These People Adhered To The Rules To Get Their Revenge
18. I'll Make The Floors Sparkle Alright
A little glitter could work wonders…
“When I was a young ET3 United States Navy Electronics Technician who was at the end of his training pipeline, stuck in limbo with not much to do because orders were coming in less and less.
Generally, the lull period between commands is a period of courtesy calls to the command to verify you haven’t partied your self to death and to verify if you’re still in limbo.
Except if you have an ET1 jack*ss who wants to make your life as miserable as they can. Now that I was no longer in training nor a part of his crew I guess ET1 saw fit to make me his personal janitor.
Anyway, after attempting to be clever and having my duty the previous day be to sweep the sunlight off the walkway during the dead of winter in the Northeast (meaning I worked like 4 hours and went home), he was furious that his plan had backfired.
So his new plan was to make me clean our workshop until it was up to his level of clean.
Did the usual dust, sweep, mop, clean windows. I was told ‘not clean enough.’
Strip and wax the floor, polish all the metal. I was told ‘not clean enough.’
Reorganize all the tool lockers to spec, take apart all the things removing every ghost turd, polish the chairs, fix the squeaky door.
I was told ‘not clean enough.’
It was at this point, the ET1 said, ‘Do you not understand me, petty officer, this room is not clean enough, I want you to make the floor sparkle!’
Well, it just so happens that the mechanics had this pint of two-tone powder pink and purple paint flake/glitter stuff (I did not ask why only found it and pretended I didn’t).
So I headed down to their workshop where most of the ones not on watch were hanging around and I asked them if they’d mind if I took that glitter off their hands.
The usual round of, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if we did…..why?’ came up and I simply asked if they’d like to see ET1 lose his mind (he was also infamous for having a short temper).
So I obtained the glitter and spent a good 3 hours stripping and re waxing and buffing the floors, even polished the top of the work table, and go to get ET1 again, after notifying the navy mechanics to be on stanby.
Well ET1 shows up and looks around, ‘Not clean enou- what, is this, is this DID YOU JUST WAX GLITTER INTO MY FLOOR!?’
I respond by inquiring why he was getting so angry, and that I had followed his instructions to the letter – the floor now sparkled.
It was in this moment amongst the growing crowd of onlookers who were chuckling at ET1 that I found out firsthand how a person could get so angry they change colors.
Flush, to red, to almost purple with veins bulging in his neck and forehead. I had not seen such a spectacle outside of a hollywood movie.
ET1 proceded to yell….something, it was very incoherent and loud, storm outside to the smoke pit, scattering every one who was there as they wanted none of what ET1 was now, our Command Master Chief even came around the corner to see what the crowd of running non-useful bodies was about, saw ET1, and came to the workshop to see what might’ve happened.
Upon seeing my handy work, he laughed, and told me to just take it easy until my orders showed up, he didn’t need an attempted murder at his command. So I got to spend the next 3 days in relax mode as my paperwork was found, I got new orders and I was off to the fleet.”
17. Of Course You Can Speak To The Manager, But Good Luck
“Prior to being a bartender, I worked at a retail chain called Big W. I’m a nerd, I tend to switch to autopilot when tired (almost always at the end of shifts) and can be a when annoyed. Me in a nutshell.
It’s a slow Wednesday afternoon, the A/C has broken again and it’s about 5 degrees C hotter inside than it is outside (29c).
I’m in autopilot, rigor mortis smile on my face and retail greetings are droning out of my throat.
A guy walks into my register, demanding a refund for something trivial. Probably his panties were the wrong color, I don’t remember.
I inform him in a monotone voice that refunds are issued by my supervisor, not me. There’s a surprisingly substantial line at the supervisor’s desk, people wanting refunds or information. He informs me that he’s not waiting that long for something trivial.
He demands I do it, because ‘Even someone as dumb as you can do this.’ Well, that snapped me out of autopilot and the smile fades.
I repeat, in a much more direct tone that, ‘only the supervisor can do refunds.’ The customer is having none of it. ‘Refund my item.’ He demands again, saying it very slowly as if I was the dumbest potato in the strawberry patch.
‘I am unable to-‘ He cuts me off.
‘I want to speak to your manager, I don’t want to talk to you.’ Now, this is where people need to be careful with their words.
As a cashier, I report directly to my supervisor, one of the two at the desk. They’re in charge of me. My manager sits out back managing the store, and usually never has to interact with customers unless the supervisor calls him.
So I nod, calling through the headset for my manager (let’s call him Fred). Fred’s a great guy, he tells good jokes, he’s always ready to help his friends and he’s a caring soul.
He’s also a mute; and after wrapping his vehicle around a tree as a teen, he’s also deaf.
As such he knows Auslan (Australian Sign Language), but can’t read lips to save his life. I also can’t speak Auslan at all.
This probably took about 5 minutes for someone to alert Fred that he was needed and for him to come down. All this time, I’m smiling but not saying a word to the gentleman, as he told me to.
He comes up to the registers, sees it’s me waving him down and pulls out his personal digital assistant device to communicate with me.
‘What’s up?’ Fred types. I take the PDA and type, ‘Customer has a complaint, wants to speak to “my manager” not me.’ Fred raises an eyebrow at me and I just shrug.
The guy is turning red with anger, probably thinking we’re ignoring him.
Fred turns to the guy who launches into a full on verbal assault that would curdle milk chcocloate. Something about incompetent employees and terrible service. Fred just stands there. Eventually, the guy runs out of breath and Fred has a chance to show him the PDA with the words, ‘Sir I am a deaf-mute, please use this to communicate with me.’ The guy practically screams and storms out of the store.”
Another User Comments:
“I’m a deaf guy and love this!
When I was fresh out of high school, I worked retail.
One time, a customer came up to me and started to talk. When I pulled out a notepad and pen (this was early 2000), the customer got angry and cussed at me and walked to the next worker who was an older man in his 60’s.
The man saw how the customer was toward me, so he pretended to not be able to hear either.
The customer stormed out of the store after that.” JoyfulDeath
16. You Really Want Your Extra Ranch? You'll Get More Than You Can Handle
“About 7 years ago, I worked at a Subway fast-food restaurant. The pay was horrible, but my co-workers became my family. For a backstory, I was the assistant manager, and we did not follow Subway guidelines like we were supposed to. Our location was always busy, so it was a miracle to get dishes done or even the lobby cleaned in a timely fashion. Our Subway also shared seating within the same building with a Mazzios pizza restaurant.
This event happened during the high school football months, and our local team, fans, and families took their football very seriously. When the football team won, I would keep our store open an hour late if necessary to feed all of the football players, fans, friends and families. Cue the “Karen” that tried her hardest being the biggest monkey-wrench in our machine. Every time we got slammed from our football team winning, she would come in and order 18-foot long sub sandwiches all of the same style, bread, meat, cheeses, and vegetables.
Along with these 18, she would order 1 random sub.
As usual, our local high school football team won and right after the game, our Subway and Mazzios would get ultra-slammed.
In comes our lady friend, and I told a few employees that I would devote my attention to her and work around everyone else making sandwiches. I make this lady’s usual 18 subs and then I start back over to make her a double meat meatball sub, provolone cheese, toasted on Italian herb & cheese bread.
A double meatball is impossible; regardless, I do my best.
I pull her double meat meatball sub out of the oven, and what do ya know? She wants every veggie on top of it. This sub is now monstrous!
I finally get to the end of the veggie bar, and she says she wants ranch on it. We always ignored Subway rules about dressings, and every customer always got way more than usual on their subs.
Same with this lady. I get the ranch on there when she clears her throat and says she wants more ranch dressing. Ok, I squeezed a hell of a lot more on her sandwich; you can barely even see her sandwich anymore. I return the ranch to its holder when she clears her throat even louder and demands more ranch on her sub. Something in me snapped.
I grabbed a brand new, full bottle of ranch; squeezed the entire bottle onto her sandwich, the make station, the floor, my pants; in fact, to make myself very clear, I twisted the plastic bottle until it had deformed into a plastic tornado shape down the middle of it.
Not even trying to be nice, I crammed her b*stardized sandwich into a too small, plastic Subway bag, slapped it on the counter next to the girl ringing her up.
I told the cashier girl to charge her for two sandwiches, and I walked out the back door to cool down for a minute. Yes, I was p*ssed.
The next morning, I came in when my boss told me to clock in and disappear for an hour. “Why?” I asked.
”I’m going to fire the cashier when she gets here,” my boss replied.
I could not stand this girl that was going to get fired, but I was not going to let her get fired for something I knew was not her fault.
I told my boss to go and look at the video from approximately 10:30 pm to 10:45 pm, and that if anyone was going to get fired, I would volunteer in place of this cashier.
The monkey-wrench lady had called corporate and complained. My boss spent a half an hour watching the video, listening to the audio before coming back, and telling me I treated this lady in the right manner. Monkey-wrench lady was banned after this.”
15. Okay, I'll Follow The Wrong Instructions
This person followed directions by following the wrong directions, if that makes sense.
