People Go Into Detail About Their Malicious Compliance Revenge
23. I'm Clumsy And Stupid? Guess I Can't Wash Dishes Then
Doing dishes isn’t a great job for a clumsy person anyway.
“A good few years back, I was about 24-25 years old, I went to Cyprus with my grandparents to visit relatives.
My grandparents originally came from there and moved to the UK when they were like… 16. My cousin, 14 female, also came along.
Now it’s important to mention that we’re Greek Cypriots.
Certain things are expected when we visit relatives. Such as helping out with things if we can, and offering our help for whatever our host might be doing. It’s also worth mentioning that I have a sight problem, but I’m extremely independent in spite of it.
So we were visiting relatives and every time I offered to help out, either taking dishes into the kitchen, bringing them out of the kitchen, washing up, even getting a glass of water, I kept being told to sit down, they could handle it.
I didn’t understand why, as I’m perfectly capable. I thought it might be to do with my eyes.
One day we were visiting a great auntie of ours, who owns a little summer home by the sea, not too far from where we were staying.
Now when we visit this auntie, I always go swimming. She’s literally not even a couple of mins away from the sea.
Now as I went to offer my help to my great aunt, I hear my 14-year-old cousin talking to her in Greek.
Another important note, I can’t string together a sentence in Greek. My father is English and had something against us speaking Greek. But although I’m not a fluent speaker, I can read, write and understand Greek.
My family doesn’t know this. They assume that because I’m not a fluent speaker, they can basically hide their conversations between other people.
My cousin was telling my great aunt how clumsy I am.
How stupid I am. How I’m a little… soft in the head. She was saying it in Greek. She thought I couldn’t understand her. But I knew exactly what she was saying, even if I couldn’t string sentences together myself, I knew what she was saying about me.
I added 2 and 2 together and realized my cousin was very obviously telling all my relatives this. She did it because she thought she’d get praised if she helped bring out the food without me.
I was angry, but I knew the perfect revenge.
We ate lunch, and after we were finished eating, my great aunt asked my cousin for her help to take the dishes in and do the washing up, as she’d been on her feet most of the morning, preparing the food.
My cousin looked at me, knowing my great aunt couldn’t speak English and said “Hey OP, auntie needs help taking the plates in and doing the washing up.” Because now, she was bored, and expected to run off to the beach and leave me doing the hard work of cleaning up after.
So I looked at her and said “But I’m too stupid and clumsy, and soft in the head, to help auntie out. Besides, she asked for YOUR help. Not mine.” She went pale, realizing I knew what she’d said.
But she doubled down. “I helped bring everything out. You could help take it all in.” I laughed at her, picked up the book I’d brought with me, and got up from the table.
Grabbed the towel I brought with me, and went to walk off. My cousin started whining to my grandparents that I wasn’t helping her. My grandmother looked at her and said “You made your bed. Now you lie in it.
Your cousin caught you lying about her, and now she can go to the beach, while you help your aunt.” My cousin went completely white then.
So I went to the beach.
I swam for thirty minutes, then chilled out on a deckchair, reading my book under the shade of a nice umbrella. By the time my grandparents called to me that we were heading home, my cousin had spent all of it helping to wash up, dry things, and put them away.
She hadn’t gotten to be lazy and go to the beach, to enjoy the sea.
I could’ve helped her. I simply decided that I wouldn’t, as she never earned my help.
Since then, every time we went to a relative’s home, and she was asked to help, I watched with a smirk on my face. To this day, (I’m 37 this year) I still won’t help her.
She made out I was incapable to people. So now she suffers the consequences. It’s the malicious compliance that keeps on giving to me.”
22. Quit If I Don't Like My Wage? I Resign, Effective Now
“I worked at a small shop serving an electrical apprenticeship. The shop manager and I had had a few run-ins, and I assume he disliked me as much as I disliked him.
I refused to do a job and told him he didn’t pay me enough. It was at the stockyards and I was expected to put on a set of waders, crawl down into a raw fat reclamation tank, and replace a submersible pump.
Wasn’t going to happen.
Another time he wanted me to lie to a customer to make an issue they were having sound like it wasn’t our fault. I refused and told him if he wants to lie about it, he was going to have to drive out to the job site and do it himself.
He told me to keep my mouth shut and did come out.
I think the only reason he didn’t fire me was because I was by far one of the most efficient and versatile employees.
This fact had me questioning how much I was getting out of this apprenticeship and was passively looking around for another shop to apprentice at.
My wage scale was structured and I got regular raises bringing me closer to the journeyman’s level over my time as an apprentice.
So, I had to find someone that would sign up to complete my apprenticeship as well as want to hire me.
One of our better journeymen had gone to another shop and had introduced me to the owners.
We had talked about what it would take to get me to move. Things were progressing but nothing was committed to at that point.
Cue the malicious compliance. It’s my evaluation and raise time.
My manager calls me up to the conference room and explains that due to my performance and the shop being in a slow period, he was not going to give me the 25 cents an hour raise as my contract said but was going to give me a dollar more an hour once I became a journeyman.
We argued and I told him if I can’t trust you for a quarter, why would I believe the dollar?
The argument ended with him telling me if you don’t like it, you can always quit.
Oh really? I picked up the conference room phone on the table in front of us and called the shop I had been talking with. I asked the owner if I brought my tools over today would I have a job?
After a quick and uncomfortable discussion with his partner, he said yes.
I informed my manager I resigned effective now. I loaded my tools up, punched out, and went straight to work that afternoon.”
Another User Comments:
“Bosses messing with confident and competent employees rarely ends well for the boss. Glad you had a backbone and self-respect.” Imbalancedone
21. Insist On Preordering A Regular Item We Always Have? Fine, But There Will Be A Wait
“To preface, I am a career butcher, and at the time was working for the Food Whole. If anyone isn’t familiar, the meat department becomes crazy around November and doesn’t abate until after Christmas.
We took holiday orders in person then, (now, mostly all online, unless they’re ‘odd’). As you might imagine, the orders are usually for: standing rib roasts, tenderloins, hams, turkeys, and ducks/geese.
They really add up, and for my boss, sorting all the paper orders is a nightmare.
Enter Karen: “I would like to place a holiday order.”
Me: (gets relevant info) “cool, what would you like on the 24th?”
K: “1lb. of boneless chicken breast.”
Me: “oh! No problem, you actually don’t need to order that, we’ll have plenty of regular chicken, steaks, and burgers, you only need to place an order for roasts, etc.”
K: “I had to wait forever last year, this year, I don’t want to wait, so I’ll order it.”
Me: “we’ll have two lines, so if you’re just coming to get regular items, you won’t need to wait in the order line.”
K: “But I want to make sure.”
At this point, I was already way done, so I decided I would comply… maliciously. I took her order, then proceeded to inform every single person in my department of the situation, and the plan.
The day of, she came up and told the guy at the counter she wanted chicken breast. Having been warned by me, he asked, “did you preorder it?”
K: “yes.”
Coworker: “ok, let me go search through the sheet to find your order.”
K: “You can just grab it from the case.”
C: “no, we already have yours put away, I’ll find it… I wouldn’t want it to get lost in the cooler, and go bad over Christmas.”
K: frustrated “ok.”
Coworker goes to our order book, searches through, finds her name, and says: “Ok! I found you on the list, now I just have to find your order.”
Coworker enters the cooler, and, as trying to find a pack of chicken breast in a cooler full of roasts is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, it took him about 15 minutes.
At multiple points through the ordeal, other employees greeted her, she tried to get them to get her chicken breast, and they all told her (because I had warned them) that she had to wait for the ones specifically put aside for her.
I estimate that she waited almost 30 minutes (including line time to get to our counter).”
20. Can't Ask Customers To Leave After We've Closed? I Won't, But I'll Make Them WANT To Leave
This is GENIUS.
“This was a hot minute ago…mid-to-late nineties.
I was working evenings slinging coffee at a well-known international coffee chain (you know the one) while I finished my degree.
The coffee chain had just introduced a BRAND NEW blended frozen beverage that made all the baristas’ lives a living heck.
I still can’t drink the crap to this day…but it was pretty popular, especially with younger patrons.
As my location was right next to the only mall in the area, we were inundated by teenagers pretty regularly.
Most were respectful and nice…except this one group of girls. They were there nearly every evening…not tipping, being loud and obnoxious, making and leaving messes everywhere. We all despised them.
When the new blended frozen drinks came out, the group of teenage succubi found a new, improved way to make our lives difficult. They would descend upon our location en masse…even bringing NEW nasty girls with them.
They’d all order the blended frozen drink, but each order would be just a liiiiiiiiittle bit different. This would ensure that we could only make one drink at a time in the ONE BLENDER we had.
The little slogs would even lean over the counter and monitor us to make sure every one of their drinks was EXACTLY made to specification and to ensure we “didn’t screw it up.”
