“I Don’t Even Work Here”: Tales Of Mistaken Identity

Yaniv - June 26, 2022

47. Some Assembly Required

This happened several years ago. I was the nighttime charge nurse over the ICU. I’d just finished a 12-hour shift at my hospital that had turned into a 14-hour shift. I was exhausted and had to return for a fourth shift in nine hours. All I wanted were some items to drop in the slow cooker so I’d have something to eat when I got up later that night.

I stopped at a well-known big box store that sells groceries, clothes, electronics.. the works. I’m wearing royal blue scrubs, a name badge with a big RN under it and forgot to take my stethoscope off so it’s hanging around my neck. The employees here…well…don’t wear that. As I’m walking towards the store I see an elderly couple struggling to load a large box in their SUV parked at the front of the store.

And I mean old. 90+ Shaky hands. Teetering around with limited mobility. No way would his hips take the weight without snapping…and I’ve worked enough tonight. I approach quickly and address the female half of the couple offering help. It was gladly accepted and I got their TV loaded with very little difficulty. It was more cumbersome than heavy.

I’m chatting with the woman who is explaining it’s a gift for their son and her husband hadn’t wanted to wait for help. I’d wondered why an employee wasn’t helping. That’s when it happened. This woman yells, “Hey! Hey!” at me. Startled, me and the nice lady stop our conversation and look over. It’s a lady in her 50s dressed in a cheap-looking beige pantsuit with a “get your manager” hairstyle standing about 15 feet away with a hand on her overly broad hip.

She says, “IF you are ABOUT done. I need help over here.” She then points to her cart with two boxes of bookshelves…some assembly required. I realize she thinks I work here. I start to say, “Oh sorry. I don’t work…” and she cuts me off, yelling: “You are already making me late! Just get it done! …and DON’T scratch my paint up.”

The elderly lady and I exchange looks of disbelief and I try again. “I don’t work he—” but once again, she cuts me off and says, “Just get it done!” She then steps away from her cart to grab her purse grumbling about “stupid idiots” and is digging for her keys when disaster strikes. The cart rolls further away and one wheel goes off the curb.

The entire uneven load causes the cart to topple over. I instinctively jump forward to try to prevent everything from falling…I was unsuccessful. This awful woman, who has now turned to see her particle board bookshelves spilled out on the cement. Corners of the boxes crushed and one has torn open with a few pieces and packaging now exposed.

The awful woman completely loses her mind and begins raging. She’s swearing at me and yelling: “You moron! Pick them up! ARGH. I’m going to have you fired! You owe me new bookshelves! And I’m late!” At this point, I’m done. I yell: “Pick them up yourself! I DON’T WORK HERE!” I then turn to go inside when I feel her grab my sleeve and try to yank me around.

I jerk my sleeve out of out of grip and turn to face her now violently red face. She opens her mouth to start screaming again but I put my finger in her face and say: “No! Don’t touch me! Shut your mouth! I do not work here, and even if I did. I’d quit before I help you clean up your pile of garbage!” She stands there speechless.

Like a bottom-feeding fish, her mouth opening and closing. She is absolutely sputtering in shock that I’ve dared raise MY voice at HER. That’s when the manager and an employee come out. As this awful woman sees the manager and finds her voice. I couldn’t believe what she did next. She says: “Are you the manager? This man damaged my bookshelves and is refusing to pay for them.”

I just stare in shock. Seriously?! She’s finally realized that a man in bright blue scrubs with a stethoscope and a big RN badge really doesn’t work here. But instead of apologizing, she chooses to double down on the craziness and now accuses me of breaking her stuff. Before I can voice my denial, the elderly gentleman I’d helped earlier steps in and explains the situation to the manager.

The awful woman is still voicing complaints but the manager realizes the real situation and apologizes to me and the couple. I’m still standing by watching angrily as the manager deals with the woman and inspects the bookshelves. They are not damaged. He offers her two new boxes but she is now done with the whole situation. She says no.

She’s already too late because of me. Just glares over at me and says to the manager, “Just load them. I’m already late enough because of this!” The manager and employee then lift the boxes up and get them wedged into the woman’s car. As I shake my head and go to enter the store I’m stopped by the elderly lady I’d helped earlier.