“This was about 20 years ago. I joined a project and developed the job role, I created the processes and even built some software tools. Then for about 18 months, I worked on the project in that role. The company decided to send in a load of process engineers to document everything so that they have very clear “how-to’s.” If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, then the company can easily recover.
Very sensible move.
For a week or so, I was shadowed by a process engineer as he documented everything I did, and it included interviews and reviews. All standard stuff. I expected to have something to review and approve, and nothing came.
Some time later, I was given a role review with an interview at the end. It did not go well. Basically, I was told that I was failing to do my job properly and put under (RA)remedial action.
The problem was that I was not following the PI (Process Instruction) on how to do my job. I read the PI, and it completely failed to capture how I did the job. This was the first time that I had seen it. It had been approved, authorized, and issued without me seeing it.
So, in order to get out of the remedial action, I followed it to the letter.
By the end of the month, things had got serious. My downstream customers were either getting the wrong data, incomplete data, or no data. Their dependencies were incomplete and so their downstream were having problems. The whole data flow was wrong or stopped.
I was called in for a ‘chat’ by one of the directors where I pointed out that I followed the PI to the letter as I was told because of the RA.
The PI was wrong, but I was not on the approval loop. RAs are serious because if you fail then it is disciplinary action time or even a sacking. He hit the roof, the sh*t hit the fan, and an investigation was started. It seems that the process team was fed up with people rejecting the PIs for their own jobs as being wrong, so they just cut them out of the approval loop.
This allowed the process engineering lead to hit all his targets and get his performance bonus.
The result was that my RA order was removed from my HR file, I reviewed and fixed the PI for my job. The process engineering lead was disciplined and put on his own RA. He left shortly after. Rumor has it that he had to repay the performance bonus as well.”
14. Soup Is Still Too Cold For You? Here's A Bowl Of Lava
En-freaking-joy.
“So, this was a few years ago when I was a chef working in what was a fancy golf club for wealthy people. You really got a very assorted bunch of people coming into the club, and every so often, an absolute weapon.
I was working in one of the smaller kitchens on my own doing bar food and snacks for the members, and it was a particularly busy day, and I was flat out.
One of the tables was booked for a group of four looking for a ladies’ lunch.
The first of the women arrive and orders a soup as the waitress tells me that she’s starving.
I put it on and am finishing off some of the other checks I had and then see that it’s starting to boil, so I pour it into a bowl and send it.
Waitress brings it back minutes later saying that the customer isn’t happy and that it’s cold. I’m sitting there thinking, Strange, I really thought I had that at a boil.”
I heat it again and send it out, and the waitress literally bounced straight back to me with the bowl in hand saying the customer is saying that the soup is still too cold.
It’s an open kitchen, and I look over to see this woman in her late sixties who’s still alone at the table with this look of disdain on her face, like I was the help and had ruined her day by existing.
Now, if you’ve worked in the service industry, you know Karens are everywhere, and I’ve always been of the approach of deflecting and give them what they want.
I put the soup back on and get it to a racing boil, grab a bowl from the bottom of the hot press, and have the waitress standing there waiting, so it’s served and straight out.
The poor waitress comes back minutes later with, “I’m so sorry.
She’s saying that the soup is cold…” I glance over and see that’s she’s still sitting there with this look on her face.
Now, I’m starting to get pretty p*ssed off. It’s not like dealing with this woman was the only thing I had on either. It’s the middle of a busy lunch rush with loads of orders coming in, and this is messing up any flow I am getting going.
So, I put more soup on this time.
I’ve got it on the hottest hob. I’ve also banged a soup bowl into the oven and cranked it up to 300 degrees. Once the soup has been at a racing boil for a couple of minutes, I pull the bowl, and it’s like lava, pour the soup in, and it’s so hot that it’s still boiling in the heat of the bowl as the waitress takes it to the table.
Now, the other guests on the booking have arrived, and they’re all sitting there chatting away, and she without even looking at the bowl picks up a spoon and goes for it.
As soon as the soup hits her tongue, she lets out the most almighty scream, and it’s carnage, people running all over the place with ice and cold water.
She’s throwing a fit that I’ve tried to kill her with soup!
When the dust starts to settle, I am taken to the general manager’s office and am getting hell. I ask them to grab the waitress I’ve been working with and to get her to tell them what happened. She backs me up the whole way and ended up just getting a, “Don’t be smart, and don’t try to kill any more members, please.”
That is the one and only time in a 12-year career in some very good establishments I have ever messed with someone’s food.”
Another User Comments:
“I’m the executive chef at a private golf club.
I’ve had similar experiences with pasta being not hot enough, soup not being hot enough, puff pastry not being hot enough. It’s extremely frustrating as you would love to just say screw it make them wait till your rush is over to tend to their particular needs. Yet, as you know, this is not possible at a private club. I’ve even had members ask for a caesar salad but only with the white core parts of the romaine lettuce. I’ve even had a particular older woman complain that the croutons are too crunchy. Let me just dampen that crouton up for you, ma’am.” sh_faria
13. Just Do My Job And Shut Up? Of Course
“The software company I worked for got acquired. Some people were let go, some were added, and some teams and functions were restructured.
Prior to the acquisition, we had a “multiple hats” situation where you basically did whatever was in your capacity, teams played to each other’s strengths, and one person would generally take a client from the first demo right through the configuration, implementing, and training phases of the software.
Some of us had strengths in technical areas; others had a decade+ in the clients’ subject matter. Clients would give us some feedback or wish lists. We’d talk amongst the team about how the functionality could be added or changed, make a functional mock-up, and then bring that to the Development team for polish and integration into the production code. It worked wonderfully. Like, 100% positive feedback and nothing broken when it went to production.
We had a good rapport with the Dev guys and some of us were able to write queries or code portions that would save them from having to ask a billion subject matter questions. When we weren’t dedicated to a task, we’d handle support calls. Clients would call up, the receptionist learned who to pass things to based on clients and the nature of issues, and a resolution was typically instantaneous unless the problem required research.
Clients loved that and had the understanding that if we couldn’t resolve their problem right away, it was because we needed to look into it.
After the acquisition, the parent company reorganized things into a much more rigid “you have one job” type of scenario. The trouble was, with the people they let go, I was the singular remaining source of a lot of the capacities we provided.
It left me working with the Sales, Product Improvement/Concept, Product Evangelism, Implementation, Development, Data Conversion, and Support teams. Initially, I didn’t mind. Wasn’t any different than my previous role. Things started nicely enough with the company CEO genuinely asking, “Would you mind helping X team with Y project?” and he’d pick up my travel bar tabs and toss me a day off here and there. It was a fair exchange, and he treated it as though I was doing him a favor.
But at some point, all these other departments expected then demanded my time. Instead of people asking when I could help them on a project, I would just find time blocks added to my schedule for various things.
A couple of times, I was supposed to be chairing these meetings and having things prepared, and no one even bothered to tell me. Around this same time, I noticed a lot of recommendations I made when asked for input were being overturned by people in new roles who had no idea what they were talking about.
As in, literally had no exposure to the subject matter and had never even seen the software, plus no programming/logic or database experience. So my input is demanded but also ignored. And this was causing more demands on my time when things were broken or didn’t meet client expectations. Plus, the new Dev team I was working with made every excuse not to act unless someone went and confirmed and fetched everything they needed.
The external demands on my time had increased and I had coincidentally hit a few walls with my actual job in that clients were unresponsive and couldn’t get me the data or access I needed to complete tasks. But that didn’t stop my boss from demanding documentation and results and documentation about the results. There was no such thing as “waiting;”0 it’s your duty to call and harass the powerless client until whatever third party involved enables whatever we need.
I was really unhappy in a job I had previously loved.
Every day was worse than the last. And then I got my employee review. It was top-notch, and yet, I got the same “cost of living” raise as everyone else. It particularly burned my a** that the sales guys were getting commission on sales that I F*CKING MADE, and I was just shafted. At the original company, effort above and beyond was WELL-rewarded. I doubled my starting salary in a few years’ time for hard work.
Now, I was miserable, overdrawn, AND got nothing for it. I was having daily arguments with my boss who was completely indifferent to all my commitments and refused to understand that I couldn’t compel third-party companies to do my timely bidding to get client data or access.
Out of nowhere, I get a call from the head of the Data Conversions department. He says a few of his people have noticed some high-level solutions to Dev or data problems in the Teams chats “come out of some random guy from Implementations in no-time.” Then he was talking to a preexisting client about converting a set of financial data from a legacy system I had converted some Building, Code, Fire, Planning, and Police data from and they asked if they could have me do it specifically because my conversion of their other data was “flawless,” and I granted them some change requests on the way through to make their lives easier (simple changes to record type names for easier identification, clip leading spaces or extra zeroes, so they could put reports in Excel…
stuff like that). He said the client “wouldn’t stop f*cking gushing” about me, and he was floored to hear that I had done the whole thing myself where his team typically breaks the responsibilities between 5 or more people. He offered me a position on the spot, and I told him I was interested, and I’d think about it. He told me I could start doing some part-time stuff with him a few hours a week if I wanted it that way.