The girls had also picked up the lovely new habit of staying past closing. The rules of the coffee chain (at that time) were that we couldn’t ask anyone to leave after we closed. We could start cleaning duties…even turning some lights off here and there…but we couldn’t be like, “hey, we’re closing…can you take your beverage outside?” Dumb rule, but most people would see us starting to shut down and head for the door.
Not the succubus brigade. Ohhhhh NO. Their “leader” confronted one of my coworkers one night as he swept and mopped near them, roughly 15 minutes past closing. “YOU CAN’T ASK US TO LEAVE.
MY AUNT IS A MANAGER AT (coffee chain), SO I KNOW.” The dude hadn’t even acknowledged them. This wasn’t an everyday occurrence, but believe me when I say we were DOOOOOOONE.
About two or so weeks after they’d confronted my coworker, I was closing. Had one other person with me, and I had volunteered to close the front of the store.
The Mean Girls were camped out in their usual corner. I started wiping down tables. I heard giggling and looked in their direction. They had knocked a piece of coffee cake on the floor.
Crumbs were EVERYWHERE. Not only this, but they were ALL LOOKING AT ME AND SMIRKING and the ringleader shrugged and said “oops!”
I was freaking done.
I finished wiping down the tables while I formulated my plan.
I ducked behind the counter and motioned for my coworker to join me in the back. I told her my plan, grabbed a mop, and moved back behind the counter near the flavored syrups.
I poured a nice amount of raspberry syrup into my mouth and headed back into the general vicinity of the flock.
After a few moments of totally inconspicuous mopping, I lurch toward the girls clutching my abdomen, with a terrified look on my face.
This is quite successful in diverting their attention toward me. Exactly what I want.
After I make a few more puke-like lurches, I spew forth the raspberry syrup all over the floor.
It went EVERYWHERE and looked like I had vomited b***d.
To say that they freaked out would be an understatement. A collective high-pitched screech rose up from the group as they grabbed their purses and scrambled for the door.
Drinks were spilled. One girl tripped and fell. Chairs were knocked over. It surpassed my highest expectations.
It. Was. GLORIOUS.
They were still scrambling around the parking lot and crying as I calmly walked to the door and locked it, with my coworker laughing hysterically in the background.
We started cleaning up the absolute (worthwhile) mess…still falling out…as they silently watched for a few moments before piling into three cars and leaving.
Never heard anything from management.
Never got written up. NEVER saw those girls again. Will forever be remembered as the single greatest event in my retail career.”
19. Demand I Stay Up Front? Good Luck Getting Your Station Covered
“I have this problematic coworker. For the purpose of this story, let’s call her Abby. Before I continue with this story, let me give you some background information.
Abby is about twice my age, but we are at equal levels in our workplace. Apparently, Abby really wants to be a manager, but she isn’t one. However, that doesn’t stop her from acting like one.
I am lucky enough that usually my shifts don’t align with hers. But occasionally they do. Almost always, if Abby and I are on shift together, she is a closer.
That means she will tell me my cutwork (food I have to portion) before I can go. That’s the only ‘authority’ she has over me. Abby has a habit of being rude and bossy.
Again, she really wants to be a manager so she acts like one.
There will be multiple occasions where she will yell at me if the previous shift crew didn’t do something and I will have just clocked in but somehow it’s my fault.
She will yell at me for not doing something when I’m actively doing something else. So if I go do the thing she yelled at me to do, she will yell at me for not doing what I was originally doing.
It would be an endless cycle.
Now, fast forward to about a week ago. I don’t do evening shifts, only mornings. But one of my coworker’s cars wouldn’t start because of the snow, and I wasn’t busy that day, so I offered to take the shift. It was a night shift. Abby happened to be working.
It was the peak of the blizzard so it was slower than I’d ever seen. I was assigned to cashier and Abby was assigned to greet (hostess). Anyway, Abby would keep going to the back to ‘help’ someone else, although he was doing just fine.
Any time I would walk away from the cashier stand for a work-related task she would yell at me telling me that I needed to stay at the front. A customer came in and paid for their pickup order.
If it’s not prepaid, an order remains in a hot box until it gets paid for. I went to go grab the order and Abby yells at me for not being upfront.
I calmly explain to her what I was doing and she was clearly annoyed and yells at me to hurry up. A lot of little instances similar to that. She left me alone up front and expected me to do my job and hers without leaving that station.
Eventually, I’d had enough. And when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn’t pass it up. Cue the malicious compliance.
A customer spilled a to-go water on the front counter.
I began to clean it up. A party comes in to be sat. And that’s when I saw my opportunity. I call back to Abby to let her know that there were people up front.
She tries to tell me to take care of it, but I return to the counter to continue cleaning up the mess before she could finish. She storms up front and seats the party.
When she is done she comes over to me and starts yelling at me for not doing what she told me. I explain that I was staying up front like she said, and I was doing my job.
She told me that cleaning the mess could wait, to which I respond that no it couldn’t because the water was beginning to spill toward the register and cords, which would be bad.
There wasn’t an argument she could make to this and she just storms away. I was satisfied with this income.”
Another User Comments:
“People like Abby sometimes end up as managers because other people don’t complain.
If she’s this obnoxious when she has no power, she’s going to be much worse if she has legitimate authority.
Let your manager know about her behavior. Specifically:
She abandoned her hosting duties and you had to do your job & her job.
She yelled and acted inappropriately in front of guests.
She acts as though she’s the manager and tries to make others comply with her unreasonable demands.
She’s difficult to work with and isn’t a team player.” Mermaidtoo
18. Not Allowed To Work Tuesdays Anymore? Even If You Change Your Mind, The Answer Is No
“I a 32m, work as a repair technician for a retail store that repairs automotive and devices. I do the occasional sales as part of my job, but there has always been a need for someone to do repairs on a daily basis.
I was hired for full-time work, but they begged me not to quit due to the bad company culture. There were a lot of red flags, but I needed a job so I stayed. I ended up taking the majority of the workloads in various areas in the retail store and doing the majority of the device repairs that came in.
Occasionally, I’d work on some trucks, SUVs, or cars that would come in for diagnostics and maintenance repairs. Then help customers pick and choose what they wanted or needed for their automotive and devices.
Open and close the store alone while handling the registers with deposits. It’s a decent job, but there are no benefits, hardly any breaks, and meager pay. So for the past several months, corporate and management haven’t trained anyone to fill in for my position in case something comes up.
Well, I hurt myself on the job when doing inspections and they refused to give or provide me the means to file workers’ compensation. Prior to that, they kept sending me home over safety-related concerns or when the business slowed down for the day.
The issue is that I am medically diagnosed with asthma and trying to breathe is hard when you have an asthma attack. I have medication, but it only does so much.
I guess they are afraid of asthma? So when I inquired about workers’ compensation and explained my situation they began radio silence. No one would provide me with the documentation or allow me to report my injury.
So rolling into the following week they quietly scheduled me off from Tuesday without saying anything. When I discovered what happened I asked why is my schedule so different? “We figured you wanted Tuesday off.
So you’ll no longer be allowed to work on Tuesday ever again.” I replied, “Shouldn’t you have discussed with me about this first?” The manager and corporate replied, “We don’t need to discuss this any further.” I replied, “Well okay then.”
Two months into this issue, I have been getting calls and texts to come in because people have been calling out or not showing up due to illnesses and the bad weather.
“Hi I know this may be an inconvenience, but can you come in this Tuesday? We don’t have a technician available to cover.” I replied, “I’m sorry, but I am not allowed to work on Tuesdays.” A week later I get a call, “I need someone to come in to open this Tuesday, can you open?” I responded, “I am terribly sorry, but you said it yourself along with corporate that I am never allowed to work on Tuesdays again.”
This goes on repeat many times and I give them the same response. And guess what? They lost a lot of sales because turns out I am on the top leaderboard for sales on Tuesday.
I come in a few days later and asked what happened, “It was insane, we had so many people come in for repair orders and no one was able to do repairs.
We lost a lot of revenue and important clients.” I gave them a smug look and smiled, “Well I no longer work on Tuesdays.”
Due to no longer working Tuesdays, I managed to find a new job in my free time that pays me twice as much and gave them my two weeks’ notice on Tuesday of course.
And guess what I am quitting on Tuesday. So now my corporate and manager are rushing to train people to do the work that I do. I am absolutely enjoying this because of the sheer panic as they try to find someone to replace me.”
17. Won't Let Me Wear Scrubs In Healthcare? Got It
“So about 10 years ago, I (35m now) became a CNA (certified nurses aide) and worked at an assisted living. In many of these types of buildings corporate do not want the “nursing home” so they make their nurses and CNAs wear business casual clothes.
The place I was at required us to wear a collared shirt and khakis or black pants. Now I’m a 6’3 male, on the skinnier side, that has been told my legs are so long I look like I’m walking on stilts.
