People Bring Us Up Close And Personal To Their Revenge
17. Pregnancy Is Definitely An Excuse To Sit Down
“Back story: This happened when I was pregnant while in the Navy and got sent to a limited duty station.
I essentially worked in an office full of pregnant/injured sailors with a couple of supervisors who were absolute jerks to the pregnant women (because we all got pregnant on purpose to avoid sea duty, of course).
I happened to be the most senior pregnant woman there at that time, senior enough to know my rights and to call out bs.
One of the things we were still required to do is PT (work out, for you civilians) 3 times a week, within the bounds of our physical limitations.
For pregnant women, this typically meant no sit-ups, push-ups or jumping jacks, no standing/walking for more than 15 minutes, and running at our own discretion.
Typically, we were allowed to do our own thing as long as we did some kind of work out (stretching and yoga balls counted), for the 30-45 minute duration.
We had requested to be allowed to attend the gym’s pregnancy yoga class, but were denied as it started at 10 am (‘middle’ of the workday, leaving us 30 unproductive minutes before lunch). For the most part, we women were left alone.
There were some instances of jekery, where the men in charge would decide that all of us, including the women that were 7-8 months pregnant, were able to do whatever hare-brained activity they thought up (like running in the rain).
I am typically able to shut those down pretty quick. Needless to say, I wasn’t very popular with our supervisors, but I always had documentation to back me up.
As I entered my third trimester, my anemia kicked in full gear and I started getting super lightheaded and having tunnel vision.
Regardless, I never called in late, always made it to work on time and did my yoga ball exercises during PT. One morning, I started having tunnel vision and slipped off my yoga ball. As I was sitting there trying to put my head between my legs, someone grabbed my shoulder and started yelling at me to ‘get off my behind and freaking PT,’ along with some other crap about how being pregnant was not an excuse to sit down.
Once my vision cleared, I stood up and faced my direct supervisor (LPO), who was still giving me crap. I told him that I couldn’t continue PT and would need to sit out the rest of the time, even producing my medical chit that stated I was allowed to ‘rest as needed. LPO wasn’t having it and told me I wasn’t allowed to sit down during PT and that if I wanted to sit, I should go to medical.
Cool.
I asked one of the girls to take me to medical, and he started yelling about how I needed to get myself there.
I looked him in the eye and said, ‘I am about to pass out. I am in no condition to drive.
If you will not let someone else take me to medical, I am calling the ambulance now.’ This would launch an investigation (workplace injury and whatnot) of course, and also involve paperwork for LPO to do, so he relented but told me I had to find my own ride back to work.
So I get driven to medical. I tell the ob-gyn desk that I have been having dizzy spells and my supervisor wants me to PT. Yes, despite what is said on my medical chit.
I get seen by a nurse, get some b***d sucked out of me and ushered into the ob-gyn department head’s office.
Apparently he had overheard me. I tell him what happened and the past attempts to force the pregnant women to do more than they are allowed to.
Doc asks where we PT. I tell him. He raises his eyebrow. And proceeds to inform me that he is VERY familiar with the particular gym that we PT in, and that it was considered a ‘hazard zone’ for pregnant women as there are a couple of basketball courts next to the yoga balls (too close to contact sports), and also that as per the manual any command requiring their pregnant women to be involved in any kind of organized PT (making us show up at a certain location at a certain time counts as organized) are required to submit a PT plan for us through the chain of command (this involves going through 3 senior/master chiefs and 4 officers, including our captain) to be approved by the closest affiliated ob-gyn department head (him) before they were allowed to subject us to any kind of PT.
He then proceeded to print out the specific pages of the instruction manual, highlight the pertinent parts, stamp, sign and attach his business card to it and told me to take that to my LPO and have him call him if he had any questions or would like to show proof of such a PT plan for our command.
He then wrote down his private extension on the back of another business card and told me to call him if I have any more problems.
He also personally wrote me a new medical chit that says that I should be allowed to ‘rest at member’s discretion and only perform work that member feels that she can safely perform.’ They were having me do things like move heavy boxes of paperwork and test live equipment!!!
While all this was happening, my bloodwork had come back showing stupidly low iron levels, so he had me increase my iron dosage and gave me a week off of work ‘just to make sure that that solves that problem.’ I get taken back to work by medical’s duty driver.
I walk into my office and immediately get called into chief’s office to get reamed out for ‘being late and missing PT.’ Apparently LPO had failed to inform him that HE had ordered me to go to medical. LPO stood in the corner with a poop-eating grin on his face.
As chief is giving me the knife hand, I pull out my paperwork from medical and place it on his desk.
I then calmly proceeded to explain how Captain OBGYN Department Head would like to see our command PT plan for pregnant women and that he had kindly attached his business card if they had any questions for him.
LPO read the highlighted portions and went, ‘You would actually go this far?’
Me: ‘I don’t know what you mean. You told me to go to medical if I needed to sit down, so I did. This is what I was given at medical. Looks like there is Naval instruction related to this that we should be following.
Oh, by the way, here is a copy of my new physical limitations signed by Captain OBGYN Department Head and medical leave for a week. If you don’t have any more questions, I’ll see you next Wednesday.’
From that day onwards, the pregnant women in my office were allowed to PT any time during the workday that they wished to as long as they did it 3x/week.
This meant that we were all now able to attend the 10 am pregnancy yoga classes. Amazingly, work production did not go down because we are (surprise!) effective at getting our work done regardless of what time we started. Except now, LPO had to do all the heavy lifting and live electrical work until we got someone to show up who did not have such limitations because the women were all suddenly issued new medical chits signed by Captain OBGYN Department Head, specifically preventing them from doing such things; with relevant Naval instruction highlighted and stapled to their chits.”
16. Refusing To Do Homework Since I'm Going To Pass Anyways
“This was many years ago when I was in high school, but it is still one of my proudest academic coups.
Backstory: I was a gifted kid in an IB (International Baccalaureate) program. I also had undiagnosed ADHD and tested well but didn’t consistently complete homework, especially if it was busywork.
I’m in IB History class in my sophomore year. We get assigned pages upon pages of reading and notes for homework every night, and the notes are THE most tedious bullcrap. There’s a really specific format we have to use that involves splitting the page in half, writing a fact from the text on one side, a couple of sentences of “analysis” of that fact on the other, and 2-3 sentences summarizing everything you’ve written at the bottom of the page.
We also had quotas for how many pages of notes we had to do. (I don’t remember the exact ratio because I never ever hit it but it was like a 40-page reading needed 20 pages of notes.) They took FOR-EV-ER, there often weren’t actually enough “key facts” to analyze, and everyone BS’ed the heck out of them to hit their page count.
They were also the first thing on the chopping block if we had too much homework (which we always did). And we would get graded down for not hitting the quota, not following the format, or for having poor quality content. Everyone hated them with a passion, especially me.
Our teacher got sick of people BSing their notes, complaining about their notes, or just not turning them in at all, which happened more often than not.
So, she announced at the beginning of the new term that anyone who missed a notes assignment would get an incomplete instead of a zero, so it wouldn’t affect your grade, and if you did well on the final, any missing assignments would be waived. But if we didn’t do well, they would become zeros, and our grade would drop.
She intended this to just be temporary grace for the good students, so they could afford to miss an assignment here and there and not ruin their GPA. But she was not prepared for the unintended consequences I was about to inflict.
This announcement was absolute music to my ears.
You see, not only were our notes busywork, but they were POINTLESS busywork because all the material from the reading would be covered on the PowerPoint in class the next day.
So, I would always just pay attention and take notes in class, only do some of my homework, ace the final because I had still learned the material, and because homework was only 35% of the overall grade, I’d still usually scrape a B in the class, which was fine by me.
So, naturally, when I hear we don’t “have to” do notes, I accept the HECK out of that challenge. I decided right then and there that I would be doing no history homework for the entire term and basked in my newfound liberation from hours of bullcrap.
About halfway through the term, my teacher comes up to me and the convo goes something like this:
Teacher (Valley Girl voice – she was only 24 and very immature): “Um, Ginger, I noticed you haven’t turned in any notes at all yet this term. I’m like, kinda concerned about that.”
Me: “Well, you said if we did well on the final we would get our notes waived.”
Teacher: “Well, I mean yeahhhh, but if you don’t do well, you’re going to lose a huuuge chunk of your grade.”
Me: “Okay, and…?”
Teacher (bothered): “I mean, you should reeeeally turn in SOME notes so that doesn’t happen.”
Me: “It’s okay, I’m good.”
Teacher (REALLY bothered): “Are you seriously planning on, like, just not doing ANY notes all term?”
Me: “Yep. Because they’ll be waived anyway when I do well on the final.”
Teacher (getting condescending): “Oooo-kayy, well don’t blame ME when your grade goes down.”
Me: “Yeahhh…Can I get back to work now?”
I proceed to stick to my word and not do any notes assignments all term.
