People Familiarize Us With Their Vast Act Of Revenge
12. Create Serious Health Risks While Working At A Restaurant? I'll Rat You Out
Dude shouldn’t have been working in food at all.
“Years back, I worked in the Back of House for a chain of fast-casual restaurants; let’s call it Emerald Wednesday. I had been there for quite some time and had seen many managers, both good and bad, come and go.
They typically lasted just a couple of years.
We had been gifted a general manager who was sent to our store as his last chance to salvage his career, and when he failed, we were without a general manager for a couple of months.
The assistant managers ran the restaurant, and things were ok. But no one was getting promoted within the company.
Then the district manager went with an outside hire that was coming in from the other side of the country. This guy was a complete idiot. We’ll call him Johnny. He had zero experience as a general manager and wasn’t even applying for the position, but the district manager talked him into taking the job.
Big mistake.
Under Johnny’s tutelage, our Emerald Wednesday started to slowly fail, mostly due to his mismanagement.
He was belligerent to the staff, making a couple of the girls cry by belittling them in front of everyone else. He was so lazy that he’d hide in the office on busy weekends while we struggled without a manager. He refused to do even the basics of his job, like the nightly pull-thaw.
For those who don’t know, many things are kept frozen in the walk-in freezer and are pulled forward to the cooler at night so that they thaw before morning. This was rarely done on Johnny’s evening shifts. We would routinely have to force-thaw steaks, shrimp, and chicken under running cold water, which is not something that we’re supposed to even do.
I saw on a few occasions that Johnny was cross-contaminating foods under the running water, a pan of frozen shrimp sitting on top of or even in a pan of frozen steaks.
At one point, (I didn’t see this one), Johnny ran some frozen steaks under hot water to thaw them quickly because they needed to be cooked RIGHT THEN. This was a HUGE problem and had I seen it, I’d have wanted to punch the fool in his face.
We sometimes ran checks of multiple hours and had frequent guest complaints. One guest even threw his silverware at the host. Johnny was called up front and actually took the guest’s side, leaving the host in tears.
I believe he even compted the guy’s meal.
Johnny was a real class act. I made it my mission to do something about him. At the very least, he was going to get someone very ill from his shenanigans.
So, I sat down with the district manager (who had brought Johnny in) and spoke with him at length and in great detail about how bad Johnny was, how terrible the morale was, how he could get people ill, all of it.
He asked me point blank what I thought of Johnny, and I told him, “Johnny is an idiot.”
Nothing came of it.
Christmas was coming, and I knew I was quitting in a couple of months. Johnny insisted on having a Christmas party at a bar a town away, but fraternizing between management and hourly employees was against company policy, so I didn’t go.
Johnny got quite intoxicated and drove himself home. I heard from co-workers that Johnny had been pulled over for a DUI.
Oops.
A week or so later, I wrote a lengthy email detailing everything Johnny has screwed up on, wrote about the Christmas party, and included screenshots of court records I was able to look up on the town’s website. I set up a burner email account and messaged everyone I could find in the Emerald Wednesday hierarchy.
When I went back to work a couple of days later, we had a shiny, new general manager, and no one knew what I had done. I am not proud of this, but he was making lives miserable, the restaurant was failing, and I was certain he was a public health risk.
Screw you, Johnny.”
11. I Deserve More Than Just Paid Leave
“In the late 90s of the last century, while I was still working at the international organization, things at the office deteriorated a bit. People were rotating in and out of the office, and my manager was one of them. The specimen that became my new manager was what my grandmother, with a knowing glance, would call “special.” Entitled and superior (according to himself). Let’s call him Frank.
We did, wholeheartedly, agree on one thing, though: the dislike we had for each other.
One of the tasks I had assumed was “Head of Protocol” for my boss, the High Commissioner (HC). This basically means that I had to ensure that he was treated according to his station, with all rights and privileges awarded to him as an international dignitary. Oh, and I had to look solemn.
Our office was working closely together with a number of NGOs on several issues: we would make policy, and they would implement it on the ground with projects, etc. One of the NGOs was organizing a conference, where we would connect policymakers with international (legal) experts. The objective being: international experts don’t bite, don’t try to invent the wheel, call them!
The Director of said NGO visited us often, and we got along like a house on fire.
Much to the annoyance of Frank, who thought I didn’t know my station. So when HC was asked whether I could assist with the organization, HC agreed immediately. I had built up somewhat of a reputation in that field, so it wasn’t considered strange. So far so good.
I helped to arrange the hotel, drivers, interpreters, liaised with various ministries and experts. The NGO got used to calling me all hours, weekdays and weekends, to check or discuss things.
I didn’t mind, I worked my proverbial butt off. We had rented conferences rooms in a five-star hotel in Vienna, the police would supply security, the airport would receive the guests and all people would be staying in the same hotel. The only thing was, due to agenda restraints of various participants, the conference would start on Friday and end on Monday. Everybody assumed, me included, that I would be there.
There was one detail I had forgotten: to ask Frank’s permission. I needed to have a form signed to authorize my travel, otherwise, I wouldn’t get paid for working, much less travel there.
On a Monday morning, I walked into Frank’s office and dropped the blank authorization form on his desk, with as neutral a look as possible, trying to pass it off as an annoying detail:
“Sir, concerning the Conference. Could you sign the document for approval? I know it’s a bother, but you know. Please?” He picked it up, looked at it, and -holding it- checked something on his computer.
“This Conference isn’t organized by us, but by the NGO?”
“Correct, the boss is a guest.”
“So the rooms and travel are paid for by the NGO?”
“Correct.”
“So you’ll be a guest! You may go. I’ll grant you the Friday and Monday as paid leave. And nothing else.” He filled in the authorization form, signed it, gave it to me, and gave this little wave that you use towards servants “That will be all.”
You… have… to… be… freaking… kidding… me.
I stood up, kept my jaws as clenched as my fists, and walked out.
Fuming. Getting back to my office, I was met with one of the policy advisors who wanted to discuss the details of one of the meetings. I think I radiated an air of dejection because he asked me what was wrong. I told him. “You can’t accept that!” I shrugged, “There’s nothing much I can do, he is my manager.” As he stood up, he said “Well, we’ll see about that.” I went about my day and managed to push it to the back of my mind.
A few days later, I was called into the HC’s Office. Sitting behind his desk with papers piled up in great stacks (he never learned “computer”). He was talking with the Director of the NGO who was sitting opposite of him. They seemed very relaxed.
HC looked at me and smiled. “Ah, have a seat. I gather you will be working with us in your spare time?” I nodded “Yeah, Frank didn’t give me authorization.”
“Well, correct, and I will not change one iota, as he is your manager. I have to respect his decisions regarding his own staff. Otherwise, I’ll undermine his authority, and I can’t have that. I am sorry, but my hands are tied. The authorization stays unchanged. It is a bit of a conundrum really, as I gather you are working day and night on this.” I nodded again and wondered why they called me in to state the bleeding obvious.
In the silence that followed, the Director let out a chuckle, and the HC started smiling. He grabbed a form of his desk and looked at it.
What followed next was the most astonishing monologue I have ever heard, not because of eloquence, but because of implications.
“We had ordered you a plane ticket, but we have just decided that we need you to bring some supplies.
So you will be going in your own car and will be reimbursed a first-class train ticket with sleeping quarters. As the supplies you will have to bring take up some space, we have decided that your room will be upgraded to a suite. Can’t have you tripping over everything, now can we? Oh, and I understand it is quite heavy, probably too much for you to carry alone.
Would your partner be available that weekend, to assist you in carrying the supplies? We will reimburse her travel and stay, on the same conditions, of course. Furthermore, you will get a ‘per diem’ for four days, and as you will be working during the weekend and two days of your leave, your salary will, of course, be increased. Leave days and Saturday 150% and Sunday 200%.
Now, where do I sign? Oh, and tell your partner that I will be looking forward to hosting her at my table for the first evening .”
The director now burst out laughing. After a couple of seconds, he composed himself and added, “Oh, and as you are consulting for us as well in those days, we will pay you a consultancy fee as well, of course.
Not a large one, but an administrative fee should do.”
Listening to this, I had to process what that meant: I would be reimbursed more than an entire month’s salary for four days of work. “But won’t Frank protest? I mean, I don’t want to get in trouble over this.”
HC looked at me and tried to look as innocent as possible. “As far as I am aware, I have completely respected his authorization form, so I am not undermining his authority in any way.
I have just added a new one to it.” He continued with a smile that I can only describe as slightly evil: “What we discussed here falls under confidential information. You are not aware of this conversation, and I have forgotten I have signed this document.” I nodded: in the environment I worked in, you quickly learn to have no active memory of a lot of things.
I stood up, walked to the door, and suddenly something hit me: “What supplies do I have to transport?”
The director randomly picked up a slender folder, marked “Conference” with -at most- 10 pages, reached out and gave it to me “Thought you’d never ask: this. Don’t drop it. I understand it’s heavy.”
My girl and I had a lovely time, and as she was from Vienna, she was positively radiating: inviting her friends for coffee or drinks at a five-star hotel suite.