That being said finding khakis isn’t easy and I usually need to custom order them, which can be pricy. Also, I’d like to note that this building had hard carpet everywhere, and I would end up kneeling down to help tie shoes or do other things while helping out my residents and ended up blowing out the knees on my khakis often.
One day management says that we were allowed to wear appropriate yoga pants that were black or khaki colored, with no reason given. This does nothing to help me and my holy khaki situation, and as I was making $12/hour custom ordered pants were very expensive to me.
So I decided I was gonna buy black and khaki scrub pants bc they are cheaper and more durable.
I go on wearing them for about a week without issue when management calls me in and states that the policy is no scrub pants and that I would be written up if I do it again.
I try to explain the financial situation that each pair of khakis were costing me most of a day’s wage and the knees would wear it quickly. They respond with, “Tough crap, no scrubs.”
I then grab the flyer they posted about yoga pants and start to make the case that if women are allowed to wear yoga pants which are much cheaper, I should be able to wear scrubs.
Again they say, “No it’s not the same.”
At this point, I look down and see the wording on the flyer is, “As a thank you for your hard work, Management has decided to allow all Nursing staff to wear appropriate yoga pants if they would like.” No gender noted, just that they must be black/khaki and not low-cut.
Cue the malicious compliance, I go home and tell my partner at the time about this and ask her for a pair of her black yoga pants. Just an FYI she was barely 5’3 and when I tried them on they barely went past my knees, they covered my butt though, so they worked. The next day I walked into work proudly sporting the high water yoga pants with my hairy calves, stilt-like legs, and black “JUICY” lettering on my but.
I made sure to tuck in my shirt so everyone could revel in my glorious bony butt.
1 hr into my shift when management gets there I instantly get called into the office with my boss and HR.
“OP, what are you doing? You are not wearing the correct uniform and we will need to send you home now.”
I grab the flyer and point out that nowhere did they ever say that this was only for women to wear, and they also don’t say anything about length on it.
I then say that they are at the appropriate height, put my hands on my hips, do a 180 to show off, and smile at them looking over my shoulder.
Boss, “That’s not the point, OP, you know what we meant!”
HR, “Actually that is the point… He’s right, you did say the nursing staff could wear these, and they fit the criteria You put in place.”
Boss has a wicked scowl on her face knowing she got beat but then pauses and laughs.
“Ok, Fine wear your scrubs. Just no more yoga pants. I’ve already heard the female residents talking about your “Juicy” butt more than I’d like. Go home and change though.”
For a long time, I got teased by a bunch of 85-year-old women about when I was gonna be showing off my “juicy” butt and legs again, but at least I got to wear scrubs!”
16. Fire Me To Help The Company's Finances? Pay An Extra Salary To Me
“A company that recently fired me was under red numbers. It is a company overseas from my country that, being in South America, meant they have quite an interesting range of professionals with different aptitudes.
Some managers you could tell from a glance that they reached their position through sheer social manipulation rather than being knowledgeable and skillful.
The company exports fruit all over the world.
They messed up since they treated commercial offices like gods that, since they got the funds from clients, they can do no wrong. Right? Right?! Cue the container crisis it is still up to this day.
Because containers get late, fruit arrives rotten, and the company starts bleeding finances. Hard. The CEO, since he notices that their financial areas are too incompetent to understand what is going on and contracts an external company to get help.
Their solution? Start firing people. Our area suffers the most, especially our office. We get fired and mostly disbanded. Since we aren’t an office that directly handles finances, we are laid off first. They must have thought we are useless idiots.
We handle documentary control and due diligence from customers. I was even one of the persons that complained about the commercial office’s complete lack of a plan (they put all their sales on one customer, who, when rejecting the fruit, left them without an option of where to sell).
They fire people from areas they deem useless (like ours) whilst preserving the idiots that got us in this mess to begin with.
Cue malicious firing:
Their first mistake was that we received the news in a meeting.
They must have thought that we were receiving a favor by telling us 2 months in advance through a team meeting. Never got a written letter at all.
Their second mistake was how they demonstrated they cared little for the overall quality of the service offered. Their ingenious plan was to take my role and give it to the department assistant (who is paid half my salary), and suddenly she would do my job and hers without a raise.
My boss then assigned the duty of training her to me, since she could bother to do things herself.
What they should have seen coming was that a person with nothing to lose is not the kind of person you expect to give continuity to your important work.
I never bothered to give complete training to my successor. Nor did I explain the database infrastructure I did for the company (they barely handle excel btw, much less a real working database on a server).
She quit halfway when realizing that she did not have the professional qualification and that she was being exploited.
During those 2 months, I stood mostly quiet. Biding my time. HR noticed 19 days before my last day that they had to calculate my severance pay.
They took me to a meeting and I told them I expected a written email to which I would respond according to my country’s laws. They never bat an eye at what I meant.
Then the crapstorm started. I write back telling them that the law in my country states that all firings must be written and that until then, this was the first written document I have received. The HR supervisor was indignant.
To her, I was nothing short of a leech that had received the company’s goodwill by being told 2 months in advance (where it should have been 1) and that I should have been happy.
I wrote to her that I didn’t care, the law is the law, and they should abide by it. She escalates to the global manager, and they get ridiculed. In my country, we get free legal advice related to worker rights, and she gets shafted the final warning:
Since they didn’t legally give me 30 days in a written notice, they now have to pay the difference, and since we are paid bimonthly, not by hours (it is their way to try to avoid paying extra hours), they have to pay me for the full 2 weeks, not just 11 days.
It is that or lawyer up with the ministry of work.
The extra salary covered more than half the severance pay. I heard the director of the site got so desperate with the budget she had to remove the water machine.
Lol.
The cherry on top is that due to the internal dispute, I had an excuse to avoid the job that was piling up. On the system for the clients, I put all requests to be suspended until the day after I was already gone.
I can only speculate as to how screwed they are with the customers… even until my final hours I had a mountain of work and they never bothered to think that it affects their precious sales.”
15. Don't Want Me To Help You? Fine, It's Your Job On The Line
“A while back when I was still in high school, I worked at the local cinema to earn a bit of pocket money and experience. I stayed for a couple of years, working weekends when school was in session.
I think it was halfway into my second year when the target of this revenge came into the picture. We’ll call him Luke. Luke was a new hire and was just learning the ropes (this was common as turnover was high since we were all students).
He seemed alright at first, and everyone was nice to him since we were all pretty close and knew one another from school and we welcomed him in.
I don’t think even a week passed before the problems started. The first issue I heard of was that Luke was trying to flirt with one of the girls.
Thing was, this girl was already in a relationship with one of the other employees, and everyone knew this, including Luke. That didn’t stop him though, and eventually, the girl told him to his face to cut it out.
It only got worse from there.
Now, I do my best to see the good in people and give them the benefit of the doubt. Despite what the others were saying, I still tried to get along with him.
This unfortunately changed during the first real conversation I had with him. We were on break at the same time, and about five of us crowded into the little break room for lunch.
I forget what exactly we were talking about, but I remember it was an uncomfortable topic, and Luke was using a lot of expletives. The break room was NOT soundproof and there were patrons outside, especially children.
I tried to warn him about using that language so loudly, and that he might get in trouble if a customer heard him. Immediately, his attitude toward me changed, and he responded with something along the lines of “I can say what I want, I have the right to free speech.
Don’t tell me what to do.” …what? Sheesh okay, chill, I was just concerned but you do you.
A few minutes later, the convo had switched to high school, and Luke was raving about how Caucasians were the majority in all the high schools in our district.
Now for my high school, this isn’t true, as most of the community and students attending were Latino and made up about 70% of our student body. I told him as much:
Me: “That’s not the case for (high school).”
Luke: “Uh, yeah it is? White’s the majority everywhere. I have a friend that goes there.”
Me: “…I actually go there, it’s mostly- “
Luke: “why are you talking?”
Me: “…excuse me?”
Luke: “who invited you to this conversation? I wasn’t talking to you. Who asked?”
Now, this irritated me. I know it’s a joke about looking for “who asked,” but this was before that became a thing, and I found it extremely rude.
But, in a moment of clarity, the best comeback came to mind, like arguing in the shower by yourself, and to this day I could only wish to be able to recreate the moment.
Smiling, I threw his words right back in his face: “free speech.”
The others at the table were laughing as I threw away the rest of my lunch and left the break room.
My heart was beating too fast from the weird adrenaline rush I got, and I spent the rest of my break in the back of concessions until it was time to clock back in.
I think that convo was what sparked Luke’s hatred of me. Ever since then, he would glare at me whenever I walked by, would dump the trash from his bin when we were sweeping the floors for me to pick up, and generally was a jerk.
His behavior kept getting worse: he would threaten to fight people (he was a short potato of a boy so no one was really scared), argue, say rude, passive-aggressive, or downright racist things, and was just generally a jerk.
