People Break Silence About Their Single Best Revenge Story
16. You Have A Reservation Here On The 4th Floor? We Only Have 3 Floors, So You Can Stay On The Roof
Since you’re SUPER sure you made a reservation at this specific hotel, let alone, on our so-called “fourth floor,” here you go, Princess.
“Several years ago, I worked the front desk at a privately owned hotel (non-chain) that had been a Days Inn five years prior.
The only way to book a reservation was to talk to the front desk staff. No online reservations, no third-party reservations. About 50% of our rooms were sold to walk-ins.
One holiday weekend, we are booked full. Our elderly elevator is having some trouble with all the traffic and spooking guests, so I close it and call for a repairman, but it’s 10 o’clock at night, so I’m not expecting anybody until the next morning. All of our guests are checked in, our accessibility rooms are on the same floor as the lobby, so I’ll just help out anyone with their luggage if they have more and put up a sign saying so.
In walks a woman I don’t recognize from check-in. She plops a piece of paper in front of me and then goes and gets lots of luggage. The paper shows her with a reservation at Days Inn at this address for tonight for a tenth of the price we were selling before being fully booked. She comes back to the desk likely thinking that I have been checking her in all this time.
“I regret to inform you that we do not accept third-party reservations; we are unfortunately already booked for the night.”
“I have a reservation! It’s right there! I paid for it!”
“Ma’am, I believe you, unfortunately, you are not in our system because we don’t take third-party reservations.
They sold it to you fraudulently.”
“You are just trying to steal! I have a confirmation number right there! I handed it to you.”
“Yes, ma’am, you handed me a reservation to a Days Inn. We are (hotel name).” Gesturing to a sign.
All of the signage inside and outside the building is correct.
“Also, this is for a fourth-floor room; we only have three floors.”
“I stayed at this DAYS INN last year on the fourth floor!”
This argument continues for a while with me keeping my cool, informing her that we are booked, all of our rooms are full, me insisting that we don’t have a fourth floor, not Days Inn, don’t take third party reservations, etc. Eventually, she screams at me that I am going to take her to her room on the fourth floor, which she paid for, right now!
I don’t respond, just stare at her with a blank face until she slaps the desk and screams, “Now!” again.
I don’t mime making a room key, but I do grab my huge key ring, and we both load ourselves up with her excessive luggage and climb the stairs. Once we get to the third floor, I gesture to the third-floor sign and tell her it is the third floor. I then use my maintenance key to unlock the door to the maintenance stairs which are not lit, and she trudges up behind me not saying anything. I open the door to the tarred roof and walk outside. “And here is the fourth floor.
I hope it is as nice as the last time you stayed here.” I drop her luggage and go down the stairs back to the front desk.
Honestly, had she been nicer to me, I would have tried to help her get a room at a different hotel and submit documentation to try and get her a refund (or chargeback) from the third party, but since she screamed at me, I left her and her luggage on the roof. Plus, she insisted she had stayed on the fourth floor, so that’s what she got.”
15. Lie About Needing A Salt-Free Diet? Well, You're Still Getting Your Salt-Free Meal
“This story is from a dinner party I hosted. I invited 6 folks, and shortly after the invites were sent, I received a call from Sally.
Sally (not her real name) advised me that she was now on a salt-free diet. She told me that at home she cooked without any salt and gave me a speech about how wonderful salt-free life was.
I was skeptical and advised her that I would personally find it difficult to give up all salt. Was she sure she wasn’t just on a low sodium diet?
Sally advised that unless her dish was salt-free, she wouldn’t be attending. While telling her no was an option, I’m not that person. I was angry at Sally for years for being difficult at the dinner table and restaurants. Trust me, there was always something wrong with her meal, or it’s preparation, or the flavor, or the waiter, or…
With a smile so large you could hear it through the phone, I assured her that her request for salt-free was 100% going to be accommodated.
On the night of the dinner, I prepped the meal. Sally was getting the same thing as everything else with one critical difference. All of her food was prepped in separate containers, baked on separate racks, and seasoned with exactly the same flavors sans salt.
Dinner time, and my guest arrive. I have all of Sally’s food plated on white plates. Everyone else gets grey plates.
First round: Appetizers. Fried calamari with a lemon jalapeno butter sauce. This dish typically has salt in both the batter and the sauce. As Sally couldn’t have that, I battered her calamari in salt-free seasonings and flour. Her condiment looked exactly the same but was made with unsalted butter and no added salt.
I place Sally’s plate in front of her first, and she immediately states she asked for salt-free. I assure her that her dish is salt-free, and I made sure to cook hers separately and even use a different colored plate to keep it straight.
We all sit to talk and enjoy the squid. Sally takes a bite and makes a face. “Mine has no flavor!” She exclaims.
All of my other guests tell Sally it’s divine, delicious, best they’ve had, etc. I smile at Sally and assure her that her dish was flavored exactly like everyone else. The only difference is that she received absolutely no salt.
It’s at this point that Sally has a moment of clarity.
It’s painfully obvious on her face. She realizes she can’t complain about the lack of salt as she’s already told the table about her salt-free life. She also can’t claim it tastes terrible if everyone else is raving about the food. She literally looks like she was about to cry at the table.
As my guests enjoy their dinner, Sally is slowly playing with her food much like a toddler would, pushing her calamari around the plate. After a few moments, she reaches for the sauce that I made for everyone else.
“Sally! Be careful; the salt-free sauce is in the white bowl. That one has salt.”
She mumbles something about wanting to taste the difference before literally dumping the bowl on her calamari.
She then exclaims how much better it tasted. You and I know that, of course, things taste better with salt.
So this drama repeated itself over the main course of honey-roasted salmon with pine nuts. I also am no heathen and had both salt and pepper on the table for my guest. I’m not going to judge you for needing more flavor. Here we go!
Sally takes a bite of her fish, and once again, realizes that it has no salt. She reaches for the salt shaker, and the conversation stops. Another guest asked Sally if she was okay with adding salt to her food. She says that she can occasionally have salt.
She proceeds to shower her fish with salt sprinkles.
I also baked some cookies for dessert. The dough uses a little salt. I made sure to whip up a separate batch of cookies wrapped to go for her. Salt-free, of course!
When I handed her those cookies the look of defeat that hit her face warmed my heart.
Dinner is over, and everyone is happy except for Sally. I called her the next week to make sure she was okay as she’s consumed sodium at my party. Sally told me her doctor has removed her sodium restrictions, and she won’t need that accommodation at future meals. On the phone, I congratulate her on her good health.
When I hang up, I laugh until my sides hurt. Salt-free life apparently doesn’t taste good when the salt is actually omitted!
Note: To anyone a low or no-sodium diet for their health- I commend you. Sally, however, wasn’t actually on this diet. This is evidenced by her shock at how salt-free food tasted. I confirmed with her husband that she’s never stopped using salt at home. Her salt-free claims were a ploy for attention that back-fired tastelessly.”
14. Since You Want Class To Start Early, You Can Pay More For It
“After being on the receiving end of more accidents than I like, I switched careers to work as a drivers ed teacher. I’m fairly easygoing, but there is one aspect of any job I have that is a bottom line- my time is my time.
If I’m off the clock for any reason then I don’t work. So if your class is scheduled for 5:45, and you show up at 5:30 when I start my break, I’m not going to do anything. Most parents understand that after the nightmare of kids that don’t understand not stopping on train tracks, that you go counterclockwise through roundabouts (seriously, he jumped the curb to turn the wrong direction through it), and one panic-inducing moment where a student nearly went the wrong way down a highway (rural area so no on/off ramps, just a road that crosses it), I NEED my breaks to destress. If they show up early, and I say I’m on break, they nod and wait.
Most of the time.
Very seldom, we get people who feel they have a right to demand I start a class early. This is one of those. First, it should be noted I don’t have a uniform or badge, so aside from the roof topper on the training car, nothing says I work for the driving school. I had just settled down in my own car and was about to bite into my sub (two of my past students work at subway and will discount my meals) when a woman knocks on my window, I open my door and step out food still in hand. The following occurs:
Karen: “Are you Isa?
We wanted to start his class early.”
Me: “I’m sorry, I’m on lunch right now. His lesson starts in 30 minutes.”