The final comes around, and it’s our typical format: 120 minutes to write two essays chosen from three prompts. I could have crushed any of them, but I picked the two easiest for me and got to writing.
I finished the first one about Columbus’s problematic historiography and realized it only filled one piece of notebook paper front and back (single-spaced). But I had said everything I needed to fulfill the prompt. Cool, onto the next one. I don’t remember the topic, but it too was clear and concise, taking up only a sheet and a half.
I was the first one done (not unusual for me; I often hyperfocus on essay tests) and walked up to turn it in. The teacher thought I had a question.
I informed her I was done. Her eyebrows shot through the roof, and she asked if I was sure.
I said yes, left class, and went and enjoyed my early lunch.
It’s next week, and we get our graded finals back. She stiffly marches up to my desk and slams my test papers down. The longer essay got a 98. The page-long one about Columbus got 100.
She muttered something sarcastic about, “Well, I guess that little gamble paid off for you, huh?” “Yep, just like I said it would,” I said. She was FUMING as she walked away.
She had been SO hoping to catch me in a big freaking “gotcha,” but as it was, I ended up getting the highest score in the class.
She had to waive EVERY SINGLE notes assignment, and I ended up with an A for the term.”
15. Mess With My Friend's Mailbox? We'll Mess With You
“My best friend and I are both sons of police officers. His dad was a Highway Patrolman and mine was a Deputy Sheriff and detective. They are both retired now and living comfortably.
This story happened shortly after we both graduated high school about 15 years ago.
My buddy and I grew up in a rural area and for the most part, it was very quiet and we rarely had any problems. That changed when one weekend morning my friend’s family discovered their mailbox smashed and scattered along the road in front of their hose.
They chalked it up to a hit and run, gathered up the mail, bought and posted a new mailbox and went on with life. The next weekend, it happened again.
Flashback a few months before my buddy’s dad retired. He decided he didn’t want to quit working so he went down to the local trade college and became certified as a welder.
After the second time their mailbox was destroyed, my buddy called me over to his house and we all went to work. Buddy and his dad did the welding and cutting, I did the grinding and his mom (who is a fantastic artist) did the painting.
Throw in two bags of cement, seven feet of steel pipe, and the necessary re-bar and you can probably guess where this is going.
We built an all-steel-reinforced mail bunker, and set it in with three and a half feet of concrete and road base.
Remember my friend’s mom whose a really good artist? She painted it so that it looked like it was made out of wood. The steel post looked incredibly realistic, even up close let alone at night driving a car 45 miles an hour. We posted the box had dinner and I went home.
A couple of weeks went by and bingo. My friend called me around 7:00 am on a Sunday morning and told me to get over to his house ASAP. When I came around the turn to their house, there it was in full glory. A 92 Pontiac Grand Prix wrapped around a steel poll almost to the passenger compartment.
The car was abandoned but all the necessary information needed for an arrest was there. It took a couple of days to track the owner down and sure enough, he confessed. However there was also a half-empty bottle of Canadian liquor and cans all over the back seat, so he got an open container charge too.
Add the cost of a tow truck and the medical bills for smashing his stupid face into a steering wheel and that criminal mischief charge added up real quick. I later found out my friend’s little brother stole the guy’s CD book too.
Realizing the main bunker could get someone hurt we repainted it after fixing it to something more conspicuous.
Update:
Time to add some context. Look we know what we did could be potentially dangerous to others, we’re not idiots. However, when we placed the new box and pole it was well within my friend’s property line, and off the road.
Their family owns a farm and has the acreage to spare. My friend’s dad cleared off a large area with his tractor, packed the ground down and added a layer of road base. He made it large enough that the postal worker could park and be completely off the road to access the mailbox.
Also in order to get to the family’s driveway, you had to drive through a soft turn. Anybody driving so fast that they might accidentally hit the box, would roll their vehicle way before they would get near the box. Assuming people are following the posted speed limit (and not a complete moron) there would be no way to hit this box unless you went out of your way to do so.”
14. You Want Your Seat? OK Yup Then I Want Mine Too!
“This is not my own story, but my Dad’s during his travel from Florida to New York.
My father prefers to arrive on at the time in anything in life. He’s a stickler for that kind of thing. So to my amazement when he told me this awesome story of how he sought revenge, although indirectly, I was grinning ear to ear while listening.
Of course, my father arrives on time to his flight. At boarding time the plane was a bit empty, something like 2 or 3 rows was empty in the very back and my father loves to sit in the back because it’s less stressful (and proven to be safer in the event a plane crashes).
So there is the freedom to choose the seat you want, and my father does so. bags put in the overhead compartment, empty seats on either side of him and life is bliss.
That is until the plane is delayed. A minor inconvenience, but nothing too detrimental. 5 Minutes pass delayed, then 10 minutes, then 20, then 30.
Everyone on the plane is wondering why this plan won’t take off. And then it happens, a family of 5 which we’ll call the Anuses (father, mother, 2 sons, and an infant) board the plane.
If you’ve ever ridden on a plane before, you’ll understand that this is almost unthinkable.
Planes love to take off on time and if you’re even 5 minutes late you will not be able to board said plane.
So here goes the Anuses boarding a plane 30 minutes after it’s supposed to have taken off. No problem. There are plenty of empty seats and we can finally get rolling.
NOPE! the Anuses walk directly to my father and the row he’s sitting in and says “these are our seats.” Well of course my father proclaims that there is a multitude of empty seats and they can just take one of those. NOPE! they want THEIR seats on THEIR tickets and wasn’t having it any other way.
Another thing about planes. It is a federal law that all passengers must sit in their assigned seats in the case of a plane crash, all the bodies can be accounted for and identified. Although it’s not enforced that much.
The Anuses MUST have their seats so they call over a flight attendant (now FA) and explain their situation.
The FA sides with them, quoting the law and how my father must relocate. Having lost, my father then gets up, collects his belongings, and proceeds to move to another seat.
The seat he chose? His seat on his ticket, which is about 5 rows up, and a middle seat.
The only problem is, there is already someone sitting there. He tells the guy that it’s his seat and he’d like to sit there now. The guy looks baffled when FA chimes in and says “sir there are open seats in the back, why don’t you just take one of those?” THE CRAP?!
Obviously outraged at this point my father then says “but you just told me to move out of my seat because it was theirs when there was also many seats available. Now when I do the same there’s a problem?” FA just says the same spiel again but my father doesn’t relent, he wants his seat now.
He recites the very law she used against him.
FA defeated, then asks the guy to relocate as well. This causes a domino effect and the guy goes to his assigned seat and asks to sit there, so on so forth until the entire plane has been rearranged and this plane is now an hour and a half behind departure schedule.
The delay in the flight now sets off some red alerts for airport security and the higher-ups at this terminal (Jet Blue I believe.) Airport police, upper management and god knows who else are now at the terminal gate to inquire as to why this plane is still here.
They board to plane to talk to the pilot about the delay and he says that he held the plane to let some late passengers on board. Now that’s against policy because as stated before they like planes to be on time. They inquire a bit more as to the situation and it’s all explained by FA, how they arrived late, wanted their seats and then the whole plane had to be rearranged.
Angry that 1. the pilot held the plane to accommodate the Anuses. 2. the Anuses then asked for their seats which caused a domino effect. and 3. it comes out that the Anuses are in fact the pilots family (brother or something), which caused him to hold the plane in the first place they ask that the Anuses leave the plane immediately because “you should have never been on this plane from the beginning.” Reprimand the pilot for abusing his position and indirectly causing this entire fiasco AND refund my father’s ticket because of the absurd requests by the Anuses.
The plane finally takes off 2 and a half hours later, my father has a full refund (about $500) and the Anuses has to wait for the next flight (this was all at 11pm.) Good flight? I think so.”Tur
13. Natural Hair Colors Only Doesn't Mean I Can't Dye My Hair Multiple Colors
“A couple of years ago, I worked retail in a store geared towards children.
A very…. magical store. Lots of princesses, superheroes….rodents. You get the picture. Our store had about 25 female employees (including all of the management) and 3 male employees.
The dress code was incredibly strict.
We had a uniform that had to be ironed all the time, no visible tattoos, only natural hair colors, women were encouraged to wear makeup and style their hair, men were either to be clean-shaven or have fully grown in f****l hair.
For some reason, one particular manager was intent on nitpicking me regarding the dress code, even when I was in complete compliance with it.
I was constantly told that I needed to iron it better, so I started getting it dry cleaned and somehow that still wasn’t enough.
I wore very minimal makeup and she constantly told me I should wear more (though she couldn’t make me). Hair bows were a big thing at the store and people made and gave as presents custom ones highlighting characters.
They weren’t exactly against the dress code, but they did push the limits. Regardless, this particular manager seemingly only had an issue with them when I wore them. Once, she got down on her hands and knees with a ruler to prove my pant hem was too long only to be proven wrong.