At some point, during a shift I wasn’t there, he cornered the girl he had been eyeing and kept verbally harassing her to the point that she hid in the manager’s office where he couldn’t get to her.
She was a sweet and loyal girl and a friend, and she and her partner could be described with the phrase “puppy love” and had been together for a long time.
The partner was angry when she texted the group chat about what had happened, and wanted to get Luke fired. However, people were hesitant about this, saying that managers wouldn’t want to because he’d claim discrimination (he was trans) and that he hadn’t done anything blatantly wrong.
Then another one of the employees made a suggestion: Luke was incompetent, we all knew this. Why not make the managers see it too?
Revenge time.
It wasn’t hard to do, since Luke would tend to shoot himself in the foot.
When possible, we’d point him out to managers when reviewing the cameras in the halls about him dumping his trash can when sweeping onto the ground in front of patrons.
When he was cursing up a storm during break, a text would be sent and someone would lead a manager to him to be caught. He rarely cleaned up, was rude and loud, and the incident with the girl didn’t help his case.
It still wasn’t enough, and week after week his name was on the schedule.
Then my opportunity came.
See at the cinema, there’s a position called ‘Point’, aka the ticket taker that lets you into the theater area.
It’s the second most dreaded position (the first being self-serve cleanup) as you have to stand in place and interact with customers at a rapid-fire pace, smiling and listening for theaters to be called at the same time.
When the night ends, the last person on Point has to close and clean the self-serve stations. Today, to my initial dread, Luke and I were both on point.
The entire time, Luke would leave his station and pace the lobby.
Toward me, then back, not even sweeping the ground as he went. He wasn’t supposed to leave Point and had to walk around customers to get back to his podium to help them.
He was told off by a manager once or twice for this, but he continued his antics anyway. Then, as things slowed down, one of the managers approached me and told me we were going down to one Point (one person at the center rather than at both entrances) and that I’d have to explain to Luke how to close Point before I went back to help clean concessions.
It had to be this way since I had already taken the sanitation test and Luke had yet to do so and therefore wasn’t allowed behind concessions.
When I finished closing my point, I walked over to Luke and told him to move his podium to the center so he could take closing Point.
He did, though scowling at me. When he was set, I began to explain.
Me: “So you’ll be closing point tonight after the last movie starts. You’ll need to go to th-“
Luke: “Go away.”
Me: “What?”
Luke: “I don’t need your help, so don’t talk to me.”
Me: “but I need to teach you how to close point-“
Luke: “I don’t care, shut up.”
Me: “I know you don’t like me, but this is work. You need to-“
Luke; “No, I don’t want your help. Shut the heck up.”
Me: “But-“
Luke: “Screw off, don’t talk to me.”
At this point, I was beyond upset. I was furious. I was trying to help, even after how he had acted, how he treated everyone here! I didn’t care what he said in the break room, but it shouldn’t affect work.
This was ridiculous!
I must have snapped or something, because I complied, walking away, saying: “fine, I don’t care. Don’t ever talk to me again.”
Luke: “Hey I said-!”
Me: (waving a hand over my shoulder) “don’t talk to me ever again.”
I went behind concessions to help, where he couldn’t reach me. I don’t know when, but I started crying out of frustration, and one of my friends came and hugged me, bringing me to a corner to cool down.
I don’t get angry often, and when I do, it makes me scared. I was just sick of his antics, sick of the way he spoke to me, just sick of his attitude.
I’m not sure how long I sat back there, but soon enough that same friend came and waved me to the front of the concessions. I wiped my face and walked out, and he pointed to Point.
There was Luke, being instructed by the manager on how to close point, and the manager did not look happy with him. Arms folded, frowning, flat tone, everything spoke of irritation.
My friend said they’d already explained that Luke refused my help when the manager asked them what was going on, as Point can be seen and heard from almost the entire lobby.
Seeing the scene lifted my spirits a bit and I was able to end the night relatively easily.
The next weekend when the schedule came out, I didn’t even have to check my email.
It was posted in the group text, specifically the section with Luke’s name. It was blacked out. If he had quit, his name would have been removed, but the fact it was blacked out meant it was a sudden event.
Luke had been fired.
I’m not sure what it was that they fired him for anymore, but considering we were always low on staff and they had to worry about discrimination, I’m guessing there were enough complaints that they had to fire him.
I’d like to think that the last interaction I had with him was the final nail in the coffin, but I was just glad to see him go more than anything.
I heard he worked at a common fast food place for a while but ended up getting mcfired from there too.
Good luck in life Luke. You weren’t missed.”
14. Cancel Your Service? If You Say So
They always come crawling back.
“I work in roadside assistance as a 3rd party for a lot of insurance companies. Like most customer service jobs we get a heck of a lot of mistreatment.
But most of it comes from long wait times and/or not being fully covered. This happens often but I very rarely am in the position where I get to see the fallout.
Recently I had a woman call in. She was completely pleasant but in a huge rush so she was a little snippy. No worries, I get it. But then it comes to letting her know that she is not covered for assistance and she has a huge out-of-pocket expense.
She whines about the fact that he knows she has roadside. Then that she supposedly set up the service earlier so not only am I trying to charge her but it’s taking too long, and therefore, the price should be waived. Finally, she gives up and tells me I’m useless and says “Just cancel it” and hangs up.
Being the good rep that I am, I call her back to confirm the disconnect was intentional. She picks up then hangs up immediately then sends me to voicemail on follow-up calls.
So as instructed, I canceled the job request. I should note intake doesn’t take long but it’s annoying to go over and if the customer doesn’t know their exact location like being on a freeway it can take some time.
A few hours later, I get a new call from an angry customer wondering where her service is at.
I apologize for the frustration, ask for her reference number, and inform her that unfortunately there isn’t any service in the system.
She starts going off. I do my best to calm her down and extract the needed information.
Halfway through the call, I realize it’s the same angry pants woman as before.
When we start going over the location I remember the drop-off location and she gets excited and says oh, “you found my service? Is the driver on the way? It’s ridiculous that it’s taking this long, you should get this prioritized or expedited.”
To which I reply in my nicest CSR voice, “No Ma’am, your service isn’t in the system. I remember when we spoke earlier. As you requested I canceled the job at that time so it is only getting opened now and the amount will be X.”
Her – that’s more than it was earlier.
Me – yes the pricing changes throughout the day to continuously match the market, stay competitive, and incentive drivers to continue taking jobs at unpopular times.
Her – silent
Me – also we have longer etas at this time so you will want to get this payment taken care of ASAP so we can find a service provider to avoid a longer wait.
I can send a text message to you to complete the payment.
Her – Stutters… But I never told you to cancel it before.
Me – (starting to lose patience) Ma’am our calls are recorded, I notate obsessively, and I called you back multiple times trying to confirm.
Her – I want to speak to your supervisor… (Ranting to make me scared)
Me – No problem, one moment… It looks like there is currently a 20-minute wait for a supervisor I’m happy to wait with you.
Her – fine then. Get my service started.
Me – certainly I’ll send the text for payment…
She finally broke down and paid it and gave up waiting for a supervisor.
She swore up and down that she was going to report me. Either way, I felt vindicated with my tiny bit of malicious compliance.”
13. Triple The Travel Cost Since Corporate Has A Discount? Sounds Good To Me!
“I was supposed to go on assignment in Toronto for about a month and a half, so I find myself a nice studio apartment right across the street from the office (this was quite a while ago, way before Airbnb).
I submit my options to the travel department and they deny it, saying I should get a hotel instead (at one of X, Y, Z chains).
So I look up hotels and find one that was a couple of subway stations away, but even with our discount code, it was double the amount.
I go back to the travel dept and explain that not only is it (much) more expensive, but it’d also incur additional costs. Not to mention it’d be more comfortable to live somewhere with a small kitchen and a washing machine for a month and a half.
Their reply was “Well, getting that apartment would mess up our metrics: we have volume discounts with several hotel chains, and we know you’ll be traveling for about 40% of your time, so we can exactly forecast your travel cost.”
At the end of my trip, my expenses were tripled compared to what I’d have spent on that apartment since I wouldn’t have needed subway rides (we also couldn’t get a pass, had to expense individual tickets!), would have used a couple of detergent bottles instead of the extremely expensive hotel cleaning service, and would cook breakfast/dinners instead of going to restaurants (at that time, we didn’t have a daily allowance, we’d expense everything instead).
You can imagine I was going to the nicer restaurants (didn’t have a hard limit, plus you could flag one dinner a week as a “client dinner”), and would have all my laundry/dry cleaning done a day before I left, so I had a full clean bag of clothes when I got home, plus on days I walked to work I’d still grab a used subway ticket from a colleague so I’d have two for each day (I got sets of 10 tickets, so I’d exchange unused ones and my colleagues would commute for free some days).
The policy also allowed 20 minutes of calls home from the hotel (I was based in Europe) – and you know how expensive roaming charges are, plus the hotel’s premium – I could’ve used Skype, but hey, it’s in the policy!
