People Tell Their "But It's What You Wanted" Revenge Story
15. Is It Clean Enough Now?
“For a bit of background, my parents are a bit older than most parents are when having a child. I was adopted at the age of 5 weeks, and at that time, my dad was 42 and my mom was 37. This is important to note, because my dad is the youngest child in his family, and his youngest sister (he was the only boy out of 4 kids), was 16 when he was born.
So that being said, my aunts are all very old now, and they aren’t the friendly old lady types, sadly. They’ve always been greedy, nosy, and love to gossip and spread rumors about the in-laws of the family. My mom has gone through a lot of torture because of them (which is the case with this story), and now so have my husband and me. Two of the three have gotten nicer over the past couple of years, but the middle sister, who is in her 80s now I believe, has always been the worst and continues to be to this day.
This story is about her. I’ll call her Rosie.
Aunt Rosie has lived right next door to my parents all of my life, and to convey how nosy and how much of a horrible jerk she is, I’ll give a few examples of the outrageous things she’s done in the past before I start the story of one of my many petty acts of revenge against her.
Rosie has, on multiple occasions, crept up to our kitchen window to peek in.
Since that window is higher up due to the sink below it, she has always gone to that one, since it’d be harder for anyone to notice her peering in from below, unless they were using the sink. More times than I can count, she’s scared the heck out of me while I was washing dishes. She’s too old to do this now, but she would creep up and I’d usually catch her movement in my peripheral.
I’ve broken a few dishes due to her window jump scares. Still, she topped that level of privacy invasion several times. Unbelievably, during a hurricane one year, she was so intent about seeing how badly my mom’s flowers were damaged (she LOVES to rub that kind of thing in my mom’s face just to get her upset), that she WALKED TO OUR HOUSE, and stood outside in the downpour and high winds.
If I hadn’t noticed her and my dad hadn’t gone out to make her come inside, she would have been crushed by a pecan tree. Not five minutes after she came in, it fell across the spot she had been standing and onto our roof. Crazy, right? Well, instead of being shaken up by the fact that she came so close to death by tree, she was just amused and rubbed in the fact that our sunroom roof was messed up, as well as bringing up my mom’s ruined flowers.
There are so many stories like that, but this should be enough to convey what kind of person she is.
So Rosie is obsessive about cleanliness as well, and our house was usually a bit messy when growing up. My dad worked long shifts, my mom had been diagnosed with MS and had battled cancer for three years on top of that, and though I did chores, I could only do so much more whilst going to school.
Of course, Rosie would take any chance she could to come in and point out any mess, sometimes just letting herself in when she thought no one was home so she could later rub it in. She’d often insist on “helping out,” just so she could go gossip to my dad’s other sisters about how “worthless” my disabled mom was or talk about how “lazy of a daughter” I was.
Unlike the other nieces and nephews in the family, she loves to speak poorly of me, because I was adopted, and now because I’m the “black sheep” of the family (I’m a Wiccan and a nerd who doesn’t conform to the preppy, snobbish behavior that the rest of my cousins have).
So, one day, she came over (and actually rang the doorbell instead of just waltzing in), and I answered the back door.
At the time, I was probably 13 or 14 years old. She had brought us some homecooked food, as she did quite a bit. That SEEMS like a sweet gesture, but in reality, she’d usually do it so that she could brag about what a good Christian she was and how she helped such a poor family.
My dad has always tried to stay on good terms with her though, so I had been instructed to accept the food at the door while my mom napped and my dad was at work.
It’s important to note that my mom had just been diagnosed with MS a month or so before this incident.
I made a bit of awkward small talk with Rosie, and then was saying goodbye, when she caught the door and stuck her head into our back porch (just to clarify, it’s a closed-in porch).
I was already angry with her that day, as it had come around to us earlier in the week that she had been telling people that my dad should just leave my mom because of her decline in health.
So I felt my blood boil as I watched her silently survey the entire room with a look of disgust. She didn’t speak for around a minute, just stood there staring at everything. Finally, she pulled her head back and looked at me.
In the most condescending and disgustingly sweet voice she could muster, she said, “OP, how about you clean this porch today?”
Now, I admit, the back porch was always the messiest room in the house.
The far side of the room was cluttered with boxes that we didn’t have proper storage space for, we would temporarily put trash bags by the door, and there was always quite a bit of dirt that constantly got tracked in from the garden several times a day. This particular day, we hadn’t cleaned up the porch for about a couple of weeks, so it was worse than usual.
Even still, I did NOT want her sticking her nose in our business and bossing me around in my own home, especially since I was helping take care of my mom too.
I had a lot on my plate. It was on a Saturday, and I just wanted to relax, and cleaning would have been the farthest thing from relaxation. I was stressed out and I wanted a day to just be a kid.
I tried to smile and said, “Oh don’t worry, Aunt Rosie, I’ll clean this up tomorrow.” It wasn’t a lie; I had already planned to clean the porch the next day, but I desperately wanted some time to myself to unwind before tackling the mess.
Of course, she refused to listen to me.
“Oh, but wouldn’t your dad feel so nice coming home tonight and seeing how clean it will be? Having to help your mama takes quite a toll on him with the amount of work he already does. It’s not easy on him having a crippled wife… So it’s YOUR responsibility now to do most of the cleaning, right?” She attempted to sound solemn as she spoke like that about my mother too.
Now she had angered me even more.
She knew how sensitive of a subject my mom’s condition was, and she knew how badly I wished to make my dad happier with everything he had been taking on. And knowing that she had been telling everyone that my dad was “suffering” having to deal with my mom and that he should leave her, it was difficult to hold my temper and force myself to be polite.
I somehow managed to calmly say, “No, it’s not easy on any of us, as you so well know.” With the way I said this, I made it clear to her that I knew what she’d been saying behind our backs.
“You’re very right. It is my responsibility. I’ll clean this up today then.”
Her expression briefly changed at my implication that I knew of her nasty gossip, but she continued on as if I hadn’t called her out. She sticks her head in again and ‘tuts’ at the mess.
“Oh no, this would take you several hours to properly clean on your own! How about I help later today? It’d be no trouble! This just must be cleaned up today!”
Now, I could barely endure a 5-minute conversation with the woman, much less a couple of hours.
Again, I told her that I’d handle it myself, but it was obvious that she wasn’t going to back off, as she kept going on about everything that needed to be done.
So I finally agreed, though I had already decided that she wasn’t going to win this. She’d only go talk crap to the rest of the family if I actually had her help, and I knew that I would definitely snap if I had to be around her and hear her passive-aggressive comments about my mom for that long.
She gave me a large satisfied grin and told me she’d be back in three hours to help me.
If she was so troubled by the mess in MY HOUSE and wanted me to make it spotless ASAP, I’d happily do it… Right away. Without her. After all, she said it was my responsibility after all.
This is so bizarre, I know, but I knew that if she were to come back to find I had already cleaned the porch without her now, she’d be furious. She wouldn’t get to rub anything in, she’d be unable to hold it over our heads, and in her eyes, she’d have lost at her own petty game.
I would be getting her back in a weird way for the things she had said about my parents. She was not going to mess with us over an untidy old porch.
Before her insistence to “help” me, she had only said that I should tidy up. So I chose to comply with her original demand. As I type this out, I’m realizing more and more how ridiculous this was, but she’s crazy as heck, and this really is something that she would be angry about.
So, as soon as the hag started her walk back home, I jumped into action, letting my anger fuel me.
My mom stopped me for a moment as I passed by her lying on the couch. She asked me what was going on, and I explained the situation to her. She was livid that Rosie was, yet again, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.
My mom had been so upset by Aunt Rosie’s gossip, and I knew she did not want to see her, but I asked her if she could possibly answer the door when Rosie came back.
My mom hesitated but finally nodded, saying she would like to see the look on the old jerk’s face.
So for the next two hours, I cleaned as fast as I possibly could, making sure not to leave a SPOT of dust or dirt. I was already worn out that day from helping my mom out so much after school each day. I was straining myself from running around so much when I finally finished, but I didn’t care.
I had been scared that Rosie would show up before I was done, so I was just smug that I had beat her. Now I just had to wait.
Right on time, Rosie rings the doorbell an hour later. There’s a little set of windows looking out onto the porch from the kitchen, so I quickly hid by them so I could discreetly peek out at her at an angle where she wouldn’t be able to see me.
My mom took a deep breath to calm her nerves, grabbed her cane, and went to answer the door. I had told her what to say ahead of time if she was asked where I was. The conversation went something like this:
Mom: “Hello Rosie, what brings you back by today?”
Rosie is silent for a long while, and I take a peek out to see her leaning forward into the porch, her mouth is agape, and she’s looking the entire room over with angry wide eyes.