Then he told me he “saw the bullsh*t I was dealing with” and said he’d “get the other departments off my f*cking plate.” I liked him right away.
My current boss then interrupted our call seeing me talking to that guy on our in-house phone app and demanded to know what I was wasting my time on. Then she proceeded to berate me about open orders and my lack of documentation about their lack of progress.
“You got time to bullsh*t with him, but you can’t call a client.” I tried to tell her for the millionth time about all the expectations from the other departments, the obligations they leave beyond their allotted timeframes, the inability I have to force other companies to do things for us no matter how many times I tell the client… She told me, “I’m done with your excuses.
Just do your job and shut up.” I called the Conversions head right back and asked how soon I could transfer to his department full time. He said, “F*ckin… YESTERDAY, man. This is such good news! I was just talking to [Assistant Department Manager], and he ’bout sh*t his pants when I said I think I got you part-time! Take the rest of the day off, have a beer to celebrate, I’ll handle the transfer, and we’ll see you in the morning.” And that was that.
I did as my new boss commanded and had a beer to celebrate.
A wave of relief came over me after months of tension. The following day, I told the vampire departments and my previous boss in no uncertain terms that I was done helping them. It went unacknowledged, and they continued adding things to my calendar. So, I deleted them, did MY job, and shut up. THINGS. GOT. UGLY. I’m not super-talented or anything, but I was literally the only person they had for a lot of things, and things went to sh*t.
Most of it requires institutional knowledge I had spent years acquiring, so they couldn’t even hire someone to do the things. And rather than come ask me for help, people made demands and attacks! And I got flat-out belligerent about it. In an email with the CEO cced, the support manager asked why I “couldn’t be bothered” to help them anymore. I said, “For the same reason you can’t ‘be bothered’ to clean the toilets or re-cable the building.
Not my job. [Previous Boss] told me to ‘just do my job and shut up.’ Take it up with her.”
The sales/evangelist guys tried to go over my head and asked my new boss if I could do some of their demos. He said, “Sure, if you come over here and do some of his conversions.” Numbers tanked for the departments I was previously involved with. Support in particular.
They went from a 2 hour avg resolution time to EIGHT DAYS. Sales for my product line went down from 85% success to less than 25% (CEO reported that sales dropped over 60 percent from 85, don’t know the exact). Dev and product went from 100% customer satisfaction to 60%. Implementations has been completely unable to install certain components which led to at least one contract cancellation and demand for a refund.
And in true storybook fashion, my previous boss’s boss, the one who gave me my previous employee review and who is a childhood friend of the CEO, told me privately that the CEO noticed, “All the departments UnFocusMyChi stopped working for suddenly saw their worst numbers in company history…
weird” and asked, “Anything in particular that pushed the guy over the edge?” Previous boss’s boss explained that I was p*ssed about the review/raise having nothing to do with merit or effort, the demand from other departments, unrealistic and impossible expectations, and the idiotic requirement for documentation. So, this year and going forward, there are two criteria for yearly raises: individual output and department output. No raises for people with negative performance numbers. Upon that announcement, some department heads up and quit and others changed positions internally. Meanwhile, I have written a few utilities for my team that have saved THOUSANDS of hours of manual work. Our numbers are SOARING where they were previously up and down, and my new boss is “driving the whole bus full of our laughing asses all the way to the bank.””
12. Wake Me Up With A Scam Call? I'll Get You Good
“This just happened about 20 or so minutes ago.
The phone rings waking me up from a sound sleep.
Me: ‘Hullo?’ (very groggy someone better be dead…)
Computer: ‘Your credit card was used on eBay…blah blah spiel…’ Oh heck no you wake me up with this crap and tell me to push 1?! It’s ON! I pushed 1.
Enter hopeful scammer from the dark bowels of a warehouse in a jungle.
Scammer: ‘Blah blah Visa credit card used for international purchases…’ (I don’t have a Visa)
Me: (yawning) ‘Oh dear what am I to do?’
Scammer: ‘Yes Mam! It is very sad! I will need to confirm your credit card information. Can you please tell me the name on the credit card?’
Me: (contemplating coffee) ‘Ronald McDonald.’
Scammer: ‘Ronald McDonald? Is that R-O-N-A-L-D?’ (getting excited)
Me: ‘Yup.
oh me oh my whatever shall I do?’
Scammer: ‘Yes Mam! Can you confirm is your credit card gone and where it is gone from?’
Me: (beginning to enjoy myself)’ Oh dear it is gone.
Oh woe. is. me. I am dismayed. Oh me. Oh . My…’
Scammer: ‘Can you tell me where you lost your credit card?’ (I’m beginning to drool thinking of coffee)
Me: ‘It must have been at Whitehouse Burgers. Gosh. darn.’
Scammer: (practically bouncing off his chair) ‘Yes Mam! That is it exactly! Can you tell me any strange purchases made on your credit card?’
Me: ‘Well there was that call yesterday saying someone bought an AK-47.
I was wondering about that as I already have one…’
Scammer: (panting from excitement) ‘Yes Ma—– ‘(voice in the background filled with disgust speaking in their dialect something that must translate to YOU IDIOT! followed by a slapping sound)
….silence….dial tone
Sigh. Just when it was getting good too. Oh well, next time! I need coffee.”
11. Not A Fan Of My Parenting? I Might Just Take Your Silly Advice
“I was at the doctor’s office today and had to bring my 15-month-old twins with me. These kiddos do not enjoy being cooped up in a stroller, but letting them wander around isn’t an option since they will both bolt in opposite directions immediately.
They have clean nappies, they’ve been fed and hydrated, so at this point, any fussing is just stroller-related crankiness.
In preparation for having to wait a while and wanting to be considerate of the others who were in waiting room purgatory with me, I packed the diaper bag full of endless snacks and sippy cups.
Sure enough, 5 minutes in they lose their mind so I instantly start giving them snacks and also walking back and forth in the very, very large waiting room. I am at the back area and not even close to being in anyone’s way and as long as I am pacing, the beasties will quietly munch away on their cheerios.
At one point, I stopped pacing to hear the doctor mumble the next patient’s name in another barely audible whisper and this is where a cranky old lady decides to weigh in on my parenting.
I hear a huffing noise and look over at her and the second we make eye contact she says, ‘Oh my gawd, you have got to stop walking up and down that back area. You’re making me dizzy. Also, you really shouldn’t be feeding them that much, just SIT DOWN and they will relax too. Watching toddlers really shouldn’t be that hard hun.’ Thanks. Firstly, while my girls are very healthy, they were preemies born at 3lb/1.5kg and are still very tiny, so I will feed them all the d*mn cheerios I want.
Secondly, I am doing all this not for myself or the twins but for the benefit of all those around us.
Finally, I was waiting to find out if my scans showed cancer or not (hurray scans were clean) so I really didn’t care.
Now for the malicious compliance. I take her advice and sit down. Right next to her. Tons of empty seats everywhere by the way.
Instantly, they start screaming their heads off and what do I do? I pull out my book and start reading. Anyone who has ever been seated next to a stranger’s baby having a meltdown, close your eyes, imagine that sh*tty moment and now double it to account for twins.
Within 5 minutes she is looking like she is about to snap and suggests they might want a snack.
To which I calmly respond, ‘Nah, I really shouldn’t be feeding them that much,’ and cooly turn the page of my book. Ten minutes later, my name is finally called and this lady looks like she is ready to give up on life. I, however, have read my first chapter in ages. I guess watching toddlers really isn’t that hard after all.”
Another User Comments:
“As a related semi-story…
my wife would sometimes be out with our kids. She’s younger than most, but was still in her mid-20s when we had our first child, and we very much made the conscious choice to have children.
She’s had old women at convenience stores look at her and make judgmental comments about her being so young and having children. They often assume she’s a single mother (even if she was, so what?).
It makes me wish I wasn’t working so that I could be there with her to tell them off.
Sometimes old women are the most arrogant and judgmental pieces of sh*t on the planet.” orangeoliviero
Reply:
“Also, old women are still the generation that got married right out of high school and were pregnant right away. Many of the women clucking over your wife’s age had multiple children by the time they were her age.” 71NK3RB3LL
10. Make Me Rewrite My Paper? Okay, But Your Rubric Says You Have To Give Me An 'A'
“Some very short context to this story: I am not a natural citizen, I am a naturalized immigrant. I was six when I arrived and (understandably) had issues with the language and was assigned ESOL classes. Once those were finished, I made it my goal to never get anything below a 90% on any written assignment that was graded. And right up until college, I’m very proud to say I never got below a 94% on any papers or essays or other writing assignments.
This happened a while back in college. I was forced to take a critical writing class and multidisciplinary too. It was fun, getting to interact with people not in my major at the time. Unfortunately, it also meant I was grouped with people who had no idea what I was doing, nor did I know what they were doing.
I get into this classroom, and it’s very open.
The campus I go to is notorious for constantly renovating buildings; in the seven years I was there, there was never a time that construction work WASN’T on site. This building had just been erected and was a brand new science building. In said science building were some modular classrooms, the campuses attempt to change things up and get rid of the traditional lecture style of teaching by forcing the professor(s) to walk among the students and teach.