This was all on the company card, so I wouldn’t keep any change at the end of it (as I might have with an allowance), but I did profit to the max.
And since most of my trips were a week-long, there was a huge difference in cost – so it got flagged at the end-of-year audit and the finance dept started asking questions.
And since my department was very mobile in general, they found other stupid wasteful (and annoying!) policies (e.g. “car rentals are forbidden if there’s a public transportation option” – so I had to have two $150 taxi rides from the airport to the client’s town and back, instead of renting a car for the week, at about $80).
Lots of policies were changed following this and.. I was getting my travel-related replies from someone new in that department afterward.”
12. Keep Your Cat If I Think I Know What's Best For Him More Than You Do? I Will
“A little over 6 years ago, my husband was at the grocery store, and right outside the door, he found this skin and bones dirty fluffball.
He had a paw that seemed to have been crushed at some point. Well, he brought him home. We got him cleaned up and fed him. He was just a kitten but devoured two full cans of cat food.
Clearly very hungry.
Well, we did the right thing. We took a picture of him and posted him on social media asking if he belonged to anyone, and said we were happy to keep him if he didn’t have a home.
Someone claimed him so we returned him.
The next day, another person found him. She also posted. The same person claimed him. New person asked if she could pick him up because her husband was out with the car.
She said she couldn’t and told the rescuer to just “put him outside and he’ll find his way home.” The rescuer lived about 2 miles away from her. It was freezing outside, with snow on the ground.
The rescuer said she wasn’t comfortable with that.
Some people who had seen our post and the new post started politely suggesting that it would be safer to keep him inside.
His owner lived next to a busy street across from the grocery store where my husband originally found him. She started getting angry and defensive, saying it was impossible to keep him inside, blah blah blah.
His crushed paw was brought up and she said he was just fine. Then she said, “if you all think you know better than me what’s best for my cat, just keep him!”
K. Second rescuer messaged us (she had since found our previous post) and said she couldn’t keep him because she already had enough pets and asked if we still wanted him.
We said, “absolutely!” My husband went and picked him up.
The original owner really lost her crap then. She started messaging us saying she was calling the cops and we stole her cat.
I replied with a screenshot of her comment saying to keep him.
We took him to the vet. The vet estimated that he was about 8 months old. He said the paw didn’t seem to be causing him any pain so an x-ray wasn’t necessary unless that changed. Neutered him, gave him his shots, flea meds, ear mite meds, and wormer (for our two resident cats as well cuz fleas, ear mites, and worms are very contagious).
Resident cats (Connor and Murphy) hissed at the new kitty (we named him Mickey) for about 2 days. Then they were all friends.
As I mentioned earlier, it has been 6 years.
Mickey has never once tried to get out. He is partial to my husband but will cuddle with the rest of us if my husband isn’t home. Guess he remembers who saved him.
As for the original owner calling the cops? If she did, they told her to kick rocks. They never showed up. I saved that screenshot, though. All 3 of our boys are very happy and healthy indoor cats.”
11. Complain About Me Arriving Late? I'll Get There Early And Take Your Parking Spot
Gotta love a little pettiness!
“My commute to work got progressively longer and unpredictable over the past year due to 4 bridge closures occurring within months or weeks of each other.
No date has been given for their reopening, so for the time being, short of heading off for work an hour or two ahead of time, you risk arriving a minute to 5 minutes late once or twice a week.
Everyone has been impacted by the traffic in one way or another, which I mention because there was no way someone could feign ignorance. One coworker, though, didn’t care about legitimate reasons for my being slightly late for work every now and then and complained so adamantly behind my back about it that my immediate supervisor reluctantly wrote me up.
I knew it had to be that one coworker because they would get noticeably irritated whenever traffic conditions were brought up. They would leave the room, loudly interrupt with unimportant questions or comments, or roll their eyes.
They’re also known for complaining about every little thing, at one point having played a big role in not having a seasonal employee rehired the following year.
Despite that coworker, I love my job.
So I started leaving for work an hour and a half earlier than before. My arrival time is now anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes before my shift starts.
And that’s when I noticed the annoying coworker always arrives about 10 minutes early and always has a very convenient street parking space available.
I used to park on a different side of our building before traffic got bad and had never noticed that they’d unofficially claimed that public parking spot as theirs.
Most of the time, I’m at work early enough to get my pick of any spot in our always-crowded employee parking lot, but no parking spot other than theirs makes up for my having to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.
That coworker can’t complain about me being late now. They know better than anyone that I’m at work way before I have to. I’ve mentioned my arrival time to other coworkers with them in earshot, so they know I’m parking there out of spite.
I’ve also gone as far as parking right in the middle of a space large enough to accommodate their car and mine.
I have no idea if they’ve complained to our supervisor about it or not, but I really want them to have been stupid enough to complain about me taking their public parking spot away.”
10. The Door Is For Members Only? Well, We Aren't Members
“So, a while back, I worked for a country club and occasionally we would have a tournament/game where people would come play a few holes at night. We also had other activities as well.
Not only was it fun, but due to the abnormal hours, the tips were usually above average so I tried to work these events when they came up. Another plus side was if you worked this party, you automatically got to come in later and were not scheduled for the morning shift.
This time when the tournament/party rolls around, we have some renovations going on. Due to this party being outside, we have to carry the things we need… outside. However, no one thought of this, and the double bay doors we normally use were no longer available.
They put pallets of concrete and old tile in front of them (was not a fire escape door so no biggie I guess?)
Due to this, now we had to carry whatever we needed down the hall, use the elevator, and then go down a makeshift ramp that led to the basement so we could go out the golf cart bay doors.
This not only disrupted the kitchen staff but also disrupted the cart jockeys. If we were almost at the end of a tunnel leading outside a cart jockey was trying to bring in a cart he had to wait and vice versa for us and the same thing went when we used the kitchen elevator and walkway.
We started getting ready for the party around 6:00. We would take the needed items over to the shelter and store them there until it was closer to the start time.
It took a lot of time due to the complexity of carrying/rolling huge tables around the entire country club, especially the elevator. Some of our tables were so big we had to shove the light fixtures up a little bit to get them to fit.
Around 9:00 we were getting the last of the supplies when my co-worker Steve has the bright idea, hey it’s been dark for about 45 minutes, let’s go out the front door and since it is on the same level as our storage we have no elevator or small hallways to worry about!!
Well, we take one load out, load it in the cart, take the second load out load it in the cart, no problem. Right as we were loading the 3rd and final load, our banquet/planning captain comes rushing over.
NO NO NO NO NO NOOOO, that door is for members only! You cannot use it to load that stuff. “Sorry, we figured that since no one had been golfing in the past hour that it was fine.”
“Well, it is not okay, and if I see anyone use this door for anything else, you will face disciplinary actions. You cannot use this door unless you are a member.”
Well crap. We both proceeded to take the rest of the load out the more difficult way and then carry it all the way around back to where our cart was waiting with the other 2 loads.
We drive off from the event and start getting set up as it will begin soon.
What we discovered, later on, is that no one told the last cart jockey that none of us had a key to 1 unlock the door or 2 to lock it when we leave.
So naturally, we tried all the usual doors we can enter in, even the one from the break room for smokers to use – nada.
Steven says hold on; I’ll be back, runs to the front, and lo and behold, one of the doors to the front was unlocked. Too bad it is for members only and none of us are members.
The 5 of us decide it’s worth the extra time to be petty, so Steven calls the banquet coordinator (our boss) and lets her know. After much discussion, she realizes we can’t leave it at the shelter as it will most likely ruin our chairs and some of the wooden tables as well as the decorations we have and she has to come in.
By the time that we are finished, it is almost 4:30, it was a lot faster with no kitchen personnel or cart jockeys but still took a while, especially with the added time it took her to get there.
Well, guess who showed up at 4:30… our general manager. He used the front door that we found was unlocked. He saw our boss and asked why she was here so early, to which she replied we were locked out so she had to come let us in.
Then he asked her why we didn’t just use the front doors since they were wide enough and unlockable from the inside (unlike the cart doors).
This brought a heck storm of rage upon the 5 of us.
She came speed walking in her heels looking like she wanted to turn us to stone like Medusa.
“5 of yall and none of y’all tried the freaking front door? Really??
Why the heck did no one check the b****y front doors before calling me?”
At this point, I was like ah, crap.
Outta nowhere, here comes Steven with “You said we couldn’t use that door or we would face disciplinary actions.”
If looks could kill, Steven would be dead. She glared at him, then her eyes glazed over, she turned around and went to go get ready for her shift.
There was never another word about it but we all laughed about it for a few weeks.
By the next time we had an event outside, the construction/restorations were complete so we just used our normal doors to go out.”
