ask the readers: what have you seen go wrong while living or traveling with coworkers?

by Alison Green on June 28, 2018

Earlier this year, I told the ridiculous story of the intern house I was in charge of, and how the interns living there made tea for a burglar, who then robbed them when they left to go to the beach.

I want to know your own tales of ridiculousness that you witnessed or perpetrated while living with coworkers (camp counselors, this is your moment!) or semi-living with them (such as during work travel where you had to share living space). Tales of petty antics are highly encouraged.

Please share in the comments!

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    1. Tableau Wizard*

      I don’t know if i’m more excited or anxious to read these. I’m sharing a hotel room with a coworker for the first time next month. I’m not looking forward to it.

      1. hibernation station*

        fwiw I’ve shared hotel rooms with coworkers five times and each time has been fairly innocuous.

        1. Scrooge McDunk*

          Scrolling quickly, I thought this said “each time has been fairly incestuous.”

          2. Crochettouche*

            “How quasi incestuous?”
            “Like a 4.”
            “Meh.”

            I have been waiting a year to use that quote from Archer.

    2. Cacwgrl*

      LOL I am now hustling through my last assignment to make time for this reading. Got my popcorn ready!

  2. Snark*

    I’ve told my story of the accidental purchase of an assault rifle traveling for field work, but I was the coworker there. Nonetheless, unless one’s story ends with “what the hell do I do with an old AK-47 I didn’t want in the first place?!”…..

    1. CmdrShepard4ever*

      I have not heard this story, would you be willing to repost it, or the link to the original comment about it please? I’m sure there are other who have not heard/read it either.

      1. Snark*

        Can’t find it, sooooo…..

        I was doing field work in a really remote part of the Peruvian Andes when I was in grad school. It was this tiny little village on a pass at like 16,000 feet, and there was a Peruvian army (or military police?) checkpoint manned by a bunch of perpetually drunk, bored young dudes about a month out of basic. It was a really warm, sunny day right before we left, and we had gotten into our last few beers, and the Army guys were shooting old liquor bottles and getting drunk themselves. I requested to join in the dumbness, and the sergeant knew I was a rich gringo, and he decided to start being concerned about wasteful usage of Army equipment. So I negotiated, I thought, for the purchase of some ammunition. They thought I was negotiating for the purchase of the entire rifle, and I compounded that by screwing up the math (booze + hypoxia != math skillz) on the exchange rate. I hosed the mountainside with a clip or two, had a grand time, and then realized, to general hilarity, that I’d actually purchased this beat-ass old AK-47.

        Our principal investigator was, by the way, thrilled by this story.

          1. Snark*

            Nah, I left it on their front porch before we left. And I think it was like $25 or so. A month’s wages for them, a priceless story for me.

        3. Hey Karma, Over here.*

          This reminds me of something from Harpo Marx’ autobiography….I can’t put my finger on it. Yet.

            1. seewhatimean*

              oh how I love both this show and this story. His absolute deadpan “yeah, and?” delivery just made it perfect.

        5. SL #2*

          Snark, I would read multiple books by you that are nothing but stories about your field work and your career.

          1. Snark*

            That is a gigantic compliment – thank you. I’d actually love to write a book or a cookbook, if I ever have the time and organization to get around to it.

              1. Bigglesworth*

                There’s a chai recipe?!?! Please share (again if the case may be). I’ve been looking for a good chai recipe.

            2. TardyTardis*

              Dictate your stories as if you were telling them to someone (in fact, have someone there who has not heard them, apply beer as necessary). Feed the tape/digital file to a version of Dragon Naturally Speaking or other text to speech program. Edit the text file. See, not that hard…

          2. YuliaC*

            Yes, me too. This is just so far outside of most of our normal lives. So damn out there. So interesting. We would never see any glimpse of this if not for you. Please know that many, many people *DESPERATELY LONG* to read more of this kind of thing.

    6. Falling Diphthong*

      I mean, don’t we all have those?

      … Seriously, I have no memory of this story.