There were also some conversations about my appearance that looking back were definitely body shaming.
As a side note, this particular manager was a natural brunette but she dyed her hair black and bleached a portion of the hair underneath so that it would show.
She was a self-proclaimed ‘bro-hoe’ if you need a more clear idea. Point is, her hair pushed the edge of what I would consider natural.
I got the itch to dye my hair and before working for the store, I had always loved to color my hair all sorts of colors.
However, with the dress code, only natural hair colors were allowed, so I came up with a compromise: silver. I went and had my hair professionally lightened and dyed silver.
The next day I worked, the district and regional managers were visiting the store. I was always picked to work those days because I had the best “stage presence” and knowledge of the company and those two were always impressed by me.
When I showed up to work that day with my new shiny silver hair, my store managers were appalled. They wanted to send me home immediately, and for whatever reason, they decided to talk to me in front of the higher-ups. This is a paraphrasing of the convo:
‘You’re in major violation of the dress code.’
‘How so?’
‘Your hair isn’t a natural color.’
‘Yes it is, gray is a natural color.’
‘But you aren’t gray yet.’
‘So?’
‘So it looks unnatural to be all gray.’
‘Are you saying that we can’t dye our hair at all if it’s not a color that would grow out of our heads naturally at this moment?’
‘No, you can dye your hair, it just can’t be obviously fake.
It needs to look real.’
I pointed at the manager who was constantly on me, ‘Your hair is half black and half bleach blonde. I feel like that looks more unnatural than my gray hair.’
I turned to the two the higher-ups and asked if I was in violation.
They agreed with me that I was not. I also showed them one of my bows and they fawned over it and even asked me for directions on how to make one.
In the end, I got to keep my silver hair AND my bows and my manager was told that HER hair actually was a dress code violation and she had to dye it before coming the next day.”
12. Don't Want A Woman Working On Your Car? Fine, But You'll Have To Wait A Long Time
“Many years ago, I (female) worked at a car dealership. The attached service garage was small and I was the only licensed mechanic.
I would occasionally have issues with male customers— they would second guess my diagnoses, watch me while I worked on their cars from the bay door, double-check my work in the parking lot, etc.
I didn’t deal with customers directly and would often get my apprentice to pull cars in and out of the shop for me.
This morning, in particular, we were busy. The lot jockey and apprentice were occupied helping wash cars for delivery and driving to a customer’s house.
The service advisor left a work order and keys at the parts counter, and I went out the front through service to get the car. It was in for a service campaign, which was an update done with a scan tool. It takes about 10 minutes.
The customer was planning on waiting and was sitting in service. When he saw me with his keys in my hand, he immediately stood up, alarmed. I was hustling so I walked right by him and out the door. I missed the following conversation, according to the service advisor (also female):
Customer: “Who is that chick? Is she going to be working on my car? I don’t want her working on my car.”
Advisor: “The other tech is out at the moment, so it’s going to be quite a wait until someone else can look at your car.”
C: “That’s fine. I’ll wait for a guy. I don’t want that chick touching my car.”
A, politely: “Understood.”
The advisor comes to let me know, and I pull the car out and put the work order and keys back on the counter, nonplussed.
Half an hour passes. The apprentice is still away, and I am happily working on something else, bringing other cars in and out.
The customer is now watching each and every person who comes through the door.
The high school co-op student comes in to get something signed. The customer’s keys are still sitting on the desk.
It’s been about an hour now.
C: “Hey— why hasn’t my car gone in yet? Can’t you get this guy to do it?”
A: “No, sorry. He’s just a co-op student so he is not allowed to drive the cars due to liability and insurance concerns.”
C: “Just get someone else to bring the car in and he can do the work. This was supposed to take 10 minutes.”
A: “Sorry, sir. He’s just a high school student doing his co-op; he’s not approved to perform warranty work. Only licensed techs and apprentices can do the recall.”
The car jockey returns. The advisor hands the car jockey a different set of keys, and he brings yet another car into the shop for me. The customer is becoming incensed.
C: “I’ve been sitting here for over an hour and I’ve watched 5 cars go in before mine.
My appointment was for 8 am, this is getting ridiculous,” blah blah blah.
At this point, he says that he literally doesn’t care who does the recall, but that it has to be a guy.
The service advisor starts listing off the names of the men who work in the dealership, then saying why they can’t perform the recall.
“Well there’s Harmon, but he’s just the car jockey. He doesn’t know how to work on cars. Then there’s Jeet, but he’s about 17. I wouldn’t want him doing the recall, personally. I guess we could ask Mike— but Mike is the parts guy— he doesn’t know how to use the scan tool.
The detailers are men, but they know NOTHING about cars… ”
The customer is fuming at this point and demands to talk to the service manager.
The manager comes out of his office and guides the customer into the garage. He’s pretty old school… lights up a smoke standing at the end of my bay, and points at me.
“That’s my best technician. Those guys take orders from her. You can either wait for her to finish what she’s working on, and then you can ask if she’s still willing to do your work, or you can take your car somewhere else.”
The guy was pretty shook up at this point and he took his car and left, two hours after he’d first arrived. I don’t think we ever saw him again, which was not much of a loss, all things considered.
That manager in particular ALWAYS stuck up for me and took my side.
The service advisor has this very dead-pan sense of humor. She knew full well it would easily be an hour before the apprentice would return from his errand, and that no one else could do the recall. This was not the first misogynist we had encountered.”
Another User Comments:
“HE can’t fix his car, how the heck can he determine who can? Don’t pay an expert and try and second guess them.” w_nightshade
11. Don't Want Me To Be A Manager? Then I'm Gone
“So, when I was freshly out of high school, I hadn’t decided on what I wanted to do with my life, so I got a job at a pizza place near where I lived.
I’ve always been the type of person who would rather work than sit at home, and I didn’t/don’t have a ton of friends to hang out with.
They started out having me just making the food deliveries once or twice a week, but that quickly turned into them calling me in daily about an hour after they opened because the managers/owners didn’t want to make the deliveries, and they were the only ones working the front of the house.
Like I mentioned previously, I didn’t mind coming in to work and would always say that it wasn’t a problem.
About two weeks into my working at the pizza shop, the owners INSISTED that I learn register because they were no longer willing to do it themselves during the week.
Okay, sure, no problem; it’s just more for me. They continued training me in every aspect of running the physical business over the next month.
Every once in a while, the owners would say they want to make me a manager, so they can leave whenever they want.
Great, I thought. As time went on, I would work anywhere between 60-80 hours PER WEEK because other employees would call out or not show, and the owners didn’t want to stick around to deal with it. They even trusted me to hire a server and a delivery driver/cashier.
About 8 months into working there, running myself ragged for them and never getting so much as a thank you for everything I did for them, I decided to sit down with one of the owners and express the way I felt to them.
Me: ‘Hey, Boss 1, I know you keep saying you want to make me a manager.
Is there any reason you haven’t yet?’
Boss 1: ‘Just haven’t found the time or reason to train you for it yet.’
Me: ‘What do you mean? I already know how to do everything from taking orders to ordering supplies when we’re running low on something.’
Boss 1: ‘Yes, but it’s not your place to do all those things yet.’
Me: ‘What do you mean?’
Boss 1: ‘You’re NOT a manager; you should not be doing manager tasks!’
Alright, that’s how you want to play it? Then consider it done.
For the next 2 weeks, I didn’t do anything aside from what they hired me to do: make deliveries and only work on my scheduled days.
This went on for about two days and really upset the owners because now at least one of them had to be there at all times to make sure everything else was getting done.
Eventually, Boss 1 called me into his back office to “talk.”
Boss 1: ‘OP, what has gotten into you?!’
Me: ‘What do you mean?’
Boss 1: ‘You KNOW you need to put in orders for supplies, yet were running out of flour and out of soda syrup, and no orders have been placed!’
Me: ‘I’m sorry, Boss 1, but you told me that I’m not a manager, and I shouldn’t be acting like one, so I stopped.’
Boss 1: ‘Stop being a child, OP. You know your responsibilities here, and you need to do your job!’
Me: ‘I AM doing my job and only my job.
If you want to make me a manager, I’ll be happy to do those things.’
Boss 1: ‘You really think I’m going to make you a manager after this?’
Me: ‘If I’m not a manager, then I won’t do a manager’s job.’
Boss 1: ‘Fine, then just quit. You need to get over yourself.’
Me: ‘Okay, I quit. As of right now, I’m done.’
Boss 1: ‘FINE!’
So, I left. I was scheduled to work all week which meant that they were out of basically a manager. I ended up getting a call the following afternoon from Boss 1 demanding to know why I was so late for work, but I just reminded him that I no longer worked there.
Now, I was and still am very close friends with some old coworkers and heard all the drama as it unfolded.
Turns out, most of the employees ended up refusing to work because the owners had to be there full time now, and they were awful.