Karen: “Well, we need to start earlier; he needs to be home early for dinner, so he can’t be out that late.”
Me: “I’m sorry, but when you scheduled the class, the schedule was fixed so that I could have the necessary break and lunchtimes.”
Karen: “Well, then reschedule this class, and have your stupid lunch later.”
Me: “Miss, it’s my lunch break; I’m not being paid for this time, and I need to be on the clock and scheduled to teach under state law.”
Not really, but sometimes saying it’s a legal requirement slows the entitlement train.
Karen: “I Don’t CARE. TEACH HIM NOW!”
Oh, wow, that’s a bright light bulb over my head. Let’s play with this.
Me: “Okay, I can reschedule today’s class. Just let me call the office and get that arranged for you.”
I grab my phone and dial the admin I deal with most of the time. Kat is great – she will let me know when parents/students cancel. She clears my schedule when I need to take the car in for maintenance, and she doesn’t like her teachers being bossed around by customers – after all, they need us more than we need them. Just to make it easier I put the phone on speaker.
Me: “Hey Kat, Joe’s mom Karen is here and wants to reschedule his lesson today.”
Kat: “When does she want to move it to?”
Karen: “I want him to start right NOW!”
Me: “So, yeah, I was thinking just cancel the 4:30 to 6:30 class and give me another at 4:10.”
Karen: “Why is this taking so long?”
Kat: “You’re sure you want to do this, ma’am?”
Karen: “YES, YOU IDIOT!”
Please stop shouting; my phone is on speaker. She can hear you perfectly fine.
Kat: “Okay, I’ve canceled the original class and rescheduled it to start in 2 minutes. We’ll note this in your records. Please remember there is a $50 fee for canceling within 24 hours.
Have a good day.”
And she hung up. While I tried not to grin as Karen realized she’d just been charged double the cost of a lesson to have it start 20 minutes early, and if she doesn’t pay, then we can withhold the certificate her son needs to take his driver’s test. For his part, the kid is actually pretty good, one of those students where we are mainly just going through the motions of drivers ed to appease the all-mighty BMV/DMV, and he’s glad he gets to spend a couple of hours every few days driving without having to listen to his mother nagging him.”
13. No More Candy Stealing For Him
“My dad was a coal miner in Yorkshire, UK. He started work at age 14 in 1935 and retired aged 60 in 1981.
Circa 1978 (when I was 15), he complained that somebody kept stealing his Kit Kat chocolate biscuit from his snap tin (sandwich box).
This kept happening, and he was getting really angry about it, as much the principle as anything else: miners didn’t steal from their workmates. Except that one was now doing that. Like most working guys those days, he had his routine. Lunch was a flask of tea, sandwiches, and a chocolate biscuit. If somebody steals part of your lunch when you’re down a coal mine for 8 hours, you can’t just nip out to a nearby shop. I was mad too when he told me what was going on.
He was a nice old guy, and I didn’t like anyone doing anything bad to him.
Nobody was gonna hurt my dad with impunity. So, I had an idea.
Very carefully, I unwrapped a Kit Kat (the two-fingered variety). In the 70s, Kit Kats had an inner wrapper of aluminum foil and an outer wrapper of paper that you could slip off sideways (not the one-use sealed plasticated-paper wrap like now that you have to tear to open).
Having found a nice fresh soft brown dog turd out on the pavement, I used a knife to fill in the gap between the two fingers, creating a strip of poop maybe four inches long, a quarter-inch wide and a quarter-inch deep, right down the center of the bar where it wouldn’t be obvious.
Technique-wise, it was like pointing masonry. Only somewhat smellier. Then I carefully re-wrapped the Kit Kat.
Dad thought it was a great joke and took it with him to work as usual. Halfway through his shift, he heard some guy further down the coalface barfing his guts up and spitting profusely. He couldn’t stop work to find out who it was as he drove a massive coal-cutting machine (known as working ‘on the chocks’). Sure enough, though, come break time, he opened his snap tin to find the Kit Kat gone. That, however, was the last time it ever went missing again.
My dad died in 1993, the usual coal miners’ diseases.
To his dying day, though, he would still fall about laughing when regaling friends with the story of how his son had ‘put paid’ to the Kit Kat thief with a poop sandwich.”
12. My Boss Stole My Stuff, So I Made Him Pay For It
“Since I was a kid, I was fascinated by computers and electronics. During school, I had no social life. I just stayed at home and was learning stuff. I was going to a generic high school that should prepare you for university without any specialization, but there were few people with the same interests as me, and our IT teacher was really supportive of us. When I finished high school, I already had a job as a programmer and had a few years of experience in the field. I also was experienced with electronics and even worked on a few contracts for the factory in town, involving creating machines for them (other engineers came up with an idea how to machine will work; my job was to put their motors, sensor, wire it up, and write programs for the PLC to control it).
I moved to a big city and started university, so I lost my programming job in my city. I was going looking for a part-time job while living off my parents’ support. Things changed when my friend got an escape game voucher for 5 people for his birthday and took me with him. The escape game had cool “magic” stuff, like you placed objects on a shelf, and all pictures in the room fell off the walls, etc. While we were there to solve puzzles, I was mostly interested in these “magic” things, making theories about how they made them and thinking about how I would do it. When the game was over, I saw for a moment their technical room, and at this point, I was like “I want to work here.”
I sent them my CV, and as I was overqualified for this job, I was accepted after the first interview. I was young, naive, and stupid, so they just used me. My hourly rate was, after tax, the equivalent of $8.50 (to put it in comparison, a cashier at a big store here makes roughly $6.50 + benefits). The first few months were awesome. I was paid for doing my hobby, and the owner loved me, as his previous tech guy (referred to as Tech Moron now on) was, compared to me, just dumb. (I’m not bragging. I swear!) He did not come up with almost any original design, he just found something on the internet and was skilled enough to read the schematics and somewhat copy it.
But he had big gaps in his knowledge (once he told me that I can’t build a battery-operated circuit that will be powered while the battery is charging, as this would cause the battery to explode. When I told them about charging regulators and how it’s not an issue with his phone or laptop, he just told me I was hired to help him and to back off).
Over time, Tech Moron started to realize that I’m just smarter than him, and his ego could not handle it, so he decided to make my life a nightmare. For example, the owner tasked me with replicating a device that they already have in one game as he wanted to put it into another one.
I spent a week just messaging Tech Moron asking him for the schematics and source code, calling him, and he just never replied. Then I decided to mess with him; I came up with an improved design and built it. When I was shoving it at the next meeting to the owner (who was very happy with it), Tech Moron just yelled at me for not using his design and wasting time on reinventing the wheel. After some time, the owner realized what was going on and hired another tech guy (Tech Senior from now on), but he cannot fire Tech Moron, as he had all-important source codes and designs on his laptop, and because of a bad contract, it was not the property of the escape game company.
(Little did we know, that in the future, he will not hand over most of the designs and codes, and we will end up rewriting that from scratch.)
The company was also franchising. We just took a game we already had running, made an exact copy, and installed it in another location. We then provided support, while they were paying us license fees, usually a small percentage of their profits. The owner was a typical manager, who thought 9 women can deliver a baby in a month. And it showed as the company grew. Eventually, Tech Senior was mad at my boss as he had much more experience in electronics, while I was more oriented on programming and on-site support for game masters if something broke.
We didn’t give a flip about Tech Moron, as at this point, he just showed up once a month, did almost no work, criticized all we already did, and had just worked and went home. Things were going really well, so we hired a few electronics students to help us. The building department, which was making props (like special wooden tables that we could hide our magic into) also grew.
Things were looking really good, until one meeting about a new franchise client. The owner told us what he needs, we (tech guys) talked to props guys, went over all the requirements, and told him we need 10 weeks for it (well, 8, but we always accounted for stuff going sideways, as this date would be on the contract).
Usual stuff in healthy company. Next week, next meeting. He told us that the client does not want to wait, and he put 5 weeks in the contract. His reasoning was we are doing the same stuff as before and now have more people, so it will go faster.
We worked hard. Like really hard. There were weeks when I just went home after 8 hours to take a shower and sleep for a bit, then went back to the workshop to work on stuff. It was hard, but we managed to finish in time, and I got some sweet ca-ching ching in overtime. But this was a mistake. Now we showed him that what he wants is possible.