Oh, and Frank? He never found out, and up to this day, he thinks he taught me a lesson.”
10. Suing The "Un-sue-able"
“So after a year-long battle, this finally came to a close.
Maybe not my revenge, but revenge on my behalf.
A little backstory, I bought a house about 5 years ago and in 3 years, flooded 3 times. It never flooded in the 40 years before. Thanks, climate change! Finally, after the 3rd flood, my wife and I were financially able to move out and sell the house for a loss. We search around and find our dream house.
Or so we thought.
After living in the new house for about 6 months we noticed something very peculiar.
Whenever it would rain hard, the bathtub would backfill with sewage and the toilets wouldn’t flush. So we called a plumber. The plumbers were awesome and told us that our sewer lines had broken between the house and the city sewer line and while we could try and spot fix, we would probably need to replace the entire line.
Ouch. Having just dumped a bunch of cash on a new house and taking a loss on the old house, we said to try and keep it as cheap as possible.
They dug up where the line was broken. Broken is an understatement. The line had all but dissolved. We were going to have to replace the whole line. About $5k. Not the best time but okay, let’s do it.
Once they exposed the line the best they could, I got a call from the plumbers. The line has broken up so badly, they cannot find where the residential line ties into the city line or “tap”.
Now the home-owner is responsible for the residential line, but the city is responsible for the tap and the mainline. I ask the plumber what is needed. He says we need to get the city plans and dig to uncover the tap. More digging = more cash. At this point, it’s been 2 weeks and I just want to poop in my own house and take a shower.
Okay, dig the hole. They dig a 4’x4’x10′ hole and find nothing. We double-check the city plans and they are right on where the plans say the tap is.
Now we have to deal with the city. We call 311 as directed and after sitting on hold for 3 hrs, a city official sends us the same plans with the location where we dug.
We call back and say we already dug there and there is no tap.
Getting nowhere with the city, my wife finally goes down to city hall and after spending a vacation day, hanging around waiting for someone, she finally gets in to meet with an official, let’s call him Richard. Richard prints off the same plans we have already been given and says we need to dig where it’s marked.
My wife takes out her phone and says, ‘look, it’s not there.’
At this point he mutters to himself and takes out a pen and draws on the plans, marking the “actual” location. It shows the residential line doglegging from the original drawings and is about 10′ west of the initial location. It was apparent that he doesn’t want to waste his valuable cushy government job time on my wife. It was pretty obvious he just made something up to get her out of his office.
Plumbers come out, dig a 2nd 4’x4’x10′ hole, and surprise surprise, the tap isn’t there either! Fun. Back to city hall and another vacation day wasted waiting for Richard.
At this point, we don’t want another hand-drawn map, someone from the city needs to come out and mark where this darn tap is.
They come out and I burn a vacation day to wait around for them.
To their credit, they got down in the sewer, did some digging around, and mark a new spot between the 2 big holes. Finally! A real location! Plumbers come out and dig the 3rd hole. And if you think they actually found the tap, then you would be mistaken. At this point, the entire backyard is destroyed. Piles of dirt everywhere, the lawn is dead, the trees are dead, it’s ruined. Our beautiful new house’s backyard is literally trash.
Back down to Richard’s office, another vacation day burned, and we are livid. We remain calm but insist that we must have not been tied into the city’s mainline. There was no tap! Now you might be thinking, how did we not know? 6 months of sewage just piled up in your backyard? In the backyard, there is a large dirt mound that had been turned into a nicely landscaped “forest”.
There were lots of room to absorb the sewage that only 2 people would produce. But if it rained hard, the dirt was saturated and would backfill the bathtub and the toilets wouldn’t flush. Richard doesn’t accept responsibility but does send out the contractor who did all the work for taps in my area.
The contractor comes out and I get the full story.
2 years prior, while the previous owner was doing improvements and not living in the house, the mainline of the sewer was replaced. Basically, they slide the new tubing into the old tubing underground and then go in and install new taps for each house. Since no one was living in the house, they couldn’t get into the backyard and told the city they did not service our house.
I am FURIOUS. It’s been 3 months, >$20k, and all the wasted time and vacation just because Richard was too lazy to do his job and make one call to the contractor to sort it out.
Now, remember how my first house flooded 3 times? I learned my lesson dealing with people and once we knew we had to talk to the city, we recorded everything.
Every phone call, every email, I videoed the contractor and his explanation, everything and all obtained legally (in my state you have to have both people’s consent to be recorded).
He installs a tap and I take the first shower at my house in 3 months. I am ready to act.
I go down once again to Richard’s office. I show him everything and want to file a claim.
I agree to cover the cost of the residential line as that is my responsibility, however, I want the city to reimburse the cost to dig the unnecessary holes.
I think I have a good case! Pursuant to our city, we had to file a claim before starting any work and provide 3 estimates in writing to file a claim. Since none of that was done and could not be done after the fact, Richard denied the claim right there.
Left without words, I walk away completely defeated. I perk up on the way home after calling my wife and being reminded that I have some lawyer friends.
Surely one of them could help or knows someone who can. Unbeknownst to me, my state has something called “sovereign immunity”. Basically, you can try and sue the city or state but it will be thrown out immediately, and Richard knows this.
No credible lawyer will help me pursue this case because they know I would just be wasting my time. I am pretty much SOL.
After months of calling around to try and find anyone to help I have resigned myself to defeat. Almost a year goes by.
The loans I took out are about to start coming due and I have no idea how I am going to pay for them.
All communication with Richard and his office is blocked. I have also tried his boss and crickets. I tried going back down there, but Richard refused to meet with me.
I finally reach out to my council member in a last-ditch effort. I include a synopsis along with all the evidence I have. I don’t expect much. One hour after hitting send, my phone rings.
It is my council member and she is LIVID about how we were treated. She has a meeting scheduled with the head of public works for later that week. She doesn’t promise anything but says she is going to fight for me until they kick her out of the building.
After the meeting, she calls me on her way back to the office. The head of public works has accepted full responsibility.
She wants receipts for everything. The plumber, pay stubs showing the vacation we took, phone logs from the time we spent on hold, the quote from the landscaper to fix the backyard, all of it. She has them all in her inbox by the time she makes it back to her office.
That was about 3 weeks ago. Yesterday I met with my council member at her office.
Me – “Thank you so much. My wife and I cannot repay you for all you have done!”
Her – “It was my pleasure!”
We chit chat for a bit
Her – “Here is a check for what you are owed!”
Me – “This is so great! We can pay off the loan and finally get someone to fix our y…. Wait, this is much more than we need.”
Her – “You forgot to include emotional distress. I added it in for you.” She winks. “Oh, and if you ever have any issues, you won’t have to worry about dealing with Richard, he no longer works there. Just come to me, I have become good friends with the head of public works.”
Me – “Oh my god, you are literally the best person I know, if there is anything I can do..”
Her – “Elections are in the fall, maybe you could turn out and vote?”
So I went home, paid off everything and the landscapers are coming out next week.
Oh, and I am volunteering on her re-election campaign! Since Richard didn’t go for that, I got him fired and almost 30k for the extra work, my wife and my’s time and effort, plus emotional distress.”
9. Anger The Crew? We'll Leave You 250 Miles Behind
“Some years ago, I got a gig working a weekend music festival. Fairly simple too: ten bands per day and all pretty standard rock ‘n’ roll fare.
Bossman puts four of us out on the gig: me, Dreadful Boris, Big Chris, and Hammer.
He also said we’d be taking out an apprentice, a young lad who was the son of a local promoter. Well, always nice to have an extra pair of hands, and it’s good to help train the next generation-after all, that’s how we learned in the past.
As it turned out this lad was about as much use as an aqualung to a trout and had an entitled attitude the size of a mid-ranged African country.
On the journey down in the truck, he was boasting as to how he was “a really good sound engineer” already and that “he could probably show us a few tricks.”
Oh, really?
We get to the venue and get busy unloading the truck: we’ve got a 16-tonner stuffed to the gills with two sounds desks and about 16KW of sound gear for front-of-house and about 6KW of monitors.
As you might imagine, this is pretty heavy stuff and it takes all of us to safely unload it and get it stacked up in place-except that, after unloading the first amp rack (all on wheels but still around 80 kilos), the Entitled Brat snottily announces that “I’m a sound engineer, not a humper…”, and promptly strolls off.
Err….okaaayy…
Well, we don’t really need him gumming up the works-we’re all well used to slinging boxes around, so about an hour later we’ve got the rig stacked up and strapped down, run out the multicore to the FOH desk, and are ready to start cabling up and tying power into the on-site generator.
Out of nowhere, the Spotty Oik emerges from whatever hole he had buried himself in and asks what he can do. I say, “I’m going to plug up front-of-house, perhaps you could help Hammer cable up the speakers.”
“I don’t take orders from girlies!”
(Quick side note here: Hammer was 5′ 9″, drop-dead gorgeous, and as hard as nails-hence her nickname. She was also a darn fine FOH engineer and a b****y good mate.)
Boris, Chris, and I collectively groaned inwardly and winced in anticipation of a full 16″ broadside from Hammer (seriously, folks-you do NOT mess with her unless you want the family jewels dangling from the nearest tree!)