In my time working there, I hired about 5 people, and all 5 left because I wasn’t there to play manager anymore. They ended up closing about 6 months after I left because they couldn’t get anyone to stay longer than about 2 weeks.”
10. Never Actually Confirm Me As A Permanent Employee? No Resignation Notice For You
“This happened in 2016. I am a Chartered Accountant/CPA and got a breakthrough in one of the largest accountancy firms in the world.
I was hired as a manager in 2014 after working as a trainee student for 3.5 years in the same firm (I was required by law to complete the training to get my degree).
I was over the moon until I got face to face with Mr. Partner.
The 2 Senior Managers who hired me resigned from the firm abruptly leaving me second in charge to Mr. Partner. Being that this happened only 3 months after my becoming a manager, I had no idea how to cope with Mr. Partner and his work style.
The important thing to mention is that I was hired on probation of 6 months which is the norm. After 6 months, Mr. Partner had to sign a confirmation report because of which my post-employment benefits would start accumulating. This means Mr. Partner would have to contribute 10% of my pay towards my provident fund.
Being the money-grubber he is, he never signed that confirmation.
I went to him to question about this and he said the agreement says that the probation period can be extended if your performance is not satisfactory. He emphasized that I am not working up to mark and I need to do more in order to be ‘confirmed’ as per agreement.
According to him: Me working for more than 60 assignments in a single year (each assignment can run from 2 weeks to 4 months), without overtime, coming in on weekends and staying all together in the office for 2 to 3 days consecutively was not up to mark.
I lost my crap, but I knew he could bend me over since it’s as per agreement.
Oh, I also single-handedly managed to increase his revenue by 18% in that year alone from existing assignments by renegotiating contracts and identifying unbilled work.
1 year passed and he didn’t confirm me always citing the same reason. My life was a living nightmare. My hair went grey from the stress and I gained a lot of weight since all my time was spent working.
Mr. Partner left no stone unturned to prove he is a typical greedy curt old and narcissistic jerk who only cares about profits.
At the same time, he was pressurized by senior partners to hire a senior manager despite my good performance (my annual increment finalized by HR based on performance was 35% after I helped the firm secure A+ rating in annual internal audit).
Enter Mr. K. He was a snobby little moron who viewed me as his competitor and immediately started to down trode me in a very passive-aggressive manner. I won’t go into details as this is already getting long. After 3 or so months, I was asked to change cabins and I was cleaning out my drawer where I found my appointment letter.
I started to read it and lo and behold: I found gold!
There it was written that after confirmation (emphasis on after), the notice period to serve after handing in your resignation is to be not less than 6 months otherwise amount equal to short number of days of salary will be deducted.
Since I was never confirmed, this did not apply to me.
I go to 4 of my other colleagues who also worked for Mr. Partner and I discussed this with them. They were also never confirmed so technically we were never permanent employees of Mr. Partner.
Keeping this in mind, we started searching for new jobs actively.
As fate would have it, it took us 1 year to find alternate jobs, and I was the first one to leave.
As soon as I got an appointment letter from the other company, I went to Mr. Partner and handed my resignation with 2 weeks of notice.
I put in 2 weeks since I wanted to finish all my jobs in hand which was crucial for me, both ethically and ensuring I stay on good terms with these rich people.
Mr. Partner goes on a rant as I have to give at least 6 months’ notice.
I calmly said sir, you never confirmed our appointment so the clause does not apply to me.
At first, he resisted, then called in HR partner and went on another rant. I sat there calmly and the HR partner listened to him, his face turning red. He knew Mr. Partner had screwed up because if he says I am a permanent employee, he would have to pay all post-retirement benefits retrospectively which amounted to a hefty sum.
If he says I am not a permanent employee then I am not bound to serve 3 months’ notice.
So I serve my 2 weeks, finish all my assignments and on the very last day, went to Mr. K, handed over my laptop, cabin keys, and employee card; and exited the building without saying a single word.
Within 2 months of my leaving, all 3 other colleagues got different jobs and all of them went out after serving a week’s notice and there was nothing Mr. Partner or Mr. K could do about it.
Since I was handling more than 50% of the workload, I start receiving calls from ex-clients about the deteriorating quality of work and lack of attention.
2 clients left immediately after they got to know about my departure.
The incremental benefit I received from switching immediately compensated for no post-employment benefits within 6 months so it was a win-win situation for me. Plus the mental peace… Those 2 years were awful for me but the satisfaction of this malicious compliance was only topped by the fact that I also met my now wife in that office and we are now as happy as a human could be…
My wife went on to work for another partner in the same firm (who is a very thorough gentleman) and just a week ago she told me that the firm has kicked out Mr. Partner due to ethical issues and Mr. K has been denied promotion to Director level over non-performance which effectively means his career has ended in that firm.”‘
Another Users Comments:
“I feel the HR partner should also be kicked out for negligence here.” Vectivus_61
9. Sure, I Won't Leave The Table Until I've Cleared My Plate
“Let me paint a picture. My grandfather, rest his soul, is the most stubborn person I have ever met.
My grandmother and he are devout Roman Catholics very much from the era of what the man of the house says goes, no matter what that is, to the point I had never seen her argue with him except two times in my entire life, which is the time I will be referencing and a time he straight up called me ugly (he was a gruff grump of a man, obviously) for black fingernail polish.
He did apologize for that, but my grandma tore him up beforehand. That tongue lashing was nothing compared to the time in question.
My grandfather, being old-fashioned, was big on the ‘you eat what you are given, you don’t leave until your plate is clean’ mentality.
Now, I was under six in this story, but I remember it so clearly, mostly because my grandma still seethes about it and brings it up regularly. It was one of the first times I was staying with them without my parents due largely to my parents divorcing, meaning it was their (Read: grandpa’s) first time making my plate.
The plate I was served was huge. I mean, thinking back the plate they served me matched theirs. That’s HUGE to someone as young and tiny as I was (I was born premature and incredibly petite until puberty, and still petite after that.) It was dinner time, and grandpa would not budge in his ways.
I was crying, he was angry, and all because I was so full I could not eat anymore. My grandpa yelled and berated me, as a child, that I WAS going to finish my plate and I would not leave the table until I did.
Okay. I don’t leave the table. He sits there, expecting me to fold, but the problem is I have always been just as stubborn as he is if not more, but only if you give me a reason to be, which he did. My bedtime was supposed to be around 8 pm because it was the summer.
I sat at the table, growing more and more irate (tiny tot unable to move and exhausted level temper tantrum) all the while. I do not eat. I do not leave the table. I follow his instructions.
Grandpa finally gives in around four in the morning, per my grandmother, and lets me leave.
Ah, but of course, only if grandma saves my now ten-hour old plate for tomorrow. I didn’t finish it, so now I would eat nothing else until that plate was finished. Whatever. Grandma does that and happily takes me to bed at last.
I think I slept basically until lunch, but grandma convinced him to allow me to (he was also the ‘everyone gets up at six in the morning’ type).
True to his word, he served me the plate. True to my resolve, I ate nothing. You don’t leave until you finish the nasty plate, so I don’t leave.
Cut to the chase, this went on between us so long that my grandma, pillar of patience and everything that is good and woman who has hidden all but two arguments between her and her 50-year husband behind closed doors, freaking LOSES it.
By the time she does, mold has grown on this plate. I haven’t eaten, at six or fewer years old, in actual days.
You can imagine how my temperament had deteriorated.
You can imagine how far my grandfather and I had pushed my grandma.
You can imagine how long this went on, how long it took to crack my grandma at long last.
My grandma absolutely lost her everlovin’ mind. She took the plate and flung it, moldy food and all, across the room and SCREAMED at my grandfather.
I was silent, stunned, terrified. Grandpa was the same. I had followed instructions, she tells him. I had told him I couldn’t eat that much when he first set the plate in front of me, as had she repeatedly when he was making it apparently, and he had pushed the issue too far.
She had tried to lightly stop this for days now, but lightly hadn’t worked and she went all out.
Eventually, terrified and starving, I completely deteriorate and am full-on sobbing, and she’s basically force-feeding me Poptarts and that Honeycomb cereal (I remember because it was the only cereal I ate for three years following this incident for whatever reason) while going absolutely berserk on my grandfather and telling him that he’s the adult and he shouldn’t have pushed it so far just to be right and if anything is wrong with me he is explaining to my father, their son and a VERY overprotective father at the time due to my mom literally trying to kill and kidnap me which was why I was in their care, to begin with, what happened and why he refused to feed his only granddaughter.
When my grandma every now and again brings this story up, mostly when I end up not finishing my plate which is rare but certain foods make me sick and my family still goes by oldest male makes the plates for holidays, she makes sure to hit three points hard.
1.) I followed every rule my grandfather set forth like the stubborn, spiteful little gremlin I am.