It was meant to encourage engagement and ease of access to students. Anyone who has sat in a lecture hall knows how irritating it is when Stacy in the middle of the row has a question during the exam, and the professor or one of their TAs has to grind their butt on everyone’s exam and unceremoniously twerk on some poor soul’s head as they squat down to listen to the question, just so they can answer with “do your best,” then leave their butt-print on the exams again as they sidle their way out.
This class began with the professor trying her best to be all fun and encouraging.
Unfortunately, her method of fun and encouragement was to treat a bunch of adults like they were in grade school by making them all get up and share their names and fun facts at 7:20 pm. After this debacle, when we’re all ready to get on with this first class of the semester, she launches into the syllabus and explains things.
She states that, similar to standard lecture classes, which usually has three to four exams total, her class will have four papers to be turned in over the course of the semester.
However, if the students weren’t happy with their grade, they had the option to either rewrite two papers once over or rewrite the same paper twice if their second attempt didn’t warrant a good enough grade. These rewrites could be submitted whenever the student wanted.
It sounded like a fantastic idea and the way she sold it, it sounded like a sure-fire way to not fail. I was confident that I didn’t need those chances to rewrite anything, and after class, I asked the professor if I could set up a gamble with her.
Given my schedule at the time (a warehouse job, a full-time job at an urgent care, another part-time job at a CPA’s office, and a full college workload), I asked if I could use those rewrites as an extension. It wouldn’t be indefinite, but rather, each would count as a week; if a paper was due February 7th, I could theoretically use up those two rewrites and extend the due date till February 21st.
Initially, she refused, but I explained to her that my father had just passed away, and given that it was sudden, we hadn’t had the money available to pay the funeral home for their services and didn’t have the money to travel back home to perform last rites, so I needed those three jobs to make ends meet. She understood and made a note due to my circumstances.
However, she did had a noticeable change in her demeanor towards me after learning what I did for work. I assumed she was just being somber due to learning about my father’s passing.
Well, in comes my first paper due. I did my usual thing: wrote my paper, edited it, gave it a day, reread and edited again, checked with the rubric, and re-edited. I was satisfied and turned it in, and a week later, she drops this paper with a big fat 68 on it.
I’m like, “Excuse the heck outta me?”
I go and speak to her at the end of class, and she said I hadn’t understood what the paper was about. She was asking the students to write about how people in my field transition from school to career. I explained to her that it was very normal, and in some cases, expected, to post your school projects on your portfolio while you worked on other projects on your own to hone/improve your skills.
She just wasn’t able to understand that and very tactfully but obviously said that I was just making it up because no company would hire an individual based on their school projects/homework assignments.
She then stated that she would be canceling our agreement and going back to the original that she had with everyone else. I told her I wanted to discuss it with her more, but the only options she gave me were very convenient during my work hours.
I even asked for video calls, and she said her only available hours were during my warehouse work hours. Just the way she said it, I could tell she didn’t think much of my choices in work.
I accepted mostly due to exhaustion. But I was this close to getting through schooling with not a single paper below 90%, and I wasn’t about to have this woman ruin it for me now.
So, I met with her at the end of the next class and asked her when the rewrite was due. She printed out a rubric for me to follow along. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind signing it because it has happened to a friend of mine before where she wrote something up following the rubric, only to have the professor accuse her of falsifying a rubric to skate by.
She agreed to sign.
The new rubric for my rewrite stated that it had to be a specific font, single-spaced, a specific font size, references in MLA style, etc., etc., etc. The only thing that jumped out to me was “a minimum of 5 pages.” That seemed a bit strange to me because I’ve always used the subtractive method of writing: word vomit on the page, then cut out what’s redundant.
I was intending on asking her about it and walked to her office; however, she was in there talking about “one of her students” who was pretentious and trying to fit in where she didn’t belong because she was “just a labor class woman.” The person she was talking to didn’t sound all that comfortable, but she insisted on getting her little casual rage rant out, going on about how dare I try to readjust her rewrite plan to suit my needs, that it wasn’t her fault I had to get crappy jobs, that she wasn’t to blame that I clearly didn’t have the brains to do anything else or find a higher paying job.
I didn’t question it, however.
I was told the due date was the end of the semester. She said she’d end the class about a week early, so she would have that week to read everyone’s final papers and submit grades on time, and I was welcome to drop my paper off at any time during that week. I agreed.
Went through the semester and did perfectly fine on the other two papers, within my personal requirements, and settled in for the third.
I was working on that paper as and when I could, emailing sections to myself when I was texting at work or taking a break and pulling out my laptop. Finally, I was done.
I walked into her office with about 18 hours left before grades had to be submitted. She had hitched on a friendly smile and said, “Hey there, I’m glad you came by! I was worried perhaps you didn’t want to rewrite after all.”
“Oh no, I did.
I was just at work is all.”
“Ah yeah, how’s that going?”
“It’s fine, actually. I’m getting promoted soon, so I actually have to go. I just came by to drop off my paper.”
“Oh, of course, of course. The warehouse job?”
“Yup.”
“Mmm.” I swear that d*mn “mmm” would have had me gritting my teeth if I didn’t have what was in my backpack. She holds out her hand while looking at the other papers, sort of with this, “I’m so busy that I don’t even have time to look at the likes of you” vibe.
So, I pulled out my paper from my binder…
…and dropped all thirty-six pages of it in her hand. All single-spaced. All the correct font and font size. Everything within parameters. She stared at it and then at me, and I just stared right back.
“You said a minimum of five.”
“What is this nonsense. I would never assign a minimum page count. It said maximum.”
“If you check the 37th page, you’ll see it’s a copy of the rubric that you signed.” And she flipped to it and realized she hadn’t read her own rubric clearly.
She done screwed up. So, to save face, she started rifling through my pages and nodding and random bits here and there.
“Okay, I’ll give it a read and get your grade in by the end of tonight!”
I just rolled my eyes at her and said, “Look. We both know you don’t have the time to read all that. Give me my A.” We both were glaring daggers at each other, and she finally just gave in and scribbled a 98% on it and said she couldn’t explain away an error-free 36-page paper when hundreds of other students submitted much shorter pages with grammatical errors.
I agreed, packed up my stuff, and told her that I could easily have reported her and used the other professor as evidence of the way she was talking about me behind my back. She got so incredibly pale and tried to call me as I left.
B*tch, I’m Indian. Academics are in my blood. Don’t test me; you’ll fail miserably.
Anyway, I got my A.”
Another User Comments:
“My sister did something similar during middle school.
I don’t think it was pure malicious compliance, though; she just loves writing.
Her teacher had the students write short stories, with a minimum of five pages. My sister got really invested in the story she was writing and went a tad overboard the limit.
The due date came, and most students met the 5-page limit. One girl – an all-around b*tch who bullied my sister a bit – was boasting about how long her story was. “I can’t believe I wrote 17 pages. I doubt anyone here put in as much time as I did.”
So, my sister got up, went to the teacher’s desk, made sure the other girl was looking, and plopped her 76-page story into the turn-in bin.” TFDUDE13
I took that as a personal challenge. I got straight A's on every paper he assigned, no matter how silly the topic. (One was a 5- paragraph essay describing a Jolly Rancher candy using all 5 senses.)
He HATED that he could not find any reason to mark me down, and as far as I know, I am still the only student who ever made an A in his class.
9. You Want Extra Time? You Got Extra Time
“So I supervised a mom-and-pop restaurant for several years that dealt specifically with shrimp and fish. Outside of cleaning and prepping the stuff, the main deal was cooking it in several big ol’ fryers. It’s involved work, but it’s not hard work. Just stick the basket of food in the fryer and set a timer for 3 minutes, and when it comes out just bag it up and give it to the customer.
Easy work, though it gets a bit complicated on let’s say a busy day like a Friday evening.
And when it’s Lent season? The busyness quadruples. So yeah, BUSY. When it’s that busy, you can’t exactly rely on timers as much, because there’s so much food going in and out of the fryers, the temperature fluctuates. You have to eyeball it. I’ll have food burning at 2.5 minutes, or some food taking up to 4 minutes to ‘look right.’
During a Lent Friday night dinner rush, we’ll get hundreds of people coming into a shop that’s probably smaller than a middle-class living room.
The waiting area on the other side of the counter was probably 20ft by 7ft, so it can get pretty cramped. I have my register person taking orders and making bags, and pushing them along the line while my weigh table people can weigh out the food so I can start cooking them. When the order is done, I’d shove it in a bag and yell either the name or the order and someone in the crowd would come grab it and be on their way.
It’s a very intimate setup.
So I got a counter full of about 20+ bags, each bag with a different order, and this one bag gets to me and it said, ‘Cook shrimp an extra minute.’ Now like I said, the fryers cook funny when there’s that much food going in and out, so using my ‘years of shrimp frying experience,’ I extrapolate in my head what the food should look like if cooked for that long under normal conditions, and cook it until it looks like that.
