By Joshua Rhee
January 24, 2020Original Article here
Neighbor Cuts Down Thousands Of Dollars Of Plants
From Redditor /u/BalloonUnderstudy:
This was a long time ago but I remember it clearly. We moved in to a community with tight space in between our house and our neighbors, and we didn't like them being able to see into our kitchen. We put up a bunch of plants, costing thousands but my parents thought it would be worth it. A week later my parents awoke to the plants completely chopped down. My father was furious, and marched down to our neighbors house. He told my father the plants were on his property line, therefor he had total right to take them down. He warned that if anything were to go on his property again, he would report us to the authorities immediately.
Later that day my father called the company that put in the plants, and with the warranty we could have them replanted next week for no charge. We made sure there was no way it was on our neighbors property. However a few days later we caught him chopping them down at 2am. We called the police upon obstruction of property, and after a chat with my neighbor he decided to call a professional and mark his property line. My father agreed.
A few days later i got home to find orange tape in my neighbors yard. Apparently, his fence was 11 feet over our property line! We watched as he took down his fence, completely furious. Within the next month we were enjoying our new space and privacy in our backyard, and my neighbor ended up losing 1/4th of his backyard. My neighbor ended up having to pay almost 10k for the destruction of our property, and we got to plant our plants again.
Tl;dr My neighbor chopped down our plants because he claimed we were on his property, after calling a professional he lost 11 feet of his backyard and had to pay for destruction of property, and we got to keep our plants.
He Has Been Throwing Out Complaints For 5 Years
From Redditor /u/tortellini21:
In high school, I was working at the local home depot as a head cashier. I kept track of all the active registers and made sure things ran smoothly. I held this position for quite some time (1-2 years) and enjoyed it pretty well. Customers were nice, and my coworkers were mostly craftsmen and gardeners, all with interesting stories to share.
before we go further, let me explain something. I am allergic to nearly every form of pollen. I mean EVERY form. I take allergy medication, but even then if I am in close proximity to flowers for too long (>30 minutes) I will begin to break out in hives and throwup most of the time.
so after about three months working in the winter, the spring season was upon us (the worst season for my allergies).
One day, about three of our garden section cashiers called off sick. They are pretty reliable people so I had no problem finding people to cover for them. As I come to my manager to inform them of the position changes, my manager looks at me and says "You can handle the garden section on your own, can't you?".
I inform my manager that I could cover it for at most 15 minutes before my allergies flare up and ill have to leave.
he states "we don't have any documents on file that state you are not fit to work in the garden section, so unless you come to me with a doctor's note stating your allergies, I couldn't give less of a f*ck."
I don't know who shit in his cheerios that morning, but I complied, saying "I want to be sure of what you are asking, you want me to work in a section which is hazardous to my health instead of placing equally capable employees in that section?"
"Did I stutter?" he said
"Ok, sure," I said
I make my way down to the garden section, and immediately my eyes are stinging. I decide that I am going to stick it out for my boss's sake, no matter how sh*tty my service becomes.
the first 10 minutes are pretty uneventful, but then a customer asks me about the rash on my arms
"[Department Store] does not care about allergies," I say "as I do not have official paperwork"
this customer looks extremely concerned, asking for my manager's name.
at this point, I was feeling nausea hit me, I throw up in the trash can at the register, turn back to smile (as well as I could) and say " I work under Bob ______".
The customer reassures me that I will be ok, and tells me I should head home. Turns out, this guy, Nick ____, was a higher-up at the home depot's regional management and was my boss's boss. So, naturally, I comply with the chain of command and head to the locker room to pack up.
As I am packing, Bob _____ comes in, fuming and cursing, telling me I have no right to leave yet and that my shift is not over for another 5 hours.
I simply say "Nick _____ told me to go home"
Bob's face gets redder as he threatens to fire me, saying I was lying and tells me to go back out.
I comply, knowing that I will see Nick on my way out.
I pass nick, still in the orange apron, and he asks me where I am going. I say that Bob told me to go back to work. Nick's expression goes from concerned to furious, as he takes my apron from me and tells me I'll be paid for the full shift and to go home.
I come into work the next day to see that Bob's nameplate has been removed from the office. I ask our HR rep what happened, and apparently, after I had left, Nick stormed Bob's office and proceeded to perform an audit on all of his past employee complaints. This guy had been throwing out complaints for the past 5 years. Needless to say, there was an opening for the store management position, and I was given a week's vacation for my troubles. My satisfaction was huge.
He Starts Company Expenses For The Homeless
From Redditor /u/cricketrocks:
So I am a business consultant, and usually during the week we are at client site and get paid for travel, meals etc. The meal reimbursement policy is quite flexible, and doesn't limit what we can claim, like some of the other consulting companies. So we can claim lunch, alcohol, whatever. The policy, however, does lay down a GUIDANCE for a daily limit for food expenses, based on the country where you're travelling. I capitalized the word GUIDANCE, since that is exactly how it is written in the policy - it is a guidance, not a hard limit. For the UK, where my current project is, the limit is £40 per day, which is mostly ok, but can be a bit low if you're in the centre of London for example.
Now I do Intermittent Fasting, so most of the days I don't have breakfast and lunch, and just have one big meal a day, and have no problems keeping to the £40 (usually around £20). On some days, I might go to a fancy restaurant, have a couple of scotches with a steak, and run up a $60 bill. But during the course of a 5 day week, my average meals would run about £30 a day, if not less.
I've never had a problem claiming these expenses in my 9 years with the firm, but recently a new project manager (read bean counter) came on board, and he sent back a couple of my expense reports for having meal expenses in excess of the £40 for a couple of days, even though the average meal expense over the week was much less than £40.
I tried to reason with him, told him that anyway it was a guidance and not a hard limit, and I was keeping the costs down on other days, he refused to budge and said I could only claim £40 a day for food.
So guess what, I started doing exactly that. Every day, I made sure I was claiming £40 or thereabouts for food. I started buying meals for the homeless people around the train station to make sure I could make up the £40.
So now, where I was claiming less than £150 a week for meals, I now claim £200 and get some good karma for it.
Teacher Stands Up For Kid With Cancer
From Redditor /u/ConfusedContortion:
So this happened years ago when I was in high school, but I smile every time I think of it.
My high school had a policy that anyone who has missed less than a certain number of school days could pick one class they had an A in to skip the final. You could get a couple extra days for college visits, but otherwise it was very straight forward. Awesome policy, and we all loved it. One year, we had this kid who was in eighth grade and had been diagnosed with cancer. He spent a lot of his year sick, getting treatment, going to the hospital, running to the bathroom to throw up, etc. Despite all this he finished the year with an A in his Spanish class. It was his only high school class, so it was the only final he would have been able to skip. Administration was not going to let him skip the final because he had missed too much school. He and his parents asked them to make an exception, given the situation, but administration wouldn't budge. His teacher stood up for him, but was told this kid had to take the final no matter what. He had missed too many days and there would be no exception.
The teacher said ok, but told her class not to study for, worry about, or exempt her final. Then, the first day all her students showed up for the final she told them to take out a piece of paper and number it 1-3 leaving one line in between each number. She then asked three questions along the lines of, "What is your name?" "How do you say yes in Spanish?", and "How do you say hello in Spanish?" Then she collected the final. Everyone got an 100 that year, and she became a legend. The kid has been cancer free for over five years now.
This was a long time ago but I remember it clearly. We moved in to a community with tight space in between our house and our neighbors, and we didn't like them being able to see into our kitchen. We put up a bunch of plants, costing thousands but my parents thought it would be worth it. A week later my parents awoke to the plants completely chopped down. My father was furious, and marched down to our neighbors house. He told my father the plants were on his property line, therefor he had total right to take them down. He warned that if anything were to go on his property again, he would report us to the authorities immediately.
Later that day my father called the company that put in the plants, and with the warranty we could have them replanted next week for no charge. We made sure there was no way it was on our neighbors property. However a few days later we caught him chopping them down at 2am. We called the police upon obstruction of property, and after a chat with my neighbor he decided to call a professional and mark his property line. My father agreed.
A few days later i got home to find orange tape in my neighbors yard. Apparently, his fence was 11 feet over our property line! We watched as he took down his fence, completely furious. Within the next month we were enjoying our new space and privacy in our backyard, and my neighbor ended up losing 1/4th of his backyard. My neighbor ended up having to pay almost 10k for the destruction of our property, and we got to plant our plants again.
Tl;dr My neighbor chopped down our plants because he claimed we were on his property, after calling a professional he lost 11 feet of his backyard and had to pay for destruction of property, and we got to keep our plants.
He Has Been Throwing Out Complaints For 5 Years
From Redditor /u/tortellini21:
In high school, I was working at the local home depot as a head cashier. I kept track of all the active registers and made sure things ran smoothly. I held this position for quite some time (1-2 years) and enjoyed it pretty well. Customers were nice, and my coworkers were mostly craftsmen and gardeners, all with interesting stories to share.
before we go further, let me explain something. I am allergic to nearly every form of pollen. I mean EVERY form. I take allergy medication, but even then if I am in close proximity to flowers for too long (>30 minutes) I will begin to break out in hives and throwup most of the time.
so after about three months working in the winter, the spring season was upon us (the worst season for my allergies).
One day, about three of our garden section cashiers called off sick. They are pretty reliable people so I had no problem finding people to cover for them. As I come to my manager to inform them of the position changes, my manager looks at me and says "You can handle the garden section on your own, can't you?".
I inform my manager that I could cover it for at most 15 minutes before my allergies flare up and ill have to leave.
he states "we don't have any documents on file that state you are not fit to work in the garden section, so unless you come to me with a doctor's note stating your allergies, I couldn't give less of a f*ck."
I don't know who shit in his cheerios that morning, but I complied, saying "I want to be sure of what you are asking, you want me to work in a section which is hazardous to my health instead of placing equally capable employees in that section?"
"Did I stutter?" he said
"Ok, sure," I said
I make my way down to the garden section, and immediately my eyes are stinging. I decide that I am going to stick it out for my boss's sake, no matter how sh*tty my service becomes.
the first 10 minutes are pretty uneventful, but then a customer asks me about the rash on my arms
"[Department Store] does not care about allergies," I say "as I do not have official paperwork"
this customer looks extremely concerned, asking for my manager's name.
at this point, I was feeling nausea hit me, I throw up in the trash can at the register, turn back to smile (as well as I could) and say " I work under Bob ______".
The customer reassures me that I will be ok, and tells me I should head home. Turns out, this guy, Nick ____, was a higher-up at the home depot's regional management and was my boss's boss. So, naturally, I comply with the chain of command and head to the locker room to pack up.
As I am packing, Bob _____ comes in, fuming and cursing, telling me I have no right to leave yet and that my shift is not over for another 5 hours.