She has a VERY distinct tone to her voice when she’s livid and she couldn’t hide it when she finally responded. I ducked back down and just listened.
Rosie: “Well, OP and I were SUPPOSED to clean this porch up together today!”
Mom: in a very innocent voice “Oh, well, she seems to have already done it.”
Rosie: “I can see that!” irritated sigh “I offered my help, but I guess my help isn’t wanted!”
Mom: “I’m sorry you feel that way.
I think she wanted to just get it done quickly since it’s Saturday and she has plans later.” (I had no such plans, lol) “And you did tell her that she should do it today, right? It was her responsibility, right?”
Rosie: stutters a bit “Well, yes… But then I told her I’d be back over to help out! She said nothing to me about having plans! I walked all the way back over here to help!”
Mom: “I’m sorry Rosie, but she did say she could do it on her own, didn’t she?”
Rosie: “Yes, but I thought y’all would appreciate my help! I thought she would appreciate my help! Where’s she at now, huh? I’d like to speak to her!”
Mom: “She’s taking a shower right now.
She was going to help me clean this up tomorrow anyway, but since you insisted she do it today, I guess she just did as you told her to. She’s old enough now to do this on her own anyway, but we do all appreciate everything that you do for us, Rosie.”
Rosie: “Well yes, but I-“
Mom: ” Oh! And thank you for the food earlier by the way!”
Rosie: “Oh…
Yes, you’re welc-“
Mom: in an overly exhausted voice cuts Rosie off “I’m SO sorry, but I need to go sit down because I’m crippled, as you know, but thank you for your offer. We appreciate the thoughtfulness! Have a good day, Rosie!”
Rosie began to say something, but then quickly realized that my mom was closing the door on her, so she muttered a strained, “You too,” and the door closed in her face.
My mom came back in, and we quietly stood there until we could see Rosie stomping home in a huff, and then we looked at each other and burst out laughing.
I know this is a very strange malicious compliance/petty revenge, but with someone like Rosie, it really ruffled her feathers lol.
She told my dad later that she was “disappointed” in me, which only made me laugh more. She didn’t come back over for about a month, which was an even bigger bonus for us. It felt so good to stand up to her like that, even though it wasn’t direct, and it cheered my mom up too lol”
14. I Specifically Told You I Wouldn't Be Able To Run This Fundraiser
“This happened back in September of 2006 when I was sixteen years old. I was a Girl Scout and our Troop Leader basically ran the troop like it was a doctoral-level university course and made us (girls aged from 12 to 16) run most of the fundraisers to “teach us responsibility.” Well in September, we were going to be selling steeply discounted magazine subscriptions through the organization as a last-ditch effort to earn funds for a trip to London the Troop would be going on in April of 2007.
I had no intention of participating in the fundraiser since I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sell any magazine subscriptions nor would I be going on the London trip. However, the leader had other ideas and put me in charge of the fundraiser, meaning I would be responsible for handing out the packets to the three girls who weren’t at the meeting, and I would have to tally up all the sales at the end of the fundraiser.
I immediately protested the decision by our militant leader and told her: “I won’t be able to run the fundraiser as I have academic obligations on our meeting night for the entire duration of the fundraiser.” The leader sneered at me and said: “What academic obligations could you possibly have for the next five Friday nights?” Me: “I’m in my high school’s concert band, and weather permitting, we’re scheduled to play at our school’s soccer and/or football games.
Each of the performances counts as a full test grade, and missing just one performance will dock my grade a full letter.” She sneered again and told me: “An extra-curricular activity like band isn’t an “academic obligation.”” Me: “But ma’am, for me, concert band is an actual class like math or science and I get graded for it. And I’m going to be studying music in college so…” Leader: “I don’t care; you’re still going to run the fundraiser.” A few of the other girls offered to run the fundraiser instead, but the leader was adamant that I would be the one running the fundraiser and she snapped: “No, she needs to step up and take some responsibility for a change.
Even if she’s not coming to London with us.”
So cue malicious compliance number one. I reluctantly agreed to run the fundraiser, and as luck should have it, the weather was perfect and clear for those next five Friday nights, so instead of going to my Girl Scout meetings, I was sitting in the stands of my high school’s football field jamming with the rest of the high school band.
The night I went back to my Girl Scout meetings was the night I was supposed to turn in all the paperwork for the fundraiser as it was due the following Monday. And well, I had nothing to turn in and my leader was furious with me. In front of everyone (and a few of the parents) she screamed: “Thanks to you, the fundraiser failed!” And I reminded her: “When you put me in charge, I told you I wasn’t going to be able to run it because of school obligations, and you still decided to put me in charge.
So I did the responsible thing and put my academics before my “extra-curricular” activities. This fundraiser didn’t fail because of me; it failed because of you.” After that, she looked like she took a bite out of a lemon, handed me her cell phone, and said: “Call your mother to come pick you up. You’re no longer a member of this troop. I’ll change your status to Juliette (a Girl Scout who isn’t a member of a troop) when I get home tonight.” Before I left, she sarcastically sneered: “Good luck trying to find another troop to join.”
Cue Malicious Compliance number two.
After school the following Monday, I called the Girl Scout Counsel office for my region and asked if there were any Cadet/Senior troops in the county I lived in, and as it turned out, there was actually one in my hometown. I requested the leader’s contact information and called her as soon as I got off the phone with the council office. I explained my situation to her and if it would be alright if I joined her troop.
She said, “Of course!” And gave me the troop number and troop crest. So later that week, I went to the Girl Scout Counsel store to pick up my new troop’s insignia. And that Friday night, I joined my new troop. But it doesn’t end there.
Before I left that first meeting, my new leaders asked my mother and me if I wanted to join them for a Girl Scout seminar that was going to be held the next morning at a local hotel.
I agreed to go and the Leader added: “Just so you know, your last troop leader is going to be there. Is that okay? I don’t know if you want to see her so soon after what happened.” I grinned and said: “Oh, I definitely want to see her.”
The aftermath that ensued that sunny but chilly Saturday morning was glorious. Once my troop Leaders, the other two girls from my troop and I arrived at the venue we were led to a room where my former troop leader, her daughter, and another girl from my former troop were in.
Turns out they were also participating in the opening flag ceremony. The look on the leader’s face when I entered the room wearing the full insignia for another Cadet/Senior troop just a week after she kicked me out of her troop was priceless. She stiffly said a curt “hello” while the two girls were like: “We’re so glad you were able to join a new troop! And none of us blame you for what happened with the fundraiser.” And to top it all off guess who ended up leading the opening flag Ceremony because she was the highest “ranking” girl taking part? Yup, yours truly.”
13. Change My Schedule? If You Say So
“A few years ago, I was working for a small company that had two office locations (office A and office B). Each office had its own office manager; let’s pretend their names are Susan and Ashlee respectively. Ashlee was a new manager and Susan has been there for over 10 years. They’re both terrible, but at least Susan was competent at her job. For some reason, Ashlee did not like me.
I think it was because I was the youngest and she had to prove something as a new manager and I was the easy target. Her management style was horrible. She never helped out and would always micromanage us. She walked around the small office announcing she was “the boss” every 5 minutes without doing any work. The staff and I like to say, “Whatever you say, Boss” behind her back when she told us to do something.
So my schedule rotates between the two offices. The second week of Ashlee being “my boss,” she tells me that she was going to switch my schedule and have me work at office B full time with her. I know she just did this to keep me under her thumb, it made no sense whatsoever. I had another job offer lined up and only told Susan and the other staff about it, so I played along.
I said, “Ok, you’re the boss.”
The next day, I showed up at office B, but my regular schedule meant I should have been working at office A that day. Mind you, this is a small company with 5 staff per office. So when one of us is sick or on vacation, the work gets very overwhelming. Susan is frantically calling me on the office phone and asking where I was and why I didn’t call to tell her I wasn’t coming in? I told her that Ashlee had switched my schedule and I did the innocent voice, “Oh, she didn’t tell you? Did she at least update the main schedule in our system? Do you want to speak to her on the phone?”
I called Ashlee over and handed her the phone, and all I hear is very loud inaudible yelling from Susan.
(Susan does not like Ashlee; there was a power struggle and Susan wanted to manage both offices.) I couldn’t stop smiling from their conversation. All Ashlee said on the phone was, “Yes, ok, ok. I understand, yes.” When she hangs up I asked Ashlee slyly, “Oh, you didn’t inform Susan of my schedule change? Next time you should have these changes approved by OUR boss and you do know where the main schedule is right?” She just walked away…I was having a field day!
An hour later, Susan called again to ask if I would be willing to drive over to office B.
I said I would, but since I’m on company’s time now, the owner would have to compensate my time commuting and gas mileage. I know the owner was a total cheapskate so he would never agree to it. Susan asked to speak to Ashlee again and the second phone call was even funnier.