      Two of my favorite ecology professional stories from people without AK-47s:
      • Fossil hunters in the Arctic (which is where the right age rocks were), on a gravel plain with no perspective clues: “Hell, there is a white shape between us and the camp. A moving white shape! A polar bear! And we don’t have a rifle… No, wait, that’s a bunny.”
      • Meteorologists in the Arctic: “Hungry polar bears have surrounded the research station, having mistaken us for seals. We don’t have a rifle.”

          1. ArtsNerd*

            Just FYI, the casual use of the phrase “spirit animal” is offensive to some Native folks. I’m working to change my habits to say “Patronus” instead.

            1. YuliaC*

              Oh I like the substitution! I am guilty myself of liking the “spirit animal” phrase, but recognize that we do have to respect the anscient tradition. Will be using Patronus from now on, as long as JKR does not object. I don’t think she will! She is usually all for making people feel their best.

          3. CanadianDot*

            Okay, I know, I’m being that person, but it might be better to say something like “Polar Bunny is my new patronus”, as spirit animal is cultural appropriate of first nations religious beliefs.

            1. Friday*

              Good to know! Thank you ArtsNerd and CanadianDot. I am sure JK Rowling would approve as well.

      2. Snark*

        In general, I find that ecologists have the best stories. They’re adventurous and outdoorsy and do fieldwork, but they’re still charmingly inept in a lot of ways, with the result that they can end up in some amusingly Steve Irwin/Mr. Bean scenarios.

        3. Jersey's mom*

          I did my thesis on ground squirrels. Was doing trap and release to determine behavior patterns. When I caught one, I’d sit on the groun and hold the wiggly little beasts while I identified the individual and took some other data. One managed to pull out of my grasp and shot into a nearby burrow, which was actually my pant leg. Recalling that it was covered in fleas, I jumped up with my hands clamped around my thigh, hopping around and yelling obscenities until I finally got it out (while keeping my pants on). When I looked up, I saw the windows of the field station building filled with pre-teens laughing hysterically.

          Gotta love those professional moments.

          1. Snark*

            You unwittingly participated in the time-honored Welsh sport/drinking game of ferret legging! Except you were squirrel legging there.

            1. only acting normal*

              Nope, sorry, us Welsh aren’t claiming credit/being blamed for that one! Ferrets in trews is a Northern England thing, Yorkshire I believe.
              If you’re after questionable Welsh sports try bog-snorkelling.

              2. seewhatimean*

                My parentage allows questionable sports from both areas. Please advise on bog-ferretting -in-snorkel-and-trews.

          3. MasterOfBears*

            I worked with black bears in grad school. We did all workups tranquilized (duh) and extracted a vestigial premolar for aging. (Tiny little tooth of no practical use for the bear.) Also an absolute pain in the butt to get out. So there I was sitting cross legged on the ground with a 190 pound black bear’s head in my lap and both hands in his mouth up to the wrist, trying to work this tooth out.

            Did you know black bears can snore?

            Black bear (with, to remind you, his head in my lap and both my hands in his mouth) made this big sleepy grunt/snore/snarl noise. According to the guys watching, I went from seated on the ground to crouched behind a tree six feet away without any apparent intermediate stages.

            This was four years and two states ago, and I have yet to live it down.

            1. Cercis*

              I have a forestry degree from Oklahoma State. At the time, we were required to do a summer camp out of state – ours was in Montana. One day we’re out in the field and one group yells “bear headed your way” and we laughed. Until it came ambling our way. I found myself backing down the hill to the van, with no conscious thought. Even better, as I was backing, I was keeping one of my classmates between me and the bear. Apparently, I’d really absorbed the idea that you don’t have to be faster than the bear, just faster than your companions. 25 years later, and I still think I would sacrifice any one of them for myself (the man I went on to marry was in a different group that day – after they realized we were a couple, we no longer got randomly assigned to the same groups).

      3. Breda*

        One of my professors in college (for a class in circumpolar ethnography!) did field work in Alaska, and he talked about how they WERE given a rifle for polar bears, but were also warned that if they killed one, there would be so much paperwork they’d wish they just let the bear attack.

        1. Snark*

          I’m just imagining a perfectly ordinary little snowshoe hare who entertains himself by trolling researchers.