I simply say "Nick _____ told me to go home"
Bob's face gets redder as he threatens to fire me, saying I was lying and tells me to go back out.
I comply, knowing that I will see Nick on my way out.
I pass nick, still in the orange apron, and he asks me where I am going. I say that Bob told me to go back to work. Nick's expression goes from concerned to furious, as he takes my apron from me and tells me I'll be paid for the full shift and to go home.
I come into work the next day to see that Bob's nameplate has been removed from the office. I ask our HR rep what happened, and apparently, after I had left, Nick stormed Bob's office and proceeded to perform an audit on all of his past employee complaints. This guy had been throwing out complaints for the past 5 years. Needless to say, there was an opening for the store management position, and I was given a week's vacation for my troubles. My satisfaction was huge.
He Starts Company Expenses For The Homeless
From Redditor /u/cricketrocks:
So I am a business consultant, and usually during the week we are at client site and get paid for travel, meals etc. The meal reimbursement policy is quite flexible, and doesn't limit what we can claim, like some of the other consulting companies. So we can claim lunch, alcohol, whatever. The policy, however, does lay down a GUIDANCE for a daily limit for food expenses, based on the country where you're travelling. I capitalized the word GUIDANCE, since that is exactly how it is written in the policy - it is a guidance, not a hard limit. For the UK, where my current project is, the limit is £40 per day, which is mostly ok, but can be a bit low if you're in the centre of London for example.
Now I do Intermittent Fasting, so most of the days I don't have breakfast and lunch, and just have one big meal a day, and have no problems keeping to the £40 (usually around £20). On some days, I might go to a fancy restaurant, have a couple of scotches with a steak, and run up a $60 bill. But during the course of a 5 day week, my average meals would run about £30 a day, if not less.
I've never had a problem claiming these expenses in my 9 years with the firm, but recently a new project manager (read bean counter) came on board, and he sent back a couple of my expense reports for having meal expenses in excess of the £40 for a couple of days, even though the average meal expense over the week was much less than £40.
I tried to reason with him, told him that anyway it was a guidance and not a hard limit, and I was keeping the costs down on other days, he refused to budge and said I could only claim £40 a day for food.
So guess what, I started doing exactly that. Every day, I made sure I was claiming £40 or thereabouts for food. I started buying meals for the homeless people around the train station to make sure I could make up the £40.
So now, where I was claiming less than £150 a week for meals, I now claim £200 and get some good karma for it.
Teacher Stands Up For Kid With Cancer
From Redditor /u/ConfusedContortion:
So this happened years ago when I was in high school, but I smile every time I think of it.
My high school had a policy that anyone who has missed less than a certain number of school days could pick one class they had an A in to skip the final. You could get a couple extra days for college visits, but otherwise it was very straight forward. Awesome policy, and we all loved it. One year, we had this kid who was in eighth grade and had been diagnosed with cancer. He spent a lot of his year sick, getting treatment, going to the hospital, running to the bathroom to throw up, etc. Despite all this he finished the year with an A in his Spanish class. It was his only high school class, so it was the only final he would have been able to skip. Administration was not going to let him skip the final because he had missed too much school. He and his parents asked them to make an exception, given the situation, but administration wouldn't budge. His teacher stood up for him, but was told this kid had to take the final no matter what. He had missed too many days and there would be no exception.
The teacher said ok, but told her class not to study for, worry about, or exempt her final. Then, the first day all her students showed up for the final she told them to take out a piece of paper and number it 1-3 leaving one line in between each number. She then asked three questions along the lines of, "What is your name?" "How do you say yes in Spanish?", and "How do you say hello in Spanish?" Then she collected the final. Everyone got an 100 that year, and she became a legend. The kid has been cancer free for over five years now.
Don't You Worry! We'll Have Our Best
From Redditor /u/TragicWords:
At the time of the MC I had 4 employees;
- Generic Employee
- Rock Star
- New Guy
- Doucebag (could not be fired as he was related to some very senior managers - nepotism at its best)
We worked closely with the ops team where one of our responsibilities was to perform certain tasks - without which the entire operation would grind to a halt.
At the time there had been some expansion and a second shift was introduce (thus new guy was hired). Like anytime something new happened there were a lot of teething issues. At the time Doucebag and Generic Employee were covering the new afternoon shift (rotating weekly) while I had New Guy learning the ropes on the morning (where the workload was a lot heavier) with Rockstar and Generic Employee/Doucebag on their week of mornings.
Anyhow - as mentioned, there were some problems with introducing a new shift and the Ops Manager (who I had worked with in the past and we didn't really get along) did as most managers do when something isn't going right - passed the blame over to our end (to be fair some truth to it however Doucebag was a minor cause at best).
One thing I really didn't like about Ops Manager was she was the type to go behind your back and be nothing but smiles to your face.
At the time Ops Manager wanted Rock Star on her shift - because he was the type of person who would constantly go above and beyond to make things happen (read: fix her problems). Instead of asking me if it was possible - Ops Manager went to our bosses boss to complain that everything that was going wrong was due to my department and how she needed my most experienced employee on her shift.
The next day I got an email from The Boss with Ops Manager, My Boss and Her Boss copied in;
"...... please ensure your most experienced employee is on the afternoon shift to help Ops Manager".
I was a little annoyed.
I must have spent about 10 minutes just looking at that email - my temper consistently rising the entire time.
Until it finally dawned on me - Ops Manager wanted Rock Star but the request was for my most experienced employee.
What Ops Manager didn't realize was that Doucebag had started about 2 months before Rock Star - and a few years before Generic Employee.
Suddenly I was in a great mood and must have had the biggest grin on my face as I typed my reply.
"Hi The Boss,
We are of course happy to help Ops Manager with the multitude off issues that is happening within her shift.
As such, Doucebag, being my most experienced employee will spend the next 8 weeks working only on Ops Managers shift"
My boss and I had a great laugh over it - as it was essentially career suicide to complain about Doucebag - there was nothing Ops Manager could do but grin and bear it.
Paid Overtime After Docking Pay
From Redditor u/tbsdy:
I worked in an electricity retailer call centre. It was highly unionized, but the management tracked login times to the minute.
One incredibly ridiculous thing they did was if you were a minute or two late, they would literally dock your pay by that many minutes. It wasn’t really enough for us to really notice, and I’m sure they didn’t actually save any money - I mean, if you were 15 minutes late I could understand not paying but 3 minutes late?
Well, eventually the union discovered what they were doing, and were completely p*ssed that they hadn’t been consulted about this dumb move. This is where their MC comes in.
The union demanded logon and log off times for everyone in the call centre. What management hadn’t counted on was that all of us would often need to wrap up calls and clear the call queue before the call centre could officially close. This often meant that operators would leave several minutes after their shift. On bad occasions it could be 15-20 minutes delay before they could clock off, but mostly it was only a few minutes.
The union made management recalculate everyone’s pay for the year based on clock on and clock off time. They also pointed out that staying past end of shift triggered penalty rates. It turns out everyone (and I mean everyone!) had spent more time wrapping up calls at the end of the day than they were late clocking on. Each of us got paid for lost wages, at overtime rates.
It cost them a fortune and they never docked the pay of anyone who was late ever again.
You Don't All Have To Leave
From Redditor /u/RedWestern:
I don’t know if this is necessarily an MC, but it happened to my Dad. He was one of the three partners at one of his former companies (about medium sized). One day, he and his company went to a company drinks. I don’t think it was exactly a company party, but it was more than an after-work drink at the pub.
Anyway, the bar was serving aperitifs, and my dad asked for his without ice, as he hates ice tainting his drink. The landlord, who was behind the bar, refused, and said the ice was mandatory. So he served my Dad’s with ice. Dad accepted it, took the ice out, and laid it on the drain rack that goes under the beer draughts.
The landlord ordered him to leave.
My Dad was half expecting it, but asked him to repeat himself. The landlord once again told him to leave.
My Dad said “Okay,” and started to leave.
And his company all started to file out after him.
The landlord protested “No no, you don’t all have to leave. Only he has to leave.”
One of the other staffers said something along the lines of “Sorry mate. He’s the big boss. We all go where he goes.”
So they all left and went to another bar.
They had made a reservation at the bar they were leaving, but they hadn’t put down any deposit for it, and hadn’t bought any drinks yet. The aperitifs had been complimentary, so the Landlord didn’t even get paid for those.
He Asked For A Date From The Vice Commander
From Redditor /u/PipsqueakPilot:
When I was commissioned into the Air Force the officer who conducted the ceremony was a female 3-Star General. She looked like your typical short, fit, friendly middle aged soccer mom (Relevant to the story!). Extremely nice and personable, and an alumna of my university! At breakfast beforehand we were sharing a table, and she and my dad (A Lt Col at the time) we're talking. The general told a story of when she first showed up to a new base for her first posting as 3-Star. While running on the track a guy comes up and starts to run along side, asking if she had just got there, etc. It quickly becomes very obvious he's hitting on her, so she turns him down and mentions she has a husband.
He is not deterred, and keeps on hitting on her. The man goes right on talking about how in shape she is, how good looking she is, how they should get together, etc. Also asking questions like, "Well is your husband at the base yet?"... "Are you staying by yourself in the TLF?" TLF being a fancy sort of hotel. He thinks she's a spouse, and figures she showed up to get the home in order before her husband arrives. He really wants to 'hang out', preferably at her hotel room. Nor will he leave her alone until she agrees to a date. Finally after about fifteen minutes of him refusing to stop badgering her she relents and agrees to meet up with him again. "Fine- I'll free up some time and we can talk. What's your name and number?"
The harasser gives her his name and phone number. He's a Staff Sergeant many, many rungs down in the organization she's now Vice Commander of. Later that day he was ordered to report to her office, in service dress, at 0730 the next morning. Along with his supervisor, his First Sergeant, and his Commander. So basically his boss, his other boss, and his bosses bosses boss. She didn't say how the meeting went, but I doubt he enjoyed his date.
He Included A Special, Little Friend In These Pictures
From Redditor /u/[deleted]:
I’m not a professional photographer, but I do have decent equipment and portfolio so a lot of friends will hit me up for discounted photo shoots. Most of them pay or at least buy me dinner, but others expect me to do it for free...
I’m close with my ex-boyfriend’s family so I was thrilled when his younger sister asked me to come to her prom pictures earlier this month, until she told me to bring the camera. I did mention to her that I’m doing online school and I have an exam due that week so the pictures might not be ready for another week. She was fine with that.
Within two hours of taking pictures of half a dozen high-school students, I ended up with 300+ shots because everyone wanted the perfect Instagram shot. Whatever, I can go home, study, and slowly work on sorting through the pictures later. They’re not paying me so I wasn’t exactly motivated either.
I get a text from her and her mom that night at around 11pm, they want the pictures edited AND uploaded by the next morning so they could be shown off on social media. I tried to explain that I’m studying but they weren’t having it, they said, “We don’t care how you edit it, just make it look nice.”