So the next contract went over, the exact same deadline. More overtime. I remember having almost no social life, just working the whole week, sometimes sleeping at the workshop, and being very stressed. Then, every Friday, I just went to a pub with a few friends, totally wasted myself to relieve the stress, and slept through the whole weekend. Then comes a Monday, and we start over. Eventually, I went from, “I love this job” to “I don’t give a flip,” and I wasn’t the only one. Our performance dropped, and we started missing deadlines. Did the owner account for it in the contracts? No! “Repetition makes perfection. This time, you can do it faster” was his reasoning.
And he just kept signing more and more contracts, dumping the stuff on us.
I remember the one meeting when he asked us about the status of Project D, as the deadline was next week. Well, we did not even start working on this, as we had our hands full with Project C, which was started later because we did not finish Projects A and B in time. This is how far it went. Deposits from new contracts were used to pay fines for old contracts. At this meeting, I realized I just had enough.
Of course, our job was not only franchising. We had our own games that needed to be maintained and we were doing that all the time alongside that franchising nightmare.
What was the biggest issue with all games was the control software. It was a ton of simple-purpose scripts driving all the Raspberry Pi’s and Arduino’s in the game, but it had one UI presented to the game master, so he could control all the props in-game, override them, etc. At least in theory. But oh boy, it was super buggy! Sometimes not working at all, sometimes you wanted to shine a light on the object to give the players a hint, but instead, it opened doors to the next level, etc. It was not universal, simple requests required massive changes, lots of overrides were not implemented correctly.
One day, the owner finally agreed to my demands and allowed me to rewrite all of that.
It took me few months, but I created a universal engine that could handle all the stuff game designers were asking us to do, was easy to expand, had error protection and recovery tasks (Now, if one prop stopped responding, you just opened the debug page and clicked restart. This was a game-changer as previously, the game master had to switch off the power, and sometimes that was not possible during the game), and my biggest achievement, I created an easy scripting language that was used to describe the game workflow. The game master now had a buttload of (working!) controls and the option to interrupt predefined tasks and change the flow, but that barely happened, as the game was now almost automatic, and he was there just to give hints.
I was not comfortable running this software on the Raspberry Pi that was there for the previous control, and I wanted better hardware for that. My request was always denied by the owner, but the games manager wanted the new software working asap (to this point, we were always just testing it from my laptop), so I decided to lend them a few PC. (Some time ago, a friend from a big corporate pulled a crapload of Dell Optiplex workstations from e-scrap. They were working fine, had Intel i5 CPU, 8 gigs of RAM, decent onboard graphics, Displayport, USB 3.0, fully working computer, and you could buy them refurbished for about $200. The company just had no use for them, and nobody wanted to go overselling them, so they just dumped them.
I had a stack of 20 of them at home, just collecting dust.) I took a few of them to my work, and the boss agreed we will settle it later, so I just emailed him a list of all of my HW that was used in the games (5 PCs, some WiFi routers, old tables, some monitors, and other stuff I had collected mostly from e-waste, fixed it, and had no use for it). Of course, I did not tell them I got that for free and was expecting them to pay me for it.
Fast forward, I was fed up with the franchising deadlines and got a few job offers that made me realize my real price and that I was an abused young kid in his 20s, working for almost nothing.
But I was waiting. In the next month, my software was deployed in the remaining games. Tech Moron was out of the picture for a few months now, and Tech Senior had some programming knowledge and was able to use my scripting language, but had very little understanding about the insides of the complex engine I wrote, which was now being developed for over a year. I had results, I was important, and I had demands. I scheduled a meeting with the owner, where I wanted to present the list of all the wrong things and what I want to do about it. It all came to a single argument: I’m not happy here, but you need me, so you will fix these issues and give me a raise, or I’m leaving.
And I will stand my ground. A recruiter from a big IT company I wanted to work for messaged me on LinkedIn a few weeks prior, and I already went on the interview, so I had an escape plan prepared. The future looked bright, and I was ready to make it happen.
The day of the meeting came up. I was in a good mood until there was a nasty accident in the workshop (I don’t want to post any details, as this would identify me in a second, but this event is important). I, being the youngest one here, not even responsible for the mess, was tasked with cleaning it up.
I had an argument with the workshop manager about me being a programmer and not a radioactive waste cleaning lady, but in the end, I just broke and started cleaning. Halfway through it, almost vomiting from the smell, I just snapped. None of this would happen in a decent IT company. I went to my office, packed my stuff, and just sat there just playing games, waiting for the owner. When he showed up, I told him about all the issues, he argued at some, but when we got to the end, I just told him that today was the last straw and that I’m leaving right now. I was employed as an independent contractor so they could save on taxes and my contract had nothing about my time there.
I just told him that I will send him a download link for all the files I have (as the contract stated that they are owned by the company). He begged me to stay for one more month, as they were behind on many deadlines. I just said I will think about it and left. On my way home, I called the recruiter and told him I accept the job and can start next month.
The next day, I just made a big archive of about 150GB of files, backups, etc. that I had, uploaded it to my server, and emailed the link to the owner and tech senior. I then spent the next two weeks in bed, watching Netflix and ignoring calls.
For the last week, I showed up to help clear up some things, hand over my projects, asked about the computers and other stuff I lent them (he told me they will pay for it), and then left. I was very lucky. A month later, they were forced to close all games by the government, making their income go almost zero overnight. This I believe was the reason they never paid me for my stuff, even I repeatedly asked until I got tired of it.
Time went by, until a few weeks ago when I saw the tech senior was looking for a new job. I messaged him, and we talked. He told me that they survived by doing private events for companies until they could open again a month ago.
All the other tech guys except him were let go, but he managed. Until he got into an argument with the owner. He did not tell me many details, but the owner wanted something either impossible or very expensive. When he presented a cheap alternative, the owner just snapped and fired him on the spot. He tried to reason with him about not firing him until he can teach his successor (and find a new job in the meantime), but he was fired on spot.
A week later, I got a call from the owner. He hired the younger tech guys he fired and wanted ME to come and answer their questions, mostly about the engine I wrote.
I agreed, but as we were planning the meeting, I was suspecting he just wanted me to do it for free. When I brought up the hourly rate, he just told me we will solve that later, hung up, and never called again. The day of the meeting came, I was waiting in my car outside the workshop, waiting if he will call where am I, but he did not. A few days later, I parked next to the warehouse where all the games were held, with a yagi antenna in my car. Surprise surprise, the WiFi routers I lent them were still there, with the password unchanged. I connected to the WiFi and poked around the network.
All the PCs that I lent them to run the software on were still there, still running the Linux server I installed there, and looking at the logs, they were still used to control the games. I wrote a script that runs on boot, rolls a dice, and then deleted the whole drive. I was connected to MY WiFi router, making changes to MY computer, formatting MY drives. Then I drove away.
A few days ago, I got a call. Apparently, when the Monday shift came in, the control system for one of the games was not responding; the browser was showing timeout. They decided to reset power for the whole rack where all the PCs were multiple times, hoping it would start up because turning it off and on again always works.
When they decided to stop trying, they find out that all 8 games were dead. The “new” old tech guys figured out that the drives probably died, but had no knowledge about my system, so they could not set it up. When I asked about Tech Senior, the owner made some excuse about him quitting and not wanting to work for them anymore.
I told him I was happy to help. In the end, this used to be my dream job. But I now work for a big company, I don’t have much time and it’s expensive. I can come over to set it up, but my hourly rate now is $150.
He talked me down to $100 (which was still about twice as much as I make now).
When I arrived, I checked the PCs, pulled out the email I sent him a year ago, and told him that these serial numbers match these on the labels, and told him I’m happy to find my lost stuff, took the first PC and took it to my car. We had an argument. I told him that I’m either taking all that stuff, or he is paying me something over $2,400, he wanted to call the police, but I had the proof this equipment was mine. He eventually agreed, and I got to work. All my software was still in the Bitbucket, even with the few modifications tech senior managed to make, alongside all the config files and scripts with the game workflow that Tech Senior was periodically modifying and backing up, so it was a pretty easy job.
I got it all working and then stayed for few more hours, explaining some stuff to the tech guys. I printed the invoice and left. Tired, but satisfied.