I’m not sure what happened afterward because I left the office for my new job two weeks later. Maybe this was rude of me, but I had an offer before Ashlee was hired. So only the owner, Susan, and staff knew I was leaving. On my last day, the owner asked Ashlee if she interviewed anyone yet to replace me. The look on her face was priceless. She had no idea.”
12. Try Not To Think? Okay, I Won't
“I signed up for a startup job that said they needed my skills earlier this year.
During the interview, they advertised themselves as:
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Experienced businessmen trying something new
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Needing someone with my skills because they had no one with that kind of experience
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Open to changing as the market did
I said I wanted to learn more about some of the tangentially related aspects of my field to grow, and they said it would be a good fit.
So I took the job for 2 quarters of the year, with a set exit point.
A very important note: my pay was coming from a third party with interest in both the startup and development of people from my city. So while I was their “employee,” I was pretty explicitly there for the learning experience instead of the pay.
This company was proposing a tech solution for restaurants.
I started there right as the racial tensions in the US reached their peak. I meet with my new boss, excited to get started and they let me know they made a last-minute hire of a friend, part-time, who’s going to be my supervisor. I was paid for full-time hours for a pretty demanding, constantly shifting environment but my direct supervisor was only going to be working 15 hours a week.
The person who hired me/founder says that he’ll be largely unavailable to me because of how busy he’ll be, and I should refer to the new supervisor instead. So there goes that learning environment I signed up for. Strike one.
I meet with my new supervisor, and before literally anything else comes out of his mouth: “I know things are pretty hard for you people right now, so just know that I understand if your work is lower quality than it usually would be.” Ah yes, judging me by the color of my skin before you know literally anything else about me.
Strike number two.
Next meeting with supervisor and boss, and they want to donate to BLM. “OP, can you write a report on what charities we should donate to? We think you’d know best.” This has literally nothing to do with my job description and isn’t even tangentially related to our business. They’re clearly only asking me because I was the only person of color at the company at that point.
I asked if we had any black business owner partners, and they say no.
I told them, “This is going to come off as tone-deaf and we shouldn’t do it. It has nothing to do with our product, our partners are literally all white men, and we’re offering less than $500 in donations. It’d be better to try and invite some black business owners and focus on community development.”
They tell me to do it anyway and that it will be the only work for me during my first two weeks.
Then, once I’ve written the report, a white accountant on the team says, “This will come off as tone-deaf, and I don’t think we should do it.” So we don’t.
Strike three. You’re out. But I’m a professional, so I covered my bases before giving up.
I speak with the program organizing the third party, and they tell me they can’t switch my company. They give me some tips for fitting in better, and I spend a few weeks doing literally anything they ask, as well as I can.
I get several weeks’ worth of work done in very little time, even doing side projects to try and show how capable I am at my job. I speak directly with my supervisor, comparing my current workload with previous jobs and stating explicitly that I feel I could be better utilized if they’d give me a chance. Showing my work to my sponsor, they start giving me side projects because they’re impressed.
But every time I turn in a project to the tech-restaurant place, one of the co-founders (who, like me, worked his way up in the world) tells me how fantastic it is.
That it meets every standard he has, and he’s excited to show it to his partner. Once the boss sees it, he nitpicks it apart, saying it’s not what he wanted. There were times he edited me in circles, having me change A to B, then B to C, then C to A, and asking why I didn’t just do A in the first place.
I try to explain why doing what he asks is against best practice, or hurts our customers in a thousand different ways.
Based on our board members’ feedback when I was at the meetings, everyone but him is on the same page. But if it’s not his idea, he hates it. And if it’s from young, black me, then he especially hates it.
Finally, this tech-restaurant business sits me down after the first quarter for a performance review. Unlike normal businesses, they didn’t ask for any feedback for them – they just wanted to tell me that I was:
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Too opinionated
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Trying too hard
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That I “should try not to think so much about the work”
So, I do.
I stop doing extra projects for them and start taking up more well-paid side gigs. Like, really well paid. $50 an hour with performance bonuses is normal for my position, and this startup is throwing that away.
Eventually, they have me write a single blog post every week instead of doing my job. I’m excluded from pretty much any meeting that wasn’t contractually required. Their sales plummet as I stop pushing back against bad business practices, to the point that I started graphing it in an excel spreadsheet.
They went from $10k a month to $200 a week, with several weeks with no sales. I’m getting forwarded customer complaints by the good founder, and my response is, “Oh man, ya, that seems like a problem. I could fix it, but you’ll need to get permission from (direct supervisor).”
Direct supervisor/friend of the bad boss turns out to have way less time available than even the 15 hours and is almost never responding.
When I tell him the good founder wants me to work on a project, he says that he doesn’t think I can handle it and shouldn’t worry about it. So I don’t. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Second-quarter over, and I remind the bad founder that I was leaving. I put together a folder of all of the things they’d need from me, as well as detailed instructions on how to move over permissions from my account.
Instead of doing that, they just leave everything as is.
Now 2020 is over. I’ve made good income this last quarter, working for the sponsor company and other contracts. My new jobs really appreciate all that I’m doing for them, and some of them even sent me Christmas presents!
I still get phone notifications about the startup’s weekly sales because they never turned them off, and it’s gone down to 2 orders or less a week.
What’s especially funny to me is that the account sending me the notification is licensed at a pretty penny, so they’re incompetent enough that they’re paying extra to update me every week. A couple of grand a year.
A friend of a friend told me their potential investors pulled out after I left since the Bad Boss thought he could do it all on his own. Several board members have jumped ship.
There were only the two cofounders left once I headed out at the end of the second quarter (even my old supervisor left), and their website says that’s still the case. They’ve stopped offering live support or refunds and started getting some pretty poor reviews from clients. I’ll be surprised if they last.
If they do, I’m sure they’ll get a nice Twitter welcome in a few years once they try to hire another POC person, and they treat them with the racism they doled out to me.”
11. Get Rid Of My Server That You Use Daily? If That's What You Really Want
“I worked for a large consumer electronics retailer for many years as technical support. I was also in charge of all of the internal devices and computers employees used at my location. Not the computers that were on demo for customers to use (comes in to play later).
The retail stores offered technical support for computers and mobile devices.
Now for technical support, there were two laptops that I was authorized to configure for use by technicians, load useful software, and allow admin privileges.
One such useful tool is called RecBoot.
This application was Freeware (I checked the license) and not an internal tool. Back in the days when iDevices had a physical home button, to put the device in recovery mode, the home and power button would need to be pressed. RecBoot allowed a connected device to be put in recovery mode by clicking the recovery mode button. Easy and simple.
A lot of devices had this home button stop working.
When you were able to access the device, assistive touch could be used for a home button. If the device passcode was forgotten or too many attempts were made and the device was permanently locked, a restore was needed. To do this, the device must be put in recovery mode. (Important for later.)
Two laptops with sometimes dozens of customers looking for support and needing to restore iDevices or reset account passwords were not great.
Obviously, customers would get impatient having to wait longer for support.
This was brought up to management. Their solution, well there are tons of demo computers, connect the devices, and do restores from them. There ya go, Bob’s your uncle.
These demo computers were loaded with a demo image and configured that any changes made would be reverted when the computer was restarted, also the admin password was a guarded secret (I had the password but was definitely not allowed to share it).
To run RecBoot after it had been downloaded from the internet required the admin password. So it only worked for restores.
So to do a restore each demo computer would have to download the restore image (many GB of download) and it would take 20+ minutes just to download one, not even complete a restore. Each device model would need a specific restore image. You can imagine this was not ideal but to management, “Hey, it works, problem solved.”
What I started doing was I would unfreeze a few computers, transfer all of the needed restore images onto them from a local server, and freeze them again.
I would also transfer RecBoot, launch it, enter the admin password, so it wouldn’t require it again later.
This server was on the public network and therefore was not managed by the remote IT team as an internal computer and had no corporate policies installed. There was no confidential information on it. I had passed this by the appropriate channels and was given some guidelines to follow.
If all was followed, I was allowed to have the server running.
Everyone seemed to think it was a great idea and it really helped.
It was a lot of upkeep. Every time a new software update was released, I would have to unfreeze, transfer, and then refreeze the computers. If a new demo image was installed on the computers, I would have to redo it as well.
It would take a few hours to get done. I was happy to do it, it saved a lot of time in the end, and we were able to offer better service to customers.
Well, the person in charge of the demo computers did not like it. Apparently corporate didn’t either. I was told I could not modify the demo computers in any way…
I came up with a solution, with the server already running I would share the logins with the technical support team.
I could grant admin access on the server, and they could run the tools needed (more specifically RecBoot), and should a restore image be needed, they could transfer it locally over the network to the demo computer they were using, much faster.
