Hobbit, those stories sound familiar and are all real-life.

Here's another good one from my personal file. At AA, we have what are called "golden" days off on reserve. Golden means "We cannot touch you, make you do any work, for that 24 hour period."

I am on my last golden day of 3 in a row. At 1900, the phone rings. It's crew schedule. I don't HAVE to answer the phone, but I do. Big mistake.

CS: "We need you to fly the Sao Paulo trip tonite."

ME: "You can't do that. I'm on a Golden."

CS: "Here's the deal... fly the trip, or we'll delay it to a 0101 departure. Your sign-in will be 0001 tonight."

ME: <?? Yeah I guess they can do that. I can either fly the trip on schedule, or delay 250 people for 4 hours.> "OK, I'm on my way."

In retrospect, I should have opened a beer while on the phone and taken a sip, but even that wouldn't work, because in theory, I was on duty at midnight, so drinking then would have me violate alcohol rules.