Fine.
I spent the next 3+ hours working on the pictures and editing them really nicely that even I was proud of....then I hid Shrek into the background of every single picture. Shrek with his head poking out between the kids, Shrek posing happily, Shrek had a very nice time at prom evidently. I uploaded the pics and sent them off, no one noticed the extra guest for weeks and I got my ear chewed out because my ex’s sister didn’t appreciate her 900 followers on Instagram seeing Shrek grinning between her and her boyfriend.
They asked me to edit however I wanted, so I delivered. Shrek was one of my best clients I’ve ever had.
Fix Those 75 Cents
From Redditor /u/AnsleyStar:
I used to be a bartender/manager at a small family-owned restaurant. We had this one customer who I’ll call D. It’s short for D**chebag.
Anyways, he used to be a really nice guy. Always fun to talk to, had interesting stories, the works. However, after about 8 months of him being a regular, he asked me out. I (VERY POLITELY AND KINDLY) turned him down. And, my gosh, you would have thought I threatened his mom with the way he reacted.
So, following that point, he turned into a giant [d-bag]. Always snapping at me (both literally and figuratively), complaining about food that he never had an issue with before, etc. A couple months later, we had some changes to our menu and some slight price changes. Notably, his favorite soup (elk chili) was 75 cents more.
He stormed in and sat and ordered elk chili. I said “of course! I just want to make sure you’re aware that of the change—“ he snapped at me and said “How dumb do you think I am??? I can read!” Ok my dude whatever you can say. So he gets his soup, his meal, a few beers and a glass of one of our higher quality bourbons. I bring him the check and he flips out.
“This is more than it was before! You never told me that it would be more! This is fraud. I’m not paying this. Fix it!” Ok, I can do that. However, on the check, I had also charged him for only happy hour price beers, which was significantly less than our regular prices. Happy hour ended before he even got there. I also charged him for a lower quality bourbon by the same company (please note, the owner was ok with that since he was technically a regular and had spent a lot of money there).
So I fixed his check for him. But I fixed all of it. The new check was about $15 more than it was before. He was so mad he was lost for words, and I took that time to show him how I fixed his check. He never came back on nights I was working after that.
I don’t work there anymore, I wonder how he’s doing.
You Have To Be A Member!
From Redditor /u/eggelstean:
Here's how a Karen attempted to forbid me from getting coffee at my job and how I sent her horribly bleached wig flying.
Ah, the joys of customer service.
Here's some background:
So I work at a club/fitness center that is located within a gated community. Basically, a breeding ground for Karens. Most people here are very entitled. I also happen to live in this community, but my mom and I rent and generally keep to ourselves and don't get involved in the drama. When you live in the community, a membership to the club where I work (that has a pool, tennis courts, gym, and dance studio) is included in HOA dues. When you rent (like my mom and I do), the owner's membership is transferred to you.
I work front desk/juice bar, which means I greet members, send emails, basically keep the place together. I also prepare all of the complimentary snacks and drinks and keep them filled throughout the day. The people are very annoying, but it's good money for a 16-year-old and my boss/coworkers are great.
Now back to Karen. It's about 8am on a Saturday, which means prime coffee time. My shift starts at 5:30am, so I am pretty tired and ready for a cup. I make all the coffee and complimentary food/drinks, so after I finish setting up, I usually have some. I have explicit permission from my boss to do so. Members of the club can have all the complimentary food/drinks they want, so everyone wins.
Enter Karen. The giant canvas tote and terribly bleached bob are telltale.
I am standing at the counter, minding my own business, pouring a cup of coffee.
Karen asks in such a shrill voice that it could probably break glass, "Young lady, what do you think you are doing?"
Me, surprised, "getting coffee."
I was also pretty annoyed at being called “young lady”. I am not her kid to talk down to and patronize.
Karen huffs, "You can't do that!"
Me, too tired for this nonsense, "Why not?"
Karen, determined to combat the apparent danger of a minimum wage employee getting coffee, shrieks "You aren't a member! You can't get coffee if you aren't a member. Until then, no coffee for you!"
I start to hatch my ever so devious plan.
Cue UNO reverse card
I don't respond to Karen and walk over to the clock-in machine to punch out.
Members have a PIN number that they enter into a keypad so we can keep track of the number of people using the facilities. I walk over to the keypad, enter my PIN, and my name and picture pop up on the monitor, indicating that I am indeed a member.
I then walk over to the bar, passing Karen who looks like she is about to spontaneously combust with anger, to pick up my half-full cup of coffee and proceed to fill it from the coffee dispenser. I then walk back over to the clock-in machine, holding my coffee and punch back in.
I sit back down at the front desk and start working on entering payments.
Karen is still standing by my desk, looking like she is about to have an aneurysm. I just ignore her until she proceeds to leave.
The 20 cents I lost from clocking out for two minutes was worth the look of pure horror on Karen's face.
She Said "There's Nothing Hot In This Store"
From Redditor /u/Arayvenn:
I work in a hot sauce store in a busy outlet mall...We have a large variety of samples available every day. Literally like 100 hot sauces...
Every so often we get people who come into the store and ask to try the hottest sauce. They love jalapenos in their burritos and have eaten habaneros straight and they're ready to enter the ring, swallow some sauce and gain the admiration of a couple friends and bystanders at the cost of a stomach ache. We usually try to guide them to the 10th hottest sauce in the store, burn them with it, and move on to something mild or medium suited to their taste.
Today while I was selling items to people who were actually paying for things, a 10-or-so year old boy enters the store. I always get wary when children enter the store alone because it is full of glass bottles. They usually dart straight for the shelves and pick something up, but this child came barreling towards me like a bullet.
While I make change for the couple buying some sauce, he calls out to me, "Excuse me!", in a horrendous whiny pitch. I ignore the rude interruption and continue my conversation with my customers. He parrots it again twelve times or so back to back as I thank these people and get them out of the store. Finally, I turn to him, "How can I help you?". Where the heck are this kid's parents?
"Hi can I try the hottest sauce in the store." Not this again. I am not dealing with this, not with a 10 year old kid. I explain to him that the hottest sauce on the table is Hellboy: Right Hand of Doom. It's spiked with a 6.66 Million scoville extract, and honestly if you're not experienced with this kind of stuff more than just a tiny bit can really mess up a good part of your day. Take my word for it.
I explain to him he has to be 19 years old to try it and sign a waiver (which is bull, but I'm off in 30 minutes so forget this kid), and instead guide him to a tasty fermented habanero that he coughs his eyes out on before explaining to me that he could handle the Right Hand of Doom because his dad eats spicy peppers with him all the time. "Okay." I say. He leaves, thank goodness.
15 Minutes later I'm interrupted by another customer. This time a gigantic woman, in a blue blouse, she's set next to my sample table like a giant blueberry blocking up 20% of my floor space. "Excuse me!" Apple doesn't fall far. The customers I'm with are polite and excuse me to speak to her. "You didn't let my son try the sauce!"
I explain to her that it has extract in it several hundreds times hotter than anything he has ever eaten and that it can cause him severe discomfort and that I will not let him try it in my store. I explain that she is free to purchase the sauce and have him try it at home if she so wishes. She explains to me that she married a Mexican man and that I wouldn't believe the things we ate in "New Mexico City" where he grew up. When I asked what they had eaten there she told me "Things hotter than anything we have in the store".
At this point her daughter interrupts our conversation, I kid you not, "Excuse me!"
"What?" I'm getting annoyed. I was annoyed from the second I saw the kid and now he's back 20mins later with three of him. "Why do you sell Valentina - it's not even a hot sauce?" Aren't you from Mexico? It says Salsa Piquante on the bottle. It's 5:50, I'm off at 6. I've had enough.
"How about this, you can try the sauce and if it's as mild as you think, I'll let him try it." She agreed and grabbed her sample stick. I reached for the Right Hand of Doom, and unscrewed the cap. It's nuclear aroma sending memories of aches to my stomach. As she goes to dip the stick into the sauce, I warn her to "only take a small amount". She grins at me and dips the stick all the way into the sauce. Trap card. She slaps it into her mouth.
Immediately she looks uneasy before she throws herself into pure agony. She is coughing, swinging her head back and forth, trying desperately to speak, but she cannot muster any words. She dropped her sample stick in all the chaos. After a solid few minutes of coughing and dry heaving, she manages a single word, "water." I explain to her that water won't help her now. My relief walks through the door just in time to witness the finish.
She tells me that the only reason she is coughing is because "it went down the wrong pipe." She then immediately vomits into our garbage can. She apologizes for "spitting up" like she didn't just rocket launch half a litre of chum into my trashcan and then leaves without saying anything else.
I tossed out the trash with a smile on my face and clocked out.
This Only Gets Sweeter And Sweeter
From Redditor /u/PunkThug
So, in 2012, I found myself working as a over night maintenance laborer for a family owned collection of properties. Two shopping complex, a winery, a few warehouses, etc.. But most of the time, I was working keeping a grocery store built in the late 60s functioning. Worked my way up to night maintenance manager and loved my job.
I was getting the kind of education you can't buy; hands on electrical one night, plumbing the next, welding after that. All taught to me by 3 men that could build a house, up to code, single-handedly. And we all got along great! It was the first time in my adult life I had real responsibilities and I was respecting myself because I respected the job I was doing. The owners were all people that truly cared about their employees and they proved this when, in 2017, they sold the Main grocery store; one of the many things they included in the sale was all current employees had to be offered a new positions at their current pay level.
The company that bought us (I won't say their name but think the opposite of "dangerous path") does not employ an in-house maintenance team. Something breaks, they outsource the fixing of it. So they really didn't have a ready-made place for me to fit into like the other department managers. The store manager also did not like that I was making $18 an hour, 6 bucks over a new hire rate. Thus began the systematic (what I saw as) harassment and what has been later confirmed to me as standard operating procedure for legally getting rid of someone at this company. Some of my favs include:
--Making my 35 year old a bag boy. (Jokes on you; I love doing easy work for good money)
--Writing me up for spending 20 minutes talking to the police about an accident I had seen while returning carts (I thoroughly enjoyed the district manager apologizing to me for that)
--Cutting my hours down from full-time to 24 hours a week ( which is completely allowable, but as the second most senior member in the store, everyone below me has to get their hours cut first).
--No, you can't force me to take a salaried manager's position.
--Yes, you can make me a cashier (a position you know I do not want) but you have to give me the $3 pay bump
And on and on and on, in addition to the many broken verbal promises and out-and-out lies. I became very well-versed on the union rules, my specific contract rules, and how to protect myself. 7 Union arbitrations in my first 5 months, all ended in my favor.