Instead, she smiles sweetly (NEVER a good sign) and says, “well I’m sure you’ll learn something useful.” I then go off to play with cables FOH, while Boris and Chris busy themselves with the monitors.
A while later I’m back on stage: Spotty Oik has wandered off again. Hammer has this resigned look on her face: “what happened?” I ask.
Turns out that, despite cables and connector ports being well labeled, The Oik had managed to make a complete pig’s ear of plugging up the amp racks. Trust me, it’s very hard to make this kind of mistake.
I found The Oik some moments later and told him that it was not the proper way of doing things and that if he wasn’t sure what to do then he should always ask one of us beforehand.
What then came out of his mouth absolutely floored me: “I don’t need to know all that stuff. I’m a sound engineer!”
Hammer, who was standing a few feet away, snorted derisively and rolled her eyes heavenwards. It took me a few seconds to process this particular nugget of stupid: “Well, you HAVE to know how all this works; it’s part and parcel of the job and as you’re here to learn, I suggest you pay attention.”
“Well, you’re just a bunch of roadies; what do you know?”
Upon delivering this charming bon mot, he ambles off (again) leaving me to retrieve my jaw from off the deck and Hammer barely able to restrain a fit of laughter that would have incapacitated a rhino.
At a guess, this idiot thought he was going to be white-gloving front-of-house for the whole gig.
An hour or so later, we’re all set up, and we now have a fair idea of the acts that are going to be performing.
In situations like this, you rarely get the opportunity of a full-blown soundcheck so you have to rely on experience to set the desk up from cold.
Luckily we got the first act onstage a half hour before the kick-off so I could quickly get a rough sense of the overall set-up.
A bit of exposition: it’s convenient to reuse channels across acts, so I generally keep the first twenty or so channels for drums, bass, and guitars, and the last half dozen or so channels for vocals.
If a band comes in with anything else-percussion, brass, Tibetan nose flutes, etc., we whack them on channels in the middle.
Keeps things nice, simple, and consistent across the board, and becomes important in a moment.
The working procedure in-show is also simple: Dreadful Boris and Big Chris run the monitor desk, and Hammer and I run front-of-house. We’ll do two acts each before handing over to the other (saves wear and tear on the ears) and when we’re not running the desk, we’ll handle setting up the stage for each act and troubleshooting where necessary, as well as doing runs for food and coffee in between.
We also tasked the Spotty Oik with helping with the stage setups, which rapidly proved problematic. We finished the first act and aimed to do the turnover within fifteen minutes. Generally, the incoming act will tell us their mic requirements and we’ll write up a mic plot which then gets sent up to the front-of-house desk. Up comes Spotty Oik with the mic plot and he goes back to help with the stage setup.
As I’m checking each mic, I notice that I cannot hear the vocal channels. No sooner had I spotted this than Dreadful Boris comes on the intercom and asks me if I can hear the vocal channels (he can’t hear them either). He then goes off to check the stage box where all the mics are plugged into. From all the way out front, I hear him shout, “Screw me!”
Seconds later he’s back on the cans: “Do you know what that idiot has done? Only repatched ALL the vocal channels so that all the plugs on the stage box are ‘lined up neatly one after the other!’-his words!!”
Ye Gods!
Boris rapidly repatches the mics and we’re good to go again. A few hours later and I’m starting my second shift out front (I won’t bore you with my experiences of riding herd on Spotty Oik on the stage shift which-shall we say- was interesting.)
Currently on stage is a rather nice jazz septet (I love doing jazz-give me a nice 20-piece big band and I’m a happy bunny). Up strolls He Who Shall Not Be Mentioned and asks, “When can I have a go at mixing. I’m really good, you know.” Seeing as he’s here to learn I tell him he can take the next act under my supervision.
This happened to be an acoustic duo-two guitars and two vocals.
Even the most tyro engineer should be able to handle something so simple, right?
Wrong!!
I’ve already set what I regarded as a sensible baseline on the faders for him to work with. The first thing he does, he reaches for the master faders and cranks in another 15dB-NOOOOO!!! Immediately the rig teeters on the edge of feedback and I rapidly pull the mains back.
“Look and listen: balance out the two vocals, then the guitars, leave the mains alone!”
He then starts making wildly inappropriate changes to the channels’ EQ-again the rig starts to squeak.
Ok, enough! I shove him out of the way and bring it back under control.
I won’t fatigue you further with the endless catalog of foul-ups and attitude that he managed to affect over the rest of the weekend, suffice it to say that despite the best efforts of myself and Hammer to try and teach this guy, they all went to naught.
Couple this with the constant drip-drip-drip of snide commentary about how he was “really a better engineer” than the rest of us, and by the end of the weekend, we’re all pretty mad.
Come to the end of the event and it’s now the fun part of striking the rig and loading out (I’m being sarcastic about the fun part, by the way). Two solid days and we’re all knackered and the last thing we want to be doing is the get-out but, of course, it has to be done.
It’s always an all-hands-on-deck situation… except the Spotty Oik has, once again, vanished into the woodwork.
Two back-breaking hours later and we’re all done, and the truck loaded to go home. So where is the Spotty Oik? Nowhere!
We give it a good fifteen minutes-but no joy. We then decide to go look for him, so we spent another twenty minutes trolling around the site trying to find him.
Again, he’s done a disappearing act. We get back to the truck-it’s now close to 3 am-and almost simultaneously we say, “Screw him!” We climb back aboard and drive the 250 miles back to the warehouse to unload.
Next afternoon, Bossman calls me to find out why we’d left the Spotty Oik behind. I gave him the Cliff Notes and was then told that The Oik had had to call his dad at three in the morning to come and get him-a 500-mile round trip.
He then said, “I never liked that promoter anyway. He was always late paying the bill on previous gigs. Next time he calls wanting a rig and crew, I think I’ll tell him to screw off!”
8. Won't Contribute To The Coffee Fund? No More Coffee
Don’t take advantage of the nice things people do.
“I work as a mechanic at a manufacturing plant in Nowhere, America, and I have been for over a decade now. Before I got assigned to my current location, the only way to get coffee here was to either bring some from home or pay a dollar at a vending machine to get the bad cheap stuff.
I decided to go with the first option but took it even further by bringing my spare coffee maker from home and then bringing in the usual supplies periodically. I kept it in the mechanic’s office in plain view.
For the longest time, it was very apparent that I was the only one using my coffee maker even though I never said it was exclusively for me.
This went on for about a year until I got a partner on my shift who also drank coffee. We came up with the idea of starting a coffee fund by leaving a jar for spare change next to the coffee maker. Whenever we ran out of something like sugar or whatever, one of the two of us would use the accumulated change in the jar to help replenish our supplies.
This was all well and good, until my partner got promoted to maintenance supervisor some years later, making him my new boss, and I was by myself again. I left the jar sitting next to the coffee maker as usual and kept using the old routine.
I also put a note on the side of the maker, in plain view, that said, “If you use the coffee maker, please put some spare change in the coffee fund jar so we can keep the supplies in stock.” This was just in case someone from a different shift decided to use it when I wasn’t there.
However, one day I noticed that I was running out of sugar way too fast. I don’t put much sugar in my coffee to begin with, so this told me that someone else was using the coffee maker. Eventually, I noticed that all the supplies were getting too low too fast and not just the sugar. This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, except I also noticed that the jar wouldn’t accumulate like it used to.
It either had the change I put into it, or someone would be taking change out but not restocking our coffee supplies.
I put up with this for a little while, but I eventually got fed up with being the only one buying supplies for the coffee while one or more others were using it and taking change out of the jar.
I took the coffee maker home and just started filling up my thermos with coffee and bringing it to work with me.
About a week later, I get stopped in the aisle by a supervisor named Saul (not mine) as I’m trying to leave for the day. The following exchange occurs:
Saul: Hey, Sethborf, what happened to the coffee maker? Did it break?
Me: Ah. I was wondering who else was using it. Nah it didn’t break. I just got tired of people taking change out of the coffee fund jar without using said change to buy more supplies.
I was still buying them out of pocket.
Saul: You took it home?!
Me: Yeah. I’ve just been using my thermos to bring cof-
(He cut me off)
Saul: You can’t just take company property like that! You weren’t the only person using it, we all used it!
Me: But it’s mi-
(He cut me off again)
Saul: You either bring that back or I’m reporting this to (my boss) and we’ll see what he’s going to do about it.
Me: I’ll bring it in if people will actually contribute to the fund instead of me having to buy everything out of pocket.
Saul: You’ll do your job!
Me: My job is to fix these machines, not be the company barista.
Saul: It better be in there tomorrow or I’m going to (my boss) about it!
(He walks off before I could say anything else)
The next day comes and I, of course, didn’t bring MY coffee maker back to the plant.
At the end of my shift, Saul confronts me again:
Saul: Sethborf, did you bring the coffee maker back?
Me: Nah. I told you, I’m not going to be the only one supplying it.
Saul: You can’t just keep company property at home! That coffee maker has been in there for years and you need to bring it back!
