People Leave Us Flabbergasted With Their Best Malicious Compliance Revenge
13. Refuse To Let Me Leave The Floor? Have Fun Being Stuck In An Elevator For 5 Hours
“This story harkens back to ye olden days when Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were the things to do on a family-friendly Friday and cellphones were still something most people didn’t really consider necessary aka the 90s.
I took a job at a video store near my house. It was a small family-owned store with three different branches in town. The job was wonderful! I loved movies and games. It was close to my residence and school.
I even got free video rentals and a discount from the sub shop next door. The video store was located in a beautiful old building from the 1920s. It had marble stairs and a really amazing cage elevator that led up to the storage and employee lounge.
The job was perfect for me. The hours were flexible, the pay was decent but the one drawback to this was my supervisor, let’s call her Amanda… because that was her name. Seriously, screw Amanda.
Amanda was on the older side and seemed to not be content with how her life had turned out. As a result, she took all of her frustrations out on anyone she could… especially those people who she worked with who happened to be younger.
If you were a college student like myself, you earned a special extra helping of disdain from her. I mean really, how dare you decide to actually have aspirations of making more than $7.50 an hour?
While I’m generally fairly tolerant of people like Amanda, she really went the extra mile to annoy me as much as humanly possible. She was bitter, mean, petty, and did anything and everything she could to just be plain unpleasant.
She wasn’t even nice to customers. The only upside to this attitude was that she didn’t let Karen customers get away with their Karen-ness.
I might have been able to take more if she happened to be particularly knowledgeable or good at her job.
She was neither and only appeared to have the job because of good old nepotism. She was the daughter-in-law of the owner. She knew nothing about movies, games, or gaming systems, or anything we rented or sold.
When a customer had a question, she would pawn them off on another employee. When she had a problem with the computers, who did she call to fix it? Me. When there was a delivery that needed to be checked into the system, who did she call?
Me. When stock needed to be dragged up to the stock room? That’d be me again. Any unpleasant task that came up, she would always try to give it to me. Generally, she hid in the back watching tv or talking on the phone (which did tie up the store’s landline for literally hours), or doing anything and everything she could to avoid doing her actual job.
When I brought up Amanda to Ken, the owner, he simply sighed and gave a pained look and asked me to just try to bear with it and stay out of her way if I could.
I got the distinct impression that Ken didn’t much care for her either but she was his daughter-in-law. He did his best to try to make sure I wasn’t scheduled to work with her but at least once a week, I had to work with this paragon of kindness and light.
One day, I was on the phone with a customer discussing the late fees on their account when Amanda wanted to make a call. This resulted in Amanda ripping me a new one in front of an entire store of people, it was a Saturday and we were packed to the rafters.
She was yelling so loudly that the woman on the phone asked me if we were being robbed and whether she should call the police. Before I could answer, Amanda yanked the phone out of my hand and slammed it into the cradle, “You are never ever to be on that phone, you understand me?”
While I was desperately aching to head butt her, I bit my tongue, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. When that didn’t work, I counted to twenty, then fifty. Instead of telling her I hoped that she’d be ravaged by rabid wolverines, I simply smiled and said, “Alright.”
This seemed to annoy her even more than if I’d gotten angry. She stormed back to the office and I took a stream of customers, all of whom asked me if I was okay and one offered suggestions on how to dispose of a body.
I appreciated the suggestions but I had plenty of my own ideas and while evisceration with a pair of rusty safety scissors might be a fulfilling immediate solution, it probably wasn’t good for my lifetime goals, unless those goals involved a jail cell and becoming overly acquainted by a thick woman with one eye-brow named Big Betty.
Instead, I checked it off in my big book of voodoo curses and hoped I would have a chance to pay Amanda back for her thoughtful gesture of embarrassing me in front of half of the metropolitan area.
Still, there were a few more pieces to be laid out for my malicious compliance and Amanda wouldn’t disappoint me.
The next piece came, perhaps a month later. I had been at work for about seven hours of my nine-hour shift and had only seen Amanda once and that had been when she left the store.
Considering I only had two hours left of my shift and hadn’t yet taken a break, I really needed to go to the bathroom. I told my co-worker I was heading to the restroom.
This was, however, apparently, not in keeping with Amanda’s view of the universe. She actually began to bang and kick the bathroom door demanding I come out. I took my time, washed my hands, adjusted my hair, and calmly walked out of the bathroom.
While she began to scream, I ignored her and walked up to the front of the store and took the cart of movies to be reshelved.
She grabbed the front of the cart and swiped the movies off of the top.
She then informed me of my questionable parentage, told me that I liked to passionately hug mothers and that I was a female dog. Really, I had no idea about any of these things about myself.
I thought all that time that I was just your regular everyday college student. I could have probably gotten on television if I had known how unique I was sooner. Amanda told me that under no uncertain terms was I to ever leave the floor while I was on the clock.
Again, I summoned an inner calm that would have made Gandhi proud. I forced a smile and nodded, “Alright.”
While I seemed calm on the outside, I had made up my mind that I would have my chance.
No matter how small, I would have my moment.
That shining moment came on a lazy and blissfully quiet morning. As it was a morning, it would just be me and Amanda, hopefully, she would stay in the office and I wouldn’t have to deal with her at all.
When I came in, there were workmen in the back working on the elevator. One of the guys came up and told me that he needed a part and he would be back tomorrow to finish up the work.
Annoying as I would now have to schlep armfuls of heavy tapes up the stairs but it wasn’t the end of the world. The light of my life arrived a few hours later without a word to anyone.
I stood at the front putting ‘BE KIND REWIND’ stickers on a batch of new arrivals when I noticed Amanda through the back door getting into the elevator. After the man told me that he needed a part, it didn’t even occur to me that the elevator had the power on and I had a moment of amusement at thinking that Amanda was going to have to take the hated stairs.
She was, above all, lazy. However, it seemed the elevator did indeed have power and worked. At least it worked just enough to go half a floor and then stop. It was just close enough to the upper floor that climbing out onto that floor was impossible and just far enough from the lower floor that climbing out was impossible.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Malicious Compliance Activated!
I couldn’t entirely see Amanda as she tried to open the door and get out but I could hear her. The sounds of frustration increased until I heard the most beautiful sound I ever heard.
Amanda: OP!
A slow smile, reminiscent of the Grinch, curved my lips. I walked to the very edge of the sales floor and called out. “Yes?”
Amanda: The elevator is stuck, can you open the door from your side?
Me: I don’t know, I can’t see it from here.
Amanda huffed in annoyance.
Amanda: Well get over here and try to open it.
Me: I can’t do that Amanda.
Amanda: Why not?
Me: I’m not allowed to leave the floor while I’m on the clock under any circumstances.
Amanda: Are you kidding me?!
Me: You said it yourself. Since I value my job, I can’t possibly go against orders.
A stream of curses came from the locked and stuck elevator. I’m pretty sure I’m still not old enough for all of the things I heard that day.
Amanda: Call maintenance, the number should be in the office.
Trying to sound as innocent and sympathetic as I could possibly manage while also trying not to burst out laughing: I can’t do that either, I’d have to leave the floor to go to the office.
Amanda: You think you’re real funny don’t you?
Me: I don’t know what you mean.
Amanda: Call Ken then. I know you know his number.
Me: Well I would but I’m not allowed to use the phone, remember?
Amazingly, there were no curses. There were no screams. There was not even one word telling me that my parents were never married. It was silent. I think for the first time she realized that she might actually be in a little trouble.
She was stuck in a position entirely of her own making with no way out of it for the foreseeable future.
Amanda: Op, please? Just get me out of here.
Me: I’m sorry Amanda, I’m just following orders.
All pretense of niceness was dropped as she proceeded to inform me of all of my imagined faults and those of my parents, friends, and any other relations I might have or think to have in the future.
Then she sealed her fate, she yelled at me that I was fired. In truth, I really only planned on letting her stew for a few minutes but after that? Nah.
Me: I’m fired?
Okay, then I guess I’ll head home. Oh, I should also let you know that Bill called and said he’d be in at seven instead of five. He has to pick up his brother from the airport.
So… I guess you’ll be in there for a while yet. I hope you’ve got a book or something.
Amanda: What?!?! You! How the heck do you think you can do this to me?
When I get out of here, I’m going to (followed by expletives).
Me: Wow. Okay, yeah. Have fun with that, have a good one. I’ll leave my name tag and shirt on the front desk.
Amanda: WAIT!
Me: Bye.
Amanda: WAIT!
Me: Don’t worry, I’ll lock up on my way out and I’ll put up a sign so people will know we’re closed.
Amanda: OP WAIT! I DIDN’T MEAN IT!
COME BACK!
I walked up front and wrote out a sign that we were closed until seven pm due to unforeseen circumstances.
The very last thing I heard from Amanda before I opened the door was, “BUT I HAVE TO PEE!”
Still snickering to myself, I locked the door and drove the forty-five minutes out to Ken’s house to let him know the shop was closed. Could I have gone the five minutes to my house and called?
