I am the author of this story. Earlier on at that job, shortly after being hired, I was at home on a Saturday afternoon watching the big college football rivalry game between Utah and BYU. It’s around the end of the first quarter, and Utah has already scored five touchdowns with extra points, all on turnovers. BYU is still scoreless.

For those of you not familiar with American football, probably the majority of GAMES don’t have that many touchdowns by one team, let alone single quarters. In other words, this is looking like a football snuff film.

Without warning, I get a call from my boss asking if I can help with an urgent ticket for a client who previously banned the current on-call tech. As a contract-to-hire employee hoping to score brownie points, I reluctantly agree.

The client is a tech retail store in downtown Salt Lake. Apparently, they had a power outage the night before, and two of their ad display kiosks weren’t working. I pack up my things, drive twenty minutes downtown, spend probably another twenty minutes or so finding parking and walking to the store, and introduce myself to the store employees.

The kiosks are nothing more than a couple of 55″ TVs with HP mini towers hooked up to them, and apparently running some specialized ad display software I’m not familiar with. It’s not clear to me where the towers are located, so I ask them to show me; they’re behind a panel next to the TVs.

I go to the first TV, reach behind it, push the “Input” button a few times, and Et voilà! The first kiosk comes right back up. I go over to the second one, reboot it, and sure enough, it also comes back up.

By the time I get back to my car, finish all my paperwork, and drive home, the game is over. Utah didn’t score at all after the first quarter, and BYU managed to score four touchdowns, bringing them nail-bitingly close to tying the game and forcing overtime. And I missed the whole thing because the employees at a TECH RETAILER didn’t think to reboot a PC or toggle the input button on a TV.

I’d like to say things got better from there, but next year, while actually on-call, I got pulled away from the game again, this time to reboot a PIN pad. It may have even been another store owned by the same client, but I don’t remember for sure.

Between the burnout, laughably low pay, and a boss and team lead so toxic that I miss the customers from that job more than I miss them, I left around a year and a half into the job, after already becoming the company’s most senior tech in Salt Lake.

I don’t miss that place.

This story reminded me of one of my own.

It was about a week before Christmas. I’m used to snowfall, and am usually prepared for doing some shoveling and scraping to get my car free in the mornings. Except this morning, I had parked by the curb the night before because I was visiting my mom, who lived nearby.

This wouldn’t normally be a problem, even with the foot-and-a-half fall we’d had that night, except apparently the snowplow decided to come along the not-so-busy road rather early that day, and basically buried my poor car in at least three feet of very hard plow-packed snow.

I grabbed my shovel and went to work, but I knew it wasn’t going to be a fast or easy job, so I texted my manager that I would be a little late that morning, complete with a picture of the snow burial.

The combination of freezing temperatures and the plow pushing and packing the snow meant my tires were trapped in essentially ice blocks, and there were small icebergs on either end blocking me in.

I’d been struggling for about twenty minutes and had barely made a dent in the mess when another plow came by. This was not an official plow, but a personal pickup truck that someone had rigged a full-size plow onto for ease of winter driving. He pulled up close and shooed me away from the vehicle and then did some very careful maneuvering of his giant plow, getting as close to my car as possible on all sides.

Luckily, there was nobody in front of or behind me, so he had the room. He did several short little passes, each time coming closer to my car to try and get as much snow as possible. Then he got out and used the shovel to break up the chunks of ice left near my tires and push them aside as well.

Once he was sure I was free, he hopped back on his plow and continued on his merry way. Probably took him maybe ten minutes where it would have taken me at least about forty-five minutes or more to get out. My manager was pleasantly surprised I made it and just as pleased by the helpful stranger as I was.

Related:
Mister Plow Is Canadian?!

I’m taking a commuter train to a rock concert in downtown Salt Lake. Just before I board, I see an email from Discover Card saying my replacement credit card was on its way because it has been reported lost/stolen.

I think, “That’s strange, I don’t remember doing that. Is this a phishing email?”