Yesterday, a nice sum of about $3,600 landed in my bank account. From what they told me, all 8 games were dead for 3 days. Each game costs between $80 and $120, takes one hour to finish and half an hour is needed for preparation, so there are 12 slots every day, averaging on $9,600 income per day when fully booked (this is of course just the income — profit after paying all the rent, wages, electricity, consumables used in games, etc. is much lower, but I don’t know how much).
Before about 80% of slots were booked during the week and 100% during weekends. I just like to think I made him lose 23 thousand (not counting the angry customers, which were forced to reschedule) dollars just because he was a jerk. If he paid me for my stuff or did not fire his only tech guy, none of this would have happened.”
11. Get Mad At Me For Clocking Out To Avoid Overtime? Don't Worry, I'll Still "Leave With The Team"
“I work for a popular grocery chain that operates in the southeastern United States where shopping at is supposedly a great time. I’ve been with the company for 18 years: four of them as a department manager before I stepped down due to being a salaried worker that worked ridiculous amounts of overtime without compensation (that was recently dealt with via a class action lawsuit).
I still work in the same department in which I was once a manager, so I know just about everything there is to know. If anything goes wrong, I can make it right. If anything breaks, I can fix it.
My current manager is an awesome boss for whom I’d do anything to help out. He understands that his employees are people and not just minions to do his bidding. He’s willing to work with us on any scheduling needs, so we’re all willing to do the same. That being said, about two years ago, we were short-handed on employees who were able to close the department, particularly those who could close the kitchen.
We talked, and I agreed to close every night for a while until we could get more people on board and trained in the different areas of the department. This went on longer than expected, and he apologized, but I told him not to worry, as I was actually enjoying having a regular schedule even though the hours weren’t ideal.
Fast forwards a few months, and we’re finally staffed properly, and my manager thanks me for my help, and we agree that I’ll continue working nights because I like the consistency, and he knows that I’ll always make sure everything is set up well for the next morning, and I make his job easier for doing so.
During this time, we’ve picked a lot of great workers and a couple of awful ones. The great workers were amazing to work with (I called them my A-team), and we’d often get off work 30-45 minutes early because we helped each other out and got stuff done. The awful workers took note of their willingness to help out and would neglect parts of their closing duties because they knew the A-team would get it done in order to get off ASAP.
This goes on for a while and gets worse, reaching a point where the other A-teamers and I talk to our boss and say that we don’t mind helping people out, but we’re done doing other people’s jobs for them.
He agrees and changes the policy so that once we’re done with our sections, we can clock out and leave after being checked out by the manager-in-charge (MIC).
The event:
Things have been going pretty well and as long as two or more of my A-team workers are closing with me, we’re still able to get out early as a team. We always make sure to set up any other closers for success and do any general work like taking out the trash, adjusting inventories, etc. before leaving, but we’re still able to leave a little early. This is important because we never have to worry about getting overtime (OT).
We have a STRICT no OT policy; even one minute of OT will earn a write-up for the employee and my manager unless approved ahead of time. Then it happens: 3 out of the 4 other A-teamers quit within two weeks of each other. One found a better job, one had a family crisis to handle, another moved. I went from working with coworkers that had years of experience in the department to coworkers that have been with the company for less than six months for the most part. There are a few coworkers that are approaching their one-year mark, but I still have more experience than all my fellow closers combined, probably tenfold.
Suddenly, instead of getting out early, I’m having to work past my scheduled times on a bad night and barely getting out on time on good nights. I try to manage my own time in order to not have to leave early or come in late, but I’ve been cutting it close.
Three weeks ago, a particular MIC (there are 7 MICs that each have a set night to close) is closing. I’m closing with newbies, and I’m in danger of going into OT. This is a Thursday night and while I do close Friday (the final day of our week cycle), I make sure to keep some wiggle room in case anything goes wrong on Friday night that keeps me from leaving on time.
I finish closing my section, take the trash, adjust inventory, and generally help out as much as I can until it’s my scheduled time off at which point I clock out and page my MIC to check me out. I’d have paged sooner, but I knew that my section was clear (again, I’ve been doing this for a long time) and wasn’t going to be asked to work off the clock.
The following conversation occurs:
MIC: “Why are you paging me over here? The others are clearly not finished, and you should be helping them.”
Me: “I paged you to clear my section so that I can leave and not worry about OT.
I did XYZ to help them out, and all they have left shouldn’t take more than ten minutes or so.”
Her: “Do you work tomorrow?”
Me: “Yes, but I’m closing Kitchen and always come in early on those days to ensure a smooth transition and make sure I don’t fall behind. The little bit of wiggle room I have left to avoid OT is going to be used for that.”
Her: “You can’t be in danger of OT if you still have another day to work. You know that the entire department is supposed to leave as a team. You leaving before your coworkers isn’t right. I’ll let you leave this time, but from now on, you leave with your team.”
Side note, this MIC came in from a sister store after the fiasco mentioned in the setup.
The next day, I talk to my direct manager and ask him how he wants me to handle the situation. He assures me that I did the right thing and was just managing my own time in order to avoid OT. He knows that I always try to set everyone up for success. The entire reason I’m still closing 5 nights a week is for this very purpose after all.
I should also mention that on this particular night with said MIC, I left the department a fair number of times to do extra work (get trucks from the back, clean up the back room of cardboard and trash, take out old grease to the canister outside, etc.), and she came looking for me while I was doing the side jobs on two occasions.
On the second occasion, she told me that she wanted me to alert her any time I’m going to leave the department, so she’d know my whereabouts. I thought it was odd since no one else had to do this, but whatever. I later learned that she told my manager that I was taking entirely too many smoke breaks (I take two a day, as per company policy) and said that I wasn’t doing what I said I was doing for the side work and just using them for extra breaks. I sighed internally and had an idea. It was time for some malicious compliance.
Every night that this MIC has closed, I’ve had a great time complying with her wishes.
First, every time I leave the department, she knows. Going to the restroom, paged. Lunch break, paged. Taking cardboard to the bailer? Running trash? Have to help a customer outside of my department? Paged, paged, and paged. She’s gotta know where I am, right?
Secondly, I still refuse to put myself in danger of overtime while also refusing to work off the clock. So what happens? I punch out at my scheduled time no matter what and then I’m on my own time. I sit down at my manager’s desk, pull up other malicious compliance stories from this sub on YouTube, and start enjoying his malicious compliance posts at full volume while my coworkers continue to finish up around me.
Last week she sees me on my phone.
Her: “What exactly are you doing? There’s still more work to be done! Don’t you see your coworkers still working? Why are you just sitting there?”
Me: “I’ve already done my work, helped out as much as I could, but still had to clock out on time. I’m just here waiting for them to finish, so we can leave as a team. That’s what you wanted, right?”
Nothing spectacular happened yet. She gives me the stink-eye every now and again when she sees me and simply smirk back at her. She tried complaining to my manager, but he always has my back.
I even shared with him that I’ve considered further malicious compliance if she keeps pushing me by keeping her updated on my whereabouts, even when she’s not the MIC. I’m keeping that one up my sleeve for the time being. She never stated that my updates were needed only when she was MIC, so I’m just waiting for her to try something else.”
10. You Sure You Want Four Times The Amount Of Pepperoni? Okay, But It Won't Cook
He should’ve just asked for some extra warmed-up pepperoni on the side, honestly.
“Back in high school in the early 90s, I worked at a pizza place.
I used to open Sundays which was great because it was just me, and the guy who rolled the day’s dough. We’d chat, listen to music, and the restaurant was usually dead.
One Sunday in the early afternoon, this guy comes in and says he wants a pizza with extra, extra pepperoni. He says he’s asked for it before, but it’s never been right. Never enough pepperoni. So he tells me we will pay for 4 toppings worth of pepperoni, and he wants 4 toppings worth on his pizza. Being the good employee I am, I say: “You got it.”
Now, usually, when people order multiple toppings, you get a bit less of each one (like if you order pepperoni, salami, and ham, you’d get less pepperoni on there than a pure pepperoni pizza).
This isn’t entirely a rip-off. If you put too much meat on, the pizza won’t cook properly.