Sure I could. Did I? Nope.
Ken seemed a bit surprised to see me there.
Ken: I thought you were working today.
Me: Oh, I was but Amanda fired me.
Ken: She’s not allowed to do that.
All hiring and firing go through me, she knows that. Don’t worry, I’ll call her. I think maybe it’s time to talk to my son about her. I can’t keep her on with her acting like this.
Me: I don’t think she’ll be able to answer the phone.
Ken gave me a long sharp look as I tried very hard not to smile. Then I gave up entirely and just smiled broadly back at him.
Ken: Op?
Me: Yes?
Ken: What did you do?
Me: Me? I didn’t do a thing, I only followed her orders.
Ken leaned down to meet me eye to eye.
Ken: What happened?
I gave him the full tale from her telling me that I couldn’t use the phone under any circumstances to her telling me that I wasn’t allowed to leave the sales floor when I was on the clock.
Then I told him about her being stuck in the elevator.
Ken: You didn’t tell her the elevator was broken?
Me: I didn’t even realize it had power.
Ken just stood there looking at me gobsmacked and then started laughing.
“I should really go let her out.”
He paused for a minute and looked down at his dirty hands and clothes, then up at me.
Ken: But I really shouldn’t leave those flowers half planted and then I should probably take a shower.
I don’t want to make that drive covered in dirt.
Me: Oh of course not. You’ve got a really nice car and it’d be a lot of work to get that much dirt out of your seats and carpet.
Do you need some help with the planting?
Ken nodded solemnly back at me and gave another chuckle. It took probably another hour to finish planting the flowers. Ken told me I’d be paid for the day and sent me home with assurances that I did indeed still have a job and that he would deal with Amanda.
I fully enjoyed the rest of my half-day off. I did hear from Bill that when he got there the elevator repair guy had just arrived and that Amanda ended up spending about five hours stuck in the elevator.
After that day, I only ever saw her one more time. She glared daggers at me as I waved happily to her as she carried a bag of her things out to her car.
Whenever I think about it, I still get a little smile on my face. Besides, I only did what she told me to.”
12. Ignore My Need For Light Duty After I Have A C-Section? I'll Comply
“In 2014, I had a C-section to bring my son into the world. I was let go from my previous job because they didn’t want the liability if something happened to a pregnant woman on the job.
I was re-hired by the fast food company where I held my very first job, which is not McDonald’s. It’s a bit higher priced than that, where you could get fried chicken, a hot dog, and a double cheeseburger at the same time.
There will be no mention of my child’s father because he wasn’t there for us.
I lived with my eldest sister who was more like a mom to me, which is why she is mentioned in this story.
She was the person I had with me when I had my C-section. She has been the one there for my son every moment of his life. My doctor said that if I was going back to work before his recommended 4-6 weeks of healing time and rest, I had to be on light duty and that I was NOT to lift more than the weight of my son, which was 6 pounds.
I was re-hired by a fast food company that was always extremely busy at each major point in the day. Lunch made over $800 between noon and 1 pm, and dinner made over $700 from 5 pm to 6 pm.
Of note, the only reason I was re-hired was because the hiring manager loved me to pieces. When I left the first time, she told me I always had a job with her because she loved my work ethic.
She said that I was the best worker she’d had in years. Nobody ever picked up extra shifts as quickly as I did. Nobody cared to learn as fast as I did. So since I had previous experience, they wanted me to work the lunch rush, but I begged them to let me work dinner.
Dinner would allow me to spend quality time with my newborn, and my sister, who I lived with, would be home from her job to take care of my son while I worked. Now, I started a month after my C-section right?
Wrong. I started 2.5 weeks later. If I didn’t, I couldn’t be hired. I had actually gone back to my doctor and asked his office to write a full letter explaining my light duty requirements, and took it with me my first day back.
I walk into the manager’s office, expecting to see my hiring manager or at least a manager I recognize. Nope. Enter Stupid Manager, who had worked as an hourly employee at another location, and thought she knew better than everyone.
I handed Stupid Manager my doctor’s note, and she looked at it like she was holding a dirty baby diaper. I asked her to make sure the Hiring Manager sees it, and she doesn’t respond.
I shrug it off and walk to the back, where the break room was. I saw that all of my coworkers were the same as the last time I’d worked there, and they all crowded around me to see baby photos.
I was crying the entire time because it felt like a homecoming. It felt like I was finally surrounded by a support system. Until Stupid Manager screamed that we needed to get to work when there wasn’t even a customer.
We all scattered like flies and made ourselves look busy.
I’d kept my phone in my pocket before clocking in and I periodically checked it, always between customers, to make sure nothing had happened to my son while I was gone.
I would think most maybe not all, managers would have understood that I hadn’t been texting, just quickly checking for new notifications, but not Stupid Manager. She hated it. She’d been sitting in the office, checking the cameras, and I supposed I’d checked my phone one too many times, yay postpartum depression and anxiety.
Stupid Manager came flying around the corner at light speed and stared daggers at me. “Hazel, what the heck do you think you’re doing? You cannot be on the phone while you’re clocked in.
You should know this already.” Now, I’d never been one to deal well with being yelled at, so I just said I was sorry. Some of my coworkers stood up for me, which again made me cry.
Stupid Manager apparently hated crying too. She turned back to me, shooting the same daggers into my soul. “What the heck are you crying about now?” Thankfully, a customer walked in, so she just stormed off.
I saw red. Within the hour, I watched her start to get ready to leave her shift, which I thought was a blessing. Of course, it wasn’t. Enter Lazy Manager who I’d had issues with the last time I’d worked there.
Not that I said anything, she just never worked. She sat in the office, staring at the cameras, eating food from the line, which the company said is illegal. You don’t get free food, you get a discount on food.
Did she ever pay for it? Not once. She wrote it off as part of the end-of-the-day “throw-away” food (I can’t remember what it’s actually called on the end-of-the-day report). Lazy Manager saw me, and her face fell.
“Oh, hey Hazel,” she said with disdain.
I put on the sweetest smile and attempted to make small talk with Stupid Manager, but they made a major mistake. They left the door cracked, and wouldn’t you know it?
I worked on the side of the line closest to the door, where I could hear EVERYTHING. This is how it went:
Lazy Manager: I thought Hiring Manager told her no.
Stupid Manager: I guess not.
She’s been on her phone all day.
Lazy Manager: Of course she has. She’s the worst employee we’ve ever had. Ugh. I’ll call Hiring Manager and figure this out. I’ve never disliked someone like I dislike her.
Stupid Manager: She seems pretty lazy. Oh, here’s her pitiful doctor’s note.
Lazy Manager: Hahaha, we’ll see how that works. It’s not like we’ve never had kids before.
Now, that fully made me mad.
But, I bit my tongue. I waited for what I knew was coming. I knew exactly what I was going to do because I was just plain sick of being bad-mouthed by others.
Stupid Manager leaves and Lazy Manager calls me to the office. I was in the middle of making an order, but she is the manager after all. I left that poor person’s order sitting right on the line and walked to the office.
“Yes, Lazy Manager?” She doesn’t even look up from the computer. “Hazel, what’s this doctor’s note for?” I just take my phone out of my pocket and try to show her pictures of my son.
“Oh, you had a kid?” In a tone that implied nobody would want to be with me or something. I smile sweetly and nod, a plan working itself out in my head.
Fast forward 4 days.
Lazy Manager hasn’t been helping us close the store at all, and I’ve been getting home after 2 am every day, from a place that closes at 10 on weekdays, and 11 on weekends. I’m done.
My sister can’t keep taking care of my child like this, and it’s completely unfair. Lazy Manager is working again, and we’re really busy. I go to put fries in the fryer because our fry cook is busy making chicken tenders.
I open the little freezer beside the fryers, and it’s empty, which I knew it would be because I never saw anyone put a new box in.
Huh, that sucks. “HEY, WE’RE OUT OF FRIES OUT HERE,” I yell.
No response. “HEY COWORKERS! FRY COOK IS BUSY AND WE NEED FRIES OUT HERE!” Nothing. Odd. Oh well. “HEY LAZY MANAGER! WE NEED FRIES OUT HERE!” Lazy Manager opens the office door. “GET THEM YOURSELF HAZEL!” I walk over to the office.
“Lazy Manager, I can’t. My doctor said I can’t lift more than 6 pounds.” Lazy Manager rolls her eyes and looks dead at me. “Look, go get the darn fries out of the freezer now.
Two boxes. I don’t care about this ‘my doctor said’ crap. DO IT! And stay the heck off your phone!”
And there it was, my opportunity for malicious compliance. I walk into the freezer and look at the box of french fries.
Hm, I really shouldn’t, this could be detrimental to my health according to my doctor. But Lazy Manager said so. Now, I’d noticed that morning that a couple of my stitches hadn’t started dissolving yet, so I’d already called and scheduled an appointment about 2 weeks early.