She says: “Sir. Thank you so much for helping us with the TV. I’m so sorry some people are so rude.” She then reaches for my hand to shake. As she folds both her fragile hands around mine, I can feel something in her palm she’s giving me. She whispers: “Don’t look yet. Wait till she leaves.” I slide the package into my scrub pocket and the nice lady walks away.

The terrible woman then gets in her car and, without apologizing or thanking anyone, peels out and drives away. I finally enter the store to grab my food items. When I reached into my pocket and pulled out what she’d given me, I was utterly astonished. It was a plastic bag with a bunch of screws and hardware. I realize immediately that the sweet little old lady took advantage of the commotion to take the hardware out of the terrible woman’s ripped box.

I couldn’t believe it. I had the biggest grin on my face as I did my shopping. And I have a new petty revenge hero to idolize.

BookwyrmsRN

“I Don’t Even Work Here”: Tales Of Mistaken Identity — Pexels

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48. Every Office Needs An Otis

A while back I was working in an office that allowed dogs. It was an open floor plan and since customers never came into the office, we kept the dog food and water bowls right by the front door, just because it was the most convenient space and no one else would see them but us who worked there. Of the six of us who worked in the main office area, I was the only one who didn’t have a dog and I always felt horribly left out.

To make matters worse, across the way was a doggie daycare. One day, a very frantic woman came in and she had an absolutely massive Basset Hound with her. Usually, the only people who came into the office were associates who had appointments with someone working there, but it was rare they brought their dogs. She ran up to me and said, “Do you work here?”

I said, “Yes, how can I help you?” And she said, “I wasn’t sure if you took walk ins but I read online I could just drop him off? I tried to call but no answer.” I didn’t know what she was talking about at that point and I said, “Come again? Who did you call exactly?” Thinking if I could just saddle her off to whoever she came to see, I wouldn’t have to decipher her problem.

She said, “Well it doesn’t matter now. Look, something urgent has come up and I really need to leave him here. Here’s his food he likes and I’ll be back in a few hours and—” At this point I wasn’t thinking of the doggie daycare. I thought maybe she was a friend of someone here. I said, “Well alright, can I get your name please?” And she said her name and then asked if I needed her to sign anything.

I was so confused at this point I just said, “Why would I need you to sign something?” And she left almost immediately. So I took Otis (the dog) to the back and showed him to my coworkers and no one knew the woman or dog. I was worried she wouldn’t come back, but at the same time, my wish for an office dog had been granted! And Otis was supremely chill.

All he did all day was lie around and drool onto his own ears. I just freshened him up every now and then, took him out every couple hours, and he was happy as a clam on a big cushy dog bed we thankfully had an extra of. He just loved attention from anywhere he could get it. At the end of the day the woman, thank God, came back. She said, “Thanks, you’re a lifesaver. How was he?”

I said, “He was a champ.” And was about to say “But why is he here” when she said, “That’s a relief. Most kennels say he gets anxious around other dogs. I heard you operated at a much higher capacity, I was thrilled to see you had so few clients in the room at one time. So, how much do I owe?” It honestly took me this long to realize what had happened.

She thought we were the dog daycare. Now, I probably should’ve corrected her. But I loved my day with the office dog and I did want to get paid for supervising this strange dog all day. I just threw out the number that sounded fair and appropriate “That’ll be $20.” I said. She replied “Reaalllly?!” In this very high tone, and I couldn’t tell if I’d overshot or undershot.

But she paid me and left. My coworkers were laughing hysterically when they realized what had happened and we thought it would just be a good story for the future. Wrong. The next week…she came back! She said we were so much more affordable and less overcrowded than her other place, and that she was happy to use us. I was glad for the company so just took him.

I didn’t think there was any way she couldn’t have at least some idea we weren’t a dog daycare. The whole ordeal was so strange I just figured, “don’t question a good thing.” I was much younger and dumber then. Not long after, Otis started getting dropped off two, sometimes even three or four days a week. I was in heaven. He was such a love. And he made fast friends with the delivery guys and visitors.

One day, we took our office Christmas card photo and Otis was over that day, so we included him. In a Santa hat. It was pretty great. But it turns out Otis’ owner was friends with one of our clients who I guess happened to have the card out on her table or was kind enough to display it alongside her other holiday cards. Because one day, Otis’ owner came in holding the card and walked up to me and said, “I can’t even believe I’m asking this but… is that my dog in this photo? This isn’t a dog daycare at all. This is just an office, isn’t it.” I froze in my tracks.