Meanwhile, the assistant managers love me. I can cover any department because I've done most everything and I'm a quick learner for what I don't know. Anything breaks down in the store (it was falling apart before they bought it) if I can't fix it, I can at the very least make a detailed work request so it gets fixed sooner. I become the go to cover guy, filling in any position that needs it.
Which at long last brings me to my malicious compliance. The store was not doing well, sales wise. About a year-and-a-half in, they couldn't get a closing butcher. So, the night manager taps me to work in the meat department for 3 hours every night just to close it out and clean it up. In the department there is a bandsaw that's used for cutting meat with bones in it. It's a pain in the but to clean, so after reading the department manual I realized you were not to use that piece of equipment if you hadn't been trained on it.
Now I 100% had been trained on that bone saw. I knew how to take it apart, fix it and put it back together. But that training was with the old company and I had been informed many times that the new company only thought I'd been trained when they had trained me. Perfect! I can close down the bone saw earlier and get it cleaned. If any customer needs me to cut meat with a bone in it, I inform them that I hadn't been trained on that piece of equipment. Shouldn't be an issue: This is late night and the stores not doing that well begin with. I clear all this with the assistant manager.
This goes on for months until finally I'm called in to the manager's office during the day. Turns out one of the customers I had informed that I could not use the bone saw was a secret shopper. The store manager is writing me up for failure to complete my duties. She's also writing it up as 'malicious' failure ( I forget the term they use; it's basically two write ups instead of just one) and that coupled up with my previous write up (I was 15 minutes late once; that's on me) gives her the three write-up she needs to fire me.
As I have done so many times in the past with this woman, I invoke my right to Union representation and declined to talk with her until after I've spoken with them. At this point I'm thinking "they can't bust me; I was following the written directions" but oh no!!! it got so much sweeter and so much worse.
While talking to my union rep it quickly becomes clear that the butchers are a completely different Union. The store is in violation of the butchers Union contract by having a non-union employee work that department.
So first my union fights the write-up , wins and gets me paid for the four/five days I missed of work. They then get me a lawyer who tells me I am not to speak with any store manager in any capacity, due to The butchers Union complaint against the store. 2 weeks off, fully paid, for me; I can't very well work at a store where I cannot speak to my bosses.
I then get two more days off paid while I speak to the various Union reps for my testimony . the store is fined ($50,000 is what I was told) for breach of Butchers contract. When I return to work, my store manager does not work there anymore. Her replacement only accepts the job if his bonuses are not tied to the store's overall performance, so he doesn't mind I'm overpaid.
As icing on the cake, no one really liked her so I'm darn near a hero when I get back
After this awful store manager finally figures out a way to fire me, it turns out she's been breaking the rules and she loses the store. I keep my job, get almost 3 weeks paid time off and still work for the company.
Oh, You Got Locked Out?
From Redditor /u/ darlin_squishy
I used to work as a property manager for a semi large company in a small city. Among the usual duties of a PM we were also responsible for after hours maintenance calls.
Originally, we were paid for 3 hours of over time to cover the phone calls we answer and paid an additional $80 for any call outs we have to attend ourselves.
The entire team rotated the phone between us so we only had the emergency phone for one weekend every 2 months. The phone was an after hours maintenance line for over 800 properties, so you can imagine how busy it would get but the extra pay helped the blow of losing your weekend.
This was not a problem until our boss wanted to crack down on over time hours stating: "I very much doubt you are working 3 hours whilst you have the emergency phone"
His new rule was for each staff member to document when and who called and you would be paid an hour of REGULAR time each call. But under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to attend any issues yourself. This includes unlocking doors for tenants who are locked out of their property. He enforced that the tenant must pay for a locksmith to attend and let themselves in. This angered many of our clients and caused us to be constantly taken advantage of over the phone by our tenants as they had to pay $300 for a locksmith.
This is where the malicious compliance began.
We indeed documented all our calls, which instead of paying each employee $100 for 3 hours, he ended up having to pay us $500 (or more) each weekend due to the amount of calls we would actually take!
But it doesn't stop there! What I should probably mention is that our company can provide accommodation for our more higher staff at a fraction of the cost you would normally pay. The manager in question was in such accommodation and low and behold, he managed to lock himself out of his apartment at 11 pm on a Friday night!
Manager: Hello OP. I have locked myself out of my apartment. You need to collect the spare keys and come unlock my door
OP: I am very sorry, Manager, but I cannot do that.
Manager: Um excuse me?? Why not?
OP: Unfortunately you have instructed me not to attend to any call outs under any circumstance. I can however, send you through the number of our preferred locksmith to come let you in?
After a few choice words, the manager hung up and phoned a locksmith. Lets just say, after he had to fork out $300 for an after hours locksmith, he changed our ability to attend call outs.
She Now Emails People To Go To The Bathroom
From Redditor /u/warroash:
Last week I was working from home one day, and got up to use the bathroom and make a cup of coffee. Took 10 minutes, tops. I get back to my computer to a bunch messages from my boss, getting increasingly nasty about something and why I wasn't answering quick enough for her. I send a message back with whatever it was she needed to know, and "apologizing" for not getting back to her soon enough.
When she finally answered me (about half an hour later) she said if I'm not going to be at my computer for any amount of time, I need to send an email to everyone in my office (including high level executives) that I'll be unavailable for X amount of time and why.
So that's what I've been doing. My normal phrasing for the message is "Hi! I'll be unavailable from this time to this time as I'm going to use the bathroom/make some coffee/etc." Every single person in my office has told me it's fine and I don't need to tell them when I'm going to be gone for a few minutes, where I then forward them the original exchange between me and my boss and apologize but say this is what my direct report has told me to do, and this is the result if I don't.
They all hate her as much as I do now.
Oops, My Bulldozer!
From Redditor /u/kg1206
This isn't my story but it's a pretty well known one around my town.
My town had some pretty strict bylaws about cutting down trees within town limits. It's because we're part of a green belt or something meaning we have to maintain a certain amount of green space on our properties. So for example you can't just pave over your entire front lawn for extra parking spaces and any existing trees on the property must be left alone unless removal is absolutely necessary for construction purposes or safety concerns. Normally this isn't an issue because we're a fairly rural town, the lots are pretty big and having all the tree cover gives you a lot more privacy.
Where this became a problem was in 2016 when a massive ice storm hit that knocked out power for 3 or 4 days. It also severely damaged a large tree on the front lawn of a 25 acre lot just on the edge of town. The man who owned the lot was a retired farmer, about 80 years old, who was a well known figure in the community. He had built the house pretty far back off the road on his property and right next to a massive tree, the same one that was now damaged by the ice storm.
Spring came and the tree looked like it was now in danger of falling on the house. He had a local tree service come out to inspect it and they confirmed that if something wasn't done that the dead tree could fall down, possibly towards the house, since there was a large split forming in the trunk as a result of the ice storm damage. The tree service couldn't do anything without the man getting permission from the town first since the tree would need to come down. Trimming would have been fine but not cutting it down. To make it more infuriating a neighbor literally next door was outside the town limits and therefore was free to clean up the storm damage however he saw fit.
The man went and applied for a permit to have the tree service come out and cut down the tree and provided them with the quote from the tree service stating that it was a hazard. For whatever reason the permit was denied by the town with no real reason given. With a nasty thunderstorm in the forecast, which he feared might send the tree colliding down on his house, and the town not giving him permission to do anything about it he decided to take matters into his own hands and got a hold of a copy of the town's bylaws regarding this situation to see if there was a loophole somewhere, and oh boy was there a loophole.
The town had made a pretty serious mistake in writing their bylaws. Have you ever noticed how laws are always written in a really strange over complicated way? Well this is done on purpose to try and minimize any creative misinterpretations of the law. Our town however had written some of its bylaws in more or less plain English saying that it was illegal to cut down trees without approval from the town. Note the word "cut" in that sentence, this is important. After a quick phone call to his attorney this man somehow got a hold of a Caterpillar D7R, which is a big bulldozer for those of you who don't know. Probably borrowed it from the local gravel pit or something since he had that kind of pull in town.
Anyways the next day when the bylaw officer, knowing full well that his permit had been denied, caught him cutting up the already fallen tree he stopped to investigate. The man calmly explained that he had been using the bulldozer, which was still sitting on the front lawn, to tear up a section of dead grass so he could re seed it when he had accidentally bumped into the tree with the blade causing it to fall over away from the house in the opposite direction from where it had been leaning. Obviously the town saw right through the cover story and knew full well that he had knocked the tree over with the bulldozer on purpose and slapped him with a fine for it.
He took it to court and won as the town's bylaw stated that cutting down trees without a permit was illegal but it said nothing about pushing them over with heavy earth moving equipment. The bylaw was changed and has since been repealed entirely and you're pretty much allowed to do whatever you want with your property as long as it maintains the green space requirements.
We'll Throw In A Bottle Of Wine!
From Redditor /u/lipwiggler:
Last year my wife and I got married. My parents and sister live halfway across world, but that didn't stop them from coming over to celebrate. Since neither my wife and I get to spend much time with them, we decided to rent a house for a couple of days in a nearby wine region. You know: hang out, drink some wine, eat some cheese and have some quality family time. It had been 3 years since we last saw them.
A month or so before my parents and sister came over I got an email from the owners of the vacation house saying that they had sold the property, but the new owners were going to continue to rent out the house and they were going to honor the booking, so not to worry. All good. Two weeks later I got an email from the new owners saying the booking was still okay, but they were going over their records and said I still owed them $100 for the booking. I replied back with the receipt and booking confirmation that I was all paid up. Turns out the new owners unilaterally decided to increase the price of the accommodation, and I had to pay up. But they were gracious enough to say I could cancel at no cost but they'd rather we'd keep the booking and pay that little extra.
No cost for cancelling the booking you say? Within 5 minutes I had found another vacation house in the same region, there's literally dozens of them. I sent a quick email back to please cancel my booking and process the refund.
"We'd like you to keep the booking. Can we split the difference?"
"No thanks. Please cancel the booking."
"If you keep the booking, we'll throw in a bottle of wine!"
"No thanks. Please cancel the booking."
Good thing the refund came back with days.
Their reviews have been less than stellar on tripadvisor. I wonder why...
This Person Becomes The Bank
From Redditor /u/captainp42:
This happened a few years ago, I was working at a large national chain restaurant as a Manager. I was asked to temporarily re-assign to a location in a city about an hour away, and accepted...they put me up in a hotel, the whole 9 yards.
The first weekend I was there, I discovered that the GM had screwed up and not ordered any change (small bills/rolls of coins) for the safe, and that the local branch of our bank would be closing in the next hour. I also happened to have a personal account at the same bank, and had, in the past, gone and gotten change from the branch back home.