This was all lining up perfectly. I grabbed that fry box on the bottom shelf and shifted it where I could read its weight. I wasn’t supposed to be on my phone, but she obviously couldn’t see me in the freezer.
I snapped a picture of the box.
I sent it to my sister with the message “Manager told me I have no choice but to do this myself. Doesn’t believe my doctor’s note at all.
Can’t respond, she won’t let me use my phone anymore either.” I made sure the message was sent and then switched my phone off. Grabbed that fry box and lifted it, and carried it to the little freezer 20 feet away.
I’ll say one thing for adrenaline, it definitely works to numb pain until it wears off. I felt a wetness in my pants and excused myself to the break room. Not the bathroom, that was too private for this.
I turned where the cameras couldn’t see me and looked in my pants. B***d. I was bleeding. But from where? Oh, that’s right. The stitches that hadn’t started healing yet. But there was another pain I’d never experienced.
I walked to Lazy Manager with a napkin covered in b***d (thankfully the line wasn’t anywhere near the office, I would never contaminate someone’s food), because of course I tried to stop the bleeding.
I was immediately sent home to my sister, who was in severe panic over the message. I called my doctor’s office with 10 minutes to spare and explained the situation, and was scheduled for the following day, and told to go to the hospital if the bleeding continued. My sister and I bandaged me up to the best of our ability, and I waited for my appointment.
When my doctor found out why I still picked up that fry box, he sounded more like a concerned father figure when he said, “I’ll handle it.” But I assured him I had it myself.
All I needed from him was a doctor’s note.
You see, I’d found out that Hiring Manager, who was also the store manager, who was lined up to become district manager, had come back from vacation.
She was actually scheduled for the following day, and I was supposed to work. I walked, no I waddled into that store, in uniform, doctor’s note clutched in one hand, the other grabbing every solid surface it could to absorb some of the shock of movement.
She took one look at me and guided me to a chair in the break room. Concern was written all over her face. “Hazel, what happened?” So I told her everything. She asked me if I ever gave either manager a doctor’s note, and I said I had.
She couldn’t find it, but she didn’t need to. What Lazy Manager and Stupid Manager didn’t know was that my sister had a printer that could scan documents. And we had a weird feeling that we would need a copy of the first doctor’s note, so not only did I have a new note clutched in my hand, but stapled to it was a copy of the original note, that told the managers that I was supposed to be on light duty because if I ripped a stitch, it could lengthen my healing process.
The new note explained that since I was not given light duty, I not only ripped a stitch but pulled a few muscles in my lower body. When Hiring Manager read both notes, she was furious.
She checked the schedule and when she saw neither of the other managers was working, she called them both in for a meeting. She asked me if I would stay for said meeting and that I could sit in the office in her comfy desk chair while we waited.
I took that seat and waited for the show. 30 minutes later, Hiring Manager was giving them an earful. Telling them they had no right to disregard doctor’s orders. And that they should never have told me to stop being on my phone.
Turns out, Hiring Manager had worked for this establishment when she had her youngest child, so she knew the anxiety of being away from a newborn for too long. I watched Stupid Manager get fired on the spot, but not Lazy Manager.
Lazy Manager was demoted to line cook because Hiring Manager told her she needed to re-learn some humility. She worked as a line cook at another store for about a month, and was then fired for stealing food.”
11. Come In And Give My Resignation? I'd Love To
“I used to work at a grocery store.
It was in this smallish beachside community that had a lot of tourists and summer homes. Chose the store cause they were all about finding long-time workers and had a little bonus and salary boost for those who finished the probationary period.
I had just finished school and planned on taking a gap year. So worked out well in my mind.
I started about two months before summer and it was nice. We had a base of coworkers that worked well with each other.
Mostly middle-aged women and some pensioners. Found out quickly the smoke break was for gossiping about others and sometimes I took part when clients made me mad or other coworkers. Usual daily things.
I was told from day one that the manager didn’t give a crap about us cause she was also the manager at a bigger store. The rule was if you had someone to cover you it was fine to do whatever.
Some took hour-long breaks, some drank during the job. But I was trying to make a good impression on my first job in that town so I never did anything like that.
Since I didn’t have that much of a social life I always changed shifts when someone needed to and came in if someone was sick.
Even stocked the end shelves which was the shift manager’s job. When the pensioners asked in the middle of the day to change assignments cause their backs hurt from stocking, I was always okay with it.
And they were really thankful. One of them (let’s call her Lidiya) was actually a neighbor and friends with my grandparents so we used to hang out during lunch breaks and she even comforted me when I had a panic attack.
We used to ride home together on our bikes if we finished together. She kinda took me under her wing and used to call me her work granddaughter.
Things kinda took a turn once summer started. Usually, it was about 1,000 bucks per two registers.
Now it was suddenly 2,000 per one. They also hired summer workers who were three 16-year-old stockboys, one being the manager’s son. Not to be an old timer cursing the work ethics of children but they were literally playing some tank games on their phones on the store floor while they had a cart of stuff that they needed to put out in front of them.
Not to mention the not checking of dates, shoving old stuff in the back and new in the front, and not checking if the barcode matched the pricetags barcode. What really made me mad was that they didn’t flush and peed all over the toilet seat.
Management made it my job to clean up after them. I was told I couldn’t say anything to call them out, so it became my everyday duty to clean the toilets. Cause the cleaner only came in the morning.
Then the self-service checkouts came. I was the only cashier there when the builders put them in. So it became my duty to train the others. Including management and the two 60+ somethings. Lidiya took it easy.
The old man literally refused to learn. So now every day, either Lidiya or I had to be in the store cause the old man refused (it was also regular that he came in intoxicated and drank at work.
Also used to hit on me a lot but I brushed it off).
So. Lot on my shoulders. Crap went down at the start of August. It was about a week or so before my probation period ended. So on Monday, I felt terrible and called in.
My first time during the whole time I worked there. Called in with the manager saying “you have to come; Lidiya is on vacation and the only other one who knows is already sick.
And you didn’t give us proper notice.” Try to argue that I have a fever of 102 and feel like crap. No. Have to come in.
So I get my crap together and go to work.
Scrubbing the toilet floor with a fever. Dealing with customers with a fever. Yes, I took more breaks. Most coworkers asked me why I look like crap, and I told them I was sick.
End the day and go home.
The next day, I feel even worse. Call in and say no, I’m putting my foot down; I can’t come. First time I took a stand and said I can’t destroy my health.
“Fine. You call Lidiya and tell her. If she agrees then you have to take sick leave.” Oookay. Not really my job. But fine. Call her, woke her up, apologized profusely, and told her the situation.
She understood. Wished me to feel better and hung up. I called my doctor and got on sick leave and then informed my manager. Went back to sleep.
Got a call a few hours later.
It’s Lidiya. “You make everyone’s lives so difficult here. Come in and give in your resignation.” She isn’t the manager she is just a cashier like me. I asked what the heck, and she told me that they have been talking on the smoke break with all the shift managers and the main manager and apparently they decided I complain too much about my health and about other workers.
I asked why my manager didn’t call me. No real explanation. I said if the manager wants to fire me, she’d have to call me herself. No call. So 2 hours later, I call her myself.
Ask what was going on. It’s true. I need to resign from my position. I ask why they don’t just terminate me. I’m still on probation. “Can’t cause you’re on sick leave.” Doesn’t really make sense.
During the probation period, they can fire me with no notice, no reasoning.
I’m fuming at this time. Fine. I’ll come in with my 102-degree fever. Got on my bike. Peddled the 1.8 miles.
Everyone is giving me dirty looks. The manager gives me a filled-out paper stating I quit on the day for personal reasons. I ask “So you can’t fire me cause I’m on sick leave?
I need to resign.” The manager says yes, it’s too much paperwork to fire me; she doesn’t have the time. Okay, deal. I take out a blank piece of paper and write my quitting date as 2 weeks from now, to ya know, be polite and give them “the proper notice.” The manager was fuming and argued I can’t do that.
I said that’s the timeframe I need to give according to my contract. She was too lazy to argue more. I signed the sheet and walked out. Called my doctor the next morning and talked about my sick leave.
A few days later, the manager calls me. Tomorrow is the big town fair, I’m def not sick anymore and can come in tomorrow, they are super short-staffed. I said that I’m on sick leave.
She said I can’t still be feeling crap and to get into work right now. I told them no, my sick leave ends on “day after my resignation date.” She got super mad and said that if I didn’t come to work, she’d have to be on the register the whole day.
To that, I just coughed fakely and said well, have fun and hung up.
I spent the two weeks on the beach on paid sick leave, and also my probation lapsed, so they had to pay me the bonus.”
10. Focus On My Own Department And Not Help My Coworkers? Fine
Way to screw everyone over.
“I’ve worked at a national grocery chain for the past decade-plus, in various roles along the way.
A few years ago I was at one of the first stores in the entire company to have online ordering.
I’m sure you have seen it near you… Order online, come to the store, and we bring it out to you.