Me: I know it’s been in there for years. It’s been in there for as long as I’ve been here because I. BROUGHT. IT. FROM. HOME. That’s my coffee maker.
Saul: I’m calling (my boss) right now and we’ll see what happens to you.
Me: (laughing) Go ahead. I don’t care. You can’t tell me what to do with my personal property.
I then walk out to my car and leave. While on the way home, my boss Bob calls me. If you recall from earlier in this story, he used to be my partner.
Even after his promotion, we remained close friends. The following conversation happens:
Me: (picking up the phone) Hey, Bob, what’s up?
Bob: I just got off the phone with Saul. What’s all this about you taking company property home?
That’s not like you, man. What’s he even talking about?
Me: He didn’t tell you what it was?
Bob: Nope. He just said you admitted to stealing company property and refused to return it.
Me: Did you even ask what the supposed “company property” is?
Bob: I did, but he wouldn’t calm down enough to tell me. Looked like you really angered him.
Me: Yeah I know. Hey, you remember that coffee maker I had in the office way back when?
Bob: Haha yeah the coffee fund, right? Did anyone else besides us start using that thing? Man, did I ever tell you that I still haven’t had a cup of coffee as good as how you made it back then? Why are you bringing this up, anyway?
Wait, don’t tell me that the company property Saul is referring to is…
Me: Yeah. He’s talking about my coffee maker.
Bob: Look, Sethborf, I know that’s your personal property. But I really don’t want Saul raising a stink about this to management. Nothing will come of it if he does, but it will just be a big waste of time for them to investigate and eventually write up some stupid company-wide email about property theft and blah blah blah.
Just bring it back.
Me: I’m not going to be the only one supplying the coffee.
Bob: How about this. Bring it back in, but keep a spare set of coffee supplies in your personal locker. Bring in some supplies for everyone to use at first. Even use the coffee fund jar again. But after that initial stock, just only resupply for yourself. That way, if Saul or anyone else wants to use it, they are going to HAVE to bring in their own supplies when that initial stock runs dry.
Is that okay with you?
Me: I think I’ll do that.
And that’s what I did.
The next day, I did as Bob asked, but I also kept additional supplies for myself in my personal locker. I didn’t tell anyone else about this except for Bob. Saul confronted me yet again that same day:
Saul: I see you brought the coffee maker back.
Me: Yeah. Bob asked me to.
Saul: You’re lucky he didn’t report you to Human Resources for it.
Me: Report me to Human Resources. For a coffee maker. Yeah ok.
Saul: Whatever. Now we can all have our coffee again no thanks to you.
Me: No thanks to me, yet it’s my coffee maker.
Saul: Don’t get that tone with me.
I’ll call Bob and he’ll straighten you out again.
As planned, I let the initial coffee supply stock run dry without ever replenishing it. I also didn’t contribute anything to the coffee fund jar.
This took about a week, and there was never any change in the jar.
Saul confronts me yet again:
Saul: Hey, Sethborf, we are completely out of creamer and sugar.
And the coffee tin itself is running low.
Me: Yeah ok.
Saul: Don’t you think you should get on that?
Me: I’m not the company barista, Saul.
Saul: Okay but we don’t have any creamer nor sugar.
Me: Then buy some.
Saul: I thought YOU did that?
Me: Oh me? No, I had surgery that prevents me from pooping out creamer. Bring your own.
Saul: Sethborf, you need to do your job.
Me: I do my job. What do you do?
Saul: Seth-
Me: NO. Saul, what do you do? Don’t say your job, because your job isn’t to pester someone to buy coffee supplies out of their own pocket, is it?
Saul: I uhh. That’s not very nice.
Me: You’re right. It’s not very nice at all.
It’s also not nice to complain to Bob because I won’t bring my own personal property to work, now is it?
Saul: But we need coffee –
Me: Then bring your own. This isn’t my job. If you want creamer then you need to bring it in yourself. I’m not supplying the coffee anymore.
Saul: Sethborf, I’ll call Bob agai –
Me: Call him then.
He’ll tell you the same thing I just told you and you’ll have wasted your time. Just like how you’re wasting my time now. I’m going home. Have a good one.
(I start waking out)
Saul: WAIT COME BACK
When I go in for my next shift, all the supplies are fully stocked.
And they remain that way for good. Someone else has taken the responsibility of resupplying the coffee.
I even notice change in the jar regularly building up.
I haven’t contributed a single penny, but it’s still filling up. Someone else has taken over handling the coffee supplies. I haven’t asked who, but I think either Saul is doing it himself or he’s got someone else doing it.
It’s free coffee for me, so I don’t care either way.”
Another User Comments:
“This sounds very similar to my situation where I bring in biscuits, peanuts, and fruit for the office to have.
For a time, the jar would fill up and I could buy replacements each week… However, I noticed the amount being given dropped off, but the consumption of food did not.
I put up with it for a while but eventually stopped, leaving the jars and bowl empty.
Soon, it became apparent who these people were when I started getting comments like, “Didn’t your shopping come last night (ha ha)” whilst looking at the jars. I replied with “Dang, didn’t you get paid last month, you know, to contribute to the fund?” “What, we have to pay for this?”
I was spending $60 a month on this stuff… There is a note to say, “Please, pay whatever you think it’s worth,” so no set prices as such, but clearly these people thought that nothing was it’s worth… until it was gone.
That said, just yesterday someone actually went and bought all of the items to replenish the jars and bowl, which was good, whilst commenting to say it wasn’t cheap!
The pot was also starting to fill… Let’s hope it stays like that.” CarryOnComputing
7. Want To Know How To Get Into Harvard? Here's A Long Lecture
“This happened in Latin America, where schools don’t give useful tools to pick a career, and most students just pick a major they have some affinity with and hope for the best.
The most expensive colleges cost around $3000-$8000 a semester, so the US costs and the concept of student loans don’t exist here.
I’m a psychologist and freelance as a vocational guide for students about to go to college. As far as I know, I am the only person in the whole city that provides this service. Some schools offer seminars to get into college but nobody helps to know where and what to study, and, if I may be so bold, I’m good at it.
I’m concise and thorough. I interview parents, analyze all the student’s grades since grades school, calculate the family’s college budget, apply 3 different personality and aptitude tests, explore life plans beyond college, ambitions outside of work, possible workplaces in the country and outside of it, salary ranges, best colleges depending on the major, scholarships, you name it.
It’s a personalized job, it takes 6 sessions and the other 6 hours of research and test grading.
I charge dirt cheap for it (about $100) and still most people think it’s too expensive, so just middle-upper class families hire me and recommend me by word of mouth. That’s why I do such detailed work.
This last part will become important.
The client is a 17-year-old girl in her last year of high school. Let’s call her Mary. We’re in January, Mary graduates in May-June.
She has good grades, and one plan: Go to Harvard, study medicine.
The parents were on board, and I smelled danger, so in the first session, I asked if anyone had done any research about admissions to Harvard.
No. I then asked about plan B, another college option. None. Harvard. I asked why Harvard. Because of its reputation…sigh. Fine.
My method works this way: First, discover what the family expects from and can offer to Mary, then discover what Mary wants, is, and has, trigger a small existential crisis so she may discover her priorities and calling, and THEN pick a couple of possible majors that work with what she wants to do, to afterward pick the best and most affordable colleges.
As I interview the parents and work with Mary through the sessions, I see that she has an aptitude for medicine, a lot of artistic and physical skills and is indeed smart and capable, and the family could afford any private college in the country, and she could graduate with not many economic troubles. After 4 sessions she has already found her calling, picked possible majors… now it’s time to pick a college.
And she still only knows– Harvard. I try to dive deep into that, but there is no depth. She just knows Harvard is the greatest college in the world, so she wants to go there.
If a client asks me to investigate a college, I’ll do it. Be it national or international.
She is the first to ask for Harvard, so I did some quick research that tells me it’s practically impossible, and that it will take me extra hours from what it usually takes me so I ask again:
Are you SURE your first choice is Harvard? Even though millions of people apply every year, the sheer cost of travel, food, housing, etc. is very steep, and you have less than 4 months to apply? Because if it’s true, I’ll research it, but you will sit and hear all of it.
Yes, she is sure. Oh, but maybe the University of Cambridge as a second option.
…fine.
Cue Malicious Compliance.
I did all the math. Housing, food, travel, textbooks, all. I also researched the whole 8 step process to get into Harvard as a foreigner.
Spoiler alert, it’s a pain in the butt. The date for the first 3 steps already had passed and she didn’t have what it took to satisfy the other requisites.
I researched scholarships, price of organs (this will come handy later), and everything about the 2 colleges.
On top of that, I also do my dues and research the national options for medicine and her other choices.
It took me an extra 3 hours to do so, but I’m a professional, and quality gets me the next job.
The day of the session arrives, and I present to her all the national colleges. Pros, cons, prices, location, mission, vision, student profile, prizes, and certifications, etc.
She seems convinced in applying to a handful of them. Now we get to Harvard and Cambridge.
First, I drop the price of medicine at Harvard.
Her giddiness disappears as she counts the zeroes, and just… gives up. Oh no, young lady. You wanted to know about Harvard, YOU ARE GONNA LEARN ABOUT HARVARD.