2.) My grandfather was undoubtedly in the wrong, because the reason I didn’t eat the food that next day was because it had already basically gone bad and tasted poorly after sitting out for so long, plus my picky eater behind had already been force-feeding myself, to begin with, the night before.
3.) She has only ever met one person in her lifetime as stubborn and absolutely unmoving in resolve as my grandfather, and that’s me.
I distinctly remember my grandma made all of my plates, outside of holidays when for a while my dad did instead of my grandpa which was a BIG DEAL with our traditions until I was old enough to make them for myself if I was staying alone with them.
And yes, grandpa got chewed out again when dad found out about it.
RIP grandpa though, he’s still one of my favorite family members and I miss him every day. Grandma is still my favorite female family member, though.
Grandma got my back and turns out she’s a straight-up savage when pushed.”
8. Sorry, I Can't Deal With Calls Due To Your New Rule
“I work in a nursing home on the 3-11 shift as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA). What happens a lot is the CNAs will go to get food around 7:30 or 8:00 after they’ve put the majority of the residents to bed. Some of the residents figured out when we normally eat lunch and come out to passively beg for our food or try to give us money to go get them some (legally, we can’t touch their assets), ESPECIALLY if we have pizza.
Don’t even mention the word pizza in a nursing home unless you want a mob of people around you.
A few residents complained about the CNAs “teasing them with food that they can’t have by eating in front of them.” The facility made it a rule that we could not eat where the residents can see us.
The problem is, the break room is a side room attached to the dining room. Sometimes when we’re in the break room eating, we could look up and see residents staring at us through the glass door. That means we can’t even eat in the break room.
The CNAs didn’t even talk about this compliance. We just all did it. The facility put in a rule that we absolutely had to take our lunch break about a week before this happened because CNAs would put that they didn’t have lunch at the time clock which led to them paying overtime.
Even if there was one CNA on the hall, that CNA still had to take a lunch break according to their rules. When I was the only CNA on a hall, I would pick up my lunch and eat while still answering call lights because I was the only CNA to answer them, but since I couldn’t eat where the residents saw me, so I stayed out of the building for my lunch break.
Because we stayed gone the entire time, they started getting complaints that call lights were being ignored. The nurses were doing their own malicious compliance because the Director of Nursing (DON) was jumping down their throats for answering lights while they were passing out medicine.
“You can’t lock up the cart to answer a light during med pass!” is what she would screech at them, so when the aides were on lunch, the nurses weren’t answering the lights either.
No residents were harmed during this malicious compliance.
This lead to a lot of complaints and phone calls to the DON’s cell phone at night because the residents would call their family members who would then call the DON.
One night at around 7:45, the DON stormed up to me while I was eating lunch in my car. She was in her pajamas, so I knew she wasn’t happy.
DON: “Why aren’t you in the hall? I’m getting phone calls about call lights not being answered!”
Me: “I’m on my lunch break.”
DON: “You can’t leave the hall unattended!”
Me: “According to the in-service AND the write up that YOU made me sign, I have to take a lunch break whether I’m the only aide on the hall or not, AND I’m not allowed to eat in front of the residents, so I can’t be in there.
We’re also not allowed to work while off the clock.”
When she realized the corner her rules back us into, she practically short-circuited. She wasn’t even making words anymore. She looked around and saw two other CNAs eating in their cars. These ladies were kind of sassy and weren’t going to take any crap from her, so she didn’t even bother.
She stormed into the building, and I didn’t see her again until my lunch break was over. She apparently answered the call lights in her pajamas.
For anyonewho is curious, the call lights that she answered were for little things like a resident who was on a fluid restriction wanting water or wanting their tv turned to a channel that the tv was already on.
Those were the only two lights that were on according to my nurse. The DON was furious that she had to drive down there to answer those lights since they didn’t even need anything. Welcome to CNA work, witch!
The next day, we had a new in-service that said we can take our lunch in the break room, and they put a sad excuse of a blind on the glass door of the break room.
They also put a sign on the break room that said “Staff Only.” This didn’t stop residents from going in it, though. The in-service also said that if there is only one aide on the hall, that aide can not leave the hall unless they find another aide to watch it while they’re gone.
Sadly, she didn’t stop bothering the nurses.
I know some people would think we went too far with our compliance, but they were threatening termination for eating in front of the residents and for not taking a lunch break. I was suspended for three days before this compliance for not taking a lunch break, so there was nothing left to do but malicious compliance.
The DON and the administrator of the facility kissed up hardcore to the residents, which is why we had stupid rules like that. Thankfully, both of them are gone. I was told by the next DON that the write-up and suspension would not be on my record, and they paid me for the 3 days I missed because there was no wrongdoing.”
7. Can't Chew Me Out For Overtime If You Expect Me To Care For Every Single Patient On My Own
“Backstory: I got hired for an IV pharmacy tech position back in January of last year.
It started off pretty nice; well-rounded team to help get me up to speed, pharmacists were lovely, and the General Manager (GM=my boss) was nothing but good to me at the time.
My basic job description was to fill IV’s for patients to leave on delivery runs, clean IV pumps, compound medications, check out of dates, and clean the IV room. Our team had to make sure the IV medications were leaving on time for deliveries (which were 2 at the time — one for the afternoon, and one for late-night).
My GM’s motto was to “Always put the patient 1st, no matter the circumstances.” (This comes into play later-on.)
During the months I was working there, the IV lead tech (let’s call her Emily) had fully trained me and placed me on EARLY morning shifts (Mon-Fri at 3:30a), which turned out to be one of the most relaxed shifts I’ve ever worked in my life.
Basically, I would fill a few IV medications for patients during the time frame before Emily would come in at 8 am, and I’d leave at 12 pm, therefore having the rest of the day to myself. Emily and I started to click very well and had a great workflow in place for the other members to come in for the evenings.
May comes along, and our IV team (which was 4 people including myself) started to disband one by one within a 2-week spread. Emily informed me that she was also putting in her notice shortly after the first member did (within 2 days of one another), so it got pretty scary at first. Our GM called me personally into his office and offered me the Lead IV tech role.
What went off in my head at that time was, “Really? Me? 3 months in, and being offered a lead spot?” I was overwhelmed with joy and got a significant raise to go along with it once I accepted the offer. During Emily’s 2 weeks’ notice, she showed and taught me everything she knew about her role and the major keys/points on what the bosses are looking for, etc.
The day after Emily left, I was in charge. However, the minor setback, it was only a team of 2 people now. Knowing that my cushy 4 am shift was eliminated, the remaining team member (let’s call her Diane) and I talked about a schedule and worked it out perfectly!
Diane volunteered to work Sat-Wed (all 8-hour shifts), and I would work Mon-Fri.
The major difference was, that Thurs-Fri was 9 am-8 pm shifts, with nobody to cover for the entire day. The GM and I had a discussion about this and said he would personally find 2 more people to replace the ones who left and get things back to normal.
May to July was one of the WORST times I’ve ever worked in my life. Instead of working 9-8 on Thursday/Friday, I was working 9 am-11 pm, so about 12-13 hour shifts on both of those days. Surprisingly, during this entire ordeal, Diane and I worked very well together and were able to send out all of the IV’s that were ordered on time without missing any.
Keep in mind, since day 1 of working here, we NEVER had an IV that went out late for deliveries nor missed any patients.
Around mid-July, I got fed up with waiting for my GM to hire 2 new people for my team. I finally went into his office, explained the situation, and my reasoning of frustration, only to be told that it was “MY responsibility to look for new team members” when he said that he’d personally look for me.
I was completely dumbfounded by this, and it finally set into me that this place wasn’t the place I expected it to be. You know, like one of those…very nice and reasonable at first, then turns into a nightmare after a few months?
Yeah, it keeps getting worse from here. I talked to Diane about it, and she explained to me that this was the reason why Emily left the company.
(Uh-oh.)
The middle of August comes around, and we finally hired 2 more people to my team, and they were amazing!
Once all trained, come September, and things were starting to get back to normal. I was back to 40 hour weeks, Diane and I finally got some quality of life again. Win-win right? NOPE. Early September, GM called me back into his office and did not like the fact I was working 48 hour weeks before our staff went back to normal. The GM said, “Kofaze, my payroll was almost in the negative during those months thanks to you.
We can’t have you working overtime like that anymore.”
I explained that it was only 2 of us working, 2 people down, the IV’s were still getting out on time, we put the “Patient 1st” just like you said.
I also asked why he didn’t tell me this while we were short-staffed at the time, that this could have been easily avoided and would have completely understood the situation.
GM scoffed and made a snarky remark, “Well you’re a leader, so I shouldn’t have to tell you to not work overtime. How about you use your time more wisely?”
What the crap? I was just making sure every patient was taken care of, no matter the circumstances, and following his command.
This is also the first time he has ever mentioned payroll and overtime to me, so I was generally upset about all of it. After this, I did not work any more OT.