Now, I’d been working there a couple of years, and I knew that 4X the normal pepperoni wouldn’t work, but I also knew it could be fun. So I went ahead and complied with the guy’s request. I literally put 4X the pepperoni of a pepperoni pizza on there. Weighed it and everything.
The freaking thing WOULD NOT COOK. Our pizzas usually take 10 minutes, but this thing was in there like 20 and would still fold when you put the paddle in there. 5 minutes later, though I see it. A bubble. First the size of a large pimple, then it grew to the size of a big cyst, then the size of a mountain.
It was crazy. It had to be six inches high. I called the other guy out from the back, so he could see it. I wish we had phones in those days, so I could have taken a picture.
Now, we get bubbles in our pizza from time to time, and we had a special hook on a long metal pole we would use to reach into the oven to pop them. I opened the oven door and gingerly reached in with the pole and poked the pizza. It erupted like Mt. St. Helens and a fountain of grease spurted up and hit the roof of the oven. It was horrifying.
It actually pulsed three or four times like the pepperoni monster had a beating heart. A cheese and pepperoni bubble spurting grease is not something you can unsee. I continually stabbed it until the bubble subsided. It was carnage. I still have nightmares about the grease fountain.
Finally, we had to take this pizza out. The grease had completely and utterly consumed the dough and the thing was as soggy as a wet towel but the top layer of pepperoni was crispy and would start burning soon. I cut it into pieces, and I swear to God, it squished with each slice of the night. I put it in the box and handed it over with a smile.
I wish I could have seen the guy take his first, disgusting bite. He didn’t come back.”
Another User Comments:
“Back in college, a buddy of mine worked at a fast-food burger place, and they had a regular who always ordered his burger with extra onions but always complained that there wasn’t enough onion, no matter how much they added.
One night, the manager had enough. He cut the ends off a huge, white onion, put it on the burger, and happily delivered it to the regular.
At long last, the regular who wanted extra onion was happy and even thanked them for doing as he asked.” KeavyRain
9. Fire Me For No Reason? Not A Problem
“I had taken over running a small development team of 9 for a relatively big company.
We were there for basic, quick little bits of software that wouldn’t make sense to outsource (web apps that quiz employees on policy, fancy interactive projects to show off at conferences, or just an extra pretty PowerPoint, etc).
The guy I took over from ran the team like we lived in the 1980s, so I brought us into the modern age, and surprise surprise, within a few weeks our team was finishing projects left, right, and center. Everything was going great, my coworkers could take breaks and listen to music, our internal clients were kept up to date with their projects and my boss thought I was some kind of software prodigy as productivity had gone through the roof.
Honestly, this was more indicative of how bad it was before rather than anything I did.
Then comes Richard. Now you know Richard, you probably have a Richard at your office.
They’ve been there too long to fire and delight in slapping people in the face with their seniority, regardless of whether or not they have anything to do with you.
First, he sends us a project and marks it Critical, as in ‘Everyone stop what you’re doing now this needs to be done yesterday.’ I politely send him a message and ask him if I can move it down to medium priority as there was little to no time limit and we had other projects to deal with.
He replies, ‘No, it needs to be done now. Get to it.’ I’d like to remind everyone that he is not my boss and has no authority over me or my team.
So I CC my boss and the other department heads who we had projects for at the time. ‘Hi all, hope you’re enjoying your day. Richard has asked me to work on this project for his department, however, he wants it to be done now which would delay your projects. Would that be ok with everyone?’ Turns out that’s a no and I downgrade his project.
A week or two later I check our task management software system and notice Shia (fantastic programmer, great person) was falling a bit behind.
I go to ask her what’s up and she looks like she’s about to have a panic attack.
I ask her what’s wrong and it turns out Richard had threatened TO FIRE HER if she didn’t start working on his project immediately. I calm her down, let her take a break, tell her to start working on her regular projects and to send Richard to me if he gets uppity. I then fire off an email to Richard and my boss reminding him that:
1. Any threats of termination need to go through me and HR first
2. Who works on what projects and when is determined by our schedule and myself
3. If a project’s deadline is moved up I should be informed directly not via my team
Turns out Richard is infamous for making threats like this but because nobody took them seriously, I was the first to remind him he had no authority over other departments.
I didn’t find out until later, but apparently, he had a meltdown at the boss about how incredibly disrespectful I was. He tried to file a formal complaint but it was rejected because doing my job properly isn’t actually a problem. Who knew?
Around this time, I accepted a better job and was going to put in my notice. But I wanted to wait until after our latest project (let’s call it the Ninja Report) was done as it was a big deal for my team.
This Ninja report was part of a presentation by a company big wig (boss’ boss’ boss) and was marked critical so all of us were working hard to make sure we did a good job and got it in on time.
Now finally we get to the revenge part.
I’m plugging in a switch under the desk when someone taps me hard on the shoulder, ‘Just a minute mate,’ I say. I stand up and stare directly into the red face of Richard, filled with fury and ready to expel his rage all over the office. ‘I’M NOT YOUR MATE, YOU NEED TO LEARN YOUR PLACE IN THIS COMPANY BLAH BLAH BLAH.’ As this grown man is screaming at me in full view of my team it suddenly dawns on me that I get severance, have another job lined up, and really have no reason to deal with this.
‘I WANT MY PROJECT DONE NOW!!!!!’ he continues to yell. Now I could’ve told him about the Ninja Report, I could’ve said a lot of things but I just smiled, looked him in the eyes, and said, ‘As long as I’m working here the schedule isn’t changing.’ Predictably Richard responds, ‘THEN YOU’RE FIRED.’ I grab my things and leave. As I’m leaving, one of my team comes up looking like a deer in the headlights and asks what they should do. Easy, ‘First I want everyone except you to stop working on the Ninja Report, second at the end of the day send an email to the boss and the bigwig, let them know what happened, and explain that the Ninja Report is going to be a week late.
See you all for drinks on Friday!’
I wake up bleary-eyed the next day to a call.
Me: ‘Hello?’
Boss: ‘Hi look I’m sorry about what Richard said. He doesn’t actually have the authority to fire you and the Ninja Report can’t be late, we need to fix this!’
Me: ‘Ohh I’m sorry I’ve actually accepted another job, but don’t worry I figured this would happen. I asked one of my team to work on it privately. If they start working on the Ninja Report again, it should be able to get it done on time.’
My boss tries to get me to come back but I made it clear that wasn’t going to happen.
I recommended one of my team take my job and thank him for the opportunity. He’s pretty cool about it, confirms I’ll be getting severance, and tells me I can use him as a reference.
Friday drinks roll around and we have a lot to celebrate. The Ninja Report was done on time and given everything that happened, it made my team look great. I got a new job, my teammate got a promotion and the big wig was really eager to learn why his subordinate’s subordinate’s subordinate fired the leader of the team he picked himself and nearly tanked the project. I’m proud to report that the office is now 100% Richard-free.”
8. Power-tripping Manager Told Me Not To Do An Important Part Of My Job, And I Didn't Object
“This was a few years ago when I worked in a 4-star hotel chain that would be very well known and was part of a larger company that had hotels of varying status. I was about 24. There were a few of us who worked primarily in-room service, and the breakfast shift was always a solo shift.
One morning, I started and as was customary, I started doing my prep, folding napkins, setting up 5/6 trays with pastries, etc. per the pre-ordered breakfast cards, so I would only need to grab the correct tea/coffee and hot food later as well as a few extra all-purpose trays for the people who call for room service last minute.
I just get finished with this when the Duty Manager (I can’t remember his full name, but the nickname was Prem) bursts into the kitchen with a dirty plate in his hand and sees me in my area while putting it in the pile of dishes for the kitchen porter. He tells me across the kitchen, “What are you doing?
It’s so crazy out there that I have to help clear tables, and you are back here? Get out and help!”
I replied that I had not gone up and walked the halls to collect the trays left out overnight yet, and he yelled some more and repeated that if he, a manager, is clearing tables, I better help regardless of if my job is actually in a different area.
For the record, Prem was a menace. I witnessed him yell in college girls’ faces until they cried several times. He would also routinely pick on anyone that was minimum wage floor staff.
So I walk into the restaurant and the supervisor (Jen) is at the door and sees me walk in.