I pull the food up, and I hear an ‘ahem’ from behind me, and I look, and this lady apparently followed her bag down the line, waited for me to drop the food, and set her own timer. She said with a crappy ‘gotcha!’ attitude while looking at her own timer, ‘Yeah, you need to cook that for an extra 45 seconds.’ At this point, her food was already looking too done, but she interrupted my flow and gave me an attitude, so I blurted out, ‘OH, OK,’ and set a timer for 45 seconds and put it on the counter.
I bagged some other people’s food, and I hear the lady behind me again, apparently with a little less condescension to her words this time, ‘Oh, I think it’s done now…’ and I grab the timer that had I set right in front of her, looked at it, and yelled, with an equally condescending crappy ‘gotcha!’ attitude, ‘Oh, but you still have 17 seconds left!’ and smacked it down and waited until the timer went off – 17 seconds can feel like a long time in those kinds of situations.
Finally, the timer went off, I grabbed her food, it looked burnt; I bagged it up and gave it to her and said, ‘Here you go, miss! Enjoy the rest of your day!’ She muttered a thank you and walked off, and my coworkers and customers had a little laugh about it.
Never got a complaint.”
8. Give You A Lot Of Notice For Vacation Time Off? Sure Thing
“I had graduated with a Masters in Engineering degree in the USA. As an international student, I had 90 days to find a job or leave the country.
So, when I received my first job offer (the only one in 2 months), I was very excited and took it to stop the 90-day countdown.
This job was paid minimum wage and was several levels below my qualifications of having a Masters degree.
During this job which I had for about 9 months, a few of my vacation requests were denied with the reason given “not enough notice.”
As this company relied on having inspectors available for emergency projects, the company relied on keeping inspectors employed without pay till a project was called in by a client.
They would rather have inspectors at home without pay rather than them being on vacation.
I needed vacation. It was the month of October, the month of my partner’s birthday. This time I had wised up and asked for vacation 1.5 weeks prior. The week I needed vacation, I followed up with my supervisor. He checked with the project manager, who proceeded to tell me the request was denied as I didn’t give enough notice and also didn’t follow up earlier, so they could make arrangements for my replacement.
I didn’t get the day off to spend with my girl.
She was sad but was mostly ok. But to make up for the birthday, we decided to take a long vacation in December: 2 weeks across the west coast.
I filed and sent my December vacation request in October to my supervisor and project manager. I copied the scheduler and couple of other supervisors in the area who I was assigned to from time to time.
I made sure to follow up every week or two till my December vacation.
I hardly got any responses, while some responses said it’s still far out, and they will check when my vacation comes closer.
Being sure my plan would work this time, we booked the flight, car, and hotels/Airbnb for our vacation by end of November.
December rolls around, I make sure to check verbally and by text message with my supervisors about my vacation request and to remind them I show them the vacation request and the emails I had sent.
All say they will check, but no one got back to me.
By this time, I had been promoted to team leader and would have a direct line of communication with the project manager when I was the acting supervisor. I would casually slip inquiries about my vacation in phone conversations and in emails when it related to my vacation timeframe.
Fast forward to December 20, 2 days before vacation.
The company was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on retraining its entire workforce. They scheduled my training during my vacation. (Yes, everyone knew trainings were going on, but you didn’t get put on the list till and weren’t notified till a few days earlier).
I reached out to my project manager and informed him about the vacation I was going to take and couldn’t attend the training.
He was furious, yelling on the phone that he never received my vacation request, and said I have no option but to attend the training.
To which, I say, “I put the request 2 months in advance, and I even emailed you about it.”
He mentions I never followed up and that I cannot take the vacation.
I mentioned the follow-up emails, the text messages and over-the-phone conversations, and my follow-ups with other supervisors and the scheduler.
He says he will get back to me and hangs up the phone.
I immediately open the work laptop (which I now had as I was promoted) and forward the email conversations.
I get a call from the scheduler. He was angry and says tho never assume a vacation request will be approved just because I submitted it earlier. To which I mention the email from the project manager I received in October which stated that the vacation request needs to be submitted well in advance and needs to be followed up to be granted.
He says my chances of getting the vacation are very slim, and I better attend the training as only trained staff will be kept employed.
Then he hangs up.
I get a call from my project manager about 15 minutes later who is calm by now, asking for my to cancel my vacation.
My partner by this point was furious and heartbroken at the same time. I assure her we will be going on this vacation, even if it means I have to quit my job. She wasn’t thrilled with that either, as this would mean the 90-day counter to get a job would resume, and we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the vacation.
To my project manager, I say canceling my vacation means canceling all the flight bookings and all reservations.
He goes back in rage mode saying how unprofessional I was and that I should have never made reservations till the vacation got approved.
In my mind: Whatever dude, last-minute reservations cost too much to afford and are never convenient.
He says he will call me back.
30 minutes later, he had made arrangements for my training to be in the next class which was tomorrow (2 days till vacation).
It was an accommodation: food, travel, everything paid for training.
I agree, go to the training, get paid for 8 hours for both days of training, free food and everything. The training venue was 150 miles away, and they paid us 0.45 cents per mile.
Come back and go on vacation.
During vacation, I get calls from other schedulers and supervisors to show up at some client, which didn’t need to, but I answered, just to get their reactions.
Some of them were salty and said they would check with the project manager and that I might have to cut my vacation short. I let them know I am across the country, and if they are willing to pay for my losses and flight, I would do that. (Knowing the company didn’t need me that much, I knew they wouldn’t follow through with it.)
Some of my supervisors told me to enjoy my vacation, and they said they would take care of stuff there.
I quit in January.”
7. Log In To Do Work From Home? No Can Do - I'm Not Supposed To Be Working When Off-Call
It’s your rules, Boss, and I surely wouldn’t want to do something that you previously advised me not to do!
“I work in a support role for a global insurance/investment company. Over the last 6 months, I’ve lost many an evening and weekend to unexpected work problems, with not even a thank you, let alone any financial compensation.
As an example, being called at 21:30 and asked if you can log on when you’ve met friends for a drink.
Where a job needs to provide out-of-hours support, a supplement is meant to be paid for being on call, with additional payment if you‘re required to actually work.
My contract is based on annual salary, where additional work might be required for no extra pay/overtime if it’s considered business as usual (BAU) or known in advance (this bit is important). However, the work I’ve been asked to do on weekends/evenings is not BAU.
BAU assumes processes work. If something goes wrong, someone needs to step in to fix it and it’s no longer BAU.
A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with my manager about being paid for being on call. I was told the work I was covering actually fell under BAU, and as I was always given advance notice (I wasn’t) I wouldn’t be paid for being on call.
The manager wouldn’t budge on this, so I made it clear I would not be taking my laptop home/available unless I was given advance notice I might be required to log on, to which my manager agreed.
On this glorious day, I received a call from my manager asking me to log on as some critical data was missing from a file, causing significant problems with several admin systems.
Trying to sound as sincere as I could, I apologized and said as I was not made aware in advance, and I’m not on call, my laptop was left at the office.
This was met by an ‘Ah.’ To which I responded, ‘Good luck, and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
So, after the call to me, my manager rang around and finally got hold of a manager from P Team (Team I provide support to).
Over several hours, between them, they figured out that somehow a group in the system had not been run for the day (controls are in place so this shouldn’t be possible).
To fix it, they had to run the missed group, validate the movements, and then rerun processes to send the data to the admin systems.
After looking into it this morning, this is for Team P to look into how they’ve managed to done goof on such a scale, a ‘near miss’ recorded with governance, who they’ll need to explain it to.
This caused several issues with admin systems and a lot of verifying everything is as it should be this morning.
Following this, a group email has been sent around, to remind people that laptops should be taken home, as in the event of the building being unavailable/inaccessible, recovery plans are for people to use their laptops to work from home/alternate site.
It seems the manager had trouble contacting someone with a laptop able to log on.
I’m positive they’ll have no issues finding someone to drop everything at a moments notice going forward . . .
I fear that should I receive a similar call in the future, I’ll not be in a position to access my laptop. Worklife balance is important, and I’m going to enforce those boundaries. The trouble is, it starts as a one-off here and there, and you do it to be nice with the best of intentions, but give an inch and they’ll take a mile if you’re not careful.
For some of those asking, I‘m already looking at other jobs. Although there are definitely issues with the management in my current area, and employees being taken for granted (not just me), the company as a whole does have a good ethos.”
Another User Comments:
“I really hate when BAU gets abused. Like, if it’s “business as usual” to work your salary employees on weekends, then you need to change what “usual” means or be willing to shell out for people who will put up with that.
Thank goodness my current job is hourly. I hate working overtime, and my boss hates me working overtime, so it works out.” Nik_Tesla
6. I Said It'll Ruin Your Car, But If You Still Want It, Alrightie Then
Don’t say I didn’t warn you in advance.
“Concrete mixers are big, ungainly things.
Trying to maneuver them around a crowded job site is like trying to play miniature golf with a tennis ball. The biggest problem is, of course, other people, specifically other people’s cars. Nobody is going to lug 50 pounds of tools any further than they have to, so if there is an open space near where they want to be, they park there, never mind that it is right next to a sidewalk or directly across from a driveway that a crew is obviously prepping.