Since time was tight, I quickly looked up the address of the bank, grabbed $800 dollars, and jumped in my car. I get to the bank, wait in line, and then ask them to make change ($400 in $5 bills, $300 in $1 bills, and $100 in assorted rolled coins). The teller tells me that the bank doesn't make change. Me, thinking it was because they didn't know me, informed her that our restaurant had an account she could look up. She then told me, "No, we don't make change at all." The thought going through my brain was, "You are a BANK!!!" I tried explaining the situation, but was quickly brought down. I left, went back to my car, then had an idea.
I went back inside the bank with my personal checkbook. Got to the front of the line, and (luckily) the same teller. Before she could even greet me, I told held out my checkbook and told her, "I would like to close this account, since this bank is no longer customer service oriented". She kind of rolled her eyes, but went about my request. Then she asked how I wanted my cash back (an automatic response, I'm sure, and one I was counting on). I said, "$400 in $5's, $300 in $1's, $70 in rolled quarters, $25 in rolled dimes, $4 in rolled nickels, and $1 in rolled pennies. The rest can be on a cashier's check." No reason for her to deny it, so I got my change.
And the following Monday, I returned, closed out the other 2 accounts I had there, and I opened accounts at a different bank where I have been banking ever since.
Don't Cheat Two Times
From Redditor /u/aeFoxbird:
Some years ago (by which I mean two or so decades, roughly) my dad was at a several-day course to earn some additional qualifications for his job. On the final day, there was going to be a multiple choice test to actually pass the seminar. On test day, everyone got settled into place, and the teacher announced that he would not go easy on cheaters: You had one strike to be caught trying to copy off of someone else or use a cheat sheet, but if you were caught a second time, you would be immediately thrown out and your score made invalid. Now, this teacher was very old-school strict, and treating grown working people like unruly schoolchildren, and my dad does not like that very much.
So my dad proceeds to take the test, and it goes pretty well! When he's through with the questions, there is just one left where he's not sure he's got it right.
And he has a free strike, after all.
So my dad... yells out into the class. Just calls out, "what's the answer to question 14?". Some complete bro elsewhere in the room yells the answer back. My dad fills in the sheet, gets up, walks to the teacher's desk, presumably tries to not trip on the teacher's jaw as it lies on the floor, hands in his test, and leaves the room.
To the teacher's credit, he approached my dad afterwards with some... begrudging respect. I don't know if he changed his policy afterwards, or the tone in which he conveyed it.
They Won't Stop Calling, So He Brings Out The Chicken Suit
From Redditor /u/evil_hound:
I'm not sure if this belongs in Petty Revenge or Malicious compliance for there's a little of both - so sorry if this has been put in the wrong place. Either way I've enjoyed my malicious revenge/compliance so I hope you do.
For the past few years our business has been receiving telemarketing calls from an offshore call center trying to make appointments for "Optus Business Centre". Every time they call, we'd politely tell them we were not interested and to remove us from their list and they'd promise not to call again.
You can probably tell by my use of the words "every time" that having ourselves removed from the list didn't work. It didn't work the first time, and it didn't work the 50th time. Offshore are cheap, and get paid per appointment. So they would get quite aggressive. It was clear that a new strategy needed to be found as it was taking too long to get them to bugger off.
So began my campaign of malicious compliance/petty revenge...
"Hi we're calling from Optus business centre and we can save you 40% on your mobile phone bill! Can we come and see you tomorrow at 11am?"
You can save me 40% of my mobile bill? That's like sixty Grand a month!
"What? How many phones do you have?"
150 or so that I'm responsible for directly, plus a few others..
The appointment is quickly confirmed. The next day a salesman calls me up he's running early - can we meet earlier. I refused. Our appointment is for 11am after all.
11am rolls around and in he walks - we sit down in reception and go through the greetings. I then ask him if it's possible to make the telemarketing calls stop now. He assures me that it is, and so I stand up, shake his hand and thank him for coming in.
What? That's it? You could have said that over the phone!
I point out that we did. Many times, and it didn't work - and I hoped that this waste of his time (45 min trip from Homebush to Sydney) would perhaps teach him to mend his ways.
Over the past 2 years they have sent out 5 different reps to see us. They call for meetings - we accept them, shine them on about the value of the account and they roll in to be greeted by me dressed in a chicken suit; made to wait in our meeting room for 20 minutes before being asked to be removed from the list; being turned away at the door (they sent two reps that time).
I'm posting this today because it was visit number 6 and it was the best yet. We got a repeat customer! I sat him down in the meeting room and played the video recording of our last meeting :)
Is that you ?
Yes! It's me! Didn't I follow up ? Did we have a good Meeting?
I point out that I certainly enjoyed our last meeting, and zoomed forward in the video to the part where I explained that we didn't have 500 mobile accounts - and he needed to please remove us from their list and you could see his heart break. Which it did again, once he realized that whatever account he thought was being discussed today was not going to be discussed. Which we also have on video, so we can go all inception if/when he shows his face again.
"I Know What It Is! Just Make It!"
From Redditor /u/vassago1376:
Years ago I worked at a local coffee shop. We served the standard coffee shop menu of coffee drinks and pastries we made in house. One of our coffee drinks on the menu was a macchiato. We served a traditional macchiato, which is a double shot of espresso with a touch of steamed milk and milk foam, but since a certain chain has named a very different drink the same thing I would always try to clarify what the customer was ordering when they asked for one.
One day a woman came up to the counter on her cell phone. She briefly pulled the phone away from her head long enough to mouth “caramel macchiato” at me. I started my spiel about how we serve a traditional macchiato, which is quite small, did she want that or one like the other place makes. She cut me off three words in and dramatically said “I know what it is! Just make it!” So I rang her up and made it.
I made her a tiny drink with espresso, caramel syrup and milk foam. When I gave it to her she finally got off her phone call and told me I clearly made it wrong. I explained I made what she ordered as she told me she knew what she was ordering.
She now said she wanted one like she would get at national chain, which I happily made and charged her for. She did not get a refund on the first drink.
Just Do Your Job
From Redditor /u/EricCartmenez
When I was 19 years old and a fresh high school (or my country's equivalent) graduate, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. The one thing I did know is that I needed money, so I started applying for all kinds of jobs. After a few weeks of writing applications, going to interviews and waiting nervously for replies, I was hired as a full-time sales assistant an international company making smartphones, TVs and other electronic gadgets.
Said company was in the process of opening their first official store in my country and I, as I was hired about 3 months before they were due to open, helped them however I could. I created one-pagers (basically posters that show all the hardware inside a device plus a picture), translated manuals, put security tags on products etc. Whatever they wanted me to do I did, sometimes until late at night, still foolishly thinking that this initiative would maybe be recognized in one shape or another. Alongside me they hired 4 other people: 3 more sales assistants and a store manager, all of whom were young and ambitious, just like me. The grand opening went very well, business was booming for the first 2 weeks and everything seemed fine. That's where the problems started.
The first thing we realized we didn't have were guidelines on how to handle returns and warranty cases. As the company's electronics had been available online long before the store opened, some people now started bringing in their devices to get them fixed or swapped out, none of which we knew how to handle. This annoyed a lot of customers, being given the information that only devices bought at our specific store would be handled under warranty only made things worse for us. We were getting mistreatment on a daily basis that ranged from curse words to death threats, once we even had to call security because a customer was threatening us. This stress caused one of my colleagues to quit, understandably.
This, as it turned out was only the tip of the iceberg. Some of the other problems we had included:
-Having a break room with no access to fresh water, no fridge, no microwave and of course no bathroom (all big no-nos where I live)
-Resupply came in sporadically at best, sometimes we were resupplied twice a week, sometimes there were no deliveries for three weeks, making it very hard for us to tell our customers when their devices will be arriving.
-The store manager was so incompetent, he couldn't even finish our schedules 3 days in advance, although giving the schedule two weeks in advance is mandatory.
-One of my colleagues thought "I can't take this" - about a month after our grand opening and went on sick leave, which where I live basically gives you immunity from getting fired, so now we where two men down.
-The bosses upstairs apparently wanted us to provide tech support over the phone, which again none of us where trained to do. We did our best, but only really ended up with more threats in addition to having our official store phone number constantly blocked by these calls. Also, we were expected to take over social media communications as well, meaning we now had to answer questions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc., putting even more strain on our small team. In the end, the manager couldn't deal with the stress anymore and broke down about 2 months after opening. He even sought psychological counseling after quitting. While I was sad to see him go, I thought that now my time had come to prove myself.
I took over most of his duties, still only earning about half of what the manager made. Naively I worked 60 to 70 hour weeks for almost 3 months straight, still thinking that this would somehow pay off. I made sure to tell my bosses how much more I did than we agreed upon in my contract, but they didn't seem to care. That is, until our sales figures dropped. All of a sudden I had two of them come into the store unannounced, basically drag me into a back room and start lecturing me on how badly the store is performing. The conversation went something like this:
Boss 1: "So, why would you say the store's sales performance has dropped so much since (Manager) left?"
Me: "Well, a lot of customers are unhappy with the way we h-"
Boss 2: "Our products are very competitive, why are you still struggling to sell them?"
Me (slightly disgruntled): "Well SIR, as I was trying to say, the customers are not happy with our service and running a store with just two employees is almost impossible. If we could hire two more assistants, maybe we could focus better on our numbers..."
Boss 1: "The interviews for those positions are ongoing, you will have new employees soon. But you were hired for a reason, so would you just do your job?"
Me:"...yes sir."
After that meeting I felt defeated. Doing all this extra work, staying late, taking responsibility for things I had no business taking responsibility for, the threats, the uncertainty, the stress, the sleep deprivation, all for nothing. And that's when it clicked in my head:
To heck with those guys. The wanted me to do my job? Fine. From now on, I would do exactly what my job description says, nothing more, nothing less.
The next day, I came in early, opened the store, everything normal. Until the first tech-support call came in. I picked up the phone and, after listening to what the caller wanted, told them that I was only a sales assistant and therefore not qualified to answer their questions. Hanging up the phone without saying goodbye, a postman came in with some special documents for the store manager, requiring a signature. I said nope, sorry, not gonna sign that, I'm not a manager. After being informed that these were court documents and need to be signed for immediately, I just shrugged and said: "Not my problem, just doing my job here man."
Later that day, after my colleague had arrived, we got a delivery of new product for the store. The delivery guy handed me the manifest, asking for a signature. Again I declined, stating that I was just "doing my job" and the manager would have to sign that. After making it clear to him there wasn't a manager on site, he left, taking all of the new product with him, product which we desperately needed. But I was beyond caring at this point. About fifteen minutes later, I got a call from Boss 1, asking me why no-one had signed for the delivery. I told him that, as there was no manager on site, nobody there was allowed to sign that document. After a few choice words, he hung up the phone and I went back to work, chatting with customers and generally not caring about anything.
Half an hour later, Boss 1 and 2 descended onto me. They rushed into the store demanding an explanation for my behavior. I simply replied: "I'm just doing my job sir, just like you asked me to do."