November came around, and oh boy it couldn’t have been any worse.
I had to let go of one of my members due to excessive no show/no call, and Diane was finally putting in her notice because she was getting her dream job across the country. Note that this AGAIN happened within a 2-week span. I was a little sad on the inside, but also couldn’t have been happier that Diane was following her dream.
Back to a 2 person crew again, uh-oh. During this period, I was very lucky that the newest IV tech (let’s call her Jasmine) agreed to the working the same shift as Diane’s for the time being and told her that things would go back to normal soon.
It was sneaking up on flu and the cold season, and it gets much busier in the healthcare world around that time.
I was still working 40 hours a week, yet I am still by myself on Thu-Fri, just like a few months ago when I worked 11-hour shifts.
One day, GM randomly called me into his office and snarled, “Kofaze, IV medications weren’t made for a run. Please explain why.” I told him that you specifically told me to not work any overtime like back in the day because it hurts your payroll, so I was just following your orders and trying to use my time wisely.
I could tell he was extremely furious and just told me to go back to work. He sent me an e-mail specifically stating the following: “Kofaze, the patients ALWAYS comes 1st. I do not care how long it takes you, but I want every single IV patient taken care of before you leave work.
This is where you need to STEP UP and be a LEADER.” I showed this to Jasmine, and her jaw dropped so far that you could walk over it and couldn’t believe that he would say that to me via e-mail.
Malicious compliance time!!!
Every day after he sent me the e-mail, I made sure that EVERY single IV patient was taken care of, therefore working about 12-14 hours shifts 5 days a week. During this madness, many of the pharmacists and other staff were concerned about my health, but I specifically told them the same words the GM spewed out at me.
The better part about it all, it was the start of a new pay period, which lasts two weeks long.
While all of that was going on, I have already applied to another job and was waiting on the thumbs up when to start.
About 3 weeks go by, and guess who calls me?
The GM asked to see me in his office IMMEDIATELY. I could tell by the look on his face what he was going to tell me. He was holding my pay-stub, saying that his payroll was completely shot, that he now has to cut hours of other workers to meet it for the monthly quota, and why I would work 132 hours in a 2-week span, knowing it would hurt his payroll?
I had the biggest grin on my face when I showed him the e-mail and used his own words against him, “Sir, you told me to make sure every single patient was taken care of before I left work, so I specifically followed your orders.” The GM’s face turned beet red with anger, knowing that there was nothing he could do about this because it would come back on him due to a paper trail with specifics.
After this conversation, to put a cherry on a cake, I also put in my two-week notice and told him that I have taken an offer with another company. The next day, Jasmine also put in her notice because she was completely unhappy with this entire situation, therefore having zero people left in the department.
Months have gone by, and I love it here at my new line of work. I spoke with an ex-co-worker a couple of weeks ago and told me that the IV department has still not recovered since my departure. They have consistent trouble keeping more than two people and have had to utilize other locations to help with deliveries due to severe understaffing, costing them THOUSANDS of dollars in the process.”
6. You Can Just Fail Since You Don't Want My Help
“I worked in a pharmacy dedicated to sending medications to nursing homes. Since this is often difficult to do just by hand, there were machines that could help out. I often helped use the machines to package the meds.
A new coworker joined my team.
She was pleasant enough, but for some reason, I could not tell you, even to this day, I hated her on sight. Apparently the feeling was mutual, though we were able to work together cordially enough.
Since the machines, while super useful, were also prone to breaking down, a lot of manual intervention was required to ensure smooth operation.
Since it’s a pharmacy, we also had to keep track of the medications being used on it (which means counts, often done nightly, particularly with more expensive medications).
This information is relevant.
I had been at this job for a few years, so I was reasonably experienced with the use and maintenance of the machines.
My coworker wasn’t. This is also where I point out that my coworker is older than me.
So, my coworker had been at the job a few weeks and had received some training, so my boss at the time told me that it’d be okay for her to shadow me while I worked but also to make sure she did some of the work on her own, so she’d learn via hands-on experience.
This also meant I couldn’t leave until my coworker did since she hadn’t been given the go-ahead to be alone with the machine. Goody.
It went more or less okay for the majority of the shift. I let my coworker do some of the work, as ordered by my supervisor, and she seemed to be getting it.
However, for some reason, she wasn’t relying on the computer, which had kept track of all the medications used (and their corresponding slots) to do the nightly count. Instead, she was literally writing down every single slot and medication by hand, to count later.
“Coworker,” I said, “you know the computer keeps track of that–”
“I know it does, YarnAndMetal, but I don’t seem to get how to do it!”
This is toward the end of the shift.
My nerves were fried from having to deal with her, and I was tired.
“You do it like THIS, Coworker.”
(shows her)
“I don’t get it, YarnAndMetal, so I’m just going to do it by hand. You younger people don’t seem to have a problem with computers, but I do! Let me do it by myself!”
People. The process to see what had been used was literally two clicks of a mouse button. I had shown her once at the start of our shift. Our supervisor had shown her during initial training. Another coworker had shown her while she was training.
I. Was. DONE.
So, I let her do exactly what she wanted. I let her write down every canister by hand, every med by hand, and let her count by hand.
I even offered, as a show of good faith, to help with the counting, but again, “NO, YarnAndMetal, I’ll do it!
Let me do it by myself!”
Fine.
As a result, we ended up leaving an hour after our shifts were supposed to end. That’s an hour of OT that we hadn’t been authorized to take, for the record.
The next day, my supervisor asks me why I’d stayed so late last night, so I told her very honestly that my coworker didn’t want my help finishing out the necessary counts last night.
My supervisor, being what she was (yes, my wording there is deliberate), immediately went and ripped my coworker a new one.
The day after, my coworker didn’t come in. We all found out she’d quit, effective immediately.
Good riddance, I guess.
BONUS AFTERMATH: I also found out the day after I had to stay so late that the counts my coworker did were wrong.
All of them.”
5. Don't Ask Someone You Mistreat To Install An Appliance For You
“So, a little backstory:
My dad’s older sister (my aunt) is a hard person to nail down. Sometimes she is the sweetest person you’ve ever met, but other times, she is a total Karen.
Well, a few months back, her husband (my uncle) passed away (RIP), and it was a total shock to everyone. Then right after, the world stopped, leaving her with only my cousin, which has brought out much more of her Karen side.
The story:
So, with everything starting to reopen after the ‘2019 world pause’ and it being ok to have small gatherings again, my dad and I went down to visit my aunt.
She had gotten a new dishwasher, and my dad nearly flipped when he found out she was going to pay someone a ridiculous amount of money. (I don’t remember the exact amount, but it was a few hundred more than when my mom got hers installed.) So, we drove down to her house, so my dad could install it for free.
We get there, and the fun begins right away. My aunt complains about where I parked. (It was next to her car. I drove because my car is newer than my dad’s.) So, I moved.
Then she complained about parking there because the guy she had paid to cut her lawn was coming, so I moved again.
(All this time, she isn’t telling me where she wants me to park either. She’s just telling me I picked bad places despite her enormous driveway.) After two or three more times of playing Simon Says, I end up on the other side of her car, which she decides is perfect.
So, we go in, and I greet my cousin who I haven’t seen for about a year due to her being in college. (She’s awesome and not entitled at all.) She and I sit around and chat for a while, and my dad gets to work on the dishwasher.
At first, my aunt was super nice offering me snacks, trying to make my dad sit down and have coffee, etc. But dad wanted to get the job done because he lives 2 hours away, and I live 2 hours north of him but was staying with him for the weekend which was how I got roped into this.
My aunt starts going on about how she is so happy to finally have a dishwasher that will be flat against the counter, starts questioning if my dad is doing it right, and overall slowly turns from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.
Then she comes in and interrupts my cousin and I’s conversation to ask me about my job and stuff while only half listening when I answer her questions.
I knew she was only half listening because I’d talk about something, and then immediately after I’d stop talking, she would ask me a question about what I just told her, so it was a lot of repeating myself. Then she starts in on my looks, how I’ve gained weight, how my hair would be so much prettier if I straightened it and brushed it properly (my hair is straight and long, and I brush it just fine; it’s just a little frizzy sometimes), and so on.
I’m self-conscious about my looks, especially because my cousin is a pageant queen. (Explains a lot about my aunt, huh?) And I’m not exactly skinny; I’m squishy but not fat. So, instantly my self-esteem is going down, and my cousin steps into the rescue and starts changing the subject to lunch.
My aunt is distracted and instantly tells us we are ordering Chinese food (knowing I hate the Chinese place that she always orders from, and my dad only eats Chinese food on my birthday).
She goes in telling my cousin to get lunch specials. My cousin explains that due to them only doing curbside that they’re not doing lunch specials.
My aunt doesn’t like this answer and tells my cousin to check their website. This starts a whole argument where my cousin has to check not only their website but their social media page AND has to call them and ask about lunch specials just to appease my aunt who even went as far as to demand my cousin ask them to “make an exception.”