It only makes things worse when it’s done by people who should know better (and done intentionally).
So, we’re pumping grout walls in the late afternoon, which already has me in a bit of a mood.
Grout jobs tend to be very slow. Each cinder block has two cells, and the crew pumps the grout into those cells filling them all the way to the top of the wall.
Grout is really just a term for a weak concrete mix that is pumped super wet. It has to be that wet to make it all the way to the bottom of the wall, otherwise, it sticks to the sides of the cinder blocks (or gets caught up on steel reinforcement).
There is a lot of stopping and starting, as well as a lot of moving the pump.
It all takes time, during which that concrete starts to go off and stiffen up.
Things only get worse on a hot day, and the subs will do anything to get more water in the load ( addicts looking for a fix have nothing on grout pumpers eyeballing your last 20 gallons).
As we move to a new street, we find a line of cars parked all along the side of the street we are working on, just far enough apart to take up as much space as possible without leaving enough room to get the pump in there.
Turns out it is another concrete crew setting up to do patios. No problem, we’re all concrete guys here, and they know how it is. We ask them to move.
That I am writing this post tells you what their response was. It turns out they are waiting for their own pump and mixer to show up, and they intentionally blocked the street because they don’t want us to be in their way.
Their crew chief tells us we can wait for them to finish and move on, or we can just work around them.
It’s pretty obvious he expects us to wait.
Waiting is, of course, going to make the concrete go off even more and will rack up standby charges for the customer, but trying to work around their cars is going to mean blocking the street and rolling up the hose every time we move (normally the crew just drags/carries it down the sidewalk, but we can’t do that with the cars in the way).
It would take much longer; depending on when their pump shows up, it might not even save us any time. Still, Todd the pumper rolls his pump right up next to the lead car and feeds his hose out around it.
At the best of times, a concrete pump farts and sputters like a nervous chihuahua, flinging small globs of concrete out the hopper. If the driver isn’t paying attention and accidentally lets the concrete level get too low, the pump sucks in air.
Feeding a concrete pump air is like feeding a hippopotamus Olestra; sh*t’s not pretty, and it gets everywhere. We probably end up moving that pump twice as many times as we have to, but it ensures that every single one of those cars gets to spend some quality time next to the hopper.
We finish with the job and are washing out the pump when the crew chief (whose own concrete and pump still haven’t shown up yet) storms over to complain about all the concrete splatter on their cars.
I point out that we told them we’d be pumping there and asked them to move, but they refused. At this point, he sees that I have a truck wash bucket strapped to my water tank and demands I let him use it to clean off his car.
I tell him that is a terrible idea, smoking lounge on the Hindenburg levels of terrible. The stuff we use is designed to dissolve dried concrete, and it will probably damage his car.
The concrete is fresh enough that he can probably just rinse it off with water. He isn’t having it. He tells me to stop lying because if it doesn’t damage my truck, it won’t hurt his car.
Besides, he’s done this before and knows what he is doing.
Now, keeping a concrete mixer clean is a downright Sisyphean task. No matter how hard you try, chutes overflow, pumps splatter, and plants huff cement powder all over your truck.
There are a variety of chemicals used to clean off concrete, and most of the modern mixes are relatively safe (for something that can dissolve concrete). Our plants provide a phosphoric acid mix (relatively safe isn’t the same as actually safe) to any drivers that need it, so it quite common for there to be a bucket of it stashed somewhere on the truck.
Of course, part of what makes these chemicals safer also makes them somewhat less effective.
That’s why some of us will bring in our own cleaning products to fortify the company mix. These are not the friendly chemicals that will just leave you with a mild chemical burn; My bucket of fun dips down to the good old days of leaded gasoline, asbestos and red dye no. 2. Still, I warned him, and he assured me he knew what he was doing.
Besides, he’s intentionally being a jacka** and expected my sub to pay standby for his convenience. I let him have the bucket.
I half expect him to stop when he pulls the lid off.
The witch’s brew in the bucket smells like Walter White’s bathtub. Somehow, the fact that his nose hairs are curling up like a spider in a flame doesn’t seem to faze him. Brush goes in the bucket.
The brush comes out of the bucket. Brush slams onto the hood of the car with a wet slap. I can only watch in mute horror as the man proceeds to not just clear off the concrete, but bathe his entire hood in hydrochloric acid, rubbing it in to get out all those nasty water spots.
It’s like watching an orphan unwittingly skin his favorite puppy. None of us stick around long enough to see the final result, but it is already apparent that he has scrubbed off the clear coat and is in the process of etching brush marks in the paint.
I don’t want to be anywhere near him when that hood dries out. I let him keep the bucket.”
5. Fail To Give Me Instructions? Okay, I'll Get Paid To Do Nothing
“So, I work this internship as a graphic designer in these trying times. The boss is very, very nice and very approachable, and when I was inducted into my position, he and the marketing head gave me all the creative freedom I needed to complete my work. The marketing head provided me all the content in a spreadsheet, and I chose topics from among them every day.
It was all great. I made about 6-8 designs each day (important for later), and sometimes, the head asked me to make small corrections, and I did. They posted the designs every day.
About two months later the Marketing Head resigns, replaced by a new Head, a woman ready to micromanage and subject me to her whims since I was the only subordinate to her. She asks me to discard the old spreadsheet and gives me a new one.
However, her spreadsheet was acutely inaccessible, very difficult to work on, and lacked details.
I worked around that for a bit. But, soon, it was apparent that she included no instructions (single slide posts or carousels, what info goes in which slide, what colors to use). Every day, I’d deliver my designs, and she’d ask me to redo them from scratch with a new set of instructions, some of them pretty impossible.
For example, she asked me to put a picture of the Constitution of the UK in a post related to the UK. When I’d point out the difficulties, she’d just say something like, “Work it out as I said / Just do it.”
Her list of corrections became long and indecisive, and she acted like she was the last word here. She would post the graphics with an Instagram filter on them which made my head hurt! She even added a vignette to every design.
Then the worst began.
I exhausted the content list she had sent me and asked for some more. I was also having college exams, so there were delays. I talked to her and waited until an hour passed, and I pinged her again. She did send me the new topics but not before reprimanding me for being so late and demanding a pretty complicated design in fifteen minutes. Work productivity fell as I tried to work with her demands.
In a few days, I needed new topics and told her so.
She just said, “I’ll send them. Wait for my instructions.” I waited the whole day with no word from her. The next day, I wrote to her asking for new topics. Now, we all communicated in a Skype group, and before I had tried to DM her, only to be told by her to “follow protocol” and message in the group. So, my first malicious revenge, I asked her everything in the group, including new topics.
A few minutes later, she sends an irate DM saying (direct copy-paste):
“How many times have I repeated myself that if work is required, you shall be informed? Then, what is the reason behind you dropping a message in the group?”
My big malicious compliance sets in. I say okay and leave it there. I spend the day not working. In fact, I spend the next few days doing nothing and sending no messages.
Now, I get paid on a daily basis, so I was literally getting paid by sitting around all day.
Soon enough, my boss and I have a word. He promises to help me out. That’s when he notices how the head hasn’t been posting anything or doing anything worthwhile on the social media handles. He asks me to go ahead and work on old stuff while he has a talk with the head.
A few days later, she’s fired.”
Another User Comments:
“The UK Constitution has never been codified into a single document like the USA has.
The UK one dates back to 1215 and includes (but is not limited to) the Magna Carta, treaties made by the UK with others, various acts of parliament, Supreme Court decisions, and the Monarchy. And various other things.
Further things keep getting added to it.” sergybrin
Reply:
“Exactly this. I ignored her ignorant instructions and put a UK flag instead.” hotash_choudhury
4. Treat Me Like The Least Important Person In The Office? I'll Act Like The Least Important Person
“My dad is a CPA. A total boomer. An awful boomer. He was exempted from serving in Vietnam for medical reasons (rare bone disease) and has zero sympathy for Vietnam Vets who “haven’t gotten their stuff together already.” He thinks mental illnesses (including PTSD) are made up ways for doctors to give you drugs, and anyone who succumbs is “weak.”
For example, I have bipolar, and anyone who knows anything about it knows that I should take my meds as prescribed for the rest of my life.
To him, that means I “chose drugs,” am no better than a h*roin addict, and deserve no respect.
His office and mind are absolutely chaotic. Things are lost, shuffled under stuff. “Where’s that file?” was one of the most common questions asked by any staff. Dad would have the whole office stop to look for an important file for a coworker who swears she gave it to him, but he has no recollection of that happening.
Guess where I find the file? On his desk, over by his adding machine, under a mountain of church charity brochures he’d just ordered.
His email… wow. If I told you he, at any given time, had over 3,000 unread emails, would that surprise you? Most of them were spam or “100 days of prayer” stuff, but there were important emails going unchecked, especially anything I sent him because nothing about me was important enough to even warrant a glance.
The worst part of him making me feel useless was the fact that I was the only one who would notice something like “we’re running out of stationery” and try to order some, only to be told to wait and have to bring it up multiple times until we’re down to our last 2 pieces, and the cheapskate is photocopying our stationery because “no one will notice or care.”