Boss 1: "What the heck do you mean? Then why has nobody accepted today's delivery or the documents we've sent you?!"
Me: "Well, that's the manager's job. I am not a manager."
Boss 2: "Yes you are, what the hell are you talking about?"
Me: "Uh, no, not only would my pay be pretty poor for all the work I am doing, my contract clearly states that I am a sales assistant and as such shall only fulfill duties related to that position."
Boss 2: "And who the heck is supposed to do the managers job if not for you?"
Me: "I don't know, but I would gladly do it, if you doubled my salary of course."
Boss 1: "Hahaha! (actually laughing in my face) Who the heck do you think you are? We can have you replaced with someone cheaper in a heartbeat!"
Me: "Okay then, go ahead, I quit, effective immediately. Bye."
And then I just left. My remaining colleague, upon hearing me quit, also quit immediately, leaving our former bosses wide-eyed with no employees to run their store. I had also taken the liberty of informing the board of health and labor about our working conditions, as well as getting myself legal counseling for some issues related to bonusses not being paid out. The store ended up having to completely shut down for about 2 weeks until they had a skeleton crew back together to run it.
The kicker? About a month after I quit and with my lawsuit for unpaid wages now pending, I got a call from Boss 1, telling me he wanted to accept my offer of doubling my salary to become the store manager. He said none was willing to take the job now that word got around how awful things are in the store. The following conversation ensued:
Me: "Frankly Boss 1(I used his first name here, just to piss him off), I don't much like getting laughed at, so I'm afraid if you want me to come back, you're gonna have to quadruple my initial pay."
Boss 1: "What?! Are you insane?! We can't afford that, how are we supp..-"
Me: "I don't give a hoot Boss 1, I really don't. But I've got an idea! How about you pull your head out of Boss 2s *ss and just do your job?"
We Love A Good Rory Story
From Redditor /u/ TerrificMoose
So I recently started posting to reddit, and I have a lot of stories. This one happened during my first career, when I worked as a scientist in a diagnostic lab. I had been working for about 2 years at this point and had just been promoted to senior scientist.
I had two supervisors in my section, each assigned to oversee half of the tests being done in our small corner of the lab, Rory and Tanya. Tanya was the senior most supervisor of the two, and secondary to my department head she had the most authority over me on any given day. She also hated me. Never did figure out why, but she hated about 3/4 of the people working in the lab so I never took it personally. I just don't think she liked people (the lab tends to attract people like that, funnily enough. We always used to joke about being the rejects stuffed in a hole at the bottom of a hospital to be kept away from the general public). As for Rory, it's important to note that he had a very good reputation in the lab of never lying. He was never once caught in even a half truth, and he'd been working there for over 30 years. He was well liked and well trusted. This will be important later.
One day I was doing one of the more technically challenging tests that our department performs. It's long, fiddly, expensive, and easy to screw up. Only senior scientists are allowed to do it unsupervised, and this was maybe the second time I've done it alone. We are talking two days just to get it set up. It was a nightmare. While I was measuring out some gelatin powder into a beaker, I accidentally elbowed Tanya (our work stations were right on top of each other, this happened at least 4-5 times a day with everyone). I apologized and go back to what I was doing, but she flips out. Like full on rage screaming in my face kind of angry. After a couple of minutes of her angry tangent, she says "Just take off TerrificMoose, no one wants you here!" and then she storms off to her office to cool off.
Rory comes up to me, having seen and heard to whole thing and asks if I'm alright. I say I'm a little shaken, but nothing too bad and get ready to continue my work. But Rory had HEARD the whole thing, and he saw what test I was doing. He Whispers to me "Your supervisor told you to go. Best you do what she says, and if she causes a fuss about it, I'll be sure to tell the boss EXACTLY what she said to you." Now, I knew Rory's reputation, so I knew I'd be safe. I also know that being told to leave early by a supervisor meant that I was still paid out for the rest of the day, provided I had worked at least 4 hours of my shift (The lab was actually pretty generous with time off, even if the pay and working conditions were bad).
So I did exactly what Tanya had said. I took off home.
Now at the stage I was at with that particular test, I had spent about $4000 worth of reagents. Normally batches of 20 samples are run to try and keep the cost down, but it was still an expensive test when you include the nearly 3 days of work from a single scientist. This was one of Tanya's tests, and therefore Rory was not required to ensure it was done. No one in my section was very happy with Tanya, and she had gone off to her office and so couldn't see me leave, so no one went to tell her that the test was left unsupervised. Apparently she didn't come back for over an hour, and by then the test was ruined and had to be started over again. My boss was PISSED. Tanya of course tried to throw me under the bus, saying I had left without informing anyone and that it was all my fault, but good old trustworthy Rory told the boss exactly what Tanya had said. I love Rory. I couldn't be punished for doing exactly what my supervisor had told me to do, so I got away with it completely.
Unfortunately nothing overly terrible happened to Tanya. She got formally reprimanded and had to take an anger management course that the hospital runs, but otherwise she got no real punishment. She never yelled at me again, and was always careful to word things just right around me after that though so that was something. As for what I did on my half day off, I went to the beach to enjoy the sunshine I almost never got to see working in the deep dark dungeon that is the average hospital lab. I made sure to bring in the pictures the next day.
UPDATE: I was teaching a class with Rory today and showed him some of your replies. He's genuinely touched by it all. He does recommend not naming your children after him though, as his name was changed for the story.
Also to all of you saying that 4 grand is too much waste for a lab, in the grand scheme of things $4000 is nothing. Diagnostic labs will waste that daily just through simple errors. The boss was annoyed, but not disproportionately so. It's factored into the budget.
She Can Only Book Over The Phone
From Redditor /u/emmahar:
A few years ago, I went to the doctor's to make an appointment (I had to go to the pharmacy next to it so thought I'd pop in instead of calling).
Receptionist tells me they can't take walk ins (I didn't want an appointment then anyway), and can only take bookings over the phone.
So I stood at reception, got my phone out and called the number for the phone right next to her. I made eye contact with her, the whole time, as she answered the phone, and booked me in.
Enjoy This Sweet Little Video!
From Redditor /u/Pip0708
Over the last several months I have been sick twice. Once I was out of work for 4 days due to an awful bout of food poisoning which may be the worst I have ever felt and, most recently, I was out of work for a day about a month ago due to what I believe was a stomach bug. Upon returning to work I was told by my supervisor that she is going to, "need to see more proof", that I'm actually sick and not just taking time off for the hell of it. Now, I'm sure I'm not the best worker she has ever had, but I pride myself on never missing a day unless I'm in awful shape and I hardly ever take vacation and I feel extremely guilty whenever I am out of the office.
Fast forward to two days ago. Not sure happened, but I went from feeling completely normal to vomiting uncontrollably in a matter of 30 mins. The vomiting (and other fun excrement's) continued for the rest of the night. My first thought was - I'm not going to be able to work tomorrow and how am I going to prove how sick I am again. This is when I thanked god for my trusty new iPhone. I pulled up the camera and turned on the video feature and recorded myself vomiting for about 5 minutes before looking at the camera and saying, "*supervisors name*, I won't be coming in tomorrow - hope this is good enough proof of how crap I feel." Back in work today and she said she no longer needs proof that I'm ill.
For all those saying I should go to the emergency room, you're either still on your parents health care plan or don't live in America.
Big Mistake, Kid
From Redditor /u/Julian-VH:
Last summer I worked as an ice cream vendor on the beach of my hometown. Best job I ever had. People were nice to me, I got to work on my tan, it payed pretty well, but most importantly, we were allowed to eat the delicious ice cream on our breaks.
One day, I'm serving a man and his son. The man orders a cone with two scoops for him and a cone with one scoop for the little one. The kid wasn't happy about that, and said to his dad that he also wanted two scoops. The dad explains that the scoops are pretty big and that one will suffice for him. I confirm this to help the Dad, even offering to make it extra big. Still, the kid doesn't budge, instead he starts throwing a tantrum, nearly crying how he wanted two scoops. The dad, clearly not wanting to ruin his vacation mood, gives up and says to the kid he can have two scoops. "However", he adds, "if you can't finish your ice cream like I said you wouldn't, no more TV for you, for the rest of the vacation!" The kid happily agrees, claiming he could eat a whole tub of ice cream.
Big mistake kid.
Me, being the petty person that I am, wanted to teach this brat a lesson. I proceed by scooping one of the most gigantic scoops I've ever scooped in my entire scooping career. I put it on the cone, the kids eyes widen in shock. My scoop goes back for more, I see the kid tremble in disbelief. I scoop the second most gigantic scoop a scooper could scoop, and graciously add it to the first one. I hand the monstrosity I've created to the kid, who by now realizes he won't watch tv again this summer. The dad seemed pretty cool with it, he even tipped me a little which was very rare. All in all a pretty good day.
OK, So What Do You Want?
From Redditor /u/darkon99
As a freelance designer, getting content from clients was almost always the hardest bit.
One client asked me to design them a flyer for an event they were running. Fine, no problem.
After a few weeks, with the deadline getting closer, I still hadn’t had any info from them, so I put together a design using dummy copy for the date, time and event details and sent it over with the hope they’d just fill in the blanks and send it back. They didn’t.
The afternoon before the mailing was supposed to go out, I got an angry call from them asking why it hadn’t gone to print. I explained it couldn’t go to print because they hadn’t actually given me any information.
“Oh no, we won’t decide all that until the board meeting next week. But that flyer has to go out tomorrow. “
“Are you sure? There’s no information on it”
“Yes, print it. It’s fine as it is. “
“Okay, if you’re really sure!”
“Yes!”
The next day I got a very angry phone call from the client’s boss asking why the flyer sent to thousands of people was full of Lorem Ipsum.
“Well...”
PB = Liquid? Discuss.
From Redditor /u/garaks_tailor
Happened to me about 7 years ago. I travelled for work and they gave us a flat perdiem for food, no receipts required. We also would be at the same location for 1 to 4 weeks. It wasn't a great perdiem but no questions asked. So in order to bring back every penny I would buy groceries and keep them in my hotel fridge. Also kept from becoming 20% Chilibee's Tuesday Roadhouse.
I was traveling back and got to TSA screening and after they scanned my bags the agent informed me that the unopened 7lb heirloom lavender peanut butter and the jelly would have be tossed. This was a lie, it was not going to be thrown away, I could tell by the way her eyes covered it that it would not make it to the trash can. I'm pretty serious about my peanut butter and jelly and it was not the cheap stuff.
So I said could I have it back and give it to someone who was arriving so they could keep it. This was also a lie. She could tell.
After she handed it back and while I was collecting my bags we had a brief discussion on the nature of liquids. I could see she was ready to move on. Then I asked if peanut butter was ok if it was in sandwich form. With a petty glee she said, "of course. Yes. if if the peanut butt....."
