I work at a sports complex that has a lot of basketball courts. One busy weekend, I’m called to one of them and told to bring the basic first aid kit. I arrive to see a teenager sitting by the side, blood coming from his mouth.

Me: “What happened?”

Teenager: *Almost proud.* “Took the ball to the face! Point blank range!”

Teenager’s Friend: “I’m soooo sorry, bro!”

Teenager: “Ha! It was an accident. Don’t worry.”

I look the kid’s face over quickly, and nothing seems broken.

Me: “I’m not seeing anything major. Did you cut yourself in the mouth? There’s a bit of blood coming from there.”

The teen starts huff coughing, as if trying to hack up a load of phlegm. For a moment, I am worried, as he’s making a real ruckus, but then he stops, and spits a single tooth onto the floor.

Teenager: “Oh, that’s what I swallowed.”

Me: “Well, that explains the blood!”

I leave him some supplies to soak up the blood and some antiseptic. He smiles a broad smile as he says thank you, revealing a gap where the tooth used to be.

The crazy boy kept playing his game with his friends for another hour. When I saw him leaving, I asked him about it, and he said replacement teeth sound like a weekday problem.

I am a Taekwondo instructor. I teach the youngest two age groups mainly. My younger daughter is in our little Tiger program for six- to nine-year-old kids. My older daughter is in the Phoenix group of nine- to fourteen-year-olds.

The school is NOT commercial. All instructors teach on a voluntary basis. In fact, instructors also pay the same club fee, which is used for insurance and equipment, as all other members. So, I pay for myself and my children to teach them myself.

As both courses are directly after each other, I can’t bring my little daughter home or pick up the older one in between. The master agreed that both my kids can stay for both courses. The older one helps with the little ones, the younger one does the games with the older ones, but then usually plays on her iPad when we do more difficult stuff.

The mom of a little boy in the Tigers noticed that my daughter was allowed to stay for the big ones’ course and asked if her son (six years old) could “finally” move up too, as he has already been there for six months and is the same age as my daughter.

I tried to explain that she wasn’t really in the group and was only there so that I could teach, but she didn’t accept that.

She claimed that when the old master (who is ill and can’t do this class at the moment) did the course, she already noticed that my daughter was his favorite. He knows her from birth, so of course, he is closer to her than the others, but he loves all the kids. She claimed that she pays “me” a lot of money and now demands that her son be treated in the same way as my kid, “who doesn’t even pay!” I have no clue how she comes to this conclusion.

She then demanded to speak to my manager (that does not even exist; the master leads the Club, but there is no actual boss). But she knows there has to be a manager because she pays us money!

I try to explain that she only pays for insurance and equipment, but she does not believe any of it. She actually calls the old master in the hospital to complain about me. He tells her to cancel and sign her son up for a commercial club nearby (50€/month instead of 70€/YEAR at our club), where she could talk to managers all day.

She complains to the board of the umbrella club (not the taekwondo club, but the sports club that manages many voluntary sports in our city). They are VERY confused! She still does not give up.

At the next lesson, she threatens to get me fired so that a real (male) trainer can finally take over again.

I tell her that if I don’t do the course, no one will do it. Voluntary work is not really popular.

We live in a small town. People know people, and here is what I heard happened next:

First of all, I couldn’t understand why she was so keen on putting him in a different age group, as kids are way taller, and they just can’t really spar or anything if the gap is too big. We don’t separate them by belt ranks, just by age, and they learn the same things, but working with the little ones, we do more games and learn in play, while the older ones just learn differently.

BUT there is a difference:

We do not take the youngest age group to tournaments. Those tournaments are usually a couple of hours away and a full weekend trip. We stay in youth hostels or sleep in the host schools. The youngest group is just not old enough to sleep in a foreign place without parents.

Well, same problem as with the course, if I drive to a tournament with the older kids, I have to bring my younger daughter.

For the last tournament, three of the girls did a music forms performance to the Oompa Loompa song. And because you can have four people in your team, they used my younger daughter as an Oompa Loompa, running around between them. It was super cute, and they won a gold medal.

My younger daughter, as she was officially in that team, got a medal as well (without having done any actual Taekwondo, ha-ha), and THAT is what triggered this mom: my six-year-old getting a gold medal for playing an Oompa Loompa.

When I was a kid, my mom’s mother lived outside of Philadelphia, and we would usually go visit her in the summer for a few weeks. Near where she lived, there was a historic sports club known for cricket, indoor and outdoor tennis, squash, and bowling. It also had a fancy dining room, and my grandmother was a member because that was the thing to do if you were a well-off person of her generation.

We often would go there for dinner at least once per visit to my grandmother. On one such occasion, we were ordering dessert, and I chose chocolate mousse, as that was definitely not something I could get at home. When it was brought out, being a kid with a rather dry sense of humor I looked at the goblet and said:

Me: “If it’s a moose, where are the antlers?” 

The waiter laughed at that and produced a pair of lollipops that he stuck stem-first into it, to the amusement of everyone at the table.

I’m on the phones in the customer service office for a Premier League football club (soccer to the Americans). Most calls are about ticketing, memberships, or matchday logistics.

The phone rings:

Me: “Good afternoon, [Club Name] customer service, how can I help?” 

Customer: “Yeah, I want a refund for my season ticket!” 

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that. Could you tell me what the issue is?”

Customer: “The issue? The issue is they keep losing! We haven’t won a home game in weeks!”

Me: “…Right. Unfortunately, we don’t offer refunds based on match results.”

Customer: “Well, I paid good money to see them win, not to watch them prance about and lose to bloody Tottenham!” 

Me: “Sir, when you bought your ticket, you paid for admission to the matches, not a guarantee of victory.”

Customer: “It’s false advertising!” 

Me: “We never advertised we’d win. If I could guarantee a win every time, I’d be sailing away on my private yacht.”

Customer: “Well, you still need to do something! Season tickets are expensive!” 

Me: “Tell you what, we’ll bring the price of the ticket down, but we’ll charge you every time we win.”

Customer: *Click.*

I’m working at the desk at a climbing gym. A mother comes over with two boys (one her son) and starts talking to me in an admonishing tone.

Customer: “Hi, yeah, I need to speak to someone about the wall.”

Me: “Sure! Is there a problem?” 

Customer: “My son couldn’t get to the top of the advanced wall. I want to know why you let kids on it if they can’t finish it.”

Me: “Well, it’s an advanced route. Most adults can’t finish it either.”

Customer: “Then what’s the point of it? He was embarrassed in front of his friend! You should’ve warned us.”

Customer’s Son: “Mooom! The only embarrassing thing here is you!”

Customer: *To her son.* “Be quiet. I paid for you to climb the wall, and I expect to get what I paid for!” *To me.* “So, what are you going to do about this?”

Me: “Was he unsafe?”

Customer: “No! But he couldn’t win.”

Me: “Ah. Well, the wall’s not there to be won. It’s there to be earned.”

Customer: *Blinks at me.* “Ugh, I should have known this place was full of fortune-cookie liberal nonsense!”

She then huffed out, the two boys sadly trailing behind her.