          2. Goya de la Mancha*

            Well obviously it was, but that thing is going to be damn near 6 ft with fangs and fire breathing when I retell the story to save face ;)

      5. Treecat*

        Oh this reminds me of a story from my paleontology advisor. He was doing work in Patagonia and was out on a boat for some reason. A penguin swam into the hull and broke its neck, and since it was already dead and he was camping by himself he decided to cook it and eat it. Protip: penguins apparently taste horrible.

        (Honestly, in general, any bird that eats fish isn’t going to taste very good. It’s why duck hunters don’t hung mergansers, but I digress.)

          1. Treecat*

            He was definitely not a normal dude, that is for sure.

            (He also smuggled the dead, eaten penguin’s bones back in the US and its skeleton has pride of place in his office to this day.)

            1. Quill*

              Oh my god, this is something my brother would do. (He’s a grad student of Evolutionary Biology so… fun times have been had in the local woods hunting for deer bones.)

            2. Jersey's mom*

              Oh, sure! My house is decorated in “modern biologist”. Skulls, nests, feathers, beaver chewed log bits, and other odd bits of stuff gathered while I was out and about doing work. God forbid you look in my freezer at the dead bits I’ve found and put away until I could properly clean them.

              Last party at my house, the table appetizers included a bowl of owl pellets and my dissection set for those who were so inclined.

              1. Treecat*

                I totally have bits and bobs of things I’ve collected during my previous life as a field biologist–in my case, mostly fossils–but I also once put a dead squirrel (in a plastic bag, I hasten to add!) in the freezer and neglected to mention that fact to my (non-scientist) roommate, who got the fright of her life looking for ice cream. Oops.

                I’m not surprised that my advisor wanted to keep the skeleton of the unfortunate penguin he consumed, however, it was very illegal to bring the bones out of Argentina and into the US without a permit so it was a BIG risk.

                1. seewhatimean*

                  In some places (here) it’s also illegal to have ‘domestic’ wildlife parts unless they are shed naturally (ie not picked up from a found dead) unless you have the right permits. Skulls from most things would be in that category, as, surprisingly enough perhaps, would the squirrel.

              2. Massmatt*

                Umm, by pellets do you mean you served your guests owl Pooh?

                I hope this means “owl chow”!

                1. UK Nerd*

                  Owls eat mice and voles whole, then regurgitate the bones and fur as pellets. Dissecting them to work out what the owl has been eating is a fun and educational activity for children. I would totally go to a party with owl pellets to dissect.

                2. Jersey's mom*

                  Nope, barfed pellets. At the same party, a bunch of us got into a very animated discussion of poison ivy vs poison sumac: identifying characteristics and chanel throughout the life cycle.

            3. TardyTardis*

              This reminds me of the cow skull my daughter had to boil down and label for her Anatomy class, which she still has in a box at this house (granted, she had to make multiple moves in search of her doctorate). I swear, when she and her husband finally put a down payment on a house, guess what their house-warming gift is going to be (though explaining to the nice airport people why we’re carrying it will likely be Awkward).

              Oh, and we made her boil it outside on the Coleman, because we’re not entirely stupid…

              1. Treecat*

                I used to teach a comparative vertebrate anatomy lab, and on the bone exam I would often put out a cow thoracic vertebra and ask students to identify it. Those vertebrae have an extremely tall spinous process and many hapless test-takers would mistake it for a femur. :)

                (This is why you always study out of the bone box, too, kids!!)

              2. Hlyssande*

                That’s amazing and you really need to give it as the housewarming gift. Take pictures of her face when she opens it.

              3. boo bot*

                I was skimming and read this as “the cow skull my daughter had to boil down and decorate,” and imagined an elementary school-aged child with a skull and a bunch of glitter before I figured out what happened.

            1. Jay*

              I once had to explain the severed baby seal head in the passenger seat of my old dodge hatch back to an irate and rather puzzled state trooper at 03:30 in the morning.
              Fortunately for me I:
              A) had all of my paperwork in order (it was from a dead specimen collected during legitimately sanctioned NMFS field work) and
              B) had managed to override my sleep-deprived brain and refrained from putting a ballcap and sunglasses on it.

              1. Jersey's mom*

                We were doing a study of beaver populations, so I had a truckload of frozen skinned headless beaver carcasses that I was taking to the lab (they had been donated by local trappers). The heads were in a separate load going to a different lab. I got a lot of looks at the gas station. You forget that not everyone is involved in sciencey stuff.