She covers room service and has worked it in the past, so she knows I should be collecting trays now so that the place doesn’t look like a warzone upstairs. She asks if I’ve done this, and I say no but that Prem sent me in to help because it’s so busy. She says it’s not very busy at all and that they don’t need me, and I should go upstairs and collect the dirty trays.
I walk back into the kitchen, and Prem is still standing there. “What are you doing? I told you to go in and help!”
“I went in, and Jen said they don’t need me and told me to collect the trays.”
He then accuses me of going to her and asking if can I go collect trays to get out of helping, so I tell him he can ask her if she called me or if I approached her. This satisfies him that I’m at least not lying, but he’s still not happy.
He says “I’m the duty manager. Manager. Jen is a supervisor. I’m higher up, so you do what I tell you. Go in there and help clear tables. I don’t want to see you going up to collect trays.”
I go back into the restaurant, and Jen looks at me confused. I tell her that Prem insists that I help and won’t let me go upstairs and says he out-ranks her, so she says I should join the guys at station 1 and help their area.
Breakfast passes, and I pop out a few times to do my room services and come back with not much issue.
My shift is until 3 PM, and breakfast ended at 10:30 AM. At this point, nobody has been upstairs, and housekeeping will have been putting out dirty trays.
I get a call on the room service mobile from a housekeeping manager saying that floor 4 has a dozen or so trays in the hall.
“I’m sorry, the duty manager has prioritized other areas at the moment and has said I cannot go up.”
I start doing my afternoon prep, polishing cutlery, and the like. About 12 PM, I get another call, this time from the housekeeping’s top manager.
She tells me there are trays everywhere, and I politely apologize and explain that my duty manager has used the exact words, “I don’t want to see you going up to collect trays.” She accepts this without question and asks that I help when I can.
At 2 PM, I get a call from the hotel’s director of operations regarding the trays. At this point, there are trays in the hallways on all 7 floors, and the place looks filthy. Again, I politely explain what instructions I’ve received from Prem, and this is accepted without further question, and he says he will inquire into it.
3 PM arrives, and I have not heard anything else nor have I cleaned up the pig-sty upstairs.
My replacement arrives, and I tell him what happened and apologize for the fact that he will have to collect these but tell him why. He laughs and decides to leave it until somebody else calls and informs him they are there.
Shortly after this, Prem ‘left’ the company.”
7. Not Happy With A Voluntary Discount I Gave You? Get A Smaller One
“I used to work at a call center for a large Canadian telecommunications company. They are a service provider for tv, internet, home phones, and cellphones. I was a customer care agent, and at the time, I was working at the end of the promotions department. I’d be the person you speak with when your 1- or 2-year discount was set to expire.
I had been through many different departments before I was moved to the end of the promotion team, so I had access to multiple discounts a regular care agent wouldn’t have access to because they never changed my authorization when I was moved to the new department.
This allowed me to bend the rules quite a bit when it came to renewing promotions for some customers.
Now, most care agents have limited discounts they can give, typically the system would generate a discount for a customers account “based on their tenure and services with us” (that’s what the company claimed which I find to be nonsense, as I have seen accounts that were created back in 1999 that would be tagged for only $10 off, and sometimes nothing at all, and they would have to pay in-market rates).
This is where my access level came in handy. If I spoke with a customer who was super polite and gave me no trouble or stress, I would apply a better discount than what was originally tagged, especially if I see they’ve been with us for years and even sometimes decades. (ex: tagged for $20 off, give $35 or $40 off instead)
Now the company always claimed they keep track if we apply discounts that a customer wouldn’t be eligible for, but I think that was also nonsense because I did this to many accounts, and it never came up during meetings with my manager.
So one day, I get a call, a customer that’s been with the company for a year or two.
Let’s call him Mark.
So Marks’s promotion is coming to an end pretty soon, and he is looking to get a new one and at the same time upgrade his services. He was on a mid-tier TV package and had 500mbps unlimited internet. If I recall, he was probably paying around $140 a month.
He wanted to move up to our highest TV package and our gigabit internet plan, which is the highest you can get for both tv and internet with this company. And this said company is not a budget service provider, so typically that combination of products would cost around $180 BEFORE taxes, and the price just climbs up depending on how many boxes you have for the tv if you have a home phone and if you have any extra TV add-ons.
So I tell him I will gladly look into it and place him on hold. Since he was very polite and I was in a good mood, I was happy to bend the rules for him, especially after seeing he was only tagged for a $15 discount. He had a $25 discount before, so he would’ve been paying $10 more if he wanted to keep his services the same and definitely a whole lot more if he upgraded to the highest packages.
So eventually I come back to him with a $50 discount for 1 year. He will still be paying more for making that change, but it’s a whole lot better than the $15 off that he was supposed to get initially.
Now all of the sudden, his attitude and tone do a complete 180. He starts getting angry and starts getting rude. He was talking as if he thought I was joking when I said $50 is the most we could give him. He went on a rant about how he’s been with us for SOOOO many years and how he deserves to pay less than what he was paying before and on top of that get upgraded services. I explained that unfortunately because he is upgrading to our highest packages, then the increase in price is inevitable. I informed him that if he wanted to, this same discount could be applied to his current services, and he’d be saving $25 more than what he’s been paying.
Then he pulls the same card I hear so often like, “Well, my friend has that package and is only paying $80,” or “I see newer customers getting it for so much less,” which in most cases, sure, it can happen, but with the combination of products he has, I know 100% he was just pulling these prices out of his behind.
He got angrier and was demanding that he gets a better discount, and on top of that, he wanted the Crave/Movies/HBO add-on (costs $19.99) for free for a year on top of that for “wasting his time.”
I start to get frustrated and explain once again that it is not something we can do and that the $50 is the best we can offer.
He asks to speak to retention – which at the time was the end of the promotion department – and I explain that he is already speaking with them.
He starts to lose it and says he wants to speak to a manager because he wants to pay what he feels like he should pay based on his tenure (which again was only around 2 years, which may seem like a long time, but in this kind of industry, it doesn’t mean much).
We do have a dedicated team of managers that take calls when a customer is going wild, their primary goal is just to defuse the situation, but they are not there to give better discounts if we already went through the best options, and they always made that very clear.
I explain that a manager cannot provide a better discount, but I can still transfer him to one, as it is company policy to get them to a manager if they request one no matter what.
So I place him on hold, and what we do is speak to the manager on the line first to explain the situation and the options we as an agent went through before escalating, and then they take the call from there. Usually, you’re supposed to disconnect from the call once you patch the customer through, but sometimes, I like to stick around and mute myself just to listen to the manager tell the customer the exact same thing I already told them.
Their reactions are usually priceless.
So I explain to the manager, we’ll call him Fred, that I had already offered the customer a way better discount than what he had before (I was worried they would question why or how I gave them more than what they were tagged for, but this manager didn’t seem to care). I explained how now he wanted to pay less than what he used to pay while upgrading to our highest package and now on top of that have a $20 add-on given to him for free for a year. Fred scoffs because they understood how ridiculous that was and told me to patch him through.
I add Mark to the call, introduce him to Fred, and explain they will take the call from there. Now all of a sudden, he’s acting very polite again and says, “Ohhh, thank you so much, OP. I hope you have a good rest of your day. Take care” and continues this act while he talks to the manager as if he wasn’t just screaming at the top of his lungs at me moments ago.
I stick around to hear the conversation play out. Fred does a quick rundown of what Mark was asking us to do just to make sure nothing was missed, and Mark says, “Yep, that all sounds right to me.” Then Fred pretty much tells him what he is asking for cannot be done and that I had already offered the best discount we can provide and explain that most customers pay way more for what he is being upgraded to.
He starts getting angry again and starts yelling that he is being mistreated as a long-term customer and is threatening to cancel all of his services with us and move to a competitor. Fred says he is sorry he feels that way and that if he would like, they can start the cancellation procedure for him. Mark had enough and hung up right after.
I got a kick from hearing that and went on with my day.
A month goes by, I’m taking calls and having a good day. It’s slow, not a lot of callers, but the ones I do get have been very nice, and suddenly a call comes in.
The account pops up, I do a quick look over the account summary and see the customer’s name, and it looks familiar. I check the account’s previous interactions and see mine and Fred’s from a month ago. A big smile goes across my face as I am speaking to none other than Mark, calling us back again.