She said it with a note of surprise, as though she was looking around and putting it all together for the first time. No coincidence that this was the first time she wasn’t in some crazy rush either. She was like, “Then who are all these other dogs?!” And I explained. I was terrified she was going to demand her money back, or worse, take some sort of action against us for misrepresenting ourselves as a dog care business, or complain to corporate.

Instead, she basically said, “Why didn’t you ever say anything!” And I explained we just really liked having Otis around. She stopped for a minute and seemed to be thinking and said, “Is that right?” And I said yes and told the story of how I was the only one in the office without a dog so loved the company. She seemed a little flummoxed or hesitant, understandably, because the whole thing was so weird.

She turned to my coworker and asked if I was telling the whole truth. I don’t know why she thought my coworker, also a stranger to her, was any more trustworthy than me, but hey. Strange times. Coworker backed me up. So she said, “Well, I wish you’d said something sooner. Could’ve saved me a lot of embarrassment with my friend back there. Alright, I have to get going. See you at 4:00.” And she left Otis!

I couldn’t believe it! I said, “So he can stay?!” And she replied, “Where else could I find someone to watch him one on one all day for $20?” And off she went. Otis stayed my office dog until his family moved away, luckily right around the same time I took a new job.

SwarmTendon

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49. That’ll Teach Him A Lesson

My niece is from Bavaria, and I am from Baden-Wurttemberg. Her summer vacation started a whole week earlier than ours, and she came for a visit with my brother and her siblings. It was in the morning and we decided to take the dog for walk and go to the bakery on the other side of the street of a big school complex. I went in, while she stayed outside with dog. When I came out, my blood ran cold.

She was gone. I decided to call her on the cellphone, and she says “Thank god you’re calling.” Some guy in the background is yelling: “How dare you take a phone call while I am talking to you, you are in enough trouble for skipping class.” As I later found out, he ripped the phone out of her hand, and must have hung up.

I realized what must have happened, and went into the school to clear up this misunderstanding. I go right away to the principal’s office hoping my niece would either be there, or soon be brought in by a teacher. Outside, I can already hear him screaming at her. He’s saying: “Stop giving me a fake name and stop lying, you won´t get out of here until I have the truth! I promise you this will be mentioned in your permanent record!”

I did not bother knocking and went right in. He looked at me and yells, “Who are you? How dare you just come in here without knocking!” I say: “I am this girl’s uncle, what do you think you’re doing here? She doesn’t go to your school!” I couldn’t believe his reaction. He says, “Ah, I guess you where the one on the phone. Nice try, but you will not help her trick her way out of this. I will get to the bottom of this, and I will only release her to her parents. Now get out of my office or I will call the authorities and have you detained by the authorities for trespassing in a school!”

I say: “I will stay right here to protect my niece from you. Calling the authorities sounds like a really good idea—after all, you’ve abducted my niece.” So I made the call and told them my niece had been abducted and that a strange man was holding her at the principal’s office of the local school. This idiot still couldn’t wrap his head around the mistake he’d made.

He yells: “Do you really expect me to believe your fake phone call ?” Then he started to shout at my niece again, who at that point was in tears. I told him: “STOP SHOUTING AT MY NIECE, you will not address her till the authorities are here, or I WILL shut you up.” Then he says he’s calling the authorities to have me detained. So he called them, only to find out that my initial call to them was real.

Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure anymore, and you could tell the cogs in his head where finally start to turn. About five minutes later the authorities finally arrived, and they asked us separately. Here is roughly what my niece told them. She was waiting outside the bakery, when this random guy came at her, screaming like a banshee.

He yelled at her that he is really fed up with people skipping school the last week before vacation starts, and will make an example out of her. Before she could get a word in edgewise, he grabbed her by the arm really hard—hard enough she got a bad bruise for over a week—and that is what started to get him into real trouble.

The officers also took her data, and confirmed she is from Bavaria. They then asked us if we wanted to press charges. I just said throw the book at him. The guy heard the authorities sayíng stuff about pressing charges and suddenly realized he was in it real deep, so he came over. He starts going: “Hey, this is just a misunderstanding, you have to understand I have to be strict with people skipping school.”