I drop number after number. How much it would cost with the best possible scholarship.
Let’s add the cheapest rent. The cheapest food. Let’s ignore textbooks. All in all, still can’t afford a year. Let’s multiply that for 4 years.
Let’s see how much it would cost if you take out some loans. In short, everyone in her family had to sell a kidney or two for the whole process, even in the best-case scenario.
She dismisses Harvard and doesn’t wanna know about Cambridge anymore.
Oh no. We’re not done.
Now I explain, step by step, all that she has to do to get into Harvard in the first place. The tests. The essays. The SATs. The extracurricular activities and achievements. The test in our country already passed. She would have to fly to the USA in a week to take the test she hasn’t prepared for. And its cost is added to the kidney budget.
AND THEN I ADD THE STATISTICS.
I show her Harvard’s official application statistics. How many apply to medicine, how many pass the test, how many get in, how many graduate.
And then… Cambridge.
After about an hour of me explaining and dropping paper after paper, I conclude with this: If you want to get into Harvard you have to start getting extracurricular credits since 5 years ago, work 2 jobs since 3 years ago, and have perfect scores in school since 2 years ago.
Harvard is like the Olympics. You don’t wake up one day and decide you wanna go; you work your whole life to maybe have the chance to be there.
I even gave her the option of taking Harvard as a foreign exchange program from some of the other colleges, or taking a mastery degree there, to not act like it’s just impossible.
In the end, she did the sensible thing and picked a viable option, (and good for her).
Just learn that if you are gonna make me waste my time in a near-impossible option, I’m gonna make you sit and listen through all of it even if you give up at the first step.”
6. Okay, Since You Don't Like The Professional PowerPoint I Made For You...
Have it your way, princess.
“I was at my old job for 2.5 years. In the beginning, I really loved it since I got along really, really well with my boss (Sarah) and my coworkers, and I also adored the students I worked with. Sarah’s the coordinator (#1 boss), and when our old supervisor (#2 boss) quit, they hired in our new supervisor, Lydia.
Lydia seemed okay at first, just kind of a regular new supervisor, learning the ropes, getting to know the other staff…..
When she started, she didn’t even know how to copy and paste on a computer. A good portion (in fact, I’d say probably like 85%) of her supervisor position is to create and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoints for the students to use. This includes handouts we use in group lessons, too. Lydia relied on me a LOT when she first started and still does/did.
As time went on, Lydia started getting worse. My coworker–another staff member like me–started hating her. I thought it was because Lydia could be SO annoying, and it was that at first. She would constantly undermine me/us in front of students and went out of her way to prove something we said wrong… pretty harmless, but then she started saying racial microaggressions to our students and staff, which were not as harmless.
SO……we moved remotely earlier this year, and it was pretty nice to not have to see her constantly. The only thing we (me and our only other staff member) had assigned to us was busywork, but it was editing the handouts that we have all edited to death. She wanted these put into Sway. For those unfamiliar, Sway is like an awful, defunct PowerPoint creator where you have a lot fewer options and no usability.
At this point, here’s the process for these handouts:
1. Assigned to various staff members to create
2. Rough draft
3. Go to Sarah and Lydia and get feedback
4. Edit.
5. Make a Sway, at which point 2-4 get repeated……numerously.
This cycle continues at least 3-6 times before they decide the handout is okay.
Lydia and I have a small disagreement over Sway, wherein I ask her why exactly we’re using this program (it’s easier than PowerPoint ????
was her reason, but okay) and that I wasn’t sure how students could access it since I was having trouble getting her to access it. She then informs me that this won’t be used by students. No, no, no, what?? What was I thinking?? They’re for her to use in her videos, which were a substitution for our group lessons we used the handouts with.
So…..I put in all this work for her to use in these videos that maybe 3 students will ever see, maybe.
Eventually, I get this Sway done. I, again, do it to the best of my abilities.
The next assignment I get a week or so later is to………take a different handout from the one previously and make another Sway, or PowerPoint if I wanted. I actually put in a bit of effort because there’s nothing else really to do, and I end up making a pretty nice PowerPoint!
Lydia links up with me to discuss the PowerPoint. She’s been trying to change the theme, but it won’t change. I’m confused but tell her it’s probably because that’s an imported template, so I don’t think Google Slides knows really what to do since it didn’t start off blank; it started off with an uploaded template.
She continues to kinda click around and then says she doesn’t like it because of the color in the background that’s….the defining picture of this template, and I had spent a while making the whole PowerPoint a perfect ombre, so I’m pretty annoyed at this point.
She decides that, hmm……maybe we can just copy this PowerPoint into a new one and edit that one. I explain to her, again, why that won’t happen; I’ve already copied it over from my own drive. Copying it won’t do anything.
So then….she asks me to keep this PowerPoint, but maybe we could make a new one that we could edit?
This means that I would have to copy each slide, individually, and redo the entire PowerPoint. I’m truly at my limit at this point. I clarify this for her: “You want me to copy and paste every slide onto a new PowerPoint?” She says yeah, so we can edit that one but have this one just in case. Let me remind you that, at this point, this handout has gone through that entire editing process originally, then transcription into a DIFFERENT video/PowerPoint, and finally onto THIS PowerPoint that I guess she’s going to have on the video that she reads off of?
I truly don’t know.
Then she asks…… “When’s your last day again?” to which I tell her that it was the following week.
She LAUGHS and goes, “Oh, you’ll have enough time. What are you talking about!” So, I say…. “Sure. I can do that. Let me go ahead and make a whole new one for ya, Boss. Lemme go ahead, and I can comply to this one, Bub.”
So…….I made a new PowerPoint. I enlisted the help of an aforementioned coworker who absolutely hated Lydia, as well as my best friend, who are both very good at being petty, and we just went to work. I used the template Lydia had picked out, which was pretty ugly to begin with, and it has all the same information.
I copied the information, slide by slide, into the new one.
The thing is that this thing is unable to be edited. Text boxes on top of text boxes that have text, small headers in completely different hidden text boxes, try to click on a bullet point and it takes you to a text box nowhere near it… It’s truly a sight to behold. This thing is so wretched that even I have a hard time editing it.
It’s unusable unless you can excuse the poor alignment, text color differences, slightly different fonts.
My shift ended at 5 PM, and I handed that sucker in at ~4:45. I emailed her earlier that day to let her know I’d been having some editing issues, but I was working hard on it and just wanted to make sure it was up to my standards.
Then I submitted my timesheet and logged out of my email for the very last time, but to get the full understanding and full picture, let me give y’all the rest of the reasons why this was soooo delicious:
When I left, there were two staff: me and my coworker Lisa. Things had started to pick up, and she and I were consistently getting appointments, and because I’m not there, only Lisa can take these appointments and won’t have time for any other projects. So, this means Lydia will be forced to edit this or use my other perfectly good pp.
I’m chronically nice, especially in my job.
I stayed out of the drama and just kind of did my job and had fun where I could.
Malice from me is incredibly unexpected.
I don’t need a reference from her and never will.
Anyone that knows me and the level of work I put into projects could tell that this PowerPoint was obviously purposely constructed, but I told Lydia that I was having editing issues with it, Not technically untrue, again, because I was having issues editing it.
I’m a little bummed that I won’t be able to witness the fallout from this as I don’t have access to that email anymore and am also unwilling to blow up my spot just yet. I’ll update if I do get anything back!!”
Another User Comments:
“I like to think that she opened PowerPoint, thought, “Hmmm, this is too hard,” and then went and Googled “bad PowerPoint.”” Posiedon22
5. Betraying Teacher Gets A Taste Of Her Own Medicine
“Let’s start this story with a woman we’ll call Ms. Howard, who was an English teacher from preschool to elementary until college, so she was very widely known and is hard to kick out of the school board.
In my first years of high school, we were close to each other, and I looked up to her because she’s a very legendary person–she teaches English Literature very, very well. So, since I admire her so much, I still put a ton of work into my homework, even though I can normally pull a B+ without any effort.
Until this February.
You see, I have a history of abuse from my narcissistic nanny, and since I have trusted Ms. Howard so much, I have told her about it.
(She should be lucky because I only open up to those who I really trust, which are only a few people.) One day, I was having difficulty understanding a certain story because of how incomprehensible the whole thing was, so I asked her a few questions.
She just ignored all of them. Until I asked this one question:
“Miss, why is she abused like that?
She isn’t—”
Before I could even finish my question, she inhales and screams out this exact sentence, which will be forever etched into my brain:
“You were abused. How in the world do you not know the reason? Do you need more abuse to find out? Or you’re just clearly dumb?” She stops for a second, “Well, I now know the reason why she did that; you clearly deserve it.
”
I was feeling a lot of emotions after that: betrayal, anger, sadness, but also disbelief and a slight tinge of laughter. (How can she be so dumb?) After a few days, her treatment towards me swiftly changed.
I got a D on my submitted work, and she did not listen to me anymore. It really affected my self-esteem and academic skills, and my friend noticed that.
Lunchtime comes, and she asks me to come in a very dark spot of the school and tells me this:
“You know what? I’m being honest with you – you shouldn’t have laughed about it before.”