Now, this kind of thing is very rare with a company this big we typically have a lot of callers and a lot of employees, so it’s extremely uncommon that I speak to the same person more than once. I’m thinking because it was a slow day, they had given early leave to the agents who wanted it, so there must not have been a lot of agents online taking calls, thus having this call routed to me since I was available.
I do the standard greeting, “Thank you for calling, how can I help,” but on the inside, I’ve got a poop-eating grin on my face because I know he is most likely calling us back because his discount had expired and his price has gone up. He is either calling to cancel or try and get a discount again.
I was right on the nose with that one – he calls saying that his discount has expired, and he is looking to get a new one.
Now Mark didn’t seem to recognize that he was talking to me again; he thought I was just a different agent because he mentioned he was given an offer from someone about a month ago that he was looking to accept.
Here’s where the malicious compliance comes in. As per our last call, you said you wanted a discount based on your tenure? Sure thing, as a matter of fact, the system has already generated a whopping $15 off based on that.
I explain that unfortunately because he is calling after his discount has ended, the original discount we had offered is now expired, and now we only have a $15 discount available.
He starts to lose it again – now in some cases, this actually does happen, where if a discount isn’t accepted before the other one expires, the new offer also expires and cannot be added. I can agree it’s some slimy nonsense that this company does, so they get more money.
In this case, because the original $50 discount was never supposed to be given in the first place, I was able to say this and only offer what he was really tagged for. Once again, he begins to lose it. It plays out the same as it did last time. I explain that this is the best we can offer, he throws a fit, wants to speak to a manager.
Again, managers are not there to apply better discounts.
Sometimes we do have something called a documented promise where if in the notes someone was offered something, say $50 off and it didn’t go through, we can still apply it. He could have lied and said he accepted it and it never went through, and the documented promise policy would’ve made it so we had to give him that discount.
In this case, because Fred and I both wrote in the notes that he declined that offer; it was gone for good.
I once again transfer him to a manager and stick around to hear the fallout. The manager did not budge, told him the same thing, that $15 off was the only option, and once again it ends with him hanging up.
I unfortunately never figured out what happened with Marks’s account, but here’s what could’ve happened.
-
He is still paying the in-market price for his services, which is a lot more than what he was paying before.
-
He accepted the $15 off and is still paying more than before.
-
He canceled with us and moved to a competitor – one less problematic, rude, and entitled customer.
The moral of the story is, be nice to the other person on the phone. If you’re nice, an agent will most likely be more willing to go above and beyond for you. If you’re a jerk, in my case at least, I’m doing the bare minimum for you and definitely will not bend the rules for you. Again, most agents can’t do that anyways, and in this case, I had access to these discounts most likely by mistake, you should still be nice to the person on the other end of the phone regardless.”
Another User Comments:
“I used to work at a call center for a similar company and had customers like this. I freaking hated that job. The pay was awful, the benefits were awful, the schedules/shifts were awful, the supervisors and coaches were awful, and last but not least, the customers were awful.” Andromeda39
6. You Break It, You Buy It (Or In This Case, Will Buy It Again)
“This was about 12 years ago, at the time I was working for a telecommunications company.
I was a tech/installer who would install fiber, cat 5, and coax at residential and commercial properties. This particular story takes place at a residential location.
It was a light workday, so my company had sent many techs who were done early with their work to assist other techs, that way there wasn’t anyone sitting around doing anything. I pull up to the client’s house to go help my co-worker. We’ll call him T.
T had just pulled up as well, so the two of us both go up to the door to greet the client. We do a walk-through, verify what needs to be done, and go over any charges that would occur if he wanted anything special done.
During this part of the visit, he explains that he would like all the lines to run under the house (there’s no basement, but there is a crawl space under the house). He then begins to go on and on about how he just hired a company to come out and put new vents and ducts under the house for his heating and air. We gladly comply with his request about running the wiring under the house so it wasn’t visible from the outside.
He then begins to tell us how the air ducts were very expensive, and they were professionally installed, and he doesn’t want us to mess them up!
We let him know it is common for us to crawl under the house so the ducts will be fine. We can crawl around them with little effort, it’s a normal part of our job. That wasn’t good enough for this guy… He continues to imply that we are going to mess up the ducts and he’s going to call our manager should we cause any damage to said ducts, and we’re going to have to pay to have them fixed!
Keep in mind, these ducts are like slinkies wrapped in foil. Just think of a clothes dryer duct, only bigger so it can move more air, and insulated to keep the air cool or hot despite outside temp.
This is important to remember later in this saga…
Let’s move this story back to the client. He will not let up and is CONVINCED we’re going to destroy his vents. Eventually, the client pretty much insists on crawling under the house with T just to make sure we don’t mess anything up. So just to keep him happy, we let him know he’s more than welcome to crawl under the house.
The client goes inside to put on different clothes suitable for crawling thru dust and dirt under the house. Must have taken him 20 minutes. By then, we could have been halfway done with our work… But whatever, this is what will make the client happy, even though by now I’m not super concerned with his happiness as he’s been condescending and insulting to this point.
So, I stay outside to communicate through the air vents from the outside of the house into the crawlspace, and T crawls from the opening to the location he needs to be in, which is roughly 50-60 ft. He completely avoids ALL ducts, nothing has been disturbed (just as we assured the client).
Keep in mind, to get under this house, there is only one crawlspace opening (the one T entered). This is also relevant to the next part of this extravaganza!
The client begins to get on his belly, crawl through the crawlspace opening and begins to navigate through the brand new, beautiful ducts that were just installed. He makes it roughly 75% of the way to T, then his face goes white!
Apparently, at that very moment, he either realized for the first time or had forgotten but now remembered… He’s claustrophobic! I’m not judging, I too am claustrophobic and it sucks bad. I would probably have felt bad for the guy if he wasn’t so aggressive with us, and for the fact that he didn’t even need to BE down there. But I digress…
Now the fun part! Remember when you were a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons? Remember when a character would run as fast as he could and there was only a puff of smoke left in his wake? Well, I’m pleased to share with you that’s EXACTLY what happened (except it was dust and dirt lol).
That guy made a B-LINE straight for the exit and crawled as fast as he could, new ducts be d****d! I swear he ripped, rolled over, and tore down half of those “brand-new ducts” that he paid so much to have done and fought us so hard on to keep in pristine condition. He cared not about anything except his escape from under his house!
I had to run around to the side of the house so he didn’t see me crack up. I definitely heard T laughing as well, but I doubt the client heard it through the crinkle and crankle of all that aluminum ducting!
The irony of this all was fantastic.
Not only was this day my most glorious day at that job, but it is also my most glorious day at any job in my entire career.”
5. Cancel This Job Completely? Sure!
“My dad used to be Field Maintenance for the Post Office. Basically, if a mail truck broke down, my dad would go out with a special truck to tow it. (Priority over all other things, usually.). If Post Office machinery needed wrenching, my dad did it. (Moderately high priority.) If a blue mailbox needed a paint touch-up, my dad did it. (Very low priority.)
One day dad gets sent on a job out into a post office in the boonies; nearly a 3.5 hour long drive, one way, if traffic was favorable.
This job was to re-paint the parking lot. You can figure that this job wasn’t exactly a high priority, so they’ve already been waiting quite a while for it to happen.
Dad gets to the site, and the equivalent of the Floor Manager gets snippy with dad, telling him that he was just going to have to sit on his hands and wait for two more hours. Apparently, Floor Manager had some project planned for that day that would require moving a bunch of stuff outside temporarily, using up the parking lot’s space. He fully expected my dad to stand around and wait for this job to be done.
Dad: “You filed a work order, and you have been scheduled for this job for a while now.
You knew what date I was going to be arriving. I am here.”
Floor manager, pompously: “You are going to wait.”
Dad: “No, I am not. I’m starting the job I was sent to do.”
Dad spins on his heel and heads for his work truck to grab the equipment. The floor manager charges outside, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Floor manager: “YOU WILL NOT PAINT THIS RIGHT NOW! YOU WILL PAINT WHEN I SAY YOU CAN PAINT, AND I SAY YOU WILL WAIT TWO HOURS!”
Dad, looking absolutely angry: “If I put my equipment back in my truck, I will close the work order, and you will have to file another one.”