9. I'm Unsuitable For A Higher-Level Role? I'll Stop Doing All The Extra Work I'm Doing Since I'm "Not Capable"
“I’m in Australia. I’m currently a 32-year-old male and this occurred this year.
I used to do admin work in Defence and during that time I got rather qualified and experienced. Specifically in people management and training people. I then left the uniform for various reasons including depression caused by my time there.
I got a new job and intentionally got a position way below my capabilities so I could focus on my mental health while still working. It was a hotline for a government assistance programme.
This position was good for about 4 years. Over that time I started using some of my skills more and built up my confidence again. I also was acting in higher positions almost the entire time.
Initiating incident: So fairly recently, there was a permanent spot in a higher position available. By this time I was the longest-serving person remaining in the team and I was the most qualified. I knew they planned on getting the incumbent to do 2 roles, both of which I knew thoroughly.
Went through the interview process, answered all the questions, explained how I could do the role immediately without training, etc. Had to wait a few weeks to find out the result since it’s still government and they don’t do these things super fast.
Then I got told that I was found not suitable. I was floored. I asked for an explanation and all I was told was “it was a very competitive round.” When I asked what I could have done to be more competitive I got the same answer.
To make things worse they asked me to train the guy who got the role. Immediately I brought up the duty statement which had the list of tasks for my role (remember it’s super easy, basically just answering the phone and replying to emails).
I also got out the public service level expectations and highlighted the appropriate bits for my level.
Cue malicious compliance. Since I wasn’t suitable to work at higher levels, I immediately stopped all work that wasn’t at my level or in my job description.
To say this put a dent into the extra work I was doing would be an understatement. I used to help out management with sorting out interpersonal disputes, I used to run a bunch of reports to find and sort out work that was missed, and I used to help the other teams do their work.
So at this point, my days became super easy. I would do about 10% of what I used to as that 10% was my actual job.
The training I was doing was directing the guy to the procedures and if he had questions directing him to ask a supervisor.
It was about a week of this before management noticed the training wasn’t very in-depth. One by one they asked me what was going on. Our structure had 6 supervisors at the time.
Each and every time I said the same thing. “Unfortunately I was found unsuitable for the role so I can’t teach someone how to do it.”
To say they were livid would also be an understatement.
But they tried to stay professional.
They then started questioning why I stopped doing all the extra work that I had been doing for years. I directed their attention to my duty statement and asked where it lists that work.
They said the extra duties as directed. I then asked how that aligns with the level of expectations (which are surprisingly clear and helpful). At this point most stopped trying.
During all this sudden free time I had I started to search for a new job. It only took 2 weeks to go for interviews, be found suitable and get a new job.
Apparently, I’m incredibly competitive at this level. Who knew?
The fallout: The new job is significantly easier, at the level I was “unsuitable” for and gives me much more pay than they were offering.
Additionally, I have kept in touch with some people there, the management is floundering as interpersonal problems are cropping up, the team can’t keep up with the workload and at least 3 more people have gotten new jobs with at least 2 looking for other employment, leaving 1 person left in the hotline team that will know what they’re doing.
It’s a shame really because I liked that programme and probably would have stayed for a long time.”
8. Just Fire You? Your Wish Is My Command
“My family runs a small trucking company. Depending on where you are in the world, you might call us a P&D company, a Final Mile company, a White Glove company… basically, we handle the kind of stuff that you might buy to have delivered to your home or business, that’s too big for someone like UPS to deliver, but not big enough for a tractor-trailer to haul, and/or stuff that actually needs to be brought into the home and set up, like furniture, appliances, etc.
A lot of what we’ve hauled over the years is stuff going to small stores that can’t take delivery by a large truck, construction sites where large trucks can’t get in and out, neighborhoods, and apartment complexes… we don’t work for the people buying the stuff, we work for the people selling or shipping it, but as we tend to see the same business owners a lot, we’ve developed great relationships with them over the years.
We don’t get rich, but we’ve been pretty comfortable over the years. Our one major stressor has been a long-time shipper who has – or rather, had – become increasingly demanding as time went on.
Now when I say ‘long-time’ I mean it. We made our first delivery for them over fifty years ago. Our company has been doing business with them longer than any of their current employees or management staff have been there.
There was one point, not too long ago, where the retired guy who came in a few hours a day to sweep our warehouse because he was bored sitting home, literally knew more about this shipper’s systems than their senior field rep who was supposed to be ‘supervising’ our operations.
We have been a small, but vital part of their network, for so long that almost no one there really realized how much we did for them.
We’ve seen field reps come and go.
Some have been great, some have been a little challenging, but most have – once they realized what was going on – largely left us alone to do our jobs. One even called when he took over our area to ask who we were because his predecessor had no notes on us at all because they’d never had to visit.
We’ve just been (mostly) quietly plugging along, taking care of their customers, in some cases for generations.
Well… the latest rep… was a genuinely unpleasant person. He was arrogant, abrasive, and casually insulted our employees… honestly, it’s not worth getting into the minutiae here.
He wasn’t someone we wanted to work with. But I’m able to put on a happy face and get along with about anyone when needs must, so onward we strode.
As I said earlier, the shipper had been getting more and more demanding as time went on. Systems had been getting harder to navigate, inventory had been getting harder to track, phone trees had grown into Banyan nightmares, more and more layers of bureaucracy had been added, and with every change, they’d grown less agile, slower, and more difficult to deal with.
One day the field rep called because he didn’t like how we’d answered an email. Not that we hadn’t answered it, just that he didn’t like the manner in which it had been answered. After decades of dealing with this shipper, being micromanaged to that level was not something that we were interested in.
The manager here who was dealing directly with him tried to defuse the situation, but it kept getting worse until the field rep said, “If you aren’t happy with the way things are going, maybe you should just quit.”
Oh.
Ok then.
We started running the numbers, looked at all our other business, and decided that we could, indeed, go on without them, and then I called the field rep to have a frank conversation with him.
And then I wrote a short, polite, direct letter to our customer of over fifty years telling them that we were firing them.
We didn’t just pull the plug.
We gave them a full 60 days’ notice, so they’d have time to get something worked out.
And… they didn’t.
We’ve always been here for them. They’ve never had to worry about it.
They had someone they thought was going to be a replacement, but… well… as of today most of their customers in this area haven’t had deliveries in a week.
Some, longer than that. Many don’t know when they’ll get their next shipment. That field rep might still have a job when all is said and done… but it’s not our problem anymore.
Our phone keeps ringing, people looking for their freight from that shipper. “Sorry, you’ll have to call them…””
Another User Comments:
“I really, really hope your letter to the customer noted that you were declining to do business with them any further because Field Rep directed you to quit.
Otherwise, that customer may blame you and not Field Rep, who deserves the heat.” maydayvoter11
Reply:
“During the Closeout period, before New Agent took over, there was a conference call between us, Field Rep, and the Sales Rep for our area to discuss some big orders that needed to be handled.
Things blew up on that call, and Sales Rep ended up reporting Field Rep to Corporate.
They know.” Wildcatb
7. Need To See My Father In Person? He's Deceased, But I'll Find A Way
“My father died 20 years ago and left me a tiny cabin house.
He loved that place, built it himself, and tended to it religiously. After he died, I couldn’t find it in my heart to visit, because every rock on the wall, every flower reminded me of him.
My mother never cared for it even when my dad was alive, so within a few months I realized that it would be a while before either of us would be ready to spend time there again.
As such, we called up the electricity, telephone, and water companies to shut off services to the cabin until further notice.
While other companies complied without an issue, the water company decided this request could be made only by the person whose name was on the bill.
Mind you, their fee (due to zoning and a well on our property) was less than €2/month. Repeatedly faxing the death certificates as well as next-of-kin transfer of the title got us nowhere.
Dozens of calls per month, several emails, in-person applications, smoke signals, interpretive dances, telepathy, etc. nothing made any difference.
Both my mother and I were entirely flabbergasted, so we asked around and found out that indeed the process is unsolvable and, albeit not technically legal, people stopped paying those fees and the water would get shut off anyway as a result.
Getting any lawyers involved would not be worth the bucks, so we did just that, discontinued the connected bank account, and never gave it another thought.
2 weeks ago while at my family house, I got a call from the water company.
They were closing inactive accounts at the 20-year mark, and my father’s cabin was up. They did however tell me that 1) there was a pending sum of €11.93 to be paid for the account to be closed, and 2) the account owner themselves had to make the application to close the account.
Once again I mention the whole “you know, he’s dead?” spiel and was passed over to a supervisor, but in a reminiscing demonstration of absolute absent-mindedness/stupidity, the response I got was “unfortunately they have to show up in person, as we need a paper copy for accounts older than X years, otherwise we can’t proceed”.
Now. I don’t know how widely common this is, but in my country, you “rent” the burial site/grave in 3-5 year increments. My father’s grave’s 20 years were up in August and my mother decided it was time to unearth his bones and surrender the site.