Before that situation, I always have laughed at my friend’s advice to not trust Ms. Howard, but now I just felt stupid about that. After that, my friend just comforted me and told me to be online on social media.
She called me after and told me her side of the story, that Ms. Howard trusted her with all her life. She admitted her desire to throw her favoritism-obsessed butt out of the campus and said now’s the time. So she told me a plan.
I was beyond shocked the whole entire time because I thought this girl was a very angelic, nerdy girl who happens to like Korean stuff, and this was the first time I had seen her curse and be downright brutally honest.
We met on a Saturday, brainstormed ideas and she told me that Ms. Howard is her mentor for a national competition, adding more possibilities (and even more brainstorming) to the plan. We bought a pocket Wi-Fi modem, so we could exchange texts while inside the school. (She doesn’t have a SIM card, so I can’t call her without an internet connection.)
Monday flew in and we secretly turned on our phones’ voice recorders in Ms. Howard’s class.
We were trying to record her unfair treatment, and she obviously did not disappoint us.
She screamed when I answered a question and turned into a different person when my friend answered. This continued for a whole month.
We then turned in our recordings to the management, and after a few scoldings for bringing phones to school, they told us that it’s okay and that they’ll look into that.
I thought that that’s it, it’s enough, but my friend decided to go a step further
After winning her competition, she was chosen to lead the teacher’s honor event thing, a part of our closing ceremony. She actually told the administration to be silent about it until the closing ceremony so that they can have more time to prepare the things needed to yeet her out, yadda yadda.
I actually can’t contact her at this time; she always says that she’s busy preparing videos for each teacher in high school. (Only knew what she’s been doing via her parents, which were actually very nice yet passive-aggressive.)
Closing ceremony came in, and everyone was there including the school president. It was a typical normal event, and then it’s time for my friend to make an entrance.
After announcing every teacher, she saved the best for last with Ms. Howard, which surprisingly was met with silence instead of clapping and cheering. With a very fake looking smile on her face, she says those typical words you’d say as a goodbye to your teacher, but instead of just ending it in a thank you, her face changes into the evilest smirk and ends her speech with these exact words:
“So, thank you so much, Ms. Howard for being here with us, guiding us in our journey, and helping us… know that you’ve been a good teacher… with bad moral values, and shall your favoritism-obsessed butt be away from our campus!”
Immediately after that, she plays a compilation of our recordings, but what actually shocked me the most were videos of her verbally abusing students, and SLAPPING A KINDERGARTEN CHILD ON THE FACE because she didn’t know WHAT PRONOUNS WERE.
Everyone’s standing one by one — some are victims, some are shocked, and Ms. Howard is beyond CRYING! No one cared to comfort her, and I was shocked to see my friend leading this mob of angry students and authorities to scream and shout at Ms. Howard. She betrayed everyone so much, and the whole venue was a whole massive storm.
She was forced to resign that day, and I did actually scold my friend for taking it a bit too far.
But, in the end, I finally have the perfect time to say that I now know the reason, and I understand why she did that; she clearly deserves it.
Ella, if you’re here reading this, thank you for being a demonic saint.”
4. I Won't Take Nonsense From My Foster Parents
“My parents were both killed in a hit and run car accident when I was ten. My dad was only 39 and my mom 35. Neither of them had relatives who could take me in. We lived in a really small, church-going town where everyone knew one another.
My dad had been the heir to a small fortune and so didn’t really have to work. He didn’t like the big city, so he and my mom decided to move to a small town where he could have an antique store.
My mom was into collecting antiques.
I would have had to go the orphanage route when they died, but this couple from the church, who I will call Mr. and Mrs. Banks, made this big to-do in church about how “a little girl needs a loving home, and God has given us this joyous task of bringing her up in our home and hearts.” It’s been a long time and I don’t remember if those were Mrs. Banks’ exact words, but they were something cringe-worthy like that.
The Banks had their own daughter “Kitty” who was a year older than me.
That should have meant we would be super good friends, but Kitty had her own thing going and practically ignored me. She was a holier than thou type. The Banks received a stipend from the state to take care of me, but they also received checks every month from my dad’s estate, which was supposed to take care of me until I was eighteen.
When I did turn eighteen, I would receive full control of my inheritance.
The Banks weren’t exactly cruel to me, but in private it was clear they were just using me to build up their reputation in town. In front of other people, they’d fawn over me in a sick, cotton candy fashion that made me uncomfortable. They’d also make Kitty be nice to me in public, which she resented.
The Banks would also put on a big show whenever social workers came to check up on me. They’d coach me before the lady would come, and tell me to praise how godly and wonderful they were. After the social worker left, they’d go right back to ignoring me and spending my dad’s cash on stuff on the internet or on trips.
It was clear to me even as a tween and teen that the Banks were only using some of my endowment, both from the state and from my trust, to take care of me.
The rest, they spent on themselves. As I grew older I could see that my foster parents would pretend as though they had great business acumen and that’s why they had more income and could buy a new Volvo (where I’m from, a new Volvo is an event) and take a trip to New York and buy fancy clothes for Kitty. When I was seventeen I noticed that my foster parents were stockpiling away my trust fund to pay for Kitty’s tuition to college.
Throughout this time, the Banks would never outright say so, but would heavily imply that I “owed them” and that once I got control of my inheritance, that I should be Godly and generous and give them some material compensation for “all the work” they did to raise me.
I think they already got lots of material, especially since Mrs. Banks practically stole all of my mom’s antiques from her store and kept them for herself, gave them to Kitty, or to her other relatives.
One thing my mom never kept at her store was an extremely expensive, B*********a fine china set, absolutely complete and worth tens of thousands of dollars. Not a replica, but the real deal. So real, Napoleon Bonaparte himself might well have eaten a steak off those plates. Probably not, but you get the point. It was my china set of course, but Mrs. Banks thought I was an idiot and didn’t know that.
She would always talk about how “this china set will go to Kitty on her wedding day.”
Mrs. Banks assumed that since I always dressed like a tomboy, I didn’t care about all my mom’s antiques that Mrs. Banks stole or gave away, that I just didn’t care about the china set.
When I was a kid, my mom told me that things were things, and not to obsess over them.
So, having the frou-frou china set for me wasn’t an issue. What WAS an issue was Mrs. Banks acting like it was hers to give away.
Wrong, lady.
So, once Kitty went off to college thanks to MY biological mom and dad, I had to make my own plans. I had always done well in school and had actually gotten a partial scholarship to attend school out of state.
The rest, I could easily pay for with my inheritance, which I would very soon have control of.
Per usual, Mr. and Mrs. Banks were haranguing me about how I owed them compensation and since I was going to be rich soon I ought to share the wealth.
I figured that over the past seven years they probably stole or misappropriated more than two hundred thousand dollars of my parents’ cash, to say nothing of the state money they misused. I think they more than shared the wealth.
I never promised anything, I just smiled and kept a tally of every single bank statement (I got them quarterly) that my trust issued over the years. The Banks family never shared them with me of course but when I asked the actual Bank for a rundown, they were more than happy to oblige.
I also wrote down every single major purchase my foster parents clearly made over the past seven years with money that was clearly beyond their means as a housewife and an insurance salesman.
Things such as a $40,000 car for cash, a used $20,000 car for cash that they gave to Kitty, trips to Hawaii, New York, cash gifts to the church that made them look super generous at my deceased parents’ expense… I kept it all in a nice, three-ring binder.
I already arranged my travel to my new campus. I didn’t have much stuff at the Banks’ house anyway and had zero intention of coming back, at least to their home.
The Banks knew I was leaving but didn’t bother seeing me off, because they assumed I’d come back to “give them their due.”
I waited for our church’s yearly antique sale extravaganza, set to begin in three days.
Per usual, the Banks donated all sorts of random stuff, many of it knick-knacks that used to belong to my mom and technically belonged to me. They weren’t shy about giving away my stuff and taking credit for it.
While Mr. and Mrs. Banks were on one of their shopping sprees with my parents’ cash and away from their house, I boxed up the china set and brought it to church.
I told the rummage sale committee that Mrs. Banks wanted to donate the priceless antiques for sale, all benefits to go to the church.
“This donation is made in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Banks.”
I was being fair.
If Mrs. Banks was really so godly, she would be delighted that such a wonderful donation be made in her name.
Sadly, I knew she’d go the other way because she was faker than implants.
The ladies were flabbergasted, especially when I told them the appraisal of the set’s value. I also told them that if they needed proof of ownership and right to sell, to contact the number of a certain attorney in New York.
They thanked me profusely and praised the Lord Jesus for Mrs. Banks’ generosity. This would be the most expensive item in their sales history. Everyone knew no one could afford to buy the set outright, but everyone would love to buy the pieces piecemeal.
Like, “I got a cup and saucer,” or “I got one of the chargers,” “I got an egg cup…”
The Banks were supposed to work the sale the second day and I wasn’t there.
What I did hear was that my foster mom went ballistic when she saw “her” china set for sale and that it was a huge hit, and ladies from all over the county had bought pieces of it, and it raised SO much for the church!