The Floor manager storms inside and returns with the Post Master of that post office, a spineless, sniveling, hand wringing, twig of a man.
Post Master: “Look, I know you’re here to do this job we requested, but really, is it so much to ask for you to wait until this project is finished? It’s only two hours.”
Dad, icily: “I drove three and a half hours to get here. Either I start right now and head for my home base on time, or I close the work order and end the job.”
The Post Master whimpers, and wheedles and wrings his hands, then nods: “Close the work order. I’ll file another job order and you can return tomorrow.”
Dad smiles thinly, nods, and climbs back in his truck to head back to his home Post Office. He then calls his own Post Master and explains what happened.
His Post Master: “…Well, give them what they want. Close the work order.”
Now, here’s the “malicious” part of the “compliance:”
Dad and only 8 other guys covered an area of approximately 250 miles or so. Sooo, yeah, waaaay understaffed.
Also, in order to get any requested jobs done, there was a whole bureaucratic mess to make it happen. You had to write up a work order, send it in, get put on a waiting list, and hope that a bunch of broken-down trucks didn’t bump you farther down the list than you already were.
If your work order was closed, whether or not it was actually completed, the job was considered fulfilled, which means that it could not just be re-opened; they would have to file a completely new work order and be listed accordingly in the many, many higher priority jobs.
Since this Post Office was out in the boondocks, with an extremely low priority job, on a VERY understaffed workforce, they’ve essentially shot themselves in the foot by refusing to let Dad get started immediately.
I can neither confirm nor deny that their new work order mysteriously dropped to the bottom of the list of priorities a few more times than necessary, but I can confirm that it was at least a further three months before that parking lot got painted.
The Floor Manager made himself scarce, and the spineless Post Master was very, very quiet when he signed off on the work order’s completion.”
4. Can't Give Me One Sick Day? I'll Take Five Instead
“I work for the us navy, so our healthcare works a little different in regards to sick days. If we were deemed sick enough, we get placed SIQ or sick in quarters, i.e, stay home for however long the doctor says.
About mid-April, my tonsils start acting up. I see an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor) whose best guess is some sort of bacteria infection. They give me a steroid via IV to fight the swelling of my tonsils and put me on antibiotics with pain medication since it’s hard for me to eat or drink anything and send me on my way.
I get placed SIQ for 10 days, and my boss isn’t really happy that I can’t work, but there’s nothing he can do. I get better and start going back to work.
Now to a few weeks ago, the last week of May.
My tonsils start acting up again, but this time, it gets much worse. It’s Wednesday morning. I call my ENT and schedule an appointment for later that day. He checks me out and wants me to come back the following week on Tuesday so they can try to drain fluid from behind my tonsils. He writes me a blank SIQ order until Tuesday and says if I need it, use it but, it’s not an official order yet.
(This is important.)
The next day (Thursday), my tonsils have inflamed so much that I’m starting to have a hard time breathing which isn’t fun, cue the trip to the ER. Another steroid IV along with IV pain meds. I get another round of antibiotics, pain meds, and also now a steroid pill pack. Now the ER doesn’t really want to write me a SIQ chit even for 1 day, but I still feel absolutely horrible. I text my boss letting him know what’s up, that I’m in the ER, and just ask him for Friday off, but I tell him I’ll be good to work Saturday and Sunday. I don’t like to mess over my co-workers because were short-handed, and I like the people I work with, which is why I only want 1-day to get some rest and real food again.
He says no. No big deal because remember that blank chit from my ENT?
Yeah, I fill that in and send it off to my boss. Whoops, looks like I actually need Friday – Tuesday off now. I take my 5 days of rest and relaxation, then get stabbed with a needle Tuesday afternoon by my ENT. It was trash. 1/10, do not recommend. THE END.
If you’re still reading and care at all, yes, I already have an appointment to get my tonsils removed. I’m counting down the days to get rid of these demons.”
3. Let Me Go? I Won't Be Giving You My Assistance Anymore
“Having been forced out of my position with the company, it kinda rattled me.
Nothing I could ever do about it…or so I thought.
Roughly three weeks later, I got a call from a distant facility where we had a store. Seems that the alarm was going off, and there was no one they could get hold of to come down and turn it off. About 5 or 6 numbers down the list, they got to mine—someone who answered.
Yup, they hadn’t taken my number off the security call list.
I asked the guard if they had the Home Office VP of Security home number (it was late) as well as some other higher-up numbers in his contact database. He did. All the while I was talking to him, I could hear that alarm wailing away through the phone. Poor guy sounded SO desperate to get some peace, so I outlined the procedure to follow:
‘First, place a call to the CEO’s home number to apprise him of the situation; next, call the VP of Merchandising, and last the VP of Security, same thing.’
I smiled as I hung up the phone, thinking of the mayhem about to commence, and didn’t care.
After all, I wasn’t with the company anymore, so didn’t care. They could do nothing to me.”
2. Can't Be Honest? The Truth Is Going To Come Out
Being honest can save you a lot of trouble.
“This happened to a close friend of my best buddy.
He was seeing this girl for over 2 years. They were like the best-looking couple I have ever seen. They were living together in his house. Her family loved him and was happy that their golden child found her soulmate.
One day, he caught her texting her ex. He was reading all her messages from his iPad which was synced with her phone. It was a boundary that was established earlier, and she crossed it. However, he didn’t break up with her. He started taking screenshots of all the messages and pics.
After a month or so later, she decided to meet her ex in Vegas using ‘girl’s night’ as an excuse.
She arranged for two of her friends to give her cover while she was in Vegas.
The second her flight took off, he changed his locks. He blocked her number and all of her social media. He called us to his house to help him pack her stuff and drop it at her friend’s house who ‘was in Vegas.’ As a final s*******u to her, he went to her parent’s house and told them what had happened. He also showed them all the screenshots and pics. They couldn’t believe that their golden child would do something so evil.
Her parents hate her now. She is now roommates with some bad people.
One of the friends who tried to give her cover was dumped by her partner for being a part of this plan. Many of you are probably wondering why her parents would hate their own child. What made them hate her were the texts where she trashed everyone including her parents. One of which made fun of her mother’s weight issue and gave her parent’s marriage 6 months’ time after which she would hire someone to seduce her dad as ‘he deserved someone hotter than mom.'”
1. It'll Come Straight Out Of Your Paycheck
“I worked as an assistant manager at one of the main Pizza Chains (I will leave the actual company unnamed) I had been there for roughly two years and had seen many Assistant and Store Managers come and go, either being transferred or quitting. Some were good, some were bad.
One Particular Assistant Manager that joined our team (We’ll call him Josh) was a complete jerk right from the start.
A scrawny little punk in his early 20s. He has a smug, condescending attitude, treated everyone as if they were inferior to him.
The one thing that really pushed me over the edge was when he accused me of stealing, sent me home, telling me I was fired. All the while, refusing to listen to my suggestion that he check the security camera. Also, keep in mind that we were both assistant managers.
I’ve been there for over two years. He had been there for only a few weeks.
After I left, I called the Store Manager and explained the situation. He didn’t care whether I stole something or not, he just stated that Josh had no right to do what he did.
As for the revenge I got against this smug little punk…
I had come to open the store and found it a complete disaster.
Everything like the oven and such were still running, food was left out, etc. When I opened the safe I found the money all just all strewn in there. The correct procedure would have been to count the money. Keep $500 organized and stacked in the safe and put the rest in a deposit bag to be taken to the bank that night. All he did was cash out the drivers and toss it all in the safe, unorganized, and didn’t do any paperwork or deposit.
I call the Store Manager to find out what happened and he informed me that according to the drivers who were working, Josh had a mental breakdown, began throwing and kicking stuff then just sent everyone home several hours before the store was supposed to close.
If he hadn’t quit, he would obviously be fired. Either way, he wouldn’t be working for us anymore.
I went back to the safe, opened it, and while obscuring the camera’s view, pocketed about $200.
I then called the manager back saying, ‘Hey, I counted it all but it’s like $200 or so short. I don’t even know if we still have orders from last night that need to be can-‘
He cut me off saying, ‘Don’t worry about it. He didn’t take care of the money, it’s on him. If it’s short, it’s coming out of his last check.'”
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