I didn’t want to take an advanced language arts class for my senior year of high school, so I signed up for the standard English 12. I immediately knew I wouldn’t like the class as, in the first week, the teacher started a unit on basic spelling rules.

My classmates and I all knew each other reasonably well, even if we weren’t all friends. One classmate had a slightly unusual name. For this story, I’ll call her Stella, and I’ll call the teacher Mrs. Hale (rhymes with “rail”).

On the first day, Mrs. Hale called the roll.

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?” (Pronounced “eh-STELL”)

Stella: “Here, but my name is Stella.” (Pronounced “STEL-uh”)

Mrs. Hale: “Oh, all right. I’ll make a note.”

On the second day, Mrs. Hale called the roll.

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?”

Stella: “It’s Stella.”

On the third day…

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?”

Stella & Her Friends: “It’s Stella!”

On the fourth day…

Mrs. Hale: “Estelle?”

Most Of The Class: “It’s STELLA!”

This went on through the whole second week until we all kind of gave up, figuring Mrs. Hale would keep mispronouncing Stella’s name no matter what we did. All except me, that is.

At the beginning of the third week, Mrs. Hale explained something to us and wrote examples on the dry-erase board. I raised my hand to point out a minor mistake she had made. She looked at it and insisted she was correct. I showed her information in the textbook to prove otherwise. She just glared at me in an “Are you finished yet?” kind of way. Clearly, I wasn’t going to win that battle, and as a student against a teacher, I was essentially powerless, but I wanted revenge anyway.

Me: “Never mind, Mrs. Hally.” (Rhymes with “rally”)

Mrs. Hale: “My name is Mrs. Hale.”

Me: “I know that, Mrs. Hally.”

Mrs. Hale: “Why are you saying my name like that?”

Me: “Because you refuse to pronounce Stella’s name correctly, even though we have all corrected you several times. So, until you can get my friend’s name right, I will intentionally say your name wrong.”

She glared at me for about a minute and then went on with her lesson (mistakes and all) as if my interruption had never happened.

I called her Mrs. Hally the entire semester. She never got my friend’s name right.

Me: “I can only take cards right now, no cash. Is that okay?”

Customer: “Yeah!”

I ring through some items, and they bring out a roll of bills.

Me: “I can only take cards right now.”

Customer: “Oh. I only have cash.”

Me: “What do you think those sounds my mouth made earlier meant?”

Customer: “What sounds?”

This call took place shortly after the turn of the century, around 2005. I was working for an answering service whose clients ranged from lawyers, plumbers, electricians, and doctors to just your everyday office.

We were not allowed to state that we were an answering service. Our company would have us answer like we were part of the company that they were calling. We would take a message and then relay it out over text pagers, emails, or personal phone calls.

One gentleman called in looking for the doctor’s office that his father had been going to. He must have thought that he was talking directly to a doctor because he started his story before I could give any more information other than the script that I read when answering for that office.

His elderly father had been on suppositories per orders from the doctor’s office. The gentleman was too elderly to apply them himself, so his son had been doing it for him. He was trying to find out if there was a place where he could buy an applicator so that he didn’t have to use his hands anymore.

At this point, he paused waiting for an answer, and I was able to tell him that I could leave the doctor that message, but I didn’t personally have access to that information.

I heard a gasping of air as I’m pretty sure he realized that he wasn’t talking to a doctor and he had just told that story to a complete stranger. The call disconnected.

Somewhere out there is a child who went below and beyond for their parents.

My store is close to a halfway house, and some people come through looking to get new phones activated and other necessities when they get to the house. There was one really nice guy who had been locked up for about twenty years and was trying to make his way back into society and figure out all the technology that he had missed.

He was a really chill and nice guy, so after I sold and activated the phone for him, I showed him how to use it fully — how to turn it on and off, call, text, etc.. He would come back specifically for me and ask a number of very basic questions about his phone (and his eventual smartphone), smart TVs, and anything else he’d buy as he got used to life on the outside.

One day, he came in to buy a laptop and a headset. When I asked what it was for, he told me he was moving in with his sister and her kid down in LA. They were teaching him how to play World Of Warcraft, and he wanted to have his own computer and join them on Discord to play. He had come to me for help with it.

I made sure he had it set up, the game installed, and Discord joined. I even gave him advice about character creation and helped him through the introductory parts of the game during my lunch break. Every piece of advice came with a “Wow, that’s amazing!” or “I wish I’d had this when I was a kid; things might have been different!” 

That was the last time I saw him, and I think back occasionally, hoping he is living his best life out there.

I was working at a big department store in the deli section. Specifically, I did most of the cooking for our hot cases. In this story, I was making the packs of fried chicken and handling the rotisserie chickens. I had my routine down pat: start with half batches so any of the three people who wanted that in the morning could get it, and for easy cooling to save it.

One day, multiple bigwigs from corporate were stopping by for a visit and noticed that the hot cases weren’t full to the brim at 8:30 am, despite multiples of every option being available, which indeed had to be taken out later to be cooled and saved. They told the store manager, who told the co-manager to tell the deli to make more — which is what he did.

Co-Manager: “Hey, these hot cases aren’t full.”

Me: “Because we won’t sell that much.”

Co-Manager: “They need to be full.”

Me: “I’m not going to waste that much time and food.”

Co-Manager: “Listen here. I want you to start cooking chickens, and I don’t want you to stop.”

Oh, no. Did he really say that?

Me: “Are you sure?”

Co-Manager: “Yes. I. Am.”

Me: “Gotcha.”

And so, I got to work. I was pissed about this brown-nosing POS not realizing that I was the one who increased sales and reduced waste to the point where it was seeing the best numbers in years, but I did exactly what he said. I did not stop cooking chickens. The ovens were both turned on and were stuffed as full as they could go. I was using both frying vats to cook the fried chicken, which pretty much required a filter clean after each batch.

I was only forty-five minutes into my shift when I was told what to do. I did not stop cooking chicken for the entire day. All of my coworkers asked what I was doing. and I responded that I was only doing what I was told.

As the bigwigs were winding their visit down, they saw the now full-to-the-brim hot cases and told the co-manager to relay that it looked great.

Co-Manager: “Hey, the hot cases look great!”

Me: “Thanks! I did what you told me to do. I didn’t stop cooking chickens all day. By the way, we are out of chicken.”

The co-manager got wide-eyed and quickly left. A short while later, he returned looking like he’d gotten a talking-to, and I’m guessing he’d actually looked at the numbers to see how well the deli had been doing.

Co-Manager: “You can go back to the way you were doing it.”

Me: “Thank you.”

And this is the cherry on top: we had just gotten a truck that day, which meant that for the next three days, we had no chicken to cook at all. The best part is that all of that chicken was properly cooled, stored, and donated. The driver was VERY happy to be getting a literal pallet of fried and rotisserie chickens. I’m sure it helped feed a lot of people.

Strangely, that co-manager was transferred shortly afterward, and I can’t imagine why. I left shortly after to a place much closer to me.