My foster mom threw a tantrum and said that I had stolen the set from her house.
The ladies at the church explained that I had made the donation in HER name, and she was getting credit for the donation to the church.
My foster mom was practically yanking her hair out, according to what I heard later. She was trying to track down who had bought pieces and trying to get them back. Of course, she was unsuccessful.
What she WAS successful in was looking like a Grade-A jerk.
The entire church thought she was selfish and materialistic and acting very ungodly, especially the way she cursed her foster daughter.
A week later my foster parents received a package by registered mail from me and my attorney. It contained my binder where I showed my bank statements and also a list of all their spending extravagances. It also contained a warning from my attorney that should they ever try to contact me again for moolah, that they will receive a BILL and a court date.
That was that.
Ten years later, I work as a third-grade teacher. I’m married to an accountant, and we have a three-year-old son and a one-year-old daughter.
Kitty ended up working through college, and as we’ve gotten older, we’ve reconnected.
She apologized for the way she acted when we were kids. We’re friends now, and see each other multiple times a year, often just for lunch.
She’s an elementary school teacher, too, and married to an engineer. She has a four-year-old daughter. Both of our older kids play together when our families meet.
We both have our OWN wedding china.
She has gone to a lot of therapy due to her toxic parents, she tells me.
As for her parents?
They still live in their small town because they’re too broke to move.
Their reputation is of being “that couple who drove both their children away and stole from that poor little girl whose parents died, and they tried to steal from Jesus when they whined about getting their baroque china back.”
I hope your Volvo was worth it, b*******s.”
3. Work Overtime Hours And Work On Weekends? Sure Thing, Boss
“So I was fresh out of college and was working at a call center as a side gig till I find a career, and I managed to land a job at one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country.
I started working with them on the 25th of December, yet my contract stated my starting date was the 1st of January. Turns out it’s just to cover their butts but I didn’t mind. I signed the contract and I went down to the financial manager as I was hired as an accountant. On the first day of work, we are auditing the warehouse department, no big deal.
But what transpired next is what really angered me: you see, I was supposed to cover for accounts payable which is easy and not a lot of work, most of the time the invoices or checks are stuck in the process due to something unrelated on my end.
My boss however wanted me to do a lot of overtime, it was paid of course, but I hated it as it was a 3 hours commute from home, and by the time I got home, I was tired and went to bed immediately.
The worst part was I didn’t even have much to do, and this has been going on constantly to the degree that the financial manager was involved and he ordered me to work overtime 3 days a week and come to work on Saturdays.
And this is where I complied: you see on Saturdays, no one is at the office — same with overtime, so what I’d do is walk out of the office and take an hour or 2 smoke break and come back inside, browse my phone, and do nothing.
This went on till he learned about it.
He wasn’t pleased, and he started assigning more tasks even some outside my job description.
I kept going with the flow until I learned that the financial manager wouldn’t renew my contract. You see, he wanted me to go to work on a Saturday that wasn’t agreed upon. They called me on Thursday at 5:30 pm, and when I refused, they told me to remember that I chose this way.
So they brought in a new guy and had me teach him, and at that point, I dropped all pretense and said screw it; might as well have fun and started slacking at my job. When the new guy arrived, my boss literally told me that he is the one to do everything, I wasn’t even allowed to use my work laptop anymore or my oracle credentials, and so it began.
I taught the guy everything I knew because it wasn’t his fault, but I soon gave up because he was as dense as a harem anime protagonist.
Fast forward a bit, right before the end of my contract, I played sick, was taken to the clinic, and was given an emergency ride home and a fully paid 14 days sick leave that was in tune with my last working day.”
2. Just Do My Work? Of Course!
“15 years ago, Australia.
Government electrical contracting can be all kinds of things.
This day it was a little bit fun.
BACKGROUND
We had a job to upgrade the switchboards in an office block.
‘The Plan’ given to us by Gov’t called for two suites of offices to be done at a time, on weekends only. Specifically, Saturdays only. Our teams could obviously get more done in a day, and over a whole weekend, but this was ‘The Plan’. ‘The Plan’ called for removing and replacing the existing switchboards and fitting new ones.
(For the Sparkies reading – the old boards in this old building had no RCDs/RCBOs, so the apprentices should have some fun helping chase the problem circuits)
‘The Plan’ schedule was communicated in advance to the suites that would be affected. 1 month prior, 1 week prior, and the day before.
Important to note that once we started a switchboard, there would be no power in the chosen suites until we finished.
STORY
This fine Saturday morning it was 7 am on Day One of ‘The Plan’. The rest of the crew were due in about 30mins with all the gear.
The two suites we were doing that day belonged to the same Gov’t department. Each suite had five offices with windows that saw into the central open-plan space. About twenty people worked in each suite.
So, 7 am I’m drinking my coffee while standing at the switchboard of ‘Suite 1’. It’s on a wall in the open plan. I can see into the offices.
In walks people from the suites front doors. They stop dead when they see me.
Person: (sounding surprised and annoyed) “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
I’m thinking uh-oh, they didn’t read ‘The Plan’.
Me: (injecting some happy into my voice) “Good morning! Just doing some electrical work here today, have you seen–” (gets cut off before I can mention ‘The Plan’)
Person: (now just annoyed) “I don’t have time for this, just get on with it.”
Person heads into the office labeled Manager and turns on the lights, so they are now Manager for this story.
Pause here for a sec.
Ok. So as an office worker, if you unexpectedly met an electrician in your office, who says they are doing work, you might have a few questions.
Like “Is it going to affect me?” And “How long will it take?” I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I go over to their office and try again.
Me: “Excuse me, the work here today is – “ (again, don’t get to bring up ‘The Plan’)
Manager: (annoyed and dreary sounding now) “Look, can you just do your work and leave me alone.”
And here we are.
DELICIOUS COMPLIANCE
I go back to the switchboard, head hanging in shame. I have failed. Not really though, because I’ve been at this rodeo before.
I go around to each office and turn on the lights, because I can hear the chimes of Managers PC turning on. This is purely for effect. I already have the open plan lights on.
Back at the switchboard, I put my finger on the circuit breaker for power in the Managers office, waiting until the PC has booted.
FLICK, power out. Managers UPS begins its beeping. Choose another breaker, FLICK, lights in the Managers office go out.
Manager: (calling out) “Hey, what are you doing?”
FLICK, lights in the next office go out. After all, it wouldn’t be MC if I didn’t follow their directive.
The race is on, I have a finale planned. How many offices lights do I get to turn off before it happens?
Two more and then Manager is out of their office and standing 2m from me, glaring.
I put my hand on the big black main switch.
Manager: (quite vexed) “I said, what are you doing?”
Me: (straight-faced, looking Manager in the eyes): “We’re doing the switchboard change-outs, outlined in ‘The Plan’.
You’re on all the emails I’ve seen.”
I turn the main switch. It makes a satisfying Ka-Chunk sound. All the lights, indeed all the power in this suite are now out. All the other UPS’ join in, underscoring this scene with their nice beeping chorus.
From the light coming through the windows, I see realization dawning. The Manager turns, heads to their office, and gathers their things.
Dear Reader. Remember when I said….The two suites we were doing that day belonged to the same Gov’t department.
Manager has two doors to choose from. The front door, or the interconnecting door. I feel like you’ve guessed which door they chose. At the time I was kinda maybe hoping they would choose that one too.
After turning off the UPSs, I head outside to wait for the team.
15 minutes later I’m recounting events to the others. We have a laugh. While they start gathering the gear, I feel 25 minutes is enough time to have logged in, checked emails, re-read ‘The Plan’, and leave.
I head to Suite 2. Manager is in an office busily typing away. Oh dear. I head to the switchboard, grab the main switch.
Manager is looking at me now.
Me: (looking Manager in the eyes again, call out with actual sincerity) “I am so sorry about this. Did you want to save your work first?”
Manager seems to be saving so I wait. I’m not a monster. I wait until they have their hand on the front door, then Ka-Chunk.
AFTERMATH
None. I mean, what could Manager do in the face of ‘The Plan’?
We had a great day.
The apprentices got some solid electrical experience.
ADDENDUM
Five weeks later I walked into Suite 9 at 7 am. In these five weeks, I’d learned that Manager had been seconded to another department. Located in Suite 9. Again, I had been kinda maybe hoping. Manager did not disappoint.
When I saw them in their office typing away, in full breach of the now five-week-old ‘The Plan’..I will here admit that the monster won.
Ka-Chunk.”
Another User Comments:
“It is always best not to anger the electricians.
During training, I heard the story from people in the electrician’s office on a military ship. They were certain someone was coming into the electrician’s shop when they weren’t there and messing with things. Nothing had been stolen but tools had been moved and put in the wrong place.
I mentioned it was a military ship.
They put together a shiny box with a big red button on top and a screen on the front that said: “Push to test.” When they came back from lunch one day, there was a guy in the shop with his finger on the big red button, sweating bullets, but the screen now said, “Release to detonate.”
They gently took the box from him, being careful to hold down the big red button as he handed it over and told him to get out.