From office supplies, to maintaining our ability to e-file, to arranging everyone’s continuing education for the year (always done December 28 to 30 in a panic), calling vendors to keep our equipment running, cranking out tax returns he should have done already while the clients wait in the lobby to pick it up (I was never fast enough), to consoling or counseling coworkers on how to approach him regarding X, new software installation (yes, there are people in their 20s-40s who don’t know how to install a disk, or open a file, and click “run”)…
I was running myself ragged for the good of his company, but anything I had to say was immediately disregarded.
One thing he was a stickler about: saving copies of “everything.” For example, in 2009, the IRS demanded a copy of a customer’s certain payroll tax form they claimed not to have received from 1996. We hadn’t even prepared the d*mn thing, but we had a copy!
The paper got to be too much, and the filing cabinets in the attic were creating cracks in the ceiling.
We went paperless, and our extremely competent IT guy set us up 3 backup systems. Since we by then had 2 offices, he had two 1TB hard drives that every 2 seconds, exchanged data, so if a tornado blew away a whole building, we’d still have everything from both buildings in the other building. Another backup was kept in the cloud and another on a server in a state across the country.
One day, I had been yelled at once again until I started to cry, then was berated because of all the drugs I’m doing because HE certainly didn’t do anything to make me that emotional.
“Either go home and cry or shut up and do your job.” And if he had to remind me of something, it was because I was on drugs and not because he gave me 27 things to do standing in my office while I was clearly eating on my lunch break.
On January 5 one year, I got an email from our IT Guy (who had CC’d Dad but knew to include me) that our 1TB backups had enough space to last maybe 2 days and that he could upgrade us in time to prevent disaster.
I called over to Dad (our offices were adjacent, and our voices carry) that IT Guy sent a really important email. Dad replies, “Uh-huh” in a way that tells me he’s not paying a bit of attention to what I was saying.
So, I forwarded my email to him and changed the subject to, “URGENT-IMPORTANT-PENDING DISASTER.” And gave him no further reminders after that. (Not my job.
I was supposed to shut up, remember?)
So, he didn’t read either email. Even with my subject line, my email didn’t strike him as one he should read.
On January 8th, the crap hit the fan. We lost everything. Our IT guy dropped everything and got everything up to December 27 from the cloud backup. The server in the other state said it would cost a $7000 “rush fee” and 3 weeks to fully restore everything the way it was.
Well, W2s and numerous payroll reports, sales tax filings, and other government deadlines occur in January.
So, we didn’t have 3 weeks. My coworkers had to redo or reconstruct everything they’d done from December 27 to January 8, which was a LOT. Anything we had completed, scanned, and shredded was gone.
A major audit was underway, and several crucial spreadsheets had disappeared. The worker that had prepared them did, so on his last 2 days before moving to another firm, December 26 and 27.
All in all, our IT guy was paid about $12,000 to spend three 14-16 hour days (one was his Sabbath) rescuing what he could.
Over $10,000 in overtime pay. And we still had missing stuff.
This was concerning to clients affected because to them “data loss” = “data breach.” Nobody would ever hack into our system because our IT Guy would consider it a personal failure if we were successfully hacked. Our data was safe from everyone but Dad.
Dad never suspected me of anything. Had I pointed out that I had reminded him only once, since he thought I should only have to be told something once, he would have berated me for “sabotaging” the firm.
While he wouldn’t listen to me, it was my job to make sure he did his job? Don’t think so.
Eventually, the harassment became too much, and I had a nervous breakdown and quit. I do food delivery for a living because something in me is broken, and I don’t think I could hold down a real job anymore. My mental health has vastly improved since I left that place, and I maintain my credential and offer free random tax advice on Reddit to stay sharp.
And before all the comments start about what a crapshow of a CPA office this must be, they are all like that. The coworker who quit in December came back to us the next year and said that even with $10,000 CRM software supposedly tracking workflow at the 3rd largest firm in our state, “Where’s the so-and-so file?” was the #1 question on a daily basis, and they spent as much time looking for stuff as they did doing actual work. Every worker we’ve had with previous experience working for another CPA agreed, files got lost. All. The. Time.”
3. Want Us To Stay Out Of Your Way? Your Wish Is Our Command
“I was a general troubleshooter for my company. My job involved a lot of traveling to different clients we support. My area of work is in Ontario, Canada (where I am based out of) and some of the nearby States in the United States (New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Pennsylvania.) I did most of my traveling by car since my schedule can change quite quickly and flying can become very expensive.
I had one colleague who is technically my subordinate but we have a very good working relationship and would often handle calls independently of each other only checking in by phone once a week and in-person once a month/when necessary.
A little over a year ago, I get an email calling me to the head office in New York City for a meeting with the CEO and the board of directors regarding my job.
I check with my colleague and he got the same email. So we make our travel plans and meet in New York City the following week. We have dinner together the night before our meeting and can’t figure out between us what the issue is about (it’s rare to get summoned to head office and rarer for things to be so vague).
When we go into the meeting the next day we are informed that the company is dividing our department between the US and Canada and that there would be a new person to deal with the US clients and we were to restrict ourselves to Canada.
Both my colleague and I were a little shocked at this since neither of us has even heard this was being discussed. I asked who the new person for the US was and we then learned that it was a new hire that the CEO had taken a special interest in.
Trying to be of good spirit I offered to train the new person, as there are many realities of the job that are not in the job description.
CEO accepted and then brought in the new hire. In walks a young lady who looks about 23 years old and wears an expression that she knows everything. She sits at the table and immediately makes it very clear that she wants nothing to do with us.
CEO – Bob, New Hire – Karen, My Colleague – Jim.
Bob: ‘Welcome Karen, we have just informed OP and Jim about the change in structure and they are willing to give you the support you need to get yourself started.’
Karen and Bob both look at me.
Me: ‘Glad to have you aboard Karen, I think both Jim and I have a lot of experience to share with you and we are happy to do so, perhaps it would be better in a separate meeting so we don’t take the board’s time.’
Karen: ‘Thank you all.
I have a lot of ideas about how I can streamline our department and new policies I can introduce that should save the company a lot of money in expenses.’
I’m very confused at this point.
Karen is speaking as though she is my supervisor and that is distinctly not what Bob spoke to us about. I can see some of the board members giving strange looks at this as well.
Me: ‘Bob perhaps I misunderstood the new roles here. Would you please clarify?’
Bob: ‘Sure, Karen is the new head of your department and both you and Jim will answer directly to her.’
Board member: ‘That isn’t what we discussed or approved as a board.
We weren’t fully convinced of dividing the department but this is completely against what we discussed.’
Karen: ‘What did you discuss then?’
Board Member: ‘That your department would be divided between the US and Canada. OP and Jim would remain north of the border and you would run the US.’
Karen: ‘That’s not what I was told but I can work with that. As long as these two stay out of my way.’ (Indicating me and Jim)
Jim and I are both shocked and insulted to be spoken of in this manner.
We are both very good at our jobs and before today have never seen this woman in our lives.
Bob: ‘That settles it, OP, effective immediately, you and Jim are to have nothing to do with Karen. Do not interfere with her work at all. You are both to restrict yourselves to working within Canada only.’
With that, he ended the meeting and left the room with Karen close behind him.
Jim and I sat there stunned for a moment and some of the board members came up to us to express their shock and sympathies about this. I had enough presence of mind to ask if we would get a written directive of this change and was assured we would.
Sure enough both Jim and I got emails with the new directive from Bob by the end of the day.
So after sending an email to all our US-based clients advising them of the change and giving them the contact information of Karen, Jim and I made our way back to Toronto and reorganized ourselves for working within Ontario only. This meant much less traveling for us so it gave us more room to breathe.
Within a week I was getting complaints from our US-based clients that Karen was not answering emails and missing appointments.
I forwarded these emails to Karen and copied the entire board including Bob.
Another week later I get a phone call from Karen who sounds frantic but will not admit she needs help. She makes pleasant conversation and then asks how I would handle a particular type of situation. I tell her I’m really not interested in discussing work as that might be seen as interfering in her work.
Later that evening I get a call from Jim telling me he had the same conversation with Karen and handled it the same way.
By the end of that month, I get a call from Bob asking if I will take over the entire department again.
I politely tell him no since I didn’t want to interfere with Karen and her role. For the next 3 months, I’m getting emails and phone calls from US clients asking if they can have me back as their contact.
This confirms an idea that had been in my head.
Jim and I had actually grown our client base in Ontario since restricting ourselves here. So I had lunch with Jim one day and asked him if he wanted to go into businesses with me as partners starting our own consulting firm. We couldn’t provide everything our current company provided but we could provide a high degree of professionalism for our specific field and it seemed we had a ready-made client base.
By the end of the lunch, he was on board and we started the necessary steps to get ourselves set up.
As soon as we were clear we both submitted our resignations with explanations of why. The next time clients contacted us we told them we no longer worked for the company. When they asked if we still worked in the field, we told them we had established our own firm and what services we offered.