I saw defeat wash over face midsentence as I pulled out a nearly full loaf of bread and utensils. I was 3 hours early for my flight and had plenty of time to make my sandwiches
The other TSA officers chuckled and nudged each other as I made my way through security a second time with a bread bag of PB&Js.
Edit just to give some context, because people keep posting ( does kid who reminds teacher about homework voice),"the tsa clearly lists peanut butter as a liquid."
This happened in the days of yor. The TSA was still young, iphone was never going to outsell BlackBerry, unlimited data plans were actually unlimited, you tube was curiosity, and few people outside of the book trades had heard of Amazon. I had an erricson Walkman phone.
I had traveled dozens of time without peanut butter being a problem through some of the nations largest airports without any issues. And here is some podunk airport TSA agent telling me my 7 pounds of hippy made heirloom apple lavender peanut butter after looking at longn a seemingly hand blown jar is not allowed on board. Well what would you think.
TSA Pat Down Two Times
From Redditor /u/kimcheekatie:
This happened about 3 years ago while going through an airport in the U.S.
I walked through the metal detector, something must have beeped and they needed to pat me down. After a thorough pat down, I put my shoes on and started to walk over to grab my bag. A TSA agent stops me and says "you've been randomly selected please step into the body scanner."
I was polite, but said that I really didn't want to get into the body scanner, and asked if there was another way. The agent said that I could get a pat down. I said well I just got a pat down so... They angrily told me to pick an option!
So, I took two steps backwards, to the woman who had patted me down 30 seconds ago and spread em... again. While she was patting me down I asked her if she found anything new. She stared daggers at me but let me go.
They Printed 500 Blank Documents
From Redditor /u/UrPokemon:
My roommate and I attend a university where we are given 250 pages per semester to print as part of our attendance. Well, we hardly used it since we have our own printer, so we went over to the print room and asked them if we could have our ~500 pages. They said that the pages were only for printing and not a quantity of letter paper we were entitled to. So we said okay.
We then went to 2 of the computers in the print room, opened word to a blank document, and printed our pages out. We then walked out with that thick stack of paper without being noticed. There has not been, and there will likely not be any fallout.
Neighbor Insults 'Devalued' Look
From Redditor /u/[deleted]:
I’m not a professional photographer, but I do have decent equipment and portfolio so a lot of friends will hit me up for discounted photo shoots. Most of them pay or at least buy me dinner, but others expect me to do it for free...
I’m close with my ex-boyfriend’s family so I was thrilled when his younger sister asked me to come to her prom pictures earlier this month, until she told me to bring the camera. I did mention to her that I’m doing online school and I have an exam due that week so the pictures might not be ready for another week. She was fine with that.
Within two hours of taking pictures of half a dozen high-school students, I ended up with 300+ shots because everyone wanted the perfect Instagram picture. Whatever, I can go home, study, and slowly work on sorting through the pictures later. They’re not paying me so I wasn’t exactly motivated either.
I get a text from her and her mom that night at around 11pm, they want the pictures edited AND uploaded by the next morning so they could be shown off on social media. I tried to explain that I’m studying but they weren’t having it, they said, “We don’t care how you edit it, just make it look nice.”
Fine.
I spent the next 3+ hours working on the pictures and editing them really nicely that even I was proud of....then I hid Shrek into the background of every single picture. Shrek with his head poking out between the kids, Shrek posing happily, Shrek had a very nice time at prom evidently. I uploaded the pics and sent them off, no one noticed the extra guest for weeks and I got my ear chewed out because my ex’s sister didn’t appreciate her 900 followers on Instagram seeing Shrek grinning between her and her boyfriend.
They asked me to edit however I wanted, so I delivered. Shrek was one of my best clients I’ve ever had.
Oh, Not Enough?
From Redditor /u/ BluntKingonGod
So I mean its not the craziest story but I remember working at Krispy Kreme and we offered these frap type mixed coffee drinks with whipped cream on top. Well one day a lady comes through the drive thru and wanted a large one of those bad boys. So my boy Ryan gets on making this drink. At the drive thru window after she gets her drink, she says there isn't enough whipped cream on her drink, I hand the drink back to Ryan and repeat what the lady said. Confused and kind of irritated cause it was the end of his shift, he slides the current whipped cream off into the sink and puts a fresh coat on top of that. I hand it to the lady and she's like nahhh boi not enough. I pass it back to Ryan and he's like "ight bet extra whipped cream it is" and proceeds to empty the ENTIRE can of whipped cream into the lid of her drink with whipped cream Shattering out the top making a huge pile of whip on the counter. After the can was empty he personally handed her the drink and that was that.
There was really no need to use the whole can and that's what made this moment so beautiful. Still brings a tear of joy to my eye when I think back on it though, the simplicity, the purity, the joy in Ryan's eyes as he followed his dreams.
The next day, I came in early, opened the store, everything normal. Until the first tech-support call came in. I picked up the phone and, after listening to what the caller wanted, told them that I was only a sales assistant and therefore not qualified to answer their questions. Hanging up the phone without saying goodbye, a postman came in with some special documents for the store manager, requiring a signature. I said nope, sorry, not gonna sign that, I'm not a manager. After being informed that these were court documents and need to be signed for immediately, I just shrugged and said: "Not my problem, just doing my job here man."
Later that day, after my colleague had arrived, we got a delivery of new product for the store. The delivery guy handed me the manifest, asking for a signature. Again I declined, stating that I was just "doing my job" and the manager would have to sign that. After making it clear to him there wasn't a manager on site, he left, taking all of the new product with him, product which we desperately needed. But I was beyond caring at this point. About fifteen minutes later, I got a call from Boss 1, asking me why no-one had signed for the delivery. I told him that, as there was no manager on site, nobody there was allowed to sign that document. After a few choice words, he hung up the phone and I went back to work, chatting with customers and generally not caring about anything.
Half an hour later, Boss 1 and 2 descended onto me. They rushed into the store demanding an explanation for my behavior. I simply replied: "I'm just doing my job sir, just like you asked me to do."
Boss 1: "What the heck do you mean? Then why has nobody accepted today's delivery or the documents we've sent you?!"
Me: "Well, that's the manager's job. I am not a manager."
Boss 2: "Yes you are, what the hell are you talking about?"
Me: "Uh, no, not only would my pay be pretty poor for all the work I am doing, my contract clearly states that I am a sales assistant and as such shall only fulfill duties related to that position."
Boss 2: "And who the heck is supposed to do the managers job if not for you?"
Me: "I don't know, but I would gladly do it, if you doubled my salary of course."
Boss 1: "Hahaha! (actually laughing in my face) Who the heck do you think you are? We can have you replaced with someone cheaper in a heartbeat!"
Me: "Okay then, go ahead, I quit, effective immediately. Bye."
And then I just left. My remaining colleague, upon hearing me quit, also quit immediately, leaving our former bosses wide-eyed with no employees to run their store. I had also taken the liberty of informing the board of health and labor about our working conditions, as well as getting myself legal counseling for some issues related to bonusses not being paid out. The store ended up having to completely shut down for about 2 weeks until they had a skeleton crew back together to run it.
The kicker? About a month after I quit and with my lawsuit for unpaid wages now pending, I got a call from Boss 1, telling me he wanted to accept my offer of doubling my salary to become the store manager. He said none was willing to take the job now that word got around how awful things are in the store. The following conversation ensued:
Me: "Frankly Boss 1(I used his first name here, just to piss him off), I don't much like getting laughed at, so I'm afraid if you want me to come back, you're gonna have to quadruple my initial pay."
Boss 1: "What?! Are you insane?! We can't afford that, how are we supp..-"
Me: "I don't give a hoot Boss 1, I really don't. But I've got an idea! How about you pull your head out of Boss 2s *ss and just do your job?"
We Love A Good Rory Story
From Redditor /u/ TerrificMoose
So I recently started posting to reddit, and I have a lot of stories. This one happened during my first career, when I worked as a scientist in a diagnostic lab. I had been working for about 2 years at this point and had just been promoted to senior scientist.
I had two supervisors in my section, each assigned to oversee half of the tests being done in our small corner of the lab, Rory and Tanya. Tanya was the senior most supervisor of the two, and secondary to my department head she had the most authority over me on any given day. She also hated me. Never did figure out why, but she hated about 3/4 of the people working in the lab so I never took it personally. I just don't think she liked people (the lab tends to attract people like that, funnily enough. We always used to joke about being the rejects stuffed in a hole at the bottom of a hospital to be kept away from the general public). As for Rory, it's important to note that he had a very good reputation in the lab of never lying. He was never once caught in even a half truth, and he'd been working there for over 30 years. He was well liked and well trusted. This will be important later.
One day I was doing one of the more technically challenging tests that our department performs. It's long, fiddly, expensive, and easy to screw up. Only senior scientists are allowed to do it unsupervised, and this was maybe the second time I've done it alone. We are talking two days just to get it set up. It was a nightmare. While I was measuring out some gelatin powder into a beaker, I accidentally elbowed Tanya (our work stations were right on top of each other, this happened at least 4-5 times a day with everyone). I apologized and go back to what I was doing, but she flips out. Like full on rage screaming in my face kind of angry. After a couple of minutes of her angry tangent, she says "Just take off TerrificMoose, no one wants you here!" and then she storms off to her office to cool off.
Rory comes up to me, having seen and heard to whole thing and asks if I'm alright. I say I'm a little shaken, but nothing too bad and get ready to continue my work. But Rory had HEARD the whole thing, and he saw what test I was doing. He Whispers to me "Your supervisor told you to go. Best you do what she says, and if she causes a fuss about it, I'll be sure to tell the boss EXACTLY what she said to you." Now, I knew Rory's reputation, so I knew I'd be safe. I also know that being told to leave early by a supervisor meant that I was still paid out for the rest of the day, provided I had worked at least 4 hours of my shift (The lab was actually pretty generous with time off, even if the pay and working conditions were bad).
So I did exactly what Tanya had said. I took off home.
Now at the stage I was at with that particular test, I had spent about $4000 worth of reagents. Normally batches of 20 samples are run to try and keep the cost down, but it was still an expensive test when you include the nearly 3 days of work from a single scientist. This was one of Tanya's tests, and therefore Rory was not required to ensure it was done. No one in my section was very happy with Tanya, and she had gone off to her office and so couldn't see me leave, so no one went to tell her that the test was left unsupervised. Apparently she didn't come back for over an hour, and by then the test was ruined and had to be started over again. My boss was PISSED. Tanya of course tried to throw me under the bus, saying I had left without informing anyone and that it was all my fault, but good old trustworthy Rory told the boss exactly what Tanya had said. I love Rory. I couldn't be punished for doing exactly what my supervisor had told me to do, so I got away with it completely.