All was well until we got a new lead technician. Jeb. Now unlike other stories, Jeb was not an external hire but a technician who had been promoted.
We had worked together for a few years at this point, and he was actually a decent guy.
I’m not sure if the power went to his head, he just wanted to impress upper management, or if he was being pressured by management, but after being promoted, he became a different person. Suddenly he was the boss and things were done his way and that was that.
During a physical inventory of the store, it was noted that my server was not a managed internal server nor was it a demo unit for customers.
As such, it needed to be decommissioned and the hardware returned to the warehouse.
Jeb brings this to my attention as I am the one who takes care of internal devices. He asks that I make it gone by the end of the next day.
I pointed out that I had followed the guidelines and that he knew full well how useful this was. I brought up that it would impact his metrics on customer wait time and satisfaction.
Something I’m sure he was hoping to improve.
He wouldn’t have it. He cited that any computer on the network needed to be managed and my server was no longer approved. He also let me know that the two laptops that were being used by the technicians were going to have an image installed on them and now be managed units.
I tried to argue (at least for my server) and he threatened to write me up.
Alright, I’ll let you dig your own grave.
He also sent out an email to the whole technical support team pretty much forbidding the use of any non-approved software.
I wiped my server and sent it back to the warehouse.
Without my server and now the two laptops being managed, no one had an admin password (except me and the IT team who was remote and tickets were usually only responded to in 24-48 hours), but being managed, no unapproved software could be installed anyways.
Cue the next night (first day without the server) when I get a call from Jeb in a panic, asking how he could get RecBoot working and he really needed it.
I had the pleasure of telling him that the server was gone and no unapproved software could be installed.
As per company policy, the admin password could not be provided unless a ticket was opened with IT and his need for it was approved, which was likely to take a few days, if it was even approved.
Turns out a customer started throwing a fit. Not only one but multiple people over the course of the day, and each time it was escalated to him to deal with.
Each time, having my server would have put a swift end to the problem.
This particular customer had an iPhone that was about a year and a half (only 1 year of warranty), and the home button stopped working. They had been in previously and were given the options of the home button (free), paying for a replacement phone (a few hundred dollars), or buying a brand new phone.
Repairing the home button was not a repair offered. They had opted for the free option.
This time, the customer’s kid had played with the phone, entered the passcode wrong, and the phone was disabled.
Of course, the customer doesn’t have iCloud set up or a recent backup. So no remote wipe and no way of backing up the info. To top it off, they would have to spend hundreds of dollars for a replacement phone or buy a brand new one.
Having had the phone for less than two years, their phone contract was not up for renewal with their cell phone provider. Needless to say, the customer was angry.
After that day, customer satisfaction and wait times tanked. He had to deal with a lot more escalations. He definitely was not looking good in the eyes of management.
After a few months, he was demoted back to technician.
I didn’t advocate to bring my solutions back. I left the company shortly after.”
10. Move Something Without Tying It Down? We'll See What Happens Then
You asked for it, Bob.
“Meet “Bob.” Bob is someone I know. Bob is a great guy. He has worked hard to support his family his whole life. I admire Bob because he can fix a lot of things on his cars, house, etc. He is almost entirely self-taught and has a lot of common sense despite not being “book smart,” which is why I was astounded that he had me do this.
Bob can also be stubborn as all heck and gets to be a real jerk when he is stubborn.
Bob’s wife found a beautiful roll-top desk at a yard sale. She had wanted one for years. Bob asked me to drive to the yard sale with my pick-up. Sure thing, Bob. I don’t mind helping you out a bit. Bob’s wife was excited. Her eyes were gleaming. It was huge, heavy as heck (somewhere around 250 lbs), and old.
It was also a very nice desk.
So Bob and I and the seller get it manhandled into my pickup bed. I grab straps, and Bob snaps at me.
“We don’t have time for that. Let’s get it back to the house.”
I know darn well it isn’t going to hold still, and I tell him so.
“YES, it WILL. It is a big, heavy desk. Drive really slowly with your hazards on.”
Now me, who actually paid attention to physics in high school, and you dear readers, know where this is going.
I protested.
Let’s lay it down or strap it. Bob over-ruled me. Bob’s wife said something. No, he didn’t want the desk marred up by straps. I said something again. Bob got angry and yelled. “Forget the straps; let’s GO! Just drive like I said.”
I said whatever. I did EXACTLY what he said, despite it being my truck. After all, Bob had done a lot of free work on my pick-up for me, I was doing him a favor, so whatever.
Let him be stubborn.
We left the yard sale at 10 mph, with a dozen or so people staring after us, slack-jawed. Bob and his wife were in their Corvette behind me. So I was doing exactly what he said, driving really slow with my hazard lights blinking. We make it the few blocks to the main drag that will take us most of the way to Bob’s house.
I get in the turn lane to wait. The desk starts to shift.
The turn lane turns green, and I edge out at about 5-7 mph. The top-heavy desk tilted, started to shift, then the wheels on one side came up. Nothing you do at that point is going to work to stop it from tilting. Physics wins again. Bob’s wife’s new desk died a horrible death in the middle of Powers Blvd in Colorado Springs one warm Spring day in 1993. I could hear her wailing through the open window.
RIP Desk.
Sorry, Bob’s wife. I wanted you to have that thing… you were so happy.”
9. Tell Me To Turn On The Propane Tank Full Blast? No Problem
Charred sandals for dinner, anyone?
“This is a really old event. And for the record, I am a decent enough human being to feel really bad about how this came out. After I was done feeling vindicated and amused. I felt extra bad because of those feelings, so I guess it somewhat balances.
Back in the late 80s through the mid-90s, my dad grew watermelons every year. It’s a good cash crop but intensive on the physical labor side of things and you’re working hardest when the weather is hottest.
You have to work really hard to pick the melons when they are ready to pick as healthy vines will bump outgrowth on the remaining melons FAST in late June, so you can pick again in just a few days. So only a certain type of person is willing and able to really capitalize on the crop. My dad was just that certain type of person.
He was transitioning all of his farming activity from row crops like corn and peanuts and cotton to pecans. He needed that summer cash crop of watermelons to stay afloat until the pecans were paying off.
I worked for him at the time and part of the successful transition from row crops to pecans hinged upon using buried drip irrigation for the pecans. For 6 years I buried drip irrigation for several months every year.
We were able to water groves with $2,000 wells instead of the $200,000 wells needed with sprinklers. Big difference. Anyway, we irrigated the melons with drip irrigation too.
Only it wasn’t durable stuff used on the melons. It was thin cheap stuff made to last a season and no more. The plastic film covering the beds was 1 mil thick and would photodegrade from sunlight in a year.
The drip tape itself did need to be picked up and disposed of. So this one year, my dad gets a bright idea to burn the film at the end of the season instead of letting it break down slowly.
A local ag company has a towable burn rig you can rent. Now, this thing is just the sort of rig no one in their right mind would insure.
I’ll describe it because it was a real monster.
Ok, start with a thousand-gallon propane tank. The huge kind you see in some yards that only have to be filled every couple of years. Now, you put that mamba jamba on top of a homemade trailer made to be pulled behind a farm tractor. And you hook up a pump to the PTO on the tractor so that it can pump the propane, not just let it flow from expansive properties.
Cause you NEED a lot of propane to flow for this kind of beast. The back of the homemade trailer has a support shaft mounted across it. And there are two long boom shafts on hinges that fold forward for transport but can be locked perpendicular like wings when deployed. They are 16 feet long each. The trailer is 8 feet across. So when the wings are deployed, this bad boy spans 40 feet.
Every 4 feet on all 3 shafts, there is a torch. These torches are angled down and backward. The idea is that a flaming jet of propane would hit every scrap of plastic film and burn it away. We won’t even get into the environmental aspects.
So, this was August, and all the melons were done, and cleanup needed to happen. My dad rented this beast, had me hook it up to a tractor, and meet him in one of the fields.
There were 2 controls up in the cab with the operator. Both toggle switches. One of them was to turn on the gas for ‘pilot lights’ on the torches. The other was to go full-on burn everything in sight. But it was a windy day. Maybe 10-15 mph average. I was not comfortable.
I voiced my objections to burning on a windy day. And got shut down.
Hard. Told to just do as I was told. OK then.
So I’m sitting up there in the cab following instructions. I get told to turn on the gas for the pilot light so I do. And then I sit there for a good five to ten minutes twiddling my thumbs because it’s too darn windy to go burning stuff. It’s too windy to get the torches to light.
The breeze is so stiff it is dissipating the gas, and blowing out the old man’s lighter repeatedly. And I’m just sitting there, doing as instructed.
After another fifty or sixty failed attempts, my dad/old man/boss was reaching the end of his patience and yelled up at me to not just sit there. Turn on the full gas. Now, I was annoyed and didn’t want to be out there, but this just seemed to be a bad idea.