I tell her it’s fine because that place typically had lunch specials with shellfish in them, which I’m allergic too.
I’ve told my aunt this a thousand times, and every time is like groundhogs day, and the same conversation always ensues.
“Are you sure?
You ate it when you were little. Could it have been something else you reacted too? What about lobster? Are you sure it’s all shellfish?”
Yeah, I hate that conversation. So, we decided what to order, and shocker, my aunt got shellfish. They make these crab things that look exactly like their chicken fingers, so immediately that’s out for me.
I ordered fried rice and beef teriyaki for me and my dad. My cousin goes to get it and comes back. My aunt immediately dumps most everything on a plate including the chicken fingers and the fried crab things together ON TOP of the beef teriyaki, so I can’t tell which is which.
I ended up eating most of the fried rice which, of course, I heard about from my aunt.
At this point through lunch, my aunt is laying into my cousin about everything that’s “bothering her” that day. Her attitude, how lazy she is, her man, and how lazy he is (in front of me and my dad!).
I tried to change the subject, but it always looped around to my cousin. My dad was livid, and when we finished lunch, my cousin wrapped up the leftovers and said she was taking them to her man because he was doing summer work and hadn’t eaten today.
She then looked at me and invited me along. I don’t think I’ve ever run out the door so fast in my life, and I felt bad for ditching my dad.
Then this happened while we were gone, so I heard it second hand…
My aunt then laid into my dad about the dishwasher again, and my dad had the horrible realization that he was missing a hose that my aunt forgot to buy separately, so now my dad had to go to the store with my aunt. The entire way there, she complained about my cousin, my other aunt in Florida, my dad’s attitude, and how my brother never comes with us for visits.
(He can’t stand aunt.)
They get to the store, and my dad thinks he knows where the part is, but my aunt demands help from the cashier. She goes full-blown Karen, being rude to this poor girl who is just a cashier and doesn’t know much about the stuff they sell, and my aunt berated her almost the entire time calling her names even I won’t repeat to keep this clean.
My dad is stunned to silence as he witnesses this, and just as this girl is about to cry, he finally finds his voice and cuts in, stepping between the girl and my aunt, hands the girl a ten, thanks to her for her help, and tells her she can let them be now.
The girl practically runs for the hills at this point, and my dad turns and lays into my aunt now.
Dad: What is your problem?!
Aunt: What?
Dad: Why are you being so mean to everyone!?
Aunt: W-well I’m not meaning to be. My husband did just die after all.
Dad: [Aunt’s name], you were a witch (not a witch but a word sounding similar) before that, so don’t pull that on me!
My dad then walks off and finds the part, he buys it with my aunt being strangely quiet the entire time, and my dad is even careful not to go to the same cashier that helped them.
My aunt drove back to the house after like a maniac and yelled at my dad, which he says he tuned out.
When they got back to the house, my cousin and I had also just gotten back, and my aunt began yelling about how my dad embarrassed her.
My dad had enough at this point, and they started arguing. My cousin and I escaped to the den to watch Disney movies.
My aunt uttered the famous words, “Just finish the dishwasher!”
Insert evil laugh as my dad remembers her bragging about how her dishwasher will be flat against the counter.
My dad agrees and goes about installing the dishwasher, except he puts the brackets in backward on purpose, so when he is done an hour or two later, it sticks out of the counter by about an inch (not enough to walk into and hurt yourself but enough to really irritate my aunt).
She starts yelling at my dad that he did it wrong, and my dad shrugs and says that if we don’t leave now, we will probably hit rush hour traffic so he grabs me while my aunt is still complaining, and we run for the car.
My cousin texted me on the way home saying my aunt hadn’t stopped grumbling about it since we had left, and she thought it was hilarious.
Please don’t be a Karen, guys, particularly not to my dad. He’s a jerk in all the best ways.
So, it really bugs her THAT much.”
4. Nachos... Nachos Everywhere
“This story comes as a result of a combination of me trying to get promoted, my social anxiety, me being a smart aleck, with just a hint of trying to spite another supervisor.
I was a supervisor at a movie theater a few years back.
I took over a regular non-supervisor shift in concessions, so there was already another supervisor working with me. This supervisor and I( we’ll call him Adam) were on pretty good terms. We get told by a senior manager (we’ll call him Kevin) to fill two rolling racks with premade trays that we put nachos in.
Filling them is simple enough: unfold trays, place them on aluminum baking sheets, so they’re ready to be filled, and leave one slot empty between sheets. This part is really important because when we put nachos in the trays, we need the space, so the chips don’t break after we fill them.
So Adam and I fill the racks as we normally would and call it a good night.
After this, we roll them in back because we don’t need them right now.
Adam gets sent home around 2 that day (we were slow as heck), and I take over the stand as a supervisor.
About fifteen minutes later, Kevin calls me in the back. Before I continue, let’s be clear that with so many managers, two senior managers, several supervisors, and about 60 employees, there is definitely some favoritism going on. Adam was on excellent terms with Kevin, and they talked regularly like they were friends.
On a good day, I was on okay terms with Kevin. He didn’t hate me, and he was pretty fair with me for the most part, but he wasn’t necessarily fond of me either.
Our overall professional relationship was pretty rocky. Overall, though, I still think he was a good guy.
Anyway, not the point. The point is, he calls me in back to tell me (just me, he made no mention of Adam) that he distinctly told me that he wanted those racks full, apparently more full than we normally make them. I would have loved to tell him that that’s what we normally do and that Adam said it was good.
But, I was trying to get promoted at the time, so I didn’t want to challenge my senior manager. Plus, my anxiety wouldn’t allow it.
So, the first thing I did after getting done with Kevin was to consolidate all the nacho trays as best as I could.
After that, we had one full rack and one empty rack. So, then I started assembling more trays and filling more sheets. This is interspersed with me trying to get daily jobs done, hopping on register to help out customers, and giving people breaks.
So, about an hour and a half after this, I used up all the clean trays we had.
However, the rack still wasn’t completely filled per Kevin’s instructions. I didn’t want to bug Kevin with it because he had other stuff to do. I also didn’t know if he wouldn’t accept this as being done.
Something important to note before moving on: we used the baking sheets for a lot of things.
We used them to dump out batches of popcorn that we had accidentally burnt.
We used them for the first batch of the day, so people didn’t get sick off of the cleaning chemicals and last batch of the night, so we could close out more quickly.
We also used them to place and pre count frozen items, so we didn’t use the counters. There were other things I’m forgetting about, but you get the idea.
Then in my desire to show motivation, relieve my anxiety, and just be a smart aleck all provided me with an epiphany, almost as though it were a sign from God Himself: I had used all of the clean sheets.
There were still some dirty ones that I had not used but could easily be cleaned. Very easily in fact!
I then proceed to clean all of our dirty trays so as to fill the rest of this rack.
During this time, the closing supervisor (Katie) comes in.
Katie and I used to have a very good working relationship. But in some months prior to this point, we had falling out. We were still polite to each other, but the damage had been done.
So, after briefing her on what she needs to know (who on mid-shift has had breaks, which movies are busy, etc.) I tell her about Kevin’s directive regarding the nachos, and she vehemently disagrees.
She makes the argument that if I use all of the baking sheets, we won’t have any for the rest of the week for all the other stuff we needed them for. After going back and forth with her a bit, consulting a third supervisor, and bringing up the fact that Kevin outranks both of us, she says the magic words:
“Fine, do what you want. I don’t care.”
What I wanted was to not get complained at by Kevin again. So, I use the rest of the baking sheets for the nacho trays. At this point, we now have none left for anything. About an hour later, I see Kevin and tell him that I finished the nacho trays.
He just says thanks and continues about his day.
So, of course, given the relative importance of having trays, this creates problems for the next few days. Concessions struggle to come up with baking sheets for when we need them, usually only having two free at any given point that they have to be washed immediately after use.
It also took until Friday (this all happened on a Monday) to sell out of the number of nachos we needed to have more than two useable baking sheets.
Oh, you’re wondering why we didn’t just remove the empty trays from the racks; it was because the managers only brought us the rack with full nacho trays.
At the supervisor meeting with senior managers two weeks later, Katie mentioned that using every single baking sheet was a bad idea and that it ought not to be done again. It didn’t take her urging by any means, but it was never done again.”
3. Working Less Hours Means Less Work Is Going To Be Done
Mark their words.
“Several years ago, I worked at an organization where I managed several projects. For most of these projects, I had a team to help meet deadlines.
My time was split up between these projects in percentages that dictated how much time I could work on each.
On one of these projects, I was alone and was allotted 20% of my work week to work on it (8 hrs). I liked this project, and my contract head from the contracting organization, so I often worked much more than the 8 hours… Pretty often, it was around 20-30 hours extra a week for this project.