As such, we had just been delivered a very respectful package with my father’s remains, cleaned and curated, only that week. Everyone that has ever gone through this process would recognize that box for what it was.
And what it was, was great timing.
2 days later, I went to the water company’s local office. I wore my most purple, silky, goth outfit, dark make-up, and “oh-so-heathen” jewelry, and carried a large bag with me.
I asked to speak to the same supervisor, who luckily for me was in an open-space area with their team’s director and quite a few more desks. After confirming with her why I was there, she started telling me the whole “he needs to be here in person” thing again, but I interrupted her and told her “I know what you will say, so I brought him with me so he can tell you himself”.
I plopped an Ouija board and the box with my father’s remains on the desk, and loudly shushed the area. Heads turned, her director looked up with a “what the crap” expression, and the supervisor herself was frozen and wide-eyed. I placed my hands on the Ouija board and just as loudly started asking my father’s spirit to communicate with me, show me a sign he was there with us, and reach out to me from the grave.
Everyone was silent, people walking by the door stopped and stared, I threw a few “Papa can you hear me?” in there as well, for dramatic effect. In comedic timing that happens only once in a lifetime, I think a pen?/something small fell down from someone’s desk behind me, which against the silence was quite startling.
Excitedly I moved my hand to YES and proclaimed I needed his help in the form of his signature from the beyond, in order to close this account.
Finally, the director snapped out of it and came over with an “alright I can help you over here, I think this is enough” but heck no it wasn’t.
I started gathering my things as I laid into him, how asking to speak in person with an indisputably dead man of over 20 years was beyond stupid and if I had to put up with their idiocy, they had to put up with the process required to get ahold of him.
I also mentioned that denying someone’s legal title claim was lawsuit-worthy, so he immediately changed his tune so that I could of course close the account. He tried to bring up the fee but I cut him off with a “don’t even think about it” and walked out.
It’s still early but so far, there has been radio silence. My mother thanked me for handling it, but when I suggested she should write to someone higher up about this, she just said “meh, not worth it, it’s over now”.
What a missed opportunity for a “water under the bridge” comment.”
6. Won't Allow Us To Remove Penalties Against Our Franchisees? Watch Them Drop Their Partnership
“I am currently a QC Analyst at a logistics company (apart from being a business analyst, I hold two roles.
We penalize our couriers, dispatching office clerks/staff, and our franchisees (who assist with last-mile deliveries) who do not follow the company’s delivery processes.
Internally we do have a lot of processes to ensure the handover of the goods is either on time and/or is recorded so nothing goes missing – or at least we know who last worked on said parcel.
I am tasked to oversee the franchisees. Notably, our penalty system is not perfect yet as it was just rolled out within the last 60 days, and lots of optimization is required still.
The penalty system for the franchisees is separated from the internal workers’, so our rules, and guidelines are different. While I am a business analyst for the franchisee program, I am not a person who worked on the penalty system – the person who worked on it had a lot of things missed out when they worked on the logic.
I don’t blame them as they were pressured to roll it out ASAP.
Moving on. What was missed out was that we (internally) operate 365 days a year while our franchisees have the option to have 1 day off per week.
The current penalty’s arrangement is that given the outlet did not perform a delivery attempt on D1 D2 D3 (so on and so forth, but except D0), they would be penalized. $1 per parcel, per day.
So now you get the gist – even on their day off, they would be penalized as the system has no way to pair the logic where if day off = do not penalize.
No biggie, we already had something planned out – which is by deleting these penalties. My colleague and I (only two of us hold both Biz and QC Analyst roles concurrently) have been removing these penalties.
One fine day in mid-December, a data analyst from higher up pulled the data and saw that we’d been removing the penalties. He walked over and screwed us, saying that we’ve already gotten the penalty system up and running, the system has generated the penalties, why are we removing it?
And as per his words, “You place a penalty, then you take it away. What for you have penalties then?”
We reasoned with the abovementioned conditions, but he didn’t accept any of them.
Livid, he walked off and demanded another department revoke our access to the penalty system. (we still do but we acted as if we don’t and we’re not deleting ANY penalties, and as per his words, why should we remove any?)
We allowed the penalties to run without deleting any part of it and sure enough, by the end of the month, the penalties were finalized automatically and charged to the franchisees’ accounts.
Chaos ensued, every franchisee came demanding and we just sat aside munching on popcorn, for every inquiry from the franchisee asking about it, we would forward the inquiry to our other colleague who deals with contractual matters.
To date, many of these complaints are still unresolved and they’re now quitting the partnership.”
5. Claim The Client Knows? Okay, Then I'll Copy Them In The Email
“I work for a vendor as a process trainer lead who has direct contact with our client (we’ll call him Howard).
Everything I cascade to our resources comes from Howard’s approval. This will come in handy later.
I work with the leader of this campaign (we’ll call her Pam).
Pam has a habit of asking me to do tasks here and there claiming that the client wanted certain stuff done when everyone in the project knows that she does all this to compete with the other sites who are also on the project.
I had caught her several times lying on these requests, oftentimes from her direct reports who I ask about these client-requested outputs. She would often say that these were requested in the meetings, but these turn out to just be items she wants to get done herself so she could take credit.
Recently, Pam mentioned that the client was asking her to come up with templated emails that we can send to our end users to “lessen” incoming calls as these are proactive messages to give them a heads-up about the status of their tickets with us so they won’t have to call.
Before this, she had asked me to take over the task of coming up with the templates as business emails are not exactly her thing. Take note that everything that our employees send to our users comes from me with approval from Howard.
Pam had claimed that Howard already does this with one of our sites, so I was under the impression he knows about this new request. Prior to this, I had asked her what they had discussed in the meeting where she was claiming the client requested this from her, and she kept on saying that the client requested the templates from her out of the blue.
In another conversation we had, she said the client had this request since a few months ago (at this point, I already sensed she was lying again).
I kept asking her to explain to me what she wanted me to include in the templates (since I wasn’t in the meeting) but she kept throwing the question back at me, asking me to come up with scenarios that would warrant our end-users to call.
I was getting nowhere.
After several back-and-forth messages, I came up with the templates. I attached these in an email asking the addressees for their feedback. I included one of my direct reports (to whom Pam wanted to pass the task), Pam herself, and Howard.
Take note that this email indicated that the attachments are “samples” and that I was still asking for feedback.
The following day, I got a reply in that thread where Pam was apologizing to Howard saying that I wasn’t aware that the templates I shared are not final yet and that she has not reviewed these yet herself (again, all of our templates come from me with Howard’s sign off and Pam had claimed he knows about all of this).
I responded to the email explaining that I added Howard in the trail to ask him for his feedback.
This was when all heck broke loose.
She responded to my email privately, removing all recipients and adding her supervisor.
She said that I should not intervene with her decision and that she does not have to explain to me what they had discussed in their meeting (how would I know what to do if she would not explain what she wanted and what they had discussed?).
She also bemoaned that I should just comply with the assigned task and basically not say anything and just do as she asked.
I don’t know what to feel.
I’m too fed up with her taking credit for things she didn’t do, and I think she was planning to do the same with these templates which is why she reacted the way she did.
After reading her scathing email, I sent a short response, copying my own supervisor.
I could be in trouble for what I did, but one thing I hate is people using other people to get the recognition they don’t deserve.”
4. Give Us A Last Minute Assignment? Alright, But I Have An Idea
“I’m a university student and I don’t think I’ve ever had a moment in my entire career that I felt like a nanny to the professor. This class is all about learning how to write for different types of media like TV, film, radio, etc. Prof is fairly new to the teaching gig so I was willing to be lenient regarding how she was teaching the class.
As per usual, we had a textbook for the class that we seldom used. I was collecting more assignments than I was needing to open it. If I remember correctly, we only really had like 2 or 3 assignments from the book itself so it was effectively useless to even have it.
But we’re having a good time with this class.
But. If there’s one thing this prof is bad at… it’s organization. She kept changing the syllabus of the class as we went and sometimes even fully disregarded the changes she made.
Sometimes, she wouldn’t even have in writing the changes she made, you just had to be in class. This is fine, I GUESS. Her overall feedback towards my work was beneficial, so I didn’t mind the other things that I could’ve done without.
We meet for the last time and she wanted hard copies of the final draft of our scripts. Would’ve been nice to know since I wasn’t in class on the 2nd to last day due to sickness.
I email it, and she accepts it. We’re all good. She tells us when our final was and sends us on our way.
Last Monday was the first day of finals week.
And she decides to let us know THEN that we, the entire darn class, were missing assignments. I look online in the grade book and I see a brand new assignment that had not been there a few nights prior.
I told her exactly what she’d told us in class back in extremely early October that we didn’t need to do that assignment because we’d be doing the same kind of assignment for our screenplays.
She kept insisting that, no, we had to do this assignment and she’d scrapped 2 others that we didn’t have time for or were a copy of this one. I looked up one of those 2 assignments and saw that I had a grade for it.