So I spoke up.
Me: “But that will -“
Him: “Shut up. Do what I said.”
Me: “But.”
Him: “Shut up. Either flip that switch or get down here and light it while I flip it. We need more gas to get it to light!”
Me: ::flips the switch::
Torch: ::Ignites::. ::Shoots a jet of flame directly onto the old man’s sandaled feet::
Yes. That’s right. He was wearing sandals. And he lit a wide-open jet of propane that was aimed DIRECTLY AT THOSE SANDALED FEET.
I let out a loud bray of laughter just as I flipped the switch to OFF.
The old man’s head swiveled away from his feet to me in a trice, but despite my guffaw, I had a sober morose expression plastered on.
He couldn’t wear shoes for a couple of weeks – while he didn’t need dressings on his feet they were pretty ‘well done.’
We didn’t burn any watermelon film that year.”
8. But All Donations Are Supposed To Be Inspected
“Years ago I started a new job. I’m a biology professor, and this job was at a small, private college. (Note, as this is important and people sometimes confuse these terms, private is not the same as a for-profit. Private just means that we aren’t operated by the state. Like most colleges, we’re a non-profit.) This college is also located within easy driving distance of a branch of a large state university.
One of the first things I do is get us some free stuff. We have a lot of out-of-date equipment (analog when everyone has moved to digital) and a lot less glassware (beakers, etc.) than we need. Some of my grad school buddies work at Large State University nearby, so I call them up and ask if anyone is clearing out their lab. See, at a lot of these universities when faculty leave or retire, anything left in their lab that isn’t cutting edge and super-expensive goes into state surplus.
There are only two (legal) ways that I know of to avoid sending things to surplus: move it to someone else in the department or donate it to a non-profit. It turns out that I actually know the person who all of this equipment goes to after being picked over in-house to be surplused and so she lets me come by her storage space and pick through it next.
Great story, right? I solve a problem for us, and Large State University saves time and looks generous.
Of course, that’s not the end of this, or it wouldn’t belong here.
It turns out that I am unaware of two things. First, by doing this I have just made someone senior to me (but not in my command chain) look incompetent. This isn’t hard, since that’s the truth. Second, one of the reasons we seem not to have replaced things in a while is that there were, several years before I came, some major financial shenanigans, the sort where senior people resign, effective immediately, and the locks on their office doors get changed overnight.
Because of the second point paperwork has been created to document all sorts of transactions around the college. I don’t know that this is helpful paperwork, since the sorts of transactions I’m about to describe weren’t part of the financial shenanigans, but as we know from thermodynamics, once useful work is converted into paperwork, it can never be converted back into useful work again.
Needless to say, SeniorProfessor complains to my department chair that I haven’t filled out the donation paperwork and so I’m violating our financial transparency obligations, am basically just Satan, etc.
It probably doesn’t help that SeniorProfessor also has the sort of attitude towards paperwork that leads me to suspect that instead of pets she just has stacks of compliance forms lying around her house. My department chair (the person who could actually fire me) gives me the forms and asks that I fill them out appropriately.
One item on this form is an estimate of the financial size of the gift.
Obviously, if you’re donating a few thousand dollars to the university (which is probably what the form is actually for) you just write down the amount. For physical items, you need to estimate their value. I have a box of random equipment. I know more are coming, and I don’t want to waste time looking up every piece of equipment, writing the price down, calculating some sort of reasonable discount because it’s used items, and putting the full, itemized list in the space available (which is about this large: _________).
Still not the real malicious compliance here, but I duck this one.
“I didn’t donate anything,” I say.
My chair is confused. “But you came in with this box of glassware and told everyone in the department to come get what they needed from it.”
Me: “Right. But that’s a donation from Large State University to Our College, not to me. I just drove it here out of the goodness of my heart. If they donated it to me personally, that would be illegal since they’re required to donate it to a non-profit.”
My chair, who came from industry and has a bit more business sense than some pure researchers, understands that this is correct.
However, I can see that there is a problem coming: the next set of things I want to get is some decent animal skulls. We have about three species on hand, one of them human. Everywhere else I’ve taught we generally have a least a dozen species on hand, and it’s very useful when you are teaching anything that involves comparative anatomy. But my plan has been to use my own skills to clean the skulls of roadkilled animals.
That will be a donation from me, every time, and I don’t want to do this paperwork.
It’s now Christmas, and I’m visiting with some of my wife’s friends back home. They are reminded that I’m a biologist, and walk me out into the woods where they show me a deer skull. “It’s been there for years; we never had a use for it. It’s yours if you want it.” It’s a doe (no antlers, which is what most people want), but for scientific purposes, that’s fine, and we don’t have one at work.
I take it.
Several weeks later, all the relevant parties are back on campus. I wrap up the skull in a plastic grocery bag and take it in to donate. A note about old skulls, in case, for some reason, you don’t have a career where you need to age skeletal elements by looking at them. Mammal skulls are made from many separate bones that fuse together at the edges.
As a skull ages outside in the elements, many of these sutures open. This means that a skull that has been sitting outside for long enough is extremely dirty. The dirt is just dirt since maggots and other flesh-eating insects pick every scrap of flesh away, but an item full of crevices sitting on dirt with leaves falling on it picks up a lot of debris.
If you don’t know anything about old skulls you, rather naturally, assume that this debris is rotting flesh. The bag is there to contain this dirt.
“I need the donation form,” I tell our administrative assistant. She gives me the form, I walk back to my office, and I carefully fill it out. Where it says, “Value of Donation” I fill in “$0.” This is important: I technically don’t need to fill out this paperwork if the item is worthless, but I need to fill out the paperwork because I need to present the paperwork, and the item, to our finance department so that they can verify that the item is worthless and that I didn’t need to do the paperwork.
A brilliant, well-designed system, as you can see.
I ask our administrative assistant where the financial office is, since I’m still new enough that I don’t really know. She tells me where, but says she has to go to that building anyway, and she’d be happy to take the paperwork and item with her. I say thanks, but no thanks, I’m taking it over now.
I walk into the financial office.
Everyone has a fancy nameplate, a desk with neatly-marked trays for incoming and outgoing forms, and everyone seems to be dressed like someone had said, “Dress like you handle money all day, but actually buy everything from Walmart.” Thankfully, the nameplates include job titles, so I walk over to the person who needs to validate my claims.
“What’s this about?” she asks.
“I have this donation for the biology department, and I’ve been told I need to fill out this paperwork.
And that you need to see the item.”
“That’s correct,” she says, taking the paperwork from me. She starts to read, frowning like she might be about to accuse me of fraud. It’s quite possible that, contrary to her parents’ instructions, she made that face for so long that it has frozen this way.
“And this is the item,” I say, reaching into a ratty plastic bag and pulling out the skull.
The nose, pointed towards her, is a gaping hole with thin bones called turbinates winding back into the recesses of the skull. There’s also a leaf, wedged into the nose somehow out in the woods. A chunk of dirt drops from the inside of the braincase and falls to the floor.
“What IS that?!” she says, clearly thrown off her routine. I have learned that most people find that most mammal skulls look the same, even though to me they look very different.
“A deer skull,” I say.
“It was found in the woods by friends of mine. Here, take a look.” I helpfully extend the skull towards her. A trickle of debris loosens itself from the back of the eye socket and rattles off the papers on her desk. I can see her cringe.
“I’ve assessed its value at $0, but I was told that you needed to personally inspect items to make sure of this.” I turn the skull over in my hands as I say this, still holding it out in presentation mode, as if I thought that she couldn’t properly assess its value without examining the strange, brown stain on the bone that once formed the roof of the mouth.
“I agree with that assessment!” she says, quite rapidly.
At this point, I relent slightly and pull the skull back towards my chest so it is no longer extended over her desk.
I casually fish a partial leaf from a suture in the top surface of the skull and drop it in the plastic bag I brought. “I have a few more of these coming,” I mention. “I’ll be cleaning those myself, so they’ll be in better shape. Possibly more organic material left on them, though. Will you be needing to see those as well?”
“No,” she says, quite definitively.
“So, just to get this straight, you, as a representative of our financial office, are telling me that all donations of such biological specimens are worth $0 and you do not want to see them or the accompanying paperwork?”
“Yes!” she says.
I stick the skull back into its traveling bag, and, as a gesture of goodwill, sweep some debris off her desk into the bag as well. “It’s a deal!””
7. Expect The Same Output From A Demoted Employee? I'll See What I Can Do
“I work in a highly specialized field, where it’s very difficult to find and train suitable personnel. By pinching pennies and not holding his promises about pay grade changes, my boss successively drove away the three specialists working in the department I led. Right before the last one put in her notice, he argued that a 2 person department didn’t justify a leadership position and demoted me, and we were integrated (on paper) to another department.