            2. Anonicat*

              I should add, I’ve dissected both mosquitoes and human foreskins in a professional capacity. I still forget this is weird sometimes.

              1. Anonymous Pterodactyl*

                I first read that as you having dissected the foreskins of both humans and mosquitos…

                1. Cornflower Blue*

                  Until I read your comment, I too thought that they’d dissected mosquito foreskins and was very surprised to hear mosquitoes even had those.

      8. Anonicat*

        We were having a “who has the worst field site” competition at a conference, because in mosquito-borne disease research it’s always some variety of swamp. Hands down winner was the guy who discovered that one of his trap sites was where a cassowary liked to hang out.

        If you don’t know what a cassowary is, they’re like a velociraptor that has decided to eat fruit instead of meat, but has retained the razor claws and mean temper. This guy would come to collect/reset his mosquito trap and if the cassowary was there he’d have to just wait in his ute till it decided to go away.

  3. Joan Holloway*

    I immediately remembered one of my favorite posts, “When Satan’s Intern Comes to Stay.”

    1. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I misread that as “When Santa’s Intern Comes to Stay” and thought, oh, that sounds delightful! Satan’s intern, on the other hand, not so…festive.

          1. YuliaC*

            Oh my god.. Is there an etymological reason these two entities are spelled so similar?! Experts, please do weigh in, I must know.

        1. Bored IT Guy*

          Is this like Pirates of Penzance where the boy is bound apprentice to a Pirate instead of a Pilot?

    2. Liane*

      Between this and “Snark and the AK47” do we need to read any further to find the Top 2? YES, we do!

  4. Hills to Die on*

    Not a super funny story, but a satisfying one. Had a manager (Dan) who sucked and managed to be hypercritical of me all the time, giving me incorrect feedback (basically, criticizing me for being right and thinking I was wrong. All the time.) Dave was a manager and Rick was Dave and Dan’s boss. Dave was driving us from the hotel to the client site, and made it clear that his car was leaving at 7:30 sharp. We all got in the car except Dan and another coworker and went to the client site. Dan calls later, wanting to know where everyone is, and we tell him we are already at the office working. Everyone rolls their eyes and Rick looks at me and says, ‘Good. Now maybe we can actually get some work done for once.” When Dan finally did show up, he proceed to say and do so may dumb things that even the client was laughing at him by lunch. Total dyfunction, but so gratifying. Not sorry.

    1. Glomarization, Esq.*

      unable to follow your narrative unless you use GoT names, pls fix and re-post

        1. Triplestep*

          I am laughing because I couldn’t follow this at all. I have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones and those names mean zero to me, but vanilla one-syllable dude names are apparently too much for my addled brain!

        2. Liane*

          ROFL!
          I don’t follow GoT (although I have read a couple of the novels) but I do find using those names fun. Or names from any other well-known movie/TV series.novels. Maybe someone will try Lewis Carroll?

          2. YuliaC*

            Oh my. Please do more Carroll than GOT, people, if you can. I would be so happy. I can’t watch GOT due to too much violent images for my continual mental health. But I guess Lewis made most of the characters way too mad for drawing many analogies. I just keep feeling I am Alice all of the time, versus the way too mad outside world. GOT references are more humanly “normal,” while being extreme enough to illustrate the reference…

            1. bopper*

              I’m with you, YuliaC. My DH was watching GoT and I thought I would give it a try. After some dude was stabbing some other dude in the eyeballs, I said “No not for me”

    2. Hills to Die on*

      Not a super funny story, but a satisfying one. Had a manager (Joffrey) who sucked and managed to be hypercritical of me all the time, giving me incorrect feedback (basically, criticizing me for being right and thinking I was wrong. All the time.) Tommen was a manager and Jamie was Tommen and Joffrey’s boss. Tommen was driving us from the castle to King’s Landing, and made it clear that his carriage was leaving at 7:30 sharp. We all got in the carriage except Joffrey and Myrcella and went to King’s Landing. Joffrey calls later, wanting to know where everyone is, and we tell him we are already at the King’s Landing council meeting working. Everyone rolls their eyes