When it first rolled out, I learned very early how to do every stage of the process, even though it wasn’t my job title.
It impacts everyone in the store, so I wanted to know the ins and outs of it so that I would be ready for what it meant for me.
Early last November, my current store started doing online ordering.
They couldn’t get anyone to transfer from nearby stores, so they had to hire an entirely new crew and send them to other places to be trained. This training only lasted a few days, then the system went live.
Even the department head was one of these new hires. No one knew what they were doing.
Whenever someone pulls up to get their order, a loud doorbell in the pickup office rings.
This office is right by my department in a major hallway, so I can hear it.
In the first week, this doorbell would ring and no one would come back to the department to get the order – they’d just keep shopping for the order they were working on.
They had a phone on them that also chimed, but they ignored it. This led to long wait times and unhappy customers.
I started paging over the intercom any time a customer was waiting for pickup, I would get orders ready so the pickup clerks just had to take them out, whatever… My department never suffered for this help, it was something I could do quickly and efficiently to help keep them afloat.
Well, one time a customer called the store directly and I happened to answer it. She said her pick-up time was at one, she got there at one, and she had been waiting for thirty minutes.
She was livid. I got her name and checked the computer, and saw that the shopping for her order wasn’t even complete yet… And NONE of the pickers were shopping for that order… They were picking orders that weren’t due for pickup for another three hours.
I called my store manager and told her what was going on.
She yelled in my ear “WHY ARE YOU EVEN ANSWERING THE PHONE FOR THEM? YOU NEED TO STOP MAKING PAGES, STOP HOVERING OVER THAT DEPARTMENT AND WORRY ABOUT YOUR OWN.”
Not what I expected, considering I had the most experience with online ordering, and these new hires had no idea what they were doing… My store manager knew this …
But I said “Alright,” and hung up with her.
I picked up the phone call with the customer and told her it would be a while, and that I was unable to help her further. I also recommend she come in and speak with the store manager if she had any concerns.
I went back to my department and started working. It only took a few minutes before I heard the store manager being paged to the front, and the shouting that ensured could be heard in every corner of the sales floor.
But it doesn’t end there. As I said, this program was rolling out in November… And Thanksgiving was just a few weeks away. I stopped helping in any way. No overhead pages, no staging orders, no answering phone calls… Nothing.
The number of orders skyrocketed, and the department was constantly incredibly far behind. They routinely had to call customers and tell them they’d have to come later in the day or even the next morning…
Pick time plummeted, wait time skyrocketed, and efficiency ground to a halt. It was horrible. And I just kept my department in tip-top shape, giving the new hires sympathetic looks whenever I would see their beleaguered faces.
Eventually, the store manager came to me and asked for my help.
“I’d love to help, but I was told rather emphatically to worry about my own department.”
Now, I knew that I was in no position to say “no.” If the store manager told me to do something that I was trained to do, saying “no” was insubordination and a fireable offense.
But that didn’t stop me from reminding her that it was HER who put them in that situation to begin with.
I took great pleasure in the sigh she gave, and the genuine apology that followed. I accepted her apology and went to help.
The workers are much better trained now and, for the most part, the department is running smoothly. I no longer have to help as much as I did in those early months, but my store manager is happy to have me when the need for help arises.”
9. Want To Challenge Your Grade? Let's Get Down To Business
“My tale comes from the realm of education a couple of years back. Back then I was lecturing at a further education college (for non-UK folks, this would be the typical age range of 16-19 prior to university but we also took older learners on select courses as well).
My course was one such course. Basically, it was a program designed to offer people a multidisciplinary study program but also simultaneously equip them with the skills to study at the university level.
In short, it was aimed at people who for whatever reason, didn’t complete their education at the “expected age” and needed many of the qualifications you’d get between the ages of 16-18 to study at a university level.
In this program, I was a senior lecturer and was the lead on all delivery to do with philosophy, psychology, and sociology, as well as delivering on the generic study stuff like referencing practices and academic integrity.
Like all providers at our level, we provide a way for students to challenge their grades if they feel they’ve been undersold. Now, our program is very bespoke and the awarding body is massively chilled out and hands-off, so they don’t involve themselves in grading disputes.
Instead, it is up to the practitioners to come up with a way of delivering a fair challenge process which is submitted to them for approval. Ours has been approved. I’ll describe it later.
The student in question was about 22. A bit younger than most of our learners. Nice enough guy, but one of those “I’ve done the private reading on my own so what are you here for?” types.
Had a really high opinion of his ability, which was generally good, but he lacked academic finesse in some areas and routinely refused to believe what we were pointing out was correct.
This was fine.
His grades were alright until one of my final philosophy research papers. It wasn’t his best work, as he had strayed from his own articulated aims in the paper. There was also a lot of irrelevance going on.
I gave him a modest grade. This grade caused his “near-perfect record” to be ruined and several other students who he perceived as less intelligent than him got better grades.
“I’d like to challenge my grade,” he says after I give feedback.
Okay. “You believe your work has been marked incorrectly?”
He confirmed.
“Okay, but I mean you’ve looked over the marking criteria and you believe I haven’t applied them properly and can point out how?” He pauses a little here and then says “yes”.
“Okay, this is absolutely your right so I’ll get the ball rolling on it, thank you for being honest with me.”
I think he was expecting maybe having to fill in some kind of a form like a written appeal or something.
That is not how our grading challenge works. At all.
The first thing is the student needs to pinpoint precisely which areas of grading they believe were undermarked. They have access to all the grading rubrics on their assignment documentation, which tells them what the marking criteria are, and what distinguishes between lower and higher grades for each criterion.
So step one: you need to identify which of these criteria you think are undermarked. As part of our feedback, we have to explicitly describe how we think the work met the criteria to the standard we are awarding it.
Second: you need to identify the qualities in your own work which you believe demonstrate the higher criteria you haven’t been awarded and argue how it does in fact demonstrate them.
Thirdly: you need to argue why you think the marker has applied the marking criteria incorrectly, by referencing the above.
All of this needs to be documented in not one form, but a booklet, and accompanied by an annotated copy of your work which is referenced in the booklet.
The booklet and annotation are reviewed by other practitioners who teach on the same qualification as me, with similar subject specialisms (3) at least two of which must not come from the same place of employment.
The reviews of these Practitioners are then reviewed by the head of my curriculum who has a high degree of familiarity with how the qualification works and is also a quality assurer for the awarding body in question.
When this review happens, the student is then invited to discuss the basis for their review in person as well, so the reviewers can see if they missed anything from the student. The in-person review is held with my head of curriculum, as well as the panel of practitioner reviewers.
The student is also offered to have a member of the student body group attend with them for liaison and support.
The final decision must be kept on record and the paperwork then be submitted to the awarding body so it can be discussed when they perform external verifier checks on our program every year to confirm final awards and grades.
This said; the next day I hand this guy the booklet and advise him of the 21-day period to submit it back to my head of curriculum and reiterate the process which was explained at the start of the year and is in his student booklet.
He looks a bit stunned. “So wait, you’re not going to look at it again?” I confirm that I won’t be; we need to guarantee impartiality and fairness in these cases and that can’t be guaranteed if I merely look at your work again.
This is fairly serious.
He goes a bit pale but takes the form and insists he will do it. A week passes. It’s coming he says. This goes on until day 19, when he quietly asks to talk to me after class and asks if we can just drop the challenge.
I say it can be dropped, but he will still need to attend a meeting with my head because flagging up this with my marking raises a potential concern with her and she will want to investigate the basis of the claim and then why he withdrew it.
He tried to say it wasn’t necessary and I insisted it was for his protection to make sure I’m being fair and wasn’t coercing him into dropping the claim.
Day of the meeting, the Head of Curriculum turns up during our free study period to talk to him.
He’s absent that day, off ill. She rolls her eyes and leaves. The next day, he’s miraculously well again, just as I break them for lunch, My Head is at the door.
His face.
My Head later confirmed to me that after it became clear he couldn’t really pinpoint which parts of my marking he was unhappy with specifically, the meeting was basically him admitting that he was beating himself up as he didn’t study as hard as he thought and was essentially trying his luck.
She reminded him accusing me of being incompetent at my job probably wasn’t the best way to do that, and it’s something fairly serious he’d do well to remember.
Fortunately, this was the penultimate assessment of the year so he didn’t have to stick around for long afterward.
He did get into his first choice uni in the end on the strength of his interview (which I helped him practice in the few weeks before he finished the course). So no harm was done aside from to his ego, fortunately.”
8. Paint The Walls However We Want? Sounds Like A Plan!
“Background: my cousin, her wife, and their two kids lived in a rented apartment along with five other resident units in a European country. It’s not completely upscale but it’s definitely not a slum, and it’s a really beautiful place.
And by lived, their “landlord” decided to evict as many residents as he could so he could “renovate” and bump up the rent by 3x. Pretty crappy.
This all occurred starting back in September.