But then I look in my wallet, and sure enough, my card is gone. I call Discover, and as it turns out, it fell out of my wallet when I tapped the fare payment card against the reader. I didn’t see it happen, but someone found it at the station. Rather than go out on a spending spree (because no one EVER checks ID or signature here), they called it in and reported it.

There are still plenty of good people in this world. They just don’t make very many headlines.

This story reminded me of something that happened when I was a young teen. My mom’s house has a big yard, as well as a deck that has a pool and a grill set up. One day, we were getting ready to host some friends, she turned the grill on and went back inside to get the food and fixings. 

I’m helping set up the patio table and other assorted things for our get-together. Our grill included an attachment on the side that had a hotplate/warmer type feature that’s wired into the side. 

While setting the table, I notice flames coming out of the SIDE, against the hotplate. I run inside.

Me: “Mom, the grill’s on fire.”

Mom: “I know, I turned it on while I finished getting the meat ready.”

Me: “No, Mom, the grill is actually on fire.”

Mom: “It’s fine, I’ll be right up. Just close the lid so it won’t catch.”

Me: “MOM! The OUTSIDE of the grill. Is… On… Fire!”

This seems to do the trick, as she drops the food and runs outside. She gets it put out, the hotplate piece is absolutely ruined, apparently the wires had come loose and ignited, but luckily the main grill is fine. Even more luckily, neither the propane tank, the wooden deck, nor the giant tree nearby caught fire.

Mom: “…okay, maybe I’ll stay with the grill, and you can go get the food.”

Me: “That sounds like a great idea.”

I used to be a supervisor at a grocery store. Most of our cashiers were young, late high school – early college-aged. I’ve worked retail long enough to be incredibly protective of younger employees.

One day, an older man comes up to my service desk. I vaguely recognize him as coming in often, but otherwise, nothing. He asks if one of the girls, let’s call her Jen, is working that day.

Me: “No, she’s not. Was there something I could help you with instead?”

Man: “No, no. It’s a personal thing. Do you know when she’s in next?”

Jen was just-into-college aged, and a man well over twice her age asking for her for ‘personal reasons’ is so incredibly suspicious to me.

Me: “I’m sorry, I can’t give that info out. I can maybe give her a message if you’d like?”

Man: “No, that’s okay. It’s really personal. I’ll just try later.”

Me: “You’re welcome to do that, sir…”

He leaves amicably, and I immediately tell my supervisor that some weird dude was trying to get her schedule so to be alert.

Maybe an hour or so later, I answered a call from the same old man.

Man: “Hi, I was wondering if Jen works tonight?”

Me: “No, sir. And I can’t give you any information about when she does. Is there anything I can help you with or do you want me to leave her a message?”

Man: “No, I can’t. It’s a personal thing. Could you give her my phone number at least so she can call me?”

No, sir, I cannot and will not give my teenage cashier your phone number for ‘personal reasons’ you have yet to explain.

Me: “If you’d like to leave your name instead, I can pass something along to her?”

Man: “Fine, I guess. Just tell her it’s John, and I would really like to talk to her.”

This is not the real name, but it was an equally common one with no last name given.

Me: “Okay then…”

At this point, I go straight to messaging my cashier and warning her that some strange dude keeps asking for her. She is, understandably, a little unnerved. She eventually settles on allowing him to talk to her, if I or another supervisor is nearby, just in case.

He does call at least once more after I’ve left, but the supervisor tells him the same thing. He ends up coming back when Jen IS actually working on her register the next day. I give her a heads up and hover nearby just in case.

Turns out, he works at some medical office and wondered if Jen, who is going into medicine and makes no secret of it, would be interested in doing an internship thing with him. He has business cards, and she recognized the company, I guess, so it was legit, and she actually decided to go with it because it sounded cool.

But honestly, I understand you might not want to share everything with the random manager, but literally just handing me the business card the first time and saying, ‘please give this to her’ would have been infinitely easier and less suspicious than asking after her for ‘personal reasons’.