Yes, I asked for help, and yes, I asked for more time on the project. Both requests were denied as we didn’t have the people for it or the money. No, I was never paid overtime.
Seeing as I was working so many extra hours, often very late into the night, I occasionally asked my manager if I could come in a few hours late because I had been up until 3-4 am working on a deliverable.
At first, this request was accepted, and I would come in late and leave late.
After the sixth or seventh time, my requests started to get declined with my manager saying, “They don’t need the deliverable at 4 am, so why are you working that late?” About a month after the requests were first denied, my mental health started to worsen as I was barely sleeping.
I decided to listen to my manager. I stopped working extra and stopped working until the early morning on all projects. I carefully marked down the times that I spent on each project on an Excel sheet and made sure to never go over my allotted hours.
I came in at 8 am and left at 4 pm.
I didn’t answer my phone or work remotely after 4 pm. I worked 8 hours a week on my individual project, and as expected, the next deliverable was missed.
Then the following one was missed, and a meeting was held between the contracted head at the contracting org, my boss, and my boss’s boss.
Needless to say, the contracted head was livid about how much time I was allotted onto the project (this was discussed internally without my say because my bosses know exactly how much time I need for the project /s) and requested for me to have more time on the project.
My boss raised my hours to 16 a week and continued to decline my requests to have somebody else work on it with me.
I put in my 2 weeks at the end of that week.
Fallout: I trained a buddy on the project during those two weeks.
There was no way that he could learn all of the small details that I had learned over the past couple of years in the time I had left there. I apologized to him, and he understood and told me not to worry. A month after I had left, the contract was canceled as my buddy and my boss tried to meet the deadlines but were not able to.
I now work at a much better company where I’ve only worked extra if my manager requests it.”
2. Okay, I Won't Put Stock Away Then
“I worked for a small, independent greengrocers, that had had a boom of business during the first world pause in 2019 and so brought me on to help deal with orders, organizing their website and general admin.
I am the sort of person who likes to get stuck into things wherever I work and so slowly, I started doing bits that were not really my job description but helped other staff out.
One of these roles was to put stock away and rotate it in the fridges.
Every morning, we would get a delivery of fresh fruit and veg, I’m talking about 6 pallets worth of stuff. I would have to go through it, take it to the correct fridge, and basically put it behind the older stuff so that shelves were being stocked with the oldest produce first.
Now the manager of the company liked to think he knew exactly what was going to sell every day and would frequently overbuy certain products.
This meant that in order to fit everything in, I sometimes had to reorganize where things went.
To clarify, the fridge was small.
You walked in and could move in an L shape while seeing all produce pretty much at all times. There was nowhere that couldn’t be seen if you moved further into the fridge and simply looked.
Because of the overbuying, a lot of produce was stuck in the fridge for days and days and resulted in it going bad.
What didn’t help was that the manager decided any orders that came in would not get picked from what was in the fridge, it would be picked from the pallets.
So we had very little stock movement coming out of the fridge, but loads of produce going in.
One Monday morning I come in (I didn’t work weekends) to find 3 pallets worth of rotting produce that the manager had taken out of the fridge on Saturday and left to sit in the yard behind the shop for me to see.
He claimed that I had been ‘hiding’ the produce, so the shop assistants were not able to stock the shelves with the older produce and this resulted in a lot of waste.
I took a quick look at the stuff and as expected, it was the products that had been overbought.
I tried to say as nicely as possible that there was no way I could have hidden it and the reason a lot of it was wasted is because we had too much to begin with.
But the manager could never be wrong, so he told me from now on, not to put any stock away unless he approved it.
Cue compliance. The next day I come in and it’s a scorcher. Very hot for the UK, one of the hottest of the year.
I see the stock sat outside on pallets, and can even see some of it sweating already, despite only being out about 15 minutes before I arrived.
Normally I would get straight on it and start putting it away, but I had not been asked to yet, so I went up to the office and got on with some admin.
Turns out, the manager had an appointment that day until around lunchtime (approximately 5 hours after I arrived) and turned up to find 5 pallets of produce, around 4k in value, all nicely baking in the sun.
The smell was not great, all soft fruits (berries mostly) had to be thrown immediately, and based on how warm most of it was, only the stuff that had been placed lower down and in the center of the pallets was even viable to save.
The manager called me into his office and phoned the owner of the company so I could explain why we had lost so much produce that day and you know what, I did just that.
My conversation with the owner was short and sweet and I had no negative consequences come from it.
The manager was given a warning, which as he had been pulled up for other issues previously, was a written warning and put him closer to being let go.
He stayed another 6 weeks before deciding this wasn’t the job for him.
As for putting the produce away, when I came in the next day, I didn’t even ask, I just got on with it as normal.”
Another Users Comments:
“I think I might know the answer to this, but did he not use any statistical information about what was selling, and how much/rate of sales? Like, he just… decided, “You know what? Today, I’ll order strawberries”?” chefjenga
Reply:
“Yeah, he would never use any actual sales information.
He would order produce based on his gut, and if anyone questioned it, he would rip into them.
I remember one time a few months before, we had like 10 trays of grape punnets, with 12 punnets per tray all come in on one day.
Being a small shop, we had enough room to display 1 tray and probably sold through 3 trays a week, but then the next day, he goes and buys another 4 trays.
and the entire shop staff were just looking at it all in disbelief.” Xyphenia
1. Fake Numbers Still Count, Right?
“Long ago, at a Fortune 500 company far away…
I had a consulting gig with Giganto Corp., helping them code their Java 1.0 web app.
My first task was to update the app’s UML diagrams, which were manually maintained and required per “the process.” I got out of that task as quickly as I could by just putting it off and writing code instead, and nobody ever complained that the diagrams which had been out-of-date when I was hired continued to be out-of-date.
But I think that since they had given someone the task, my boss was able to check it off and claim compliance with the process. Not malicious compliance, but that’s just setting the scene for what kind of workplace this was.
Giganto liked to rotate their middle managers around routinely whether things were going well or not.
I never knew whether this was to give them more experience in different departments or limit the damage that any one manager could do in one place, or what.
But partway through the gig, our middle manager got rotated out, and New Manager decided what we had to have was a Gantt chart.
UML diagrams and Gantt charts, a clear recipe for success, and the project would be a shining beacon of New Manager’s abilities.
One of the things you have to have for a Gantt chart is numbers. New Manager needed (or at least his Gantt chart software required), for every task we had done, its estimate, and the actual time it took.
He also needed estimates for incomplete tasks. And, of course, the dependencies between tasks. Now, for all the processes this place had, they didn’t have any tracking of the time taken on a task, not on software, not in a spreadsheet, not on index cards.
Nothing. Programming led assigned tasks, we did tasks, moved on to the next one. So where was New Manager going to get his numbers? In a meeting, of course.
We all gathered for the Meeting of Numbers. For each task, New Manager would name the task, and then the developer who did it would say how long it took.
“DB component for account table?” “1 week.” “UI component for account selection?” “in progress for 2 days, 4 days left.” And so it went until New Manager impaled me on a task from my past:
“Controller for account configuration?”
“Uh, I did that, but I don’t know how long it took.”
“You don’t?”
“No, that was months ago. I really don’t remember.”
“But I need a number.”
“I’m sorry, any number I gave you would be made up.
You probably don’t want a made-up number, do you?”
His frustration was starting to show.
“No, of course not. But I have to have a number.”
“Uh…”
His face turned red, and he hit the table with a closed fist. (I thought that only happened in movies; I’ve never seen it in any business setting before or since.)
“I just need a number!”
Finally, the light bulb went off in my poor, confused brain. Having only once said he wouldn’t accept a made-up number, he had said three times (and loudly) that he needed a number. Three is more than one, so:
“Four point five, three days!”
“OK! Thanks!”
The other, smarter developers were probably making up many of their numbers also, just with less fuss than I made out of it.
Gantt charts are of questionable usefulness in software, and with the data he was getting, probably even less useful. I think it’s a sure bet that the Gantt chart was useless in predicting when the project would be done.
But contractors being expensive jettisonable pods, I left the project before it was finished and never found out for sure how it turned out.”
Another Users Comments:
“I’m reminded of a physics professor’s story of when he worked in the industry. One time his team was tasked with assembling a very powerful vacuum that could attain very precise measurements of high vacuum.
This was no simple vacuum; it was a high-precision scientific instrument.
Once set up, if I recall correctly, the vacuum control system could report the vacuum measurement with 10 digits of decimal precision past the radix. Unfortunately, the manager demanded 20 digits. They tried to explain to them that the equipment could physically only measure as accurately as 10 digits, and you all know you can’t change the laws of physics.
The manager would not listen and insisted on 20.
And so, they gave him 20. Since the equipment was incapable of measuring any more accurately, they simply appended an additional 10 random digits to pad the length out to 20. Thus, the manager was satisfied.” hotlavatube
