A man recently moved into an apartment unit in the business district of my city, just a few doors down from my place of work. I’d seen him in passing and he’d come into my retail job a few times, he’d introduced himself, told me he’d just moved here from the Bronx, and always acted uncomfortably flirty with me, but I always ignored him and gave him that passive aggressive automated customer service behavior to send him on his way.

A week ago, while I was locking up and walking to my car, I heard someone whistling really loudly from above me. I turned and looked up to see this man leaning out of his apartment window looking right at me.

“Hey pretty lady! Finally done with the grind? Wanna come over and check out my place?” I kinda laughed and waved him off, telling him no thank you and I’m trying to head home. He continued to shout at me as I kept walking, trying to convince me to come up and we could have “plenty of fun together.” I turned around and told him much more firmly and that I’m not interested and never will be, to which he responded “cmon don’t be a weirdo, that’s weirdo behavior.”

I felt a switch in me flip, and I don’t know why I decided to do this, but I proceeded to start barking at him like a rabid dog, snarling, slobbering, the works. When he tried shushing me, I really ramped it up till people passing by were staring at us, until he called me a freak and closed his window.

Now, every single time this man sees me on the street, he crosses. When he sees me at my job, he leaves. He won’t even make eye contact with me if I happen to see him anywhere in public. I’d consider it a win for sure.

This happened to me about ten years ago but I still think about it. I was checking out at the grocery store and packing my groceries to hurry up because there was a line and no bagging clerk available. I had not yet finished my debit transaction on the machine. It was asking if I wanted cash back. The guy in line behind me reached over and pushed no. What the heck? I needed cash back! I got mad and was yelling at him! How dare he shove his way forward and mess with my money! He said he was in a hurry and offered me $100 cash. I told him that I didn't want his money. The cashier said she had to cancel the transaction and start over because he interfered with my transaction. She later told me she does that sometimes when dealing with annoying people. She was the queen of petty!

I have a coworker I don’t get along with. I tried being friendly with him when I first started, but he listened to a coworker who worked in my unit and she only ever spoke badly about me. She later admitted it’s because she “has a hard time making friends, is shy and sometimes being a little bit mean helps her open up.”

Anyway, this coworker guy is ONLY ever nice and helpful to the girls. For the longest time I was the only guy in my unit. That meant that if he had info he needed to share with me, he would take it to my boss. If he had info to share to anyone else in my unit he would come bearing gifts. Usually Mexican or Japanese snacks. He prefers his private messages to be only from the girls in the office. Recently he directly told me to only message him in the group chat. If it hadn't been for the way he told me I would have been ok. There are managers in the group chat, time stamps, etc.

I began to message him in the group chat but only to point out his errors, showing that he was making people wait up to an hour to hear from him on issues that normally take 2-5 minutes to get a response back on, sending messages that people are on hold for him and implying that he should be taking calls he promises to take and not leaving them to flirt with girls in the office. In the last hour of the day he came back to me and just quickly said “please send messages for me directly to me.” I didn’t. He was very stern in needing messages for him in the group chat.

I was working my retail job when an elderly customer asked for help choosing a fragrance. I was spraying different perfumes on those little sample cards and I had my sleeves rolled up. The old lady looked at my heavily tattooed arms and said, “Oh honey, how do you think all those tattoos are gonna look when you’re my age?!” And as I handed her a scented card I replied, “I have multiple congenital heart defects, so I probably won’t ever be your age, and I just try not to think about that.” Her grown daughter grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away saying, “That’s why we don’t say those things to people, mother!”

My sister and her husband moved to Arkansas to be close to his parents. She was going to pack up her mugs but he told her not to, and that he would pack them up to bring back on a later trip. What he did instead was throw away all her mugs. So here's what me, my stepmom, and my dad did to agitate him.

My dad sent her a couple mugs. My stepmom sent her a set of blue Diamond pots and pans since she only has one pan, it's the pink set my stepmom ordered for her. I sent her a set of cutesy ceramic marshmallow mugs, a cookie mug with a cookie holder slot on the bottom, an Oreo mug set that has cookie tongs and a cookie holder along with the mug, and a cookie dunker. I think the cookie dunker was a nice touch since she'll like how cute it is and he'll hate it for being a useless utensil.

Yesterday I was flying to America from the UK, and a mother and 18-year-old daughter were sitting next to me. She looked younger but the mother gave her alcohol during the flight that she had ordered, so who knows.

The whole flight the daughter had her shoes off and kept elbowing and kicking me with her stinky sock feet while talking loudly. At one point I was asleep and the daughter kicked me awake and slapped me with her jacket. Right before landing the two of them were physically fighting, and play or not, I got hit a few times and told them to be civilized.