This was done outside of any legal framework and with a one-week notice, which is illegal.
During the reorganization, the manager of the department we joined was assigned to R&D, and another manager and his deputy were promoted to lead the department’s daily business. We effectively had no less than 3 supervisors, all of them lacking managerial training and technical knowledge about the duties of our now-defunct department (and only one of them can read the language in which 50% of our reports are written).
Right after the reorganization, I was granted one last meeting with the boss, where I pointed out that several of my duties cannot be bestowed upon the mere foot soldier I had become, nor taken over by the new leadership. He answered that his decision was final, I was to revert to my previous job description and take up any future matter with my new supervisors.
I did just that, and some more: I read the state law and ordinance about state and university employees (should have done it earlier, in hindsight). I discovered that:
-
The illegal move by my boss doesn’t carry any penalty, so there’s nothing I can do legally.
-
I’m allowed to take on private mandates for anything that is not explicitly mentioned in my job description (it’s a gift normally meant for professors).
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I get to take up to 15 days of additional paid leave per year to hold a public office.
-
The pay grade I reverted to doesn’t match my responsibilities today, even excluding the absence of a leadership position, and there’s an independent procedure with state HR to reevaluate the pay grade.
The kicker? My old job description that dates back to 7 years before is short, to say the least: 3 lines that don’t even cover 50% of what my duties in the last seven years consisted of.
And I have a side gig as a retained firefighter and fire instructor for which I used to take vacation days. This counts as a public office according to state law.
The fallout
My new managers both signed the authorization to take on private mandates and public office without understanding the implications. I used all of the 15 days, where I legally get paid by the FD and my employer at the same time.
I took on several private mandates totaling nearly an additional month of salary for 4 days of work. And the pay grade reevaluation has brought me back to the same income as with the previous leadership position. Oh, and since my specialty now has a bus factor of one and my new supervisors have been unable to staff the open positions, it was very unlucky that I fell ill at the time where I had to submit paperwork for a research grant, costing the institution $30,000 in lost research funds.”
6. Make Me Call Police Every Time Someone Can't I.D. Themselves? This'll Come At A Cost
“So a little story from years ago about an assistant manager who didn’t understand the work at all.
I worked as a security guard driving around industrial areas and responding to alarms that go off at the buildings from our clients. When I started there, I was told/learned to ask for proper ID (driving license, passport, ID card) if I encounter someone in the building (which was very common as most alarms came from people not turning off the alarm in time/entering the wrong code) and note their details in the report.
But (and this will be important later on), if they can’t show ID, kindly request them to leave and close the building. If they refuse, call the police to deal with it.
Some background to make things clear(er): Laws here make it so that security guards are just civilians, which means I can ask for ID, but if they refuse to give it, there is nothing I can do.
Only Law enforcement officers can “demand” IDs. Also, my assistant manager hates me for some reason, always looking for something to pin on me.
So for a few years, I do this as I was learned: ask for ID if I found someone in the building and ask them to leave if they refused or didn’t have one with them. Some would show credit cards or other things with their name on them, then I would write it in my report but still ask them to leave.
All this time, the assistant manager would go over these reports in the morning.
But I never heard any complaint about it. So I was doing stuff right I thought.
After a few years on this particular day, I get an alarm, so I drove there. I arrive at the building, go in, and find the cleaning lady doing her job. The alarm system logs show she entered the wrong code the 1st time and was just a little too late entering it correctly the second time.
As would happen a lot.
I kindly ask her for an ID and she tells me she doesn’t have any with her. She shows me a bank card with her name. I write down the name in the report (including it was from a bank card) and tell her she has to leave. She understands, picks up her stuff, and leaves. I finish my report and go on my merry way.
The next morning, I received an e-mail from my assistant manager, going mental over the fact I sent the cleaning lady away without noting down PROPER ID details and telling me the client is mad because they wanted to know who was in the building.
I calmly reply that I did what I always did and was instructed to do when I joined the company.
And had been doing without any issue for the last 3 or 4 years.
The reply came fast with detailed instructions: “If someone doesn’t have proper ID on them, you call the police and have them identify the person, so you can note it in your report!”
The assistant manager also made a memo stating this to everyone in the unit (which I of course also made a copy of).
As the good employee that I am, I followed that instruction to the letter.
(Most others didn’t, as they weren’t targeted by the assistant manager. So they could do whatever they wanted.)
I called the police every time a person couldn’t show me proper ID, which happened almost every shift I worked, if not multiple times in a single shift. Leading to:
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A few employees of clients actually being arrested for Failing to Identify to a Law Enforcement Officer. (This wasn’t my intention at all, some police officers were jerks and just arrested them even though they could verify the identity of someone fairly simple on location.)
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The police calling my manager why they were called every single day to go and confirm someone’s name because they didn’t have ID on them.
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Multiple clients calling the manager why a simple alarm was taking 3 times longer than usual (clients have to pay per 15 minutes I am “on-site” after the initial 15 minutes have passed) and refusing to pay the extra fee for me waiting for the police to show up.
As I expected I got invited for a talk with my manager and assistant manager to “discuss” some things.
Basically, my manager wanted to chew me out over all these calls he had been getting. Let alone people being arrested.
The next day, I sit down with my manager and the assistant manager (being very cheerful as his favorite target was getting a huge reprimand).
The manager asks me why I called to police every time someone doesn’t have a proper ID, asking me if I have any idea how angry the police is and how many clients are refusing to pay the fee because it takes so much longer now I have to wait for the police.
Basically, I cost the company a lot of money.
After the manager has asked these questions, I pull out my folder containing the e-mail conversation with the assistant manager, instructing me to do exactly that. And the copy of the (now conveniently disappeared from the office) memo with the same instructions. Both signed by the assistant manager. The same assistant manager that is now turning pale realizing what I’m about to hand over to the manager.
I calmly explain to the manager while he is reading both papers, that I am only following the instructions given to me, as I had clearly been doing it wrong for the last 3 to 4 years prior to this incident.
The face of the manager is slowly turning red from anger, while the assistant manager is turning paler by the second.
Before the manager explodes, he asks me to go grab a coffee and wait till he calls me back in. They needed to “go over these papers” and “decide what they would do with me.” Sure thing boss!
While I’m enjoying my coffee, I can hear my manager go mental to his assistant. Multiple things like, “How can you be so stupid!” and “They have it on freaking paper, you idiot!” are clearly heard across the entire floor.
When I get called back in, I can see my assistant manager sitting silently, shamefully behind his computer.
Attempting to avoid any and all eye contact with me.
The manager calmly explains he wasn’t aware of these papers and that I should follow the instructions as all other employees should (saving face, as admitting this was wrong and changing the instructions would mean the defeat of the management). And that he would inform all clients about this so they can avoid these kinds of “incidents.”
I spend the next 9 years following these instructions, which angered the assistant manager as he would read my reports every morning, telling about how the police had to show up again and again for something silly.
Eventually, they found a way to get rid of me, reassigning me to a new position, which I gladly accepted as the work was a lot more fun. (I actually became a Law Enforcement Officer with that switch.) The pay was better and the hours were even sweeter.”
5. You Want The Ambulance Lit On Fire? I'll Keep Driving
“Several years ago, I was working as an EMT for a small private ambulance company which contracted primarily as a transportation service. The ambulance company employed a pair of mechanics that did regular maintenance on each unit and fixed problems when they came up.
The company’s CEO was pretty stingy when it came to money so the rigs were old and a lot of the mechanic’s spare time went towards restoring the Impala owned by the CEO’s son.
I wasn’t well-liked by the owners and management for one reason or another, but I suspect it’s because I frequently spoke my mind.
This means that I was tasked with the worst trucks on the worst shifts.
One day, my partner and I were dispatched to a scheduled patient transfer from a long-term rehabilitation facility to their home. On our way to the facility, our ambulance overheated and we were forced to pull over. Dispatch was notified and we were told to let them know when the truck cooled, so we could get back to work.
An hour later, the truck was still hotter than I’d like and I let dispatch know that we needed a new unit.
Their solution was to have us drive back and swap our gear into a fresh unit to finish our shift. We would need to drive across town to get back to dispatch, so I let them know that it would take a while as we’d need to pull over every time the engine overheated. Little else was discussed and we started back.
I figured I’d stick to the smaller side roads and take my time avoiding the freeways for the safety of ourselves and other drivers sharing the road.
I should also mention that every ambulance has a GPS reporting system that reports all of our telemetries, so we’re tracked every moment of every day.
The moment we passed the first entrance to the freeway, the dispatch manager (we’ll call her Mary) calls us on the radio and angrily asks us to explain why we’re not following instructions. I opted to give her a phone call to settle this and not have a long, drawn-out discussion on the public airwaves.