I say to him, “If by being strict you mean attacking a 12-year-old so badly she has a handprint from you on her arm that will create a huge bruise, abducting her from my care, and wrongfully imprisoning her in your office while screaming at her and scaring the beejezus out of her, then no, I DO NOT HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THAT!”

He’s saying please, it’s blown out of proportion, he could get suspended or lose his job. I wasn’t having it. I said that anybody who treats a scared 12-year-old girl like that should not get to work with kids. In the end, he really did lose his job, and I am very glad he did. During the investigation, it turned out he was a sorry excuse for a teacher who belittled kids, who always took the teacher’s side no matter how wrong they were, and had even slapped kids on several occasions.

He went to court for assault and attempted abduction plus wrongful imprisonment, plus a few more bodily harms against students. He lost his job and pension, got two years on probation and 500 hours community service with the stipulation that it could be nothing that involved kids. He was also forbidden to ever work with kids again.

hicctl

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50. She’s Got The Look

I have experiences like this constantly. I think it might be due to having spent 17 years in the service industry. I just have that look. So, this time, my buddy was taking me out to a fancy French restaurant as a treat and I was pretty gussied up. I really enjoy getting dolled up and wearing a beautiful dress to enjoy a wonderful meal.

However, the city I live in (Portland, Oregon) has a reputation for diners dressing down, even in fine dining restaurants. I only mention this because the staff tends to be better dressed than the clientele. I was wearing all black with my hair in an elaborate up-do and chandelier earrings. I think the all black is what started everything.

This particular restaurant has a well-known (and frankly down-right foxy) chef who typically works at a station showing off and plating where everybody can see him. It’s also near the door to the only washroom and the server station. It’s a huge restaurant and with only the one washroom, there was a bit of a line. I waited and waited and at one point I think the chef and I exchanged a few pleasantries.

When I was next in line, a middle-aged man in a Portland-issue plaid button up and jeans got in line behind me. He had cranky energy and was shifting from foot-to-foot. It didn’t seem like he had to go badly, just that he was impatient. I had been waiting much, much longer than him and found his constant sighing and scoffing irritating. Well, it was downright pleasant compared to what happened next.

When it was my turn I reached for the door only to have this awful man push in front of me and nearly knock me over shoving himself into the open door. I was so taken aback I just sort of froze and said, “Excuse me, I was next.” Which is when he wheeled around started YELLING about how he wasn’t about to wait while, “some waitress changed her tampon.”

Then he yelled at the chef that he should have a staff bathroom, because it’s “disgusting” that the staff use the same bathroom as guests and implied he might not pay for his meal because of it. I stood there in absolute shock (and a full bladder) while this man took care of his business. Clearly taking his sweet time out of spite. Maybe. Something about his personality made me think he hadn’t taken a normal poop in years.

The chef apologized to me and a waiter who had been at the server station commiserated. I decided screw it. I DON’T work here, but even if I did there is no reason to be treated like I’m not a human. Seriously, dude. You’re wearing muddy Teva sandals and suddenly acting like we’re in Downton Abbey. When he came out I used my entire body to block his path out of the bathroom and gave him a stern, but quiet lecture.

I told him how a) I actually wasn’t an employee and b) there is nothing wrong with sharing the bathroom with the staff and told him that he had ruined what should have been a special night out. Again, this all happened in full view of the entire kitchen staff and several members of the wait staff. I hadn’t realized it at time, but this jerk was actually seated directly next to my friend on the banquet.

His female dining companion had been sitting next to me. I had been gone easily 20 minutes and my friend was confused and annoyed. I figured at that point I had nothing to lose, so I loudly explained what happened while gesturing to the awful man and making pointed eye contact with the woman. The man looked furious and the woman just silently glared at him. But that wasn’t the best part.

After a few minutes, the waiter wordlessly dropped their check. They were mid-meal and hadn’t been offered dessert. It was clearly a very pointed, but polite, “screw you, get out” from the staff after his rant. They paid without incident and as they got up to leave he tried to put his hand on her shoulder only to have her jerk away and say, “don’t touch me.”

My friend and I got a cheese plate and glasses of sparkling rose as a gift from the restaurant. Cheers!

pdxcranberry

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