A month later, we had 60% of our US clients on board, and since the former company had no Canadian support at all, we had 80% of the Canadian clients.
Within 2 months, we had 80% of the US and 90% of the Canadian clients.
In the year since that time our new company has grown enough that we have hired 7 new consultants. Jim and I find ourselves doing more office work than road work, and a lot of client courting. Our old company has had to stop offering in-person troubleshooting (what our department did) and Bob was fired by the board. No idea what happened to Karen”
2. Have To Pay A Fee For Someone Else's Mistake? Here's A Loophole That'll Make The IRS Pay The Fee Too
“First, you have to appreciate the kind of guy Nathan is.
Brilliant engineer/crazy person. Nathan likes rules and Nathan doesn’t give up when he knows how things should work. I like to get him to tell the story whenever we’re together because he doesn’t even see why it’s funny – it’s just how he deals with all problems.
Nathan was like if you saw Sysiphus and you thought, maybe I should try to stop him.
But then one day, the boulder was on top of the hill. And you go and ask Sysiphus how he did it and he replied, ‘it was simple… I just kept pushing it forever and ever, and eventually… the mountain gave up.’ A real Grade 19 Bureaucrat.
He just works systems through problems no matter how daunting they should seem.
Until one day, when Nathan’s unstoppable force met an immovable object.
I came into work and saw checks and envelopes spread all over his desk. And Nathan filling them out with the kind of grin Steve Buscemi might have crossing names off a list with a tube of lipstick.
I ask him about it and he calmly starts explaining that he’s ‘having trouble with the IRS.’ I probe a little deeper since that in no way explains more than one check or envelope and he starts telling me about how last year during tax season he was in China for work so he started filling his taxes out early while at his parents’ house.
He owed a little but left before he could mail it in. But he remembered while in China and (broke through the firewall in order to) paid it online. But then his parents, thinking he forgot, wrote a check for him and mailed his taxes in too.
So now his taxes would be paid twice. So they said don’t worry about it, we’ll cancel the check.
Well, it turns out that NYS IRS has a canceled check fee of something like $40.
And they sent Nathan a bill and penalty for the $40… That was it. That was the whole story. A $40 fee.
Nathan, why do you have 20 checks on your desk? ‘Oh, well after I explained to them what was wrong with the fee they didn’t get it.’ So Nathan spent the next 4 weeks escalating the issue to the point that he got a case officer – a real, live human agent on the phone with a case number.
Nathan started by asking for the agent to spell his name – and politely to demonstrate that he was where he said he was by asking how the weather was and how the ‘drive in’ had been that day. He then asked for his agent’s manager – got their name and exchanged some pleasantries.
He explained that his parents wrote the check but that he was the one being charged the fee.
The agent explained that this was the policy of the IRS – ‘All canceled checks will result in a $40 fee.’ The agent and Nathan went in rigorous compliant circles for hours exploring the rules. Nathan then calmly confirmed that:
It is the policy of the IRS to allow just anyone to write a check on behalf of anyone else? ‘Yes, sir that is fine.
You just need to indicate the name and zip code of the account.”
It is the policy of the IRS to charge a $40 cancellation fee to the person whose account is indicated on the check? ‘Yes sir, that is the policy in NYS.’
This means that – and I swear to God he actually asked the agent this hypothetical question on the phone, “I (Nathan) could write a $10 check and indicate it’s for you (Mr.
“Agent” at 1234567 Schenectady, NY) and cancel it resulting in a $40 fee for you with absolutely no penalty or recourse to me?’ The equally compliant and rule-minded agent replied, ‘Yes sir, I guess you could.’
So, that’s what Nathan did.
And that’s what was doing with 20 checks on his desk and what he meant by ‘IRS trouble.’ He was following through, sending checks to the IRS addressed to pay the taxes of the agent and the agent’s manager, so Nathan could cancel them, causing the agent and his manager to owe the IRS a fee for each canceled check.
He was exploiting the same flaw in the system in which he was caught to essentially extort the IRS agents.
I laughed about this for weeks after.
And then, 3 or so weeks later… I’ll be damned if he didn’t receive a letter from the IRS:
“Sir, we understand the point you’ve made. Please consider your fee waived and I hope we can put this behind us.”
Another User Comments:
“It is a silly situation, but I will say, this approach most definitely isn’t going to be a catalyst to change policy, and he was simply burning taxpayer dollars playing this game. It’s funny, don’t get me wrong, but a waste of resources already stretched thin.” underdonk
1. Want Me To Make Fancy Coffees? Forget The Other Drink Orders
You said you wanted to sell more coffee, so…
“A long time ago, I worked for a chain of posh pubs in London.
The one I worked at was in Maida Vale, a fairly wealthy neighborhood with several celebrity residents (Jude Law, for example).
Anyway, I was an assistant supervisor in the pub and was always responsible for the Sunday afternoon shift, which for those of you who are familiar with the UK, knows means Sunday roast was a big deal.
And we had a really good roast with all the fixings, and we’d get really, really busy on Sundays with all of our tables full with people who’d come to eat and drink for half a day at least.
For whatever reason, my manager had decided that, despite how busy we are on Sundays, that we only needed two people on the shift.
Again, for those of you who are familiar with UK pubs, everyone typically orders at the bar, but it’s table service, so the other person and I on shift were responsible for staffing the bar, pouring drinks, taking food orders, but also taking out the food, taking out cutlery and sauces, restocking, cleaning glasses, and bussing tables.
You’re essentially a cashier, bartender, and wait staff all at once.
And then there was the one thing I hated the most – coffees.
We had this old, slow, partially broken espresso machine which none of us had been properly trained on. Making coffee on it took AGES. The worst was that it would take so long that food orders would go out more slowly, and a queue would form at the bar of people wanting to order drinks.
I hated having to leave customers waiting at the bar who just wanted a quick pint or soda while I fussed with the stupid coffee machine for 15 minutes.
We all hated the goddamned coffee machine and complained about it constantly. Luckily, however, demand for coffee wasn’t that high at the pub – given that it’s traditionally a venue for drinking alcoholic beverages. But then, one day, corporate management announced that they wanted all their pubs to sell more coffee.
In fact, they had quotas of coffee sales they wanted us to meet, and they wanted us to ask EVERY guest whg was placing a food order if they wanted a fancy coffee drink like we were some sort of Starbucks or something.
But they still didn’t give us a new, proper machine, and they still provided us with exactly zero training on making espresso drinks.
For the most part, on Sundays, I ignored this edict.
We were so slammed just with regular beverages and getting out Sunday roasts that adding obligatory coffees into the mix would be suicide.
Then one Sunday, my manager was in the pub doing paperwork, and pulled me aside and said that he noticed our sales of coffee weren’t what they should be, particularly on Sundays. He noted that Sunday afternoon should be our best day for coffee sales because everyone’s in for roasts.
He then perched himself next to the bar to work on his paperwork, and I could kinda tell he was doing this so he could monitor whether I was up-selling coffees or not.
I tried to warn him. I said, ‘You know, with only two people on shift, when the rush comes we’re going to be really slammed. If I’m doing coffees as well as drinks and food service, there will be a significant delay.’
‘Whatever, I’ll jump on if things get out of hand,’ he said.
So, I decided he should see how crazy Sundays get, and just what adding coffees to the mix would do. As usual on a Sunday, a trickle of people start filling into the bar around 11 am, but by noon it’s already two-deep at the bar, all the tables are full, and there are two full lines of food tickets with multiple plates of starters, mains, and dessert.
It’s now that I and the other bartender start selling the coffees hard. We’re telling everyone, ‘You know what would go well with that, a nice cappuccino, or maybe a latte!’
And they’re all agreeing with me. I wait until I have about a dozen coffee orders all lined up, and I tell the other staff member that he’s on the bar and food service, and I go over to start preparing them with our old, slow, crappy espresso machine.
It’s at this point that things go a bit haywire. Food starts coming down the food lift, and so the bartender is sprinting back and forth between the bar, the food lift, and the tables.
The crowd at the bar is growing and becoming restless. They just want some beer, FFS! I’m going as fast as I can with the coffees, but honestly, it takes a really long time.
Then my manager looks up and sees the angry mob at the bar, my colleague running around like a crazy person, and asks me ‘Why aren’t you pouring drinks?!’
I show him my tickets, ‘I have 20 fancy coffee orders!’
The manager decides to take over the coffees so I can go back to the bar, so I double down on the coffees. I’m getting people to order mochas, flat whites (I don’t even know what that is, really, but now we sell them!), Irish coffees, coffee with shots of Baileys or Amaretto.
I’m going wild. And my manager is visibly sweating and frustrated and cursing at our terrible coffee machine. And then the best thing happens. We run out of coffee cups and saucers. He’s now making coffees in some Styrofoam cups he found in a closet. He’s very close to making a cappuccino in one of those fancy Belgian beer goblets. And then finally, he comes up to me, all angry, ‘Stop offering people fancy coffee drinks.’
‘But you said…’
‘No more coffee drinks.’
He never asked me to up-sell coffee ever again!”
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