Mary accuses my partner and me of wasting time and milking the situation, so we wouldn’t have to take our share of calls.
Mary goes on saying that our intentions were obvious since we’re not taking the freeway, and as such, when we got back to dispatch, we would be dismissed for the remainder of the day without pay and they would investigate to see if further disciplinary actions would be needed. I tried to let her know that driving on the freeway was unsafe and I would have to stop more frequently, but she wouldn’t hear it and told me to get back as fast as possible, no more delays.
Cue malicious compliance.
Our patient monitoring equipment is incredibly expensive and management has stated in the past that if we break it, we’re on the hook to replace it. So I tell my partner to pack it all up and put it just inside the side door because I wasn’t sure what would happen, but chances were good that we’d need to grab it quickly and make a run for it.
So, as directed, we turn around and head back to the freeway entrance at full speed.
I think we made it to the end of the freeway merging lane when the temperature gauge started to redline and we had another 12 miles to go. The further I drove, the hotter the engine got and it started to produce white smoke. Lightly at first then heavier as we approached the big hill just before our freeway exit. Several cars were passing us and honking their horns to alert us of our peril, but there was no stopping this train!
We were filling up the lanes behind us with smoke and the smell was wretched but the ambulance was still running.
As we made it to the top of the hill the engine cut out and lost all power. Smoke was pouring out of the sides of the hood, but my vision wasn’t compromised, so I coasted it over to the shoulder and got it as far off the road as I could safely manage.
Once I threw it into park, flames erupted from the engine. I told my partner to get as much equipment evacuated as she could, and I grabbed the fire extinguisher.
As I’m trying to put out the fire, and my partner is on the phone letting dispatch know that we were forced to stop because our ambulance was on its way to a fiery death. I guess at this point, our situation had received enough attention that someone had called 911 and the fire department was dispatched, but they pulled up on the opposite side of the freeway watching to make sure that things didn’t spiral out of control.
We were sure to let dispatch know that the fire department had also arrived.
Shortly after our call, the CEO’s son showed up in his Impala to pick up the equipment as well as myself and my partner. He was on the phone trying to get a flatbed tow truck out as fast as possible, so his smoking ambulance could be removed from public view as quickly as possible.
The unit was picked up and towed back to the garage all while the fire department sat and watched.
My partner and I were still sent home for the rest of the day. I celebrated the early start to my weekend with a few drinks and nothing else ever came of it. That unit was retired and never saw service after that but the mechanics said they owed me a beer I guess because I brought the end to the worst rig in the fleet and they no longer needed to provide upkeep on it.”
Another User Comments:
“I used to drive for a bus company that was not always the best at listening to drivers…
One time, another driver was having issues with the bus, kept radioing to ask for a replacement, kept being told to finish his run… until the engine seized solid.
Another kept calling about a vibration. Same answer, finish the run. Until the dying wheel bearing welded itself to the hub…
I had issues with my door playing up, mechanic met me at the school, had a look, then said keep going and we will look at it later.
Halfway up the road, the door/brake interlock activated, locking the back wheels at 80kmh. They had to send another bus and disable the whole door mechanism to take it back to the workshop.
Another bus, I complained about the clutch feeling weird, and getting worse. Keep going. Halfway through a run the clutch quit entirely, turns out the friction plate was in 3 pieces…
I was complaining for months about a shudder in the Allison auto in one bus, was told to keep it running until the Xmas holiday.
Then the boss jumped in it to do a quick job as it was the easiest to get to at the time, came back half an hour later, and said it was going straight into the workshop, I was to finish the day in another bus, and he didn’t know how I was still driving it every day… Same bus blew a radiator hose a few hundred meters before the end of a run, I scooted in to the bus stop, shut it down, and called the mechanic. He burned himself fixing it, then swore and told me I should have kept going until it caught fire, so he never had to fix it again…” derwent-01
4. Wait For All Your Songs To Play On The Jukebox? Sure Will
This story will have you dying laughing!
“I tend bar at a little hole in the wall watering hole with a very regular and very loyal customer base.
I had last night off, so I met up with a friend at another bar for a few drinks and some food.
After supper, we decide to walk to the bar I work at to cap off the evening.
We get there, and there is good energy going on.
The music is a bit louder than usual, and there are maybe 10 patrons in the bar.
We have this one customer who is extremely wealthy, and it’s nothing for him to spend $200-$400 per night multiple times a week buying everyone rounds. As such, he’s treated like royalty around there.
So I’m sitting there having a really good time, enjoying a beer, and decide that I want to add a song to the jukebox.
I grab a $5 bill and walk over, only to notice 63 credits showing on the screen. No big deal, I think; I’ll just put my $5 in, request a few songs, and leave the 63 credits untouched.
But noooo…
Our wealthy regular, let’s call him Jack, sees me perusing the jukebox and comes up and PHYSICALLY pushes me away from it. I ask him what the heck he thinks he’s doing.
He says those are HIS credits, and no one is allowed to touch the jukebox till he’s used them up. I point out that I have my own $5 and have no intention of using any of his credits.
Nope, not good enough. No one is allowed to TOUCH it till he’s done with them.
I know it’s not worth arguing, so I step back, and he starts requesting songs till he’s used up every single credit.
Each song costs 2-5 credits, so he put in a LOT of songs. Each song gives you the option to pay an extra 2 credits to have your song played next, but I noticed he wasn’t using it.
This particular brand of jukebox has an accompanying phone app. I didn’t have it downloaded prior to last night. But I do now.
I calmly sat down at my table with my friend, and put my plan in motion.
I go to the App Store, find the app, download, install it, create an account, and purchase $10 worth of credits. I request 2 songs and pay the extra 2 credits to fast-track them. I sit there in quiet anticipation, and I can see that Jack is starting to get into a groove with the music he’d requested (Vietnam rock).
His heart gloriously sinks when “Bom Bom Bom” by Sam and The Womp comes on.
No big deal, guys; his song must be next. Nope, it’s “Wannabe” by The Spice Girls.
He sits down, dejected. I quickly purchase another $20 in credits and request:
“Baby” by Justin Bieber, “Livin La Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin, “Axel F” by Crazy Frog, and “Foil” by Weird Al Yankovich.
And fast-track every one of them.
Partway through “Foil,” I notice Jack sulking in his chair… so I purchase another $20 in credits and proceed to request:
“Never Going To Give You Up” by Rick Astley, “Who Let The Dogs Out (Barking Mad Remix)” by Baha Men, “Numa Numa” by O-Zone, “Pas Parle Americano” by Yolanda Be Cool, And “Star Wars Cantina March” by John Williams.
They’re starting to realize something is up, so Jack and a few staff who were on last night convene at the jukebox to try to figure it out.
At this point, the Cantina March is playing. They turn the jukebox off. Then back on again. “Doop doop doop doop.” They turn it off. Then back on. “Doop doop doop doop…” each time picking up where it left off. I can’t hold my laughter and let out a muted chuckle.
One of my coworkers catches on and comes over with her phone in her hand with the app open and shoves it in my face with a “how freaking dare you…
yada yada yada…”
I quietly get up, down the last mouthful of my drink, put my jacket on, and walk out without a word.
I walk down the street to a greasy spoon that our staff and customers are regulars at due to proximity.
I sit down, order a beer and a burger, and proceed to log back into the app.
I purchase another $10 worth of credits, and fast track “All I Want For Christmas by Mariah Carey” and “Mickey by Tony Basil” as one last “bite me” to Jack.
I can only imagine the fallout I’m going to face Monday afternoon when I show up to work, but whatever.
My $40 was no less valid than his, and no one customer gets to commandeer the tunes for the entire night and physically block anyone else from touching it.”
Another User Comments:
“I used to do this on a bowling league with my team.
Older league members would plug the machine and get mad if their songs weren’t playing, so we would fast-track the most annoying and longest songs we could find. The ENTIRE William Hung album(s), etc.
The same league I was making up games one time on another morning. There were a few other people in the alley on the first 5 lanes and I had already played 1 of my 3 games.
I was in a groove and kept going when I noticed it got dead silent. The person next to me had stopped bowling to wait, the 4 or so teams at the other end had stopped as well, cut the jukebox, and were doing some announcements. They were the church league and they were saying a prayer before bowling…. over the intercom and expected everyone to stop playing while they did. They waited for me to stop too. They kept glaring the rest of the time, so on my way out, I plugged the machine with ACDC Highway to …. My buddy was there and said they were not happy when I left.” agexvii
3. Mad At Me For Logging In 30 Seconds Late? My Revenge Will Cost You
“My first job out of bar school was with an ambulance-chasing firm. I worked 12-8 pm in the call center calling people after accidents to get them to sign with us for a personal injury claim. Officially this was not cold calling as the details were passed to us by insurance companies who assured us that each lead had confirmed injuries and asked to speak to a lawyer.