Now “scum lord”, as my cousin passionately called him, had tried to keep it a secret, but another tenant, who did work on the apartments for a reduced rent, found paperwork when he was fixing a broken window at Scum Lord’s residence (a very, very nice house).
He shared it with the other residents because that paperwork was drafts of eviction notices for random things. Example: pictures of the residents of apartment 3 have been leaving garbage in the hallway.
According to my cousin, who lived in apartment 3, they kept finding bags of garbage outside their door.
Not theirs, but ones full of fast food take-out and very… unsettling magazines.
My cousin is vegetarian. She and her wife try not to eat takeout. It’s definitely not their garbage.
But back to the story: basically, my cousin, her wife, and the other residents came together in their courtyard and realized that their landlord was faking these sorts of things to get them all evicted… with “photographic evidence”.
None of them were very happy. Especially since; one apartment was apparently being rented by a couple who just had their first child, another held an elderly couple who had nowhere else to go, three families including my cousin’s who’d been living there for over ten years, and the maintenance guy who couldn’t find anywhere closer to work and didn’t have a car.
And rent prices were already skyrocketing. These guys literally had nowhere else to go.
Of course, they found this out while Scum Lord was out of town, so they couldn’t confront him.
As they were stewing over this, my cousin’s wife (let’s call her Ali) had an idea. She and my cousin had been planning to repaint their living room because the paint was peeling, and Scum Lord had said, in EMAIL: paint it.
He didn’t specify how it was painted or what color was used.
Ali suggested that they all get permission to repaint their places but in HORRENDOUS ways. Then move out quickly. Everyone except the older couple jumped on board, which as my cousin explained to me, they didn’t want to start a fight in a losing battle.
The older couple later managed to move into a retirement community that one of the families found for them to go to.
Anyways. The rest of the residents agreed to it, and Scum Lord was sent email requests for repaints.
And he basically said “go for” in each one. I guess he thought he could get free paint jobs done from them…
So, while juggling their normal lives, my cousin’s family and the other four units all have to find new places, start packing, set up everything for the painting, and repaint their walls.
My cousin decided to be extra vindictive and buy a crap ton of black paint, along with varying neon colors. She and Ali then painted on as many layers of black paint as they could (after using a primer of course), in every.
Single. Room. Even the bathrooms and ceilings weren’t spared! They finished in about mid-November… and they then let their kids (5 and 8) loose with the neon colors. I’m talking handprints, random swathes of paint, got footprints on the ceiling, and just every random thing those two kids wanted. It, according to my cousin, was a GLORIOUS, HORRIFIC disaster.
She told me there was even a butt print! (Though she could’ve been exaggerating). She didn’t know what the other places were like, only hearing that the maintenance guy painted rainbows everywhere, that the family in apartment 5 had just thrown different colored paints on the walls at random, etc.
Thankfully they (cousin’s family) managed to find a place before Christmas, which was smaller but it was in a good area of their town. They sent their moving notice and booked it.
Two weeks later after they settled in their new place, Scum Lord is blowing up their cells… he was livid by all the new looks. He then wanted to sue them and threatened court.
Cousin and Ali obliged.
Court day comes and Scum Lord actually had a lawyer and was suing all five of the former resident families at once. He claimed a whole bunch of crap, including all the reasons for the evictions…
The maintenance guy destroyed him. Provided proof about the fake eviction evidence (ex. apparently some of the garbage included receipts from Scum Lord’s own purchases, that damage to the sink in apartment 6 was actually from Scum Lord trying to fix it, etc).
Then, they all provided the email printouts of the paint requests, pointing out how Scum Lord never specified how it was to be painted or the colors.
The judge threw Scum Lord’s case out and ordered him to pay restitution for damages.
My cousin’s family got the restitution, and she watched in glee as Scum Lord struggled to undo the paint damages before apparently giving up and trying to sell the building.
So far, there have been no takers!”
Another User Comments:
“Forgive my American ignorance. But I’m a big fan of UK television and lately, I’ve been watching videos of “Can’t pay, we’ll take it away” which often deals with this.
The landlord will begin evicting people, even if they’ve done nothing wrong and never missed a payment, and the family finds out on the day that the High Court officers come to evict them.
At that point, you have 2 hours to find a place to live AND move out. They change the locks and can call the cops to evict you. The officers don’t like it but they have an HC order and are paid to do a job.
So scummy.
What you and a bunch of other people should do is call or email him requesting a showing because you’re interested in buying. Sending him over there to meet at the specified time.
But not showing up. Waste his time.” Sir_Distic
7. Can't Bother To Make Me An Employee I.D. Card? I Guess I'll Just Rack Up A Bunch Of Overtime
“In my early 20s, I once worked a summer as a security guard, delivering and picking up funds from stores and fetching from night deposits, as well as switching money cartridges in ATMs. Had a good two weeks of training with the guy I was going to replace for the summer before I was on my own.
I had to ask for my ID card several times until I escalated the card issuer to the guy I was replacing some of the last days before his vacation. He clearly said to the boss that I needed the card so I can do my job, and he kind of waved it off but ended up saying the card will be in my locker the first Monday I’m working alone.
Mind you, I’m handling several 100k dollars (in my local currency) each day just in cartridges for ATMs, and picking up a good amount throughout the day as well,
Monday arrived and no card.
I’m starting around 5 in the morning so it was no use calling my boss at that time, I just had to start my day as it’s one of these jobs where you can’t leave until everything is handled. So it was shifting between 6 and 10 hours to complete, a nice carrot at the end of the stick if you managed to be efficient, as you would get paid for 8 hours minimum.
I grabbed the 20+ keys I needed from the safe, and the rest of the equipment and drove to the national bank to fetch change. And already there it was just luck that the people recognized me from the previous weeks.
You just don’t deliver funds to anyone, do you? There are still two passwords and a key to get to where I was fetching the funds, so it’s not like anyone can arrive there, but they still take precautions.
I followed the instructions throughout the day, but quickly realized it’s summer, people take vacation to be replaced with others, I had so much trouble that the first day it ended up breaking all records on time, 12 hours… I had to wait for several places for people to call in and verify I worked there, I had to call myself, and at one place a colleague had to come by to verify… it was a nightmare… When I arrived back at the base, the boss had already left for the day.
I called and got the same message, it’ll be in your locker tomorrow. I explained the extra time it took, and he just said to put it in as overtime.
Well, the card wasn’t there the next day either, and each day of the week had different routes, new stores, and people to meet, and there were A and B routes for alternating weeks, so the next two weeks I kept on going without an ID card, kept asking for it and kept working many hours overtime just to get the job done.
I had nothing better to do really and was looking forward to the extra pay.
Six weeks went by, it was time to get paid, and somewhere in the system my boss got notified about my tremendous amounts of overtime, he was fuming, very intimidating as I was quite young, and told me I should have learned the ropes by now, and not spend so much time on the route… I tried mentioning the ID card issue, but he wasn’t interested in hearing about it now.
Well, fine I thought. Time for some malicious compliance.
I got more and more frustrated the longer I thought about the situation, but I decided to comply, I would simply just turn in the door at any place that asked about my ID card.
I miraculously got about 60% of the job done from day to day, but started to mark down the ones that never accepted me without the card.
So the next 4 weeks I’m increasingly quicker as I started to omit the ones I never got to pick up from, and kept turning in the door whenever an issue with the missing card came up.
I had some days completed in a new record-breaking 4 hours, and most days were between 5 and 6 hours, still getting paid for 8.
Obviously, the complaints started coming into the base, I had very good communication with most of the places I visited so several people had mentioned to give the young guy an ID card and it would be no problem.
As I always told them how it was. I even got several colleagues which I slowly got to know and tell about this issue, backing me up when the boss had finally heard about all the complaints.
There was really nothing he could do at this point, they still needed me to do the work, and the following morning there was an ID card in my locker. I actually continued working there for another year after that as I didn’t get into the architectural school I had applied to, and even now a good 15 years later, I still kind of miss that carrot at the end of the stick, working more efficient to be able to take shorter days…”
Another User Comments:
“I mean, your boss makes such a huge error here that it’s a miracle that you actually got some work done. I work at a place where security guards have to pick up funds, and there’s no chance you’re getting anything from me without an ID.” martijn1104
6. Want Me To Downgrade Your Computer? You've Got It
“This was quite a few years ago, but I used to do IT for a company that was suddenly experiencing rapid growth. This meant many new employees got new out-of-the-box computers. But it also meant it was hard to always be fully stocked. But the shipping was quick and they basically ordered the exact amount of computers required to fill new employee needs.
Employees before this obviously had computers that may be a couple of years old. This story will feature one such employee.
Employee had noticed many of the newer employees were getting new computers and he felt upset he wasn’t using one of these computers.
He had actually been upgraded a year before which was also before this rapid growth. So what was the upgrade? The year before there was a budget to upgrade CAD workstation users to brand-new ones.
The company bought its equipment outright. So the former CAD workstations could be re-used easily for non-CAD users.