Once he was out of sight, they put the box down and laughed. He never came back.” Red_Sparx
1. Sure, We'll Email You About Every Single Update We Put Out!
“This takes place probably about five years ago. I had joined an internal IT department’s service desk as a Senior Service Desk Engineer. I guess you could say I was second line? Or maybe third? But we are all in one team. It felt a bit messy…
One of the things I noticed when I arrived was the lack of control the department had on the versions of software installed on end-user devices. We had seven different versions of Adobe Reader installed, for example, the oldest version was about three years old at that point. Applications would be updated in the image we used to deploy new computers, but, once the computer had been deployed, nobody checked up on them again.
In some cases, auto-updates of applications might have been turned on for some computers but turned off for others. All of this ultimately caused issues when troubleshooting or providing guidance, documentation, and training for applications. In some cases, there were issues with backward compatibility. GPOs also sometimes wouldn’t function correctly, again, depending on the version of the software installed.
After a few months working there, I asked my boss for authorization to create a process for deploying software updates across the company’s devices, throwing out a few ideas I had.
He gave me the green light, and I spent about six weeks working on getting a process developed, workflows for tracking changes setup in ServiceNow, creating reports to highlight devices with old software, and creating tasks in our asset management tool that would deploy the relevant updates to the required computers. I ended up presenting them to both my boss and the Service Delivery Manager, who had recently joined the company and was super keen to get the department working in a more process-driven way.
Both of them were happy with what I had come up with, suggested a few changes, most of which were implemented, and then a final process document was created. A few members of the team were tasked with assisting me with updating software and we soon got to work.
With a catalog of around 50 applications that were managed by the team I was on, we decided to set a schedule for rolling out our updates.
The general guideline was that every application should be updated at least once a year, or three months before it went out of support, whichever was sooner. Exceptions would be made for applications with extended support releases. An expedited process was drafted for emergency updates. The aim was a week of testing in the lab (installation, uninstallation, update, rollback, GPO functionality where applicable, and some user stories), followed by a week of testing within IT, two weeks of testing with power users, and then a general rollout across the company.
With around 50 applications, that worked out at 4-5 a month, and we decided we would start the process on that month’s applications altogether in one week. It was more efficient that way.
The first few months of updates were quite tough, as we targetted the applications that were the most inconsistent across our environment, but things eventually settled and, after 5-6 months, we hadn’t really had any issues.
That was until we rolled out a new version of TeamViewer.
The process by which we rolled out the new version was actually done without following our process as it was … well … different. 99% of devices needed the Host installed, with the remainder having the Full installation installed. TL;DR Host lets people connect to you, Full lets you connect to people (and lets people also connect to you).
We looked at setting up tasks such that those with the Full installation installed would have their version updated to the new Full version, and those with the Host installation would be updated to the new Host version, but we found out that about 20% of our devices had the Full version installed. Apparently, a mistake had been made in the image a few years earlier eventually fixed, but nobody had gone back to fix the computers deployed with the wrong TeamViewer installation.
Therefore, we exported a list of users that had TeamViewer accounts, allowing them to log into the Full installation, and sent them an email about two months in advance to tell them that they would need to update TeamViewer on their computers. The majority of these users should have had local admin on their computers, so we provided instructions on how to update it themselves.
In the case of a user not having a local admin, we could do it for them pretty quickly. We sent them a reminder about three weeks later, a second reminder three weeks after that, a third reminder a week before we started rolling out the new version.
Then, we activated our task. Regardless of what installation of TeamViewer the computer now had, if it was the old version, it would be uninstalled and replaced with the Host.
That very same evening, the head of one of the CRM teams calls me up, furious that we have uninstalled the Full installation of TeamViewer and replaced it with the Host installation. I informed her that we had sent out four emails over the past two months, asking them to update their TeamViewer or contact us if they couldn’t, but she didn’t care. Apparently, I should have sent out an email on the day of the update.
I retorted that, if someone hadn’t acted on the previous four emails, it was highly unlikely that they would act on a fifth. She didn’t appreciate that. The next day, an email came in from the CIO, with all the IT senior managers CC’d in, sent to my department, stating that we must send out emails two weeks before we roll out a new update, and again the day we begin rolling out the update.
I ran it by my manager, who ran it by the Service Delivery Manager, who said I should do as the CIO asked. Turned out the Service Delivery Manager was kinda spineless, never wanting to challenge his boss, the CIO, in any way. Meh. Not really my problem. It was a really easy change to make. Though I sensed that there would be some complaints down the line.
Because of the way the ServiceNow workflows functioned, each update was assigned its own change and tracked independently of the others being run alongside it. Emails were already being sent out to the teams responsible for support of the application and power users to inform them about the updates. Because we didn’t have groups created for the users of each application, the power user emails went out to all power users, even if they didn’t use the application, even if they didn’t have it installed on their computer in the first place.
And, because we were running 4-5 updates in tandem, the users would often get 4-5 emails in the space of a few minutes, notifying them of new updates. But we had been clear with said users that this would sometimes be the case and most were accepting of it.
I added the two new activities to our workflow, such that, when the change reached the point where we were deploying it to power users, we would send an email to all of IT notifying them that an update was two weeks from being deployed. Then, when the change progressed to the point where we were deploying it to all users, it would send another email to all of IT notifying them that an update was now being deployed. Note that there were around 120 people working in IT.
And, of those 120 people, about 30 of them were on our power users list. What’s more, because an email was also sent out to the team responsible for supporting the application when we were in the lab and power user test phases, these users would now receive duplicate emails. At a minimum, a member of IT would receive 8 emails in two batches over the course of a month.
At its worse, a member of IT might receive 25.
Over the next 6-8 weeks, members of IT started to grumble at me about the flood of emails they were now receiving about updates.
‘Why do I keep getting all these emails about updates?’ It was requested by (Head of CRM team) and approved by the CIO. That’s why.
‘Can you not send one email instead of four?’ No, the emails are linked to the changes we log for each update and are automated.
‘Can you not put each month’s updates onto one change?’ No, because if we encounter an issue with one application update, it would delay the rollout of the other application updates on the change.
‘Can you remove me from the email list for the updates?’ No. The CIO was very clear that all staff in IT should receive these emails and I don’t want to have to start maintaining a new distribution group for IT staff, minus those that don’t want to receive the emails.
It was usually a combination of a few of the above. But, eventually, probably at the end of the second month, or beginning of the third, by which point a total of around 2700 emails had been sent out to 120 users, I got a visit from the CIO.
‘Hi 8DAQenS3355wMPFj. You are responsible for the emails about updates, correct?’
Well, ServiceNow sends them out.
But I own the updates process and maintain the workflows in ServiceNow, so I guess you could say yes.
‘Can we cut down the number of emails being sent out?’
Not really. The emails are sent out automatically for every update, two weeks before the update is rolled out, and then the day the update is rolled out. Which emails should I stop sending?
‘Well, do I really need to receive five separate emails in one day? I received two emails last week for updates for programs I have never heard of. I don’t even have them on my computer.’
The emails are sent out when the change request reaches certain stages. Each application update is tracked in its own change request, so each application update gets its own set of emails.
We do the updates in batches as it’s more efficient that way and we send the emails automatically because it reduces our workload and the chance of a mistake being made. They are sent out to everyone in IT as we have no way to automate only sending them to people with the application installed.
‘I see. And you’re really rolling out that many updates?’
Yes. We support roughly 50 applications, each updated at least once a year. That works out at 4-5 a month.
‘And there’s no way to merge the emails into one?’
I guess it could be possible, but that would probably involve creating a custom application in ServiceNow, which is not something I know how to do.
‘I guess we will have to live with it, then.
Notifying other departments of changes is important.’
You are aware that this process functioned without complaint for around six months, right? And the one case that led to a complaint was related to an application that wasn’t updated via this process? And, in the case of that application, the individual that complained had received four emails in the two months prior to the update, asking them to update the application on their computer themselves, or contact our team to update it manually?
‘So you never sent any emails out before?’
We did. Let me explain the process to you. The process for each update runs for five weeks. Week one is testing the update in the lab. An email is sent out to the team responsible for supporting the application at the commencement of this stage. Week two is deployment to and testing within this team.
We don’t send an email for that as we’re all in the same room and generally know what’s going on. Week three is deployment to and testing with power users. All power users are informed of the update once we reach this stage. And, finally, week five is deployment to all devices across the company. As per your request to notify IT of updates two weeks prior to the release of a new update, and when a release is updated, I added activities to our workflow to send additional emails to all of IT at the last two stages.
‘I see.’
Partway through the conversation, my manager had noticed the CIO chatting to me and started hovering over his shoulder.
(Manager) ‘Should we stop sending the additional emails you requested?’
(CIO) ‘Hmm. Yes.’
And so the emails were stopped.
A few members of IT noticed a month later that the emails had stopped and asked me if that was my doing.
‘The CIO seemed to be as fed up with them as you were.’ And word through the g*******e was that the head of the CRM team that initially made the complaint to the CIO about the ‘lack of communication’ fell out of favor with him.
Things went back to normal, we kept working through updates, everyone was happy in the end! Apart from the lady that didn’t read her emails.”