I have my doubts over how truthful the insurers were after a number of people I called denied any injury or seemed surprised to be contacted by a solicitor’s firm. (but that is not the cause of the story).
I was very good at my job. Our target was for 10 new claims a day, so if you got a car with a driver and passenger in the front and three kids in the back, you were laughing as that one call was half your quota.
Many colleagues would go onto a go-slow once they had their 10, but I kept busy – if nothing else it was boring there when not working and time dragged – and would average about 25 new clients a day.
After 6 months, we get a new manager in the call center. One of those micro-manager types, which is a style I do not respond well to.
I start getting emails saying things like, “You were 30 seconds/1 minute and 23 seconds late logging into the system today. Make sure you stay late by that much time.”
Now I should point out that up until now I logged out at the end of my shift bang on time unless I was on a call in which case I would finish it, and if this was a call with 5 people in, you could be stuck for another 45 minutes.
We also had to turn the computers off at the end of the day (easy – hit shut down and walk off) and turn them on at the start of our shift. The computers being slow this could take 5 minutes before you could log into the call system.
I responded to the first few emails pointing out that logging into the call system 30 seconds late meant I had actually turned the computer on (which was technically part of my job) about 4 1/2 minutes before my shift started and I stayed late regularly to finish calls.
The manager told me that the time to turn on the computer was not part of my job and it had to be ready to make calls bang on 12. I contacted HR and they reluctantly agreed that turning on the computer was one of our duties and therefore we only needed to be in, ready to press the power button at 12.
The new manager was not easily had though.
He started buying the time we got to our desks and then, as is always the case when relying on public transport, if you were a few seconds or minutes late he’d send the email telling you to work the extra time at the end of your shift.
I decided that I had had enough of this and so I decided to work to rule. I stopped trying to get new clients after hitting my 10 for the day and would play on the internet unless getting an incoming call from someone responding to a voicemail.
I wouldn’t make any outgoing calls after hitting the daily target. I also decided that if I was on a call at 8 pm, I would simply tell the potential client “my shift has now finished,” hang up, and turn the computer off. I did this for a week and encouraged others to do it. When the weekly stats hit my boss’s desk, he realized we were about a third down in terms of clients secured compared to other weeks.
He called us into a meeting with his head of the department and bollocked us all, asking why we were all lazy and not securing clients.
Screaming about us hanging up on clients. I just said, “You told us you wanted us to work as required by the contract, down to the second” that’s all we’re doing. Do you not like it?
A few weeks later, he was gone and a much more sensible manager moved in. Things went back to the way they were. I ended up staying at the firm for 7 years, although only in the call center for 9 months before moving onto case handling and then trial work.”
2. Leave If We Don't Like It? Goodbye Then
“When I was in school, about 14 years old, we got a new art teacher. Our previous one was amazing – she used to be a famous painter in our state that wanted to teach in her free time and paint just for pleasure. She taught us the basic techniques while encouraging us to create and experiment. She also implemented an “art fair” in our school, kind of like a science fair.
We had one big theme and each grade had a sub-theme that would fit. The students used to split into groups and come up with an idea that would use some of the material in our curriculum but we still had a lot of freedom to create – we would have to clear it with her and she helped us with ideas, materials, guidance. The fair had been going for years and it was one that parents actually liked to attend, going back to it even after their kids already left the school.
It’s important to note that the school was really not a big one. My grade was the last one that was taught there and we only had 20-30 students per grade, so we had all classes together and we all knew each other well.
Awesome teacher’s health wasn’t that good anymore and she retired. Comes in a new teacher that from the get-go seemed to be intimidated and full of hatred for our previous teacher.
She would talk badly about our previous teacher’s work, say that what we learned was useless, that everything we were doing was bad and wrong since we never were taught any better, etc., etc. We already didn’t like her, but it was our last year there, and we weren’t confrontational. Then, time for the art fair comes up. We are excited. Our whole theme is art from our country, and each grade got specific states.
The one my grade got has a really rich culture, with characteristic clothes, dances, etc. We were excited and started organizing ourselves.
Then, the new teacher tells us that none of that is going to be presented. She wants us to split into groups of twos and make sort of a “painting,” using papier-mache and trapping objects of that state in it. We were like “but we want to present the dance; we already talked with someone who has the clothes for us to borrow to present in a living statue, and we want to do more,” and she went on this rant about how our old teacher used to let us do anything, but we were not following the curriculum and it was ridiculous and that she knew what was best for us and we were all brats, and that the old teacher made the art fair become a laughing matter and she would not have it.
We tried presenting our reasons; we said that having over 10 of the exact same thing was not going to represent the culture of the state and that it would be boring to look at and that we didn’t mind doing it if we could also do more.
She got angrier and angrier with us trying to talk to her, so she said, “THIS IS MY CLASS, AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, YOU CAN LEAVE.” So, of course, we left.
All of us just got up and left. We went straight to our principal’s office. She agreed to see us and it was a mess. All of us teenagers feeling that we were not being treated fairly complained about our teacher all at once. Our teacher finally showed up, crying. Our principal asked us to wait outside of her office. Finally, 3 of us were invited back inside, where our version was asked.
The teacher was still there and we explained what happened and what we wanted with her crying in the corner and sobbing all the time. I am glad to say that none of us let that make us back away, and the principal didn’t allow it either. We reached a compromise – we would make sure to have at least 5 of those hideous “paintings” she wanted, and we would still be allowed to do everything else we wanted.
The fair itself was horrible.
Our class was the only one allowed to do anything different, so every room just had things hanging on the wall, all looking similar to each other. Ours had typical food from that state for people to snack on, dance presentation every 30 minutes, people doing living statues with the full clothing we got from a cultural center, a TV showing short movies from artists of that state, and a bunch of students wearing some sort of attire from there with a ton of information about the state to tell visitors.
Plus, 5 of those paintings in a corner that no one paid attention to.
It didn’t take 2 more years for the art fair to stop happening since it didn’t get attendance from the public anymore and the parents complained about the waste of time, plus the waste of funds the school had hosting it.”
Another User Comments:
“It’s one thing for a new teacher to come in and want to do things in a new way. It’s quite another for her to come in and badmouth a PROFESSIONAL ARTIST. And then, to force everyone to do kindergarten level “art?”” Tom_Marvolo_Tomato
1. Don't Want My Help? No Worries!
Stubbornness doesn’t get you anywhere.
“I once worked at a Go-Kart track for a summer to earn some extra income. My friends and I all decided to work there but didn’t realize how crazy it was going to be – every single day there was a massive issue where someone was either fired or chewed out by the owner, Greg.
Now it’s important to note for this story that Greg wasn’t in the best shape – he was larger than life so to speak – but despite this, he would be trying to help every day on the track, more likely than not causing problems that would have been easily avoided.
The micromanaging was brutal, and when he wasn’t physically there, he would send us a lengthy email at the end of the day telling us what we did wrong after watching the cameras on the track.
Now, Greg also had an attitude of “he can do no wrong,” and also “he doesn’t need help from nobody,” which led to some awkward situations with customers…especially when they were upset.
More likely than not, I or the other employees had to apologize to customers daily when he would raise his voice at them for not wearing their helmet correctly, and if we ever mentioned it he would then turn on us and begin to chew us out for doubting his actions.
So, one of our responsibilities was standing around the track with a stop sign with the word SLOW on it to wave at drivers who are going too fast and driving recklessly.
The vehicles were too loud to simply yell at them. The track was pretty bendy but part of it zoomed right by Greg’s office, where he always kept a sign handy in case he thought a driver needed to slow way down.
It was one of those days and a driver was zooming and bumping against other drivers and the walls, so Greg thunders out of the office, grabs his sign, and waved it in front of the driver in question, who proceeds to whizz right past him.
He goes around again, Greg more aggressively shakes the sign at the driver, who once again ignored him and kept going. This did not please Greg.
Finally, Greg uses all his might and really shakes the sign in front of the driver’s face but unfortunately loses his balance and falls onto the track! We rush over to him and ask if he needs help, to which he replies, in his usual angry bellow, “I’m fine! Leave me!”
Now normally, for any other person, we could’ve stopped the traffic and given him a hand regardless.
But this was Greg, and he was very clear that he was fine and we should leave him. But despite that, he was still on the ground, rolling around and unsuccessfully getting upright from his prone position.
I suddenly get an amazing idea. I grab some spare orange traffic cones and put them around him on the track to make sure that the karts didn’t get too close! It was all I really could do while following his instructions! Only until about 10 minutes later when all the Go-Karts had pulled off the track was when Greg managed to get himself upright, but by then, we had already all busted a gut laughing! I’ll truly never forget seeing him squirming mere inches from Karts while refusing help. It was a sight to see!”
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