Unfortunately nothing overly terrible happened to Tanya. She got formally reprimanded and had to take an anger management course that the hospital runs, but otherwise she got no real punishment. She never yelled at me again, and was always careful to word things just right around me after that though so that was something. As for what I did on my half day off, I went to the beach to enjoy the sunshine I almost never got to see working in the deep dark dungeon that is the average hospital lab. I made sure to bring in the pictures the next day.
UPDATE: I was teaching a class with Rory today and showed him some of your replies. He's genuinely touched by it all. He does recommend not naming your children after him though, as his name was changed for the story.
Also to all of you saying that 4 grand is too much waste for a lab, in the grand scheme of things $4000 is nothing. Diagnostic labs will waste that daily just through simple errors. The boss was annoyed, but not disproportionately so. It's factored into the budget.
She Can Only Book Over The Phone
From Redditor /u/emmahar:
A few years ago, I went to the doctor's to make an appointment (I had to go to the pharmacy next to it so thought I'd pop in instead of calling).
Receptionist tells me they can't take walk ins (I didn't want an appointment then anyway), and can only take bookings over the phone.
So I stood at reception, got my phone out and called the number for the phone right next to her. I made eye contact with her, the whole time, as she answered the phone, and booked me in.
Enjoy This Sweet Little Video!
From Redditor /u/Pip0708
Over the last several months I have been sick twice. Once I was out of work for 4 days due to an awful bout of food poisoning which may be the worst I have ever felt and, most recently, I was out of work for a day about a month ago due to what I believe was a stomach bug. Upon returning to work I was told by my supervisor that she is going to, "need to see more proof", that I'm actually sick and not just taking time off for the hell of it. Now, I'm sure I'm not the best worker she has ever had, but I pride myself on never missing a day unless I'm in awful shape and I hardly ever take vacation and I feel extremely guilty whenever I am out of the office.
Fast forward to two days ago. Not sure happened, but I went from feeling completely normal to vomiting uncontrollably in a matter of 30 mins. The vomiting (and other fun excrement's) continued for the rest of the night. My first thought was - I'm not going to be able to work tomorrow and how am I going to prove how sick I am again. This is when I thanked god for my trusty new iPhone. I pulled up the camera and turned on the video feature and recorded myself vomiting for about 5 minutes before looking at the camera and saying, "*supervisors name*, I won't be coming in tomorrow - hope this is good enough proof of how crap I feel." Back in work today and she said she no longer needs proof that I'm ill.
For all those saying I should go to the emergency room, you're either still on your parents health care plan or don't live in America.
Big Mistake, Kid
From Redditor /u/Julian-VH:
Last summer I worked as an ice cream vendor on the beach of my hometown. Best job I ever had. People were nice to me, I got to work on my tan, it payed pretty well, but most importantly, we were allowed to eat the delicious ice cream on our breaks.
One day, I'm serving a man and his son. The man orders a cone with two scoops for him and a cone with one scoop for the little one. The kid wasn't happy about that, and said to his dad that he also wanted two scoops. The dad explains that the scoops are pretty big and that one will suffice for him. I confirm this to help the Dad, even offering to make it extra big. Still, the kid doesn't budge, instead he starts throwing a tantrum, nearly crying how he wanted two scoops. The dad, clearly not wanting to ruin his vacation mood, gives up and says to the kid he can have two scoops. "However", he adds, "if you can't finish your ice cream like I said you wouldn't, no more TV for you, for the rest of the vacation!" The kid happily agrees, claiming he could eat a whole tub of ice cream.
Big mistake kid.
Me, being the petty person that I am, wanted to teach this brat a lesson. I proceed by scooping one of the most gigantic scoops I've ever scooped in my entire scooping career. I put it on the cone, the kids eyes widen in shock. My scoop goes back for more, I see the kid tremble in disbelief. I scoop the second most gigantic scoop a scooper could scoop, and graciously add it to the first one. I hand the monstrosity I've created to the kid, who by now realizes he won't watch tv again this summer. The dad seemed pretty cool with it, he even tipped me a little which was very rare. All in all a pretty good day.
OK, So What Do You Want?
From Redditor /u/darkon99
As a freelance designer, getting content from clients was almost always the hardest bit.
One client asked me to design them a flyer for an event they were running. Fine, no problem.
After a few weeks, with the deadline getting closer, I still hadn’t had any info from them, so I put together a design using dummy copy for the date, time and event details and sent it over with the hope they’d just fill in the blanks and send it back. They didn’t.
The afternoon before the mailing was supposed to go out, I got an angry call from them asking why it hadn’t gone to print. I explained it couldn’t go to print because they hadn’t actually given me any information.
“Oh no, we won’t decide all that until the board meeting next week. But that flyer has to go out tomorrow. “
“Are you sure? There’s no information on it”
“Yes, print it. It’s fine as it is. “
“Okay, if you’re really sure!”
“Yes!”
The next day I got a very angry phone call from the client’s boss asking why the flyer sent to thousands of people was full of Lorem Ipsum.
“Well...”
PB = Liquid? Discuss.
From Redditor /u/garaks_tailor
Happened to me about 7 years ago. I travelled for work and they gave us a flat perdiem for food, no receipts required. We also would be at the same location for 1 to 4 weeks. It wasn't a great perdiem but no questions asked. So in order to bring back every penny I would buy groceries and keep them in my hotel fridge. Also kept from becoming 20% Chilibee's Tuesday Roadhouse.
I was traveling back and got to TSA screening and after they scanned my bags the agent informed me that the unopened 7lb heirloom lavender peanut butter and the jelly would have be tossed. This was a lie, it was not going to be thrown away, I could tell by the way her eyes covered it that it would not make it to the trash can. I'm pretty serious about my peanut butter and jelly and it was not the cheap stuff.
So I said could I have it back and give it to someone who was arriving so they could keep it. This was also a lie. She could tell.
After she handed it back and while I was collecting my bags we had a brief discussion on the nature of liquids. I could see she was ready to move on. Then I asked if peanut butter was ok if it was in sandwich form. With a petty glee she said, "of course. Yes. if if the peanut butt....."
I saw defeat wash over face midsentence as I pulled out a nearly full loaf of bread and utensils. I was 3 hours early for my flight and had plenty of time to make my sandwiches
The other TSA officers chuckled and nudged each other as I made my way through security a second time with a bread bag of PB&Js.
Edit just to give some context, because people keep posting ( does kid who reminds teacher about homework voice),"the tsa clearly lists peanut butter as a liquid."
This happened in the days of yor. The TSA was still young, iphone was never going to outsell BlackBerry, unlimited data plans were actually unlimited, you tube was curiosity, and few people outside of the book trades had heard of Amazon. I had an erricson Walkman phone.
I had traveled dozens of time without peanut butter being a problem through some of the nations largest airports without any issues. And here is some podunk airport TSA agent telling me my 7 pounds of hippy made heirloom apple lavender peanut butter after looking at longn a seemingly hand blown jar is not allowed on board. Well what would you think.
TSA Pat Down Two Times
From Redditor /u/kimcheekatie:
This happened about 3 years ago while going through an airport in the U.S.
I walked through the metal detector, something must have beeped and they needed to pat me down. After a thorough pat down, I put my shoes on and started to walk over to grab my bag. A TSA agent stops me and says "you've been randomly selected please step into the body scanner."
I was polite, but said that I really didn't want to get into the body scanner, and asked if there was another way. The agent said that I could get a pat down. I said well I just got a pat down so... They angrily told me to pick an option!
So, I took two steps backwards, to the woman who had patted me down 30 seconds ago and spread em... again. While she was patting me down I asked her if she found anything new. She stared daggers at me but let me go.
They Printed 500 Blank Documents
From Redditor /u/UrPokemon:
My roommate and I attend a university where we are given 250 pages per semester to print as part of our attendance. Well, we hardly used it since we have our own printer, so we went over to the print room and asked them if we could have our ~500 pages. They said that the pages were only for printing and not a quantity of letter paper we were entitled to. So we said okay.
We then went to 2 of the computers in the print room, opened word to a blank document, and printed our pages out. We then walked out with that thick stack of paper without being noticed. There has not been, and there will likely not be any fallout.
Neighbor Insults 'Devalued' Look
From Redditor /u/[deleted]:
I’m not a professional photographer, but I do have decent equipment and portfolio so a lot of friends will hit me up for discounted photo shoots. Most of them pay or at least buy me dinner, but others expect me to do it for free...
I’m close with my ex-boyfriend’s family so I was thrilled when his younger sister asked me to come to her prom pictures earlier this month, until she told me to bring the camera. I did mention to her that I’m doing online school and I have an exam due that week so the pictures might not be ready for another week. She was fine with that.
Within two hours of taking pictures of half a dozen high-school students, I ended up with 300+ shots because everyone wanted the perfect Instagram picture. Whatever, I can go home, study, and slowly work on sorting through the pictures later. They’re not paying me so I wasn’t exactly motivated either.
I get a text from her and her mom that night at around 11pm, they want the pictures edited AND uploaded by the next morning so they could be shown off on social media. I tried to explain that I’m studying but they weren’t having it, they said, “We don’t care how you edit it, just make it look nice.”
Fine.
I spent the next 3+ hours working on the pictures and editing them really nicely that even I was proud of....then I hid Shrek into the background of every single picture. Shrek with his head poking out between the kids, Shrek posing happily, Shrek had a very nice time at prom evidently. I uploaded the pics and sent them off, no one noticed the extra guest for weeks and I got my ear chewed out because my ex’s sister didn’t appreciate her 900 followers on Instagram seeing Shrek grinning between her and her boyfriend.
They asked me to edit however I wanted, so I delivered. Shrek was one of my best clients I’ve ever had.
Oh, Not Enough?
From Redditor /u/ BluntKingonGod
So I mean its not the craziest story but I remember working at Krispy Kreme and we offered these frap type mixed coffee drinks with whipped cream on top. Well one day a lady comes through the drive thru and wanted a large one of those bad boys. So my boy Ryan gets on making this drink. At the drive thru window after she gets her drink, she says there isn't enough whipped cream on her drink, I hand the drink back to Ryan and repeat what the lady said. Confused and kind of irritated cause it was the end of his shift, he slides the current whipped cream off into the sink and puts a fresh coat on top of that. I hand it to the lady and she's like nahhh boi not enough. I pass it back to Ryan and he's like "ight bet extra whipped cream it is" and proceeds to empty the ENTIRE can of whipped cream into the lid of her drink with whipped cream Shattering out the top making a huge pile of whip on the counter. After the can was empty he personally handed her the drink and that was that.
There was really no need to use the whole can and that's what made this moment so beautiful. Still brings a tear of joy to my eye when I think back on it though, the simplicity, the purity, the joy in Ryan's eyes as he followed his dreams.
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