happened next wasn’t a rumor, nor did I hear it secondhand. [Salon Owner] was openly proud of herself and didn’t miss a chance to tell anyone what she’d done.

[Salon Owner] decided that [Coworker] had been given enough time and took action. She found [Coworker]’s home address on the employment paperwork, went to [Coworker]’s house, searched the yard until she found a hidden spare key, and walked right in. [Salon Owner] then stormed through the house until she found [Coworker]’s bedroom, threw open the door, and shouted her awake.

Salon Owner: “Wake up and get dressed! It’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself! You have work to do, and I expect you to do it. The world doesn’t stop for you just because you want to pout.”

[Coworker] let out a string of curses.

Coworker: “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! ARE YOU INSANE?! THIS IS NOT OKAY!”

Salon Owner: “You have a job to do!”

Coworker: “Not today.”

Salon Owner: “Get up, get dressed, and get in the car. I’m driving you, so you don’t even have to drive yourself.”

Coworker: “I’m not coming in. I already called out.”

[Salon Owner] ignored that statement.

Salon Owner: “Get dressed. You have five minutes to get ready. Either do it, or you’re fired!”

Coworker: “GET THE F*** OUT! I’M CALLING THE POLICE!”

[Salon Owner] left after telling [Coworker] that she was fired. The staff was absolutely gobsmacked as [Salon Owner] bragged about this incident to everyone and flatly told the rest of us that she would do the same to any of us if we tried to be lazy like [Coworker] was.

As we tried to string words together to mention just how illegal that was, we were all struck silent (again) by police officers coming into the salon and telling [Salon Owner] that they needed to talk.

I had been planning to open my own salon soon anyway, so I just looked at my staff.

Me: “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m typing up my resignation, effective immediately.”

The rest of the staff weren’t far behind me.

Related:
Like A Good Sister, Lock Up Your Audacity!
Like A Good Neighbor, It’s Nice That They Care
Like A Good Neighbor, Don’t Be A Creep!
Like A Good Neighbor, Stay Out Of My House!
Like A Good Neighbor, Eyes To Yourself!

This is about my own wedding and how an entitled mom nearly turned it into her personal circus.

My fiancé (now husband) and I planned our wedding for over a year. We wanted something small yet elegant, with close family and friends. My husband’s family is pretty down-to-earth — except for his aunt, who is known for her over-the-top behavior and entitlement.

Everything was going smoothly until the week before the wedding. [Aunt] called and demanded that we include her six-year-old daughter (my husband’s cousin) as a flower girl. We already had two flower girls, my nieces, who were thrilled about it. I politely declined, explaining that arrangements had already been made.

[Aunt] didn’t take this well. She started a tirade about how her daughter was being excluded unfairly and how we were ruining her child’s self-esteem. I tried to stay calm, but she was relentless.

I thought that was the end of it, but oh, was I wrong.

On our wedding day, [Aunt] showed up with her daughter dressed in a full-blown white, frilly flower girl dress. She marched up to me, demanding that her daughter be included in the ceremony.

I was flabbergasted. My husband and I, along with our wedding planner, tried to reason with her, but she caused a huge scene, saying things like, “How could you be so selfish on your wedding day?” and, “You’re destroying a little girl’s dream!”

My usually quiet mother-in-law had had enough. She stepped in and told [Aunt] in no uncertain terms that this was our day, not hers or her daughter’s. She said that if [Aunt] couldn’t respect our wishes, they would have to leave.

[Aunt] was shocked. She tried to argue, but other family members, who were equally fed up with her antics, supported my mother-in-law’s stance. Realizing she was outnumbered, [Aunt] left in a huff, her daughter in tow.

The rest of the wedding went off without a hitch, and everyone had a great time.

We heard through the grapevine that [Aunt] complained about us to anyone who would listen, but most of the family knew her history and took it with a grain of salt.

I’m grateful for my amazing in-laws who stood up for us, boosting my confidence in our marriage’s success even more.