I told her that we did that assignment but she had told us to skip the one we were supposedly missing. She returned and doubled down that we were to do the treatment assignment (which was for our favorite reality TV show, and I don’t watch any) and not the other two.
I took a picture of the assignment in my textbook as well as my grade book and explained that she had us do this supposed canceled assignment but for 5 pages instead of 15.
She didn’t respond to that email. I still haven’t gotten a response to that email. But that made me say “whatever” and do the TV Show Treatment assignment she wanted. But I decided I didn’t want to do it seriously and picked out a random episode of Total Drama Island on Netflix.
Wrote out the Treatment and turned it in. She gave me full marks but never responded to my last email. I gave a scathing course evaluation response.
Edit: Total Drama Island is an animated TV series that makes fun of reality shows.
It itself is not a reality show.”
3. Require Us To Have A Parking Pass? Got It
“I worked for a university police department. The university requires employees to purchase a parking pass decal to park on campus.
The police department is set a little bit off of the main campus and we got away for years without needing to buy parking passes. One year, our police administration decided that we would no longer be exempt and had the parking services office put up a decal required sign for our lot.
They told us that we must have decals to park there or we would be ticketed.
Another officer and I decided to start parking on the public street next to the department, which allowed us to avoid buying parking passes.
This did not sit well with the department, and we both ended up in the Chief’s office for a meeting. The Chief told us that ‘I’m not telling you you won’t be eligible for promotion, but when we’re looking for people to promote to Sergeant, we need team players.’ He made it clear that he did not like that we were not purchasing parking passes even though we were complying with the policy and not parking on campus without a pass.
We had a Sergeant who loved to go out of his way to find things that others were doing wrong. He would nitpick the smallest things trying to get one over on people.
I love reading and would read policies and stuff in my free time, so I was well-versed in how to use them to my advantage. I came up with a plan to get one over on the department using Sgt.
Nitpick.
On a week I knew Sgt. Nitpick would see, I went to the parking office and purchased a temporary parking pass. The normal decals would be placed on the rear window while the temporary pass is a hangtag that goes on the rearview mirror.
The campus parking policy stated that if you did not have a decal as an employee, you could purchase a temporary pass once per year for up to two weeks at 4 dollars per day.
I purchased the temporary pass for one week (M-F), which was the best $20 I’ve spent.
I worked the night shift and Sgt. Nitpick worked the day shift at the time.
On Monday night, I parked in the lot with my new temporary decal knowing that Sgt. Nitpick would see my car in the lot on Tuesday morning. When I came into work Tuesday night, I expected to get called into my Sergeant’s office and spoken to.
It didn’t happen! By the end of my shift on Tuesday, I began to wonder if my plan had failed…
On Wednesday, though, it happened! I get called into my Sergeant’s office and he has an email from the Captain.
The Captain stated that someone had noticed that I was parking in the lot without a decal and I needed to get a decal if I was going to park in the lot.
He also intimated that they noticed the hangtag and suggested that I had somehow gotten it nefariously.
I had the biggest grin on my face and my Sergeant looked very confused. I explained the parking policy, that I had paid $20 for the temporary pass, that it was good through Friday, and I would stop parking in the lot after it expired. He started laughing and said he would take care of it.
The next morning when I saw Sgt. Nitpick, I said good morning as I usually do. He would not speak to me. He did not end up speaking to me for about two weeks.
I’m guessing he got an earful from the Captain for the embarrassment he caused. Treat people better!”
2. Keep The Cooler Stocked? I'll Load Up On Inventory Then!
“So up until two months ago, I had been working as the beverage buyer at a bar.
I loved the job (through all its faults), but our upper management (it’s a small chain) really stopped listening to any of the employees three years ago. The main complaint that every (and I mean EVERY) location had was this new computer system we switched to.
Apparently, some of the investors also had some connections with this new company, so we had to switch to their system because, ya know, gotta make the rich people richer.
Anyways, the system was HECK. I mean literally malfunctioned so frequently and so badly that our store alone had lost thousands of dollars because of it.
Anyways, the system made my job as a buyer nearly impossible.
I couldn’t keep track of my cost because it was constantly inaccurate, I couldn’t put in invoices because it had some stupid thing that did them automatically (but they were ALWAYS incorrect and it didn’t allow me to manually fix them), and I couldn’t run any reports because the numbers were always wayyy off.
I complained to my boss about it very professionally, multiple times, and then a couple of times not as professionally, and finally I just said “listen, you want me to keep my drink cost under 30%, but I literally can’t even see what my cost IS.
I would just do the math manually but the reports are always wrong, so it would still be inaccurate. I cannot meet your expectations if I am working blind, and I really do want to do well in this job.
What do you want me to do?” And she said, word for word, “Forget about drink costs. Just make sure the cooler is stocked.”
I had spent the past two and a half years METICULOUSLY keeping track of our cost while that store went from $27,000 a week to $45,000 a week in sales.
And suddenly they just didn’t care about that?! They were willing to lose an asinine amount of profit because one investor was gonna lose some business relationship or something.
So.
I did exactly what she said. I didn’t mind the cost; I literally didn’t even look at prices when ordering. I just. Kept the cooler stocked. And I never even got to see the real numbers (because I wasn’t able to pull the darn reports), but I know that the actual cost went WAY up.
I had vendors coming in with samples saying “I know this probably isn’t in your budget for this month but-” and I would say “nope, let’s get it. Today, please.” I didn’t do anything that would literally put the company in jeopardy, but I know darn well when they do the math at the end of this year, they’re going to see exactly when I stopped giving a crap.
A few weeks after buying some of the most incredible (and expensive) beers ever because I didn’t give a crap about cost, I decided it wasn’t fair to me OR the company to still be working at a job that I started to resent, so I accepted another position (which I have been loving immensely).
But when I trained the person to fill my role, I taught them HOW to calculate the cost in case they ever got a new system, but told them not to worry about it now because it was impossible.
I said the exact words that I was told, “just keep the cooler full.”
I still love the company overall and I hope they do well, but I also kinda want the investors to crap their pants a little bit once they run those end-of-year reports this week.
…Not that they will be accurate.”
1. Want Me To Do My Job YOUR Way Instead? Let's See How That Turns Out
” I M(20) have been working at this fast food place that is known for serving chicken for a bit over a year at the back of house.
I have gotten pretty good at almost every station. But my specialty is at the fries station. I have been told by both supervisors in the front and back that I’m the best at the station.
The supervisor (let’s call him Jake) that was running the shift just recently moved to the back with 3 months of working in the kitchen after working in the front.
We started working here around the same time.
Since it is almost Christmas, it tends to get busy. Lunch comes around and I was placed on fries which was no problem for me.
Jake comes to me and says to not fall behind which I say sure thing. He is working on the chicken fryer and at around 11 am it starts to get busy.
I always like to keep my fries freezer stocked up so that I don’t run out and when I do need to stock up, I make sure that the fries chute is full (depending if it’s busy or slow) and grab the number of boxes I need. This takes 30 seconds tops per trip.
I have worked with this method for months now and within those months I never fell behind when restocking. When I was in the middle of restocking, I smashed my finger against the chicken thawing cabinet and I didn’t know if it was bleeding or not.
So I finish restocking what I had and asked a fellow coworker that is buttering and toasting buns for the line if she can take fries for a bit while I checked on my finger (It wasn’t bleeding).
When I came back my coworker was falling behind and I went in to help her. Then I hear my supervisor calling me so I go to him.
Jake: Why weren’t you at your station?
Me: I was restocking my freezer but I smashed my finger so I asked my coworker to step in for a second while I checked it out.
Jake: we are falling behind on orders right now.
I need you to be at your station and if you need fries I’ll get them for you.
Me: I can see that we are really busy and I feel that it is better that I grab my own fries since I have been doing it like this for months and haven’t fallen behind.
That way we don’t have to pull someone that’s already at their station to grab me fries.
Jake: I don’t care. Just go to your station and don’t leave or else I’m going to write you up.
So I go back to my station and caught up to the current orders. By the time the second rush came I was low on fries so I yell out to the person on the chicken fryer (Jake) that I needed 6 boxes of fries.
So he goes and gets a trolley and starts grabbing the fries boxes. When he got to the walk-in freezer the chicken fryers started to go off and Jake comes back to the fryers and puts the chicken to the line.
I get to my last bag of fries and I yell out “I’m on my last bag,” and I turn and see him trying to drop the chicken into the fryer, starting the fryer, and power walking to the freezer.
But one of the fryers goes off and needs to be cleaned. He cleans it and rushes to the freezer to get me the boxes that are already on the trolley.
Jake: How do you feel if you just grab your own fries like you always do?
Me: I was thinking the same thing. You got it, Jake.
So we finish the rush.
I can move around to help the person next to me when her bun person left for her break. And I can now grab my own fries again when I need them.”