As soon as the fasten seat belt sign came off, they got up and obviously were trying to force their way off the plane early. I threw down my table and kept watching my programme, trapping them. I told them "patience is a virtue, we'll be last off anyway." They were not pleased. When the rows in front were clearing out, I waited til the last second to close up and as I got my bag out of the overhead I put it on my seat blocking them again, and I "accidentally" hit the daughter with my jacket on the way out of the overhead keeping her back. There was a very large family behind us that made their way behind me in the aisle blocking them in again. I didn't see them at baggage until five minutes after I made it.

I took German for one year in high school and did terribly. I was later stationed in Germany in the mid 1990s while in the US Navy. I didn't learn a whole lot of German, but I picked up enough to get a seat at a beer garden and order food, and a few other small phrases.

Fast forward to around 2010 and I am headed to Las Vegas from San Diego for a convention. Whenever I went somewhere solo, I took one of the kids small stuffed animals so I could send them pictures of our "adventures."

While in Vegas, an older German couple walked by and said the equivalent of, "Look at this idiot with his toy". So I did my best to reply in German, "Thank you, this is for my kids!"

I must have gotten my message across as they quickly apologized and increased their speed of walking.

At work we had a community fridge where everyone put their lunches. Everyone had their names on them or at least on their containers. I was a chef my entire career but had taken a different job as my career was winding down. Something to do with my time. Every job has lunch thieves it seems. I got mine taken more than others as people knew it was going to be good. I frequently brought fancy sandwiches like banh mi or such. I knew or at least suspected who the thief was, a CPA I’ll call Micheal, because that’s his name. He was on a days-long streak of pilfering so I made a nice big banh mi and spiked the mayo. Did I mention I also own a hot sauce company? I do. I took Trinidad scorpion pepper powder from peppers I’d dehydrated and loaded the mayo with it. About an hour before everyone took their lunch break was prime time for lunch thief Micheal to go do his dirty work. I looked in the fridge and sure enough, the skunk took the bait. As I walked by the bathroom, his preferred hiding spot, I heard coughing, gagging and finally vomiting. Really grotesque yet satisfying noises. I casually walked in and looked at the red faced, watery-eyed drooling mess and with much concern asked if he was alright? He mumbled he wasn’t feeling well and might have to go home. He was gone the rest of that day and all of the next. Micheal, to my knowledge, never stole anyone’s lunch again.

Yesterday afternoon my elderly lab passed away in his sleep. It wasn't entirely a surprise, but we thought we'd have a few more days. He was in his comfy bed and as is common, had released his bowels upon passing. Being a holiday, our only option was to bury him in our yard. We wrapped him in a blanket and my husband started digging. I went to put his soiled bed in the trash, which is behind a bush on the north side of the house.

My "neighbor" on that side doesn't live in the house. He just bought it as an investment property and has been slowly renovating it and tends to be around on weekends and holidays. He's an unpleasant old goat, and I'll just leave it at that. He saw me putting it in the trash and said, "Don't you teach those dogs not to go in the house?" I said, "Well, my husband is digging his grave right now, so we'll just have to let it slide." He did immediately apologize, but gah, not what I needed to hear at the time.

I applied for a job and was invited to an interview. The interview was going well and the recruiter looked at my resume and saw that I'm just now about to get my Bachelor's. (I'm 26.)

She asked, "About to graduate? Just now? Oh my. Why is that? What took you so long?

So I told her, "Well, my dad was sick with cancer. He just died, so I'm finally able to focus on my studies."

She just looked at me, lowered her head and said "I'm sorry."

Yeah, I bet you are. Stop asking dumb questions.

15 years ago my dad broke one of my mom’s dinner plates. Mom has the standard issue green daisy Corelle dishes that were common in the late 70s. This was the first plate to be broken and Dad was horrified. He ran to Walmart and bought a plain white dish and stuck it at the bottom of the pile of dishes, hoping for the best.

The rogue plate was discovered when my sisters and I had all gathered for a visit. As I am the youngest, I was blamed. Because I am petty, I decided that it would be wrong of me to NOT give my mom mismatched plates. This began my quest of buying random Corelle dinnerware and sticking them in her cupboard when she was not around.

But today was the plate stashing of which I’m most proud. Those green daisy dinner plates are available on eBay, I just added three of them to her cupboard. Some day, she’s going to get all of those plates out of her cupboard and she’s going to count the green daisy plates. And then she’s going to realize she has more of them than what she started out with.

To quote Stanley Hudson from The Office, “It’s stupid but it’s my thing now.”

My dad never accepted me for being a transgender woman. That’s not my problem though. I have a happy relationship and great career. I haven’t lived with him in over a decade. He tried to guilt trip me into “reconsidering.” Instead of getting mad, I was just like, “you’re right, but since you had me circumcised, I always hated sexual experiences as a guy. It never felt good. I decided that I would just become a woman now.

Anyways, now he is like fully convinced that this is all his fault and apparently has been going on tirades about the evils of circumcision.