For those not familiar these machines are often higher-end as they are used for high-end visual work, etc. Our company paid about $2500 each for these.
His was one of these repurposed machines. It was currently 2ish years old and had 16 gigs of ram, quad-core Xeon, SSD, and a workstation video card that doesn’t really benefit him.
What was in the brand new computers people got?
A dual-core CPU, 8 gigs of ram, and a 500 GB non-SSD drive.
You can probably guess where this is going.
Employee: How come most of my coworkers have a better computer than me?
Me: I think your computer seems fine, but if you’re having performance issues, I could look at it.
Employee: It doesn’t run as quickly as my coworkers.
Me: Could you show me quickly what you’re doing?
He showed me, and he was pretty much inefficiently running his Excel causing it to be bloaty with overly large file sizes considering it’s Excel.
He honestly should have had a few different Excel worksheets and files for this. This was more an Excel limitation back then than a hardware issue. I talked about this a bit and he didn’t want to listen
Employee: see it’s not running very well.
Me: I see that… Have you tried doing…
Employee: Yes and it didn’t work. Could I get an upgrade?
Me: Honestly your computer is likely better than your colleagues so I don’t think this is going to help.
Would you mind if I helped you optimize your files?
Employee: it’s not going to work. I’ve tried. Can you give me a different computer? One like my coworkers have?
Me: Sure, if your manager sends me an email that says this is vital to your work I could have one ordered for you.
Employee: That would be good. I’ll have them email you.
At this point, I thought it was done as most won’t bother their managers about this. If they do most managers will almost never do this.
I didn’t want to downgrade the guy either even though he was coming across as arrogant.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. I guess it was in his department’s budget or he was doing important work for the department.
I already knew what was going to likely happen from this so I immediately forwarded the email to my manager. I then promptly called my manager as well and gave him a quick rundown.
I told him this is obviously going to come back later since he’s using Excel wrong and won’t listen.
Why didn’t I just have his file used on another employee’s computer to show him you may ask?
Privacy and confidentiality reasons. You’re only supposed to use your assigned computer except in certain circumstances.
So fast forward to him getting his new computer. He failed to back his data up so I had to help him retrieve it.
Also how long did his new computer last after this before he was upset it wasn’t working well you may ask? 1 hour.
Unfortunately, I was busy because as I said the company was growing fast and I couldn’t run to help over something with this type of priority.
He can do his job albeit not optimally because of his excellent knowledge. I had him go through the service desk knowing it was coming back to me eventually. He had to wait about 2 days.
He begged for his other computer back. At this point, I was done playing this ridiculous game. This was taking way too much of my time and I’m not swapping it again. Also, that computer was just billed to his department.
I don’t really want to unassign it and reassign his old one and have it put back in the inventory pool for his department.
Me: do you mind if I can actually test for a minute to see if I can fix your Excel first
Employee: It’s not going to do anything. I use this program every day. I know what I’m doing.
Me: ok but I need to test because if I don’t my manager is going to ask me why I didn’t before I swapped again.
Note my manager trusts me and doesn’t care. But I need to make it clear this is a requirement without creating a conflict such as him thinking I believe he’s lying.
Employee: Sure whatever.
I’m going to go grab a coffee
Me: Actually can you grab a chair and stay for a couple of minutes?
I proceed to quickly check the Excel file to avoid breaking references and make this basically a 10 MB (don’t remember the exact size currently) 32-bit garbage Excel file into 5 different files.
Honestly, these files are still pretty crap but suddenly Excel isn’t hanging or freezing for often a minute or more anymore.
Employee: How did you do that? Is there any way you can combine the files for convenience?
Me: …I think you should keep the files separated. When a file gets too bloated Excel struggles to handle them.
At this point, about half of his department is looking at us. I can tell a few are trying to not laugh.
I think they kind of realized this guy that was kind of rude to me before was the cause of his own issue.
Employee: Oh… Well ok, I guess.
I stand up and tell him to have a good day and leave.
He didn’t even say thanks.”
5. Be Better At Timekeeping? I Can Do That
“This one day in particular I arrived at work at the same time as my Team Leader’s boss.
I walk across the car park and in through the doors to our office, merely seconds after him.
He doesn’t say anything to me from across the car park even though he saw me, he doesn’t even acknowledge me at all. The time was 0703 and I was supposed to start at 0700 (just like him).
Later that day my Team Leader gets an email from this guy telling him to give me a b********g for being late.
My Team Leader (who also happens to be a good buddy of mine outside of work) didn’t give me a b********g, but instead replied and told his boss that I regularly work an hour or so later after work and don’t claim any overtime for it.
At the time I was young and didn’t have any commitments waiting for me back home and I was the type of guy who would want to finish a job off before leaving.
My Team Leader’s boss told him that he didn’t care, that my working day started at 0700 and he expected me at my desk at that time every day. He said he was sick of my “relaxed” attitude toward timekeeping.
My buddy showed me the email back and forth between them (which he wasn’t supposed to do) and just shrugged and said something like “At least now you know, I don’t give a crap, as far as I’m concerned you do more than your stated hours, but he’s clearly gunning for you.
Just watch your back.”
So I decided I’d take the boss’s words to heart and from that day until I left (for a much better job) I arrived at work at 0650 each morning, got myself a morning brew, and sat at my desk not doing anything until 0700 when I would start work.
Even when I got to the office early I’d sit in the car park until it was time. And I left exactly bang on my finishing time of 1530. Every. Single. Day.
The boss didn’t notice of course, until a few months later a big job dropped just before home time (as they often did) and they needed someone to stay on.
There was the usual rushing around and hushed discussions from the management about it and then the boss came over and asked me if I would mind staying on to do the job.
I was usually the guy for the job in these circumstances. Most everybody else had young families they needed to be home for.
Now, I could have stayed on and earned myself some sweet overtime.
I had nowhere I needed to be or anything I particularly wanted to do. But at the time he was asking me it was only a few minutes to home time. I told the boss that I wouldn’t be staying on to do the job.
He asked why and I pointed to the clock and said “because it’s home time.” With that, I shut down my computer, put my coat on, and went to leave. He asked me if I had something to go to and if I had plans for the evening or something and I just replied blankly “nope” and then politely said goodbye over my shoulder as I left.
He was absolutely fuming, of course, but he had no power to compel me to stay and he knew it.
I found out in the days that followed that he blew his top and had asked my Team Leader to gather my timekeeping logs over the past couple of months since he’d ordered him to b*****k me for being 3 minutes late.
He wanted to haul me over the coals for something. When he realized I was keeping exactly the hours I was contracted to keep he pulled me into his office and asked me why I wasn’t being as committed to my role as I used to be, staying back late to get stuff done.
I just smiled and very politely explained that staying late after home time for no pay is something that is done out of goodwill. And that he had eroded all of that goodwill when he had my Team Leader give me a b*****king for being 3 minutes late, on a day when I got to work the exact same time as him.
And I explained that from that point onwards my goodwill was gone and I was only going to do what my employment contract asked of me and nothing more.
He was so red in the face I could tell he just wanted to lose his crap at me, but he had no legs to stand on.
My timekeeping had been impeccable and the work I was doing while at work was to a good standard. He had nothing.
All he could say was that he was very disappointed that I felt that way.
I just shrugged and asked if there was anything else. There wasn’t, so I got up and left his office.
I kept my nose clean for a little over a year after that incident, but he was always trying to get me for some reason or another.
In the end, I found a very nice job elsewhere. And I heard that after I left just about the entire department followed suit.”
Another User Comments:
“Every time someone says that they are “disappointed I feel that way,” I reply that I’m disappointed that I have a reason to feel that way.” awalktojericho
4. Refuse To Leave Work Late? Now You'll Have To Stay Late Everyday
They got exactly what they didn’t want.
“Once upon a time, I worked in a research hospital coordinating studies. When you work in healthcare, following the written laws and rules to the letter is of the utmost importance.
We run into trouble when people begin inventing their own rules and playing by them.
The hardest part of my job was convincing other departments to also do their jobs, and sometimes it was like pulling teeth asking people to perform their duties at even a basic level.
Ask a nurse to draw a basic 4-tube b***d kit? You got an eye roll. Ask the pharmacy to stay 5 minutes past the end of the workday? Nope, they couldn’t do that; they were out at 4:30.
That second scenario is the important one for the purposes of this story. That department REFUSES to stay late. I could understand why they’d feel that way and strive to maintain as steady a schedule as possible, but in the world of sick and dying people, sometimes things come up.
Mind you, I regularly had to stay an hour or two past the end of my shift to take care of problems and data entry. We could get overtime pay or flex our schedules pretty easily at least in my department.
This hospital was in a very snowy metropolitan area, and one time years ago, we were projected to get a massive blizzard. Every one of us — the nurses, the physicians, the pharmacists, and the coordinators — were essential employees (or whatever they called it previously) and had to come in regardless of the weather.
So every one of us should have been planning to be there the next day even if the weather was awful. (We had to call in sick if we missed work for weather reasons.)
The afternoon before the storm was due to begin, we had a patient in the clinic. Typically, patients in this particular research study got a doctor’s appointment and then treatment immediately after. However, this individual had a job that made him prefer getting his clinic visit done in the afternoon and his treatment early the next morning.
It was unusual, but it wasn’t hard to accommodate him.
While most of us had accepted our fate of driving in the snow the next morning, the investigational medicine department was especially not too excited about the prospect of having to come in during the blizzard.
So at 3:30 — an hour before the pharmacy closes — they send me a Slack message and ask us what the possibility of doing this patient’s treatment TODAY might be so they don’t have to come in for it tomorrow.
Really? You’re asking us NOW? This was on your docket ALL DAY. Anyhow, I begrudgingly went to find the patient in the waiting room and ask. He wasn’t thrilled but says he’ll do it if he has to.
I let the pharmacy know.
Then they asked me what the status of the patient was. The clinic was running behind (as usual) and we hadn’t cleared the patient for treatment yet. The investigational pharmacy needed at least 20 minutes to prep the medicines needed, so they told us we had till 4 pm to get them the signed order.
The process for getting a medicine order filled involved:
- getting a signed order from a doctor after a patient has been cleared to get a medicine
- walking it outside across the street to the pharmacy
- handing the signed prescription to a pharmacist
- waiting for the medicine
- walking it back to the patient in the first building
This was absolutely not going to happen in ~12 minutes.
At 4:01, the pharmacy sent me a very rude Slack message indicating that I’d basically missed my window to get the patient in today and I should do better next time (as a coordinator, you got blamed for absolutely everything even if it was the fault of a doctor who was bad at time management).
Their message said something along the lines of, “If you don’t come up and give a pharmacist the order by 4:05, there’s nothing we can do for your patient. In the future, you should get the order signed and over to us ahead of time so we can prep it.”
“Ahead of time,” in this case, meant that a patient would be prescribed a medicine but wasn’t yet cleared by a doctor to receive that medicine. In my training, the pharmacy director told us we were never ever supposed to do this.
It was a HUMONGOUS no-no and would be grounds for a massive lawsuit if anything went wrong. You absolutely don’t prep a medicine unless the patient receiving it is cleared for treatment by a physician.
I really liked the pharmacy director, and I messaged her regularly with questions about medicines patients might be considering while on the study, but she wasn’t super involved in the day-to-day of the pharmacy workers and tended to focus on bigger-picture tasks.
Hence why her employees were inventing their own rules and demands.
Hmm, so I’m supposed to get this patient in today, right now, eh? All right, if you insist.
So I got the order signed by the physician ahead of seeing the patient (they didn’t really give a crap).
The next step, in the words of the person who messaged me, was to take it to a pharmacist, eh? You said I had to take it to a pharmacist by 4:05, right? What if, instead of walking it directly to the pharmacy, I took it directly to the pharmacy director?
She was still a pharmacist and could do everything the folks in the investigational medicine dispensary could do.
I told her that we hadn’t cleared this patient, but I had been urged by the pharmacy to dispense the medicine anyhow so that the patient wouldn’t have to come in tomorrow for their treatment.
She looked puzzled and asked if the patient rescheduled while in the clinic. I told her no — this was at the request of the pharmacy staff so they wouldn’t have to come in during a snowstorm.
I showed her the message her employee had sent me.
The pharmacy director was unhappy with this and said someone would just have to stay late if this was the plan. I referred her to the Slack message that said I had missed my window because they didn’t plan to stay late.
Director was livid and told me that she personally was going to stay late to make sure this went through. We went to the pharmacy from her office and she intended to scold this employee, but of course, everyone was gone.
So the two of us went and got the medicine at 4:35, and I got it back to the patient.
I got a call from him a week later indicating that he actually preferred getting Thursday afternoon treatment instead of having it on Friday morning, and wanted to keep that schedule going forward.
I relayed this to the head of the pharmacy. I expressed uncertainty about how we’d handle this, and she said she’d get back to me.
We all got an email a few days later saying that the investigational medicine department would now be staying open until 5:30, and one person would be staying late every day (rotating every day) so that someone could cover late medicine orders.
But I knew she only had 3 pharmacists, and they were all salaried, not hourly, which meant some of them would be covering more than one late hour a week.
I went to get this patient’s next dose of medicine a few weeks later at about 4:45.
The same woman who’d asked me to break the rules was working. I asked how she was doing, and she told me she was having to work THREE 4:30-5:30s a week… presumably, because she tried to act unethically a few weeks prior.
She handed me the pill bottle and slammed the window in my face.
And to think — if the pharmacists would have just shut up and done their jobs like they were supposed to and come in during one snowstorm, they’d still be able to leave at 4:30 every day.
If you work in healthcare or health research, don’t make your own rules, kids.”
3. Ignore My Expertise? Pay Me For Months To Do Nothing
“For just about the last three decades, I (58m) have been designing software. I’ve gotten pretty decent at it, too.
There are of course challenges, like insane business requirements, ridiculous deliverable timelines, micromanaging product owners, or the ever-popular design-by-committee; but the worst, and I mean WORST, is that everybody who uses software thinks they know how to design it.
(Spoiler alert: they do not.) There are design rules. There are best practices. There are laws. There are nuances to accessibility and localization. There are technical constraints. Try to explain that to a stakeholder who can barely spell HTML and thinks they’re a wiz with MS Paint, and savor the empty stare and vacant eyes.
But hey – they’ve worked there for years, so they know best!
Well. A few years ago, I took a gig at a small software company with a complex and well-established, if antiquated, niche software product.
They wanted to modernize it and bring it to the web. Excellent – just what I specialize in. I settled in for a few months of learning the software, the customers and their needs, and the industry it served. All was hunky-dory while I was off on Research Island, but the time came to start putting actual proposals together and doing some testing.
This is where the real fun started.
The team leader I was assigned to was a mediocre dev who’d failed upward into management and argued with every darn thing I said or proposed. No, Bert, the buttons should NOT all be scattered randomly on the page.
Yes, Bert, colors do actually need to be consistent and mean something. No, Bert, you shouldn’t create a new custom widget to replace a well-established HTML control because you didn’t like the thickness of a line.
And so on. And because dealing with this yutz wasn’t enough of a challenge, the business dev guy they threw at the team demanded that we create all specs and design artifacts during daily 5-hour workshop meetings, where everybody could have a say about everything.
In Elmo’s view, nobody would be above anyone else with their annoying “skills” or “knowledge” about anything. No, we would all talk it out, and hey, remember kids, there are no wrong answers!
As a bonus, we’ll hold a vote on every decision, because yeah, your uninformed opinion is just as valid as my three decades of experience. Design patterns which would normally take me about an hour of wireframing took five people a full week, and the “design” they settled on sucked wet farts out of dead pigeons.
Trying to tell the team that I could generate some examples they could then take and adjust went over about as you’d expect: not at all.
The cherry on this crap sundae was the dev they brought in to prototype the thing.
In a final attempt to help move things forward, I slapped together a very quick wireframe mockup in HTML, which sent Ernie the dev into paroxysms of fury. How dare I invade his domain and create any code?
That was HIS job. He demanded that he was the expert and that I should let him take care of everything. For reference: he’d found Google’s Material Design site and did a copypasta of their generic framework.
Zero customization, zero color, zero personality. It was like selling a house with drywall installed, but no finish. As expected, his work was crap, and any feedback or suggestions, no matter how politely framed, were met with not only scorn and derision but anger at my temerity to question his skills, meager as they were.
By now, not only was I a trouble-making elitist who thought I could do a better job than the team (gasp – I could), but now I was a complainer. Middle manager Bert went and whined to his boss, who called me on the carpet for 15 minutes just as I was on my way out the door one Friday.
I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, but apparently, I wasn’t a “team player.” I was instructed to only provide input when asked. Period.
Malicious compliance is incoming.
I sat in meetings for hours, watching the clown show and counting down to lunchtime.
Nobody asked my opinion, so nobody received my opinion. Questions to me were few and far between, and my replies were as neutral and generic as I could make them. At the end of the week, I started getting uninvited to the workshop meetings.
Since that was my only deliverable, I sat at my desk with nothing else to do. At all. After all, I wasn’t supposed to do anything without being asked.
After about two weeks of this, I figured I’d cover my butt a little, and asked Bert’s boss if there were any changes in his instructions.
There were not – apparently I was doing exactly what they wanted. So, back to my desk and more hours of waiting to go home. I didn’t think this would go on forever… after all, the executive team who hired me into this role knew for a fact they needed my expertise, their customers informed them almost daily of how outdated the software was.
So I sat and did online training and read professional journals and surfed Reddit on my phone, all while watching the frantic pace of ready-for-the-dumpster software being developed all around me. And sat.
And waited.
For three months.
These idiots actually paid me to sit on my hands for more than three months. Now, although these clowns were utterly incompetent, the people who ran the company weren’t.
At some point, they were going to discover what a garbage pile their minions were carefully splooging together, and somebody was going to be blamed. Pretty obvious that the guy who hadn’t participated for a quarter year would be the designated scapegoat, so I found another position and bailed before they managed to pull their head out of their butts long enough to find somebody to fire.
As I was strolling out the door, they were planning on a big release to introduce their “All new updated wonderful product!” To be launched after “all the bugs were ironed out.”
It’s been three years since I left. The product never launched.
To those who say, “I’d love a job where I don’t have to do anything!” I’m sure for some people that would be heaven. But for me, having no purpose was a waste of life.
If I’m going to spend my time on something, it’s going to be something where I can make a difference. Anything else is a waste. Plus, the days draaaaaaaagged.”
Another User Comments:
“I don’t know if it’s age or maturity or just the experience of having been through it before, but a job where you actually have nothing to do blows rhino. You have to be in the workplace, so your time killers are limited to things that are workplace appropriate.
Depending on the situation, you don’t want to do anything to draw attention to yourself. Can’t leave, because you might be asked to do something. You’re basically limited to reading, web surfing, or streaming.
If you’ve never done it, you might be surprised how quickly that gets old doing it for 40 hours a week.” PimentoCheesehead
2. Complain About The Driver? Let Me Handle It For You
Are you sure you want to follow through with this complaint?
“Many years ago, Other Half and I worked at the same company, but in completely different departments.
Other Half worked in Sales as a salesman/driver, taking out products on his own local route.
There were 13 other local routes in that department, fresh product delivered daily.
The customer base in my Other Half’s department is small businesses; corner shops, sandwich shops, take-outs, eateries, that kind of thing.
These small customers would have orders ranging from $10-$50 at a time.
I worked in the offices, predominantly working with the distanced national and international customers (very large businesses in the food industry that most people have certainly heard of) for frozen product delivery.
Their orders were in the range of $80,000-$100,000 per month, ordering pallets over pallets of product. I managed their orders and the accounts, doing the aged debt collecting on those.
One thing I learned at this place that has stayed true at every other job I’ve had: the small-fry customers are the ones that complain the most and the loudest.
Due to the nature of the job, I had to take phone calls, a mixture of the large customers haggling to pay their debts later, sprinkled with the local corner shops calling to complain.
Took a call one morning from Karen (of course), complaining that her delivery was short, the driver is horrible and a piece of work and should be fired, she’s always having the same problem with this driver, he’s never on time, he’s surly, rude, and that I should tell the driver to buck his ideas up or they are never ordering product from us again.
She made some choice words about the driver, screaming, swearing, the whole nine yards. I ask the business name and the business location. The location by the area tells me which route they are on before I even look up their account.
Once I have the business name, I already recognize them as a problem customer. They have actually been moved from one neighboring route to another due to “issues” – read, many Sales drivers refusing to have anything more to do with them.
Karen continues to rant while I do due diligence to look up their account.
Karen: So what are YOU going to do about it?! I want the driver reprimanded immediately! My order was short of this product and that product, he was late, he wouldn’t comp/refund the missing products, he’s an idiot, blah blah.
Me: Well, I’m super sorry about that. Let me fix this for you. I see your order on my screen here and I also see your handwritten faxed order that was scanned in.
Those products aren’t on your order I’m afraid. The driver can’t credit items that were not ordered.
Karen: Yes I did! I want compensation and the driver fired!!
Me: I see.
Let me dig into this a little further. Right, I see there have been a lot of credits in your account already, also lining up to your orders that didn’t include those credited products in the past, that’s rather odd.
Important to note: it was normal for the local drivers to sometimes put in credits to keep the smaller customers quiet and on board. Sometimes production issues happen, and ordered products are short or not available that day.
The business had a whole philosophy that the customer was always right, and to keep them happy. I was in the business of debt collecting, completely opposite to that, and had the power to place customers ‘on hold’ (they got nothing) until they paid up.
I notice that this customer hasn’t paid their bill for over six weeks. They now fall under my remit.
Karen: your driver is lying! I know what I’ve ordered! Your drivers are always doing this and he was a rude jerk!
I want the driver reprimanded and fired or I’m never ordering again!
Given that they have been a problem account for quite some time, I decided to comply.
Me: You know, I’ll follow this up for you.
I can’t speak to the driver right now as they are out delivering, but I will reprimand the driver tonight over dinner at home.
Karen, silence at first: Wait, what?
My Other Half is 6’2” and built like a brick outhouse.
He isn’t a doormat but is also the most chill and least rude person I have ever known.
Me: We take this very seriously and don’t wish to lose your business, we’re very sorry to hear you’re unsatisfied, and I do see you’ve had similar problems in the past. Unfortunately, I don’t have the authority to fire my Other Half, but here’s what I can do.
As your account is now in aged debt, I will place your deliveries on hold and I promise you won’t see that driver until the account is fully audited and paid in full.
Karen: He’s your husband? I don’t think we need to go that far-
Me: He is, but that isn’t relevant, I insist we look into your complaint and take it seriously.
I’ll order a personal audit of your account as all these credits for product not included in your past orders is concerning. I’ll get this all straightened out for you. If you decide to take your business elsewhere after the audit is complete and the account settled, we’ll be sorry to see you go, but completely understand your stance if we can’t find a resolution.
Karen: splutters, mumbles that it’s all ok, she was having a bad day and it’s not all that bad.
Me: I know. Don’t worry. Let me audit this and get you a final correct total, and the driver won’t bother you again until the account is square and you’re happy with the service.
Aftermath: customer’s aged bill came in at $150 more for items that were credited to keep them happy and quiet when she still insisted to complain that they were not getting product they did not order in the first place and tried to make out my Other Half was terrible at his job.
They didn’t get any orders till the account was paid in full, and the customer never made a peep again. My husband continued to deliver to them after the audit and settling the bill, and always walked in there with a big smile.
Moral of the story: witch, be careful who you lie and complain to because that’s going to bite you in the butt one day.”
1. Make Me Upcharge Customers? I'll Add So Many Charges That They'll Want Refunds
“I used to be a server at a major restaurant chain that you see in every mall in the US, and my particular location just happened to be in one of the wealthier parts of the country.
Because of that, a large percentage of the clientele wanted their dishes a certain way. There were some oddball regulars (like the one lady who wanted a Caesar salad with no dressing but 3 whole lemons to squeeze on the lettuce) but 99% of the time they’d ask for rigatoni instead of penne in a dish, or red onion instead of yellow on a burger, or something of that nature.
The thing about this chain, though, is that technically you’re supposed to charge them for substitutions like that. So, for instance, if a guest wanted a different kind of dressing on a salad, it might be a 10-cent charge.
Or if they wanted Swiss instead of cheddar on their burger, it would be like a 15-cent charge.
As a server, you were supposed to know all the upcharges, but because there were like 26 pages to the menu it was daunting enough to just memorize what we even had.
But obviously, no one ever charged for these things because what’s an extra 15 cents on a $200 tab, especially when you’re in the weeds and you’re pretty sure the host stand wants you to have a mental breakdown?
Not only that, but because rich people tend to be the stingiest jerks you’ll ever meet, we would never charge them because they would instantly complain if you did. And the restaurant’s policy was essentially “the customer is always right” no matter how wrong they were.
We even had regular grifters that would order the “wrong thing” and then complain and get an entire free meal EVERY FREAKING TIME.
So one normal day I’m serving a table and someone asks for goat cheese on their salad instead of feta, which is supposed to be one of those 10-cent changes.
I obviously don’t add the upcharge, just like I hadn’t for any of the other countless times in over 3 years, and like 15 minutes later the new manager (I’ll just call him Brad) comes along and pretty much chews me out over it.
Keep in mind, this is Brad’s 2nd day on the job and he came from the other side of the country to replace our beloved former manager who left to manage her own restaurant.
The dude hadn’t even introduced himself to me and he comes out of nowhere to yell at me for not doing the upcharge. I explained to him why I didn’t, and how it was pretty much a directive from the GM not to do upcharges because of the 99% chance that a complaint and free meal would follow.
But Brad just blah blah blahs some more and tells me I need to add the upcharges or I’d get written up.
So when the next table (a party of seven that had a $500ish bill) changes literally every dish, I added the upcharges (which totaled like, $1 at most).
When I dropped the check they freaked out over all the upcharges (even though I informed them of the charges when they ordered, the itemized receipt made it look so much more severe) and they demanded to speak to the manager.
Instead of getting any of the other managers I had worked with for years, I grabbed Brad and made him deal with them. He ended up having to comp all $500ish because he insisted I charge an extra dollar for all the substitutions.
But did he learn his lesson? Nope! So I did it over and over again to the detriment of my bank account (most people still tipped me though, so that was nice) and I got to watch tables routinely chew him out over the charges.
This continued for a month or so until he finally relented, and not too long after I was suspiciously fired for “creating a hostile work environment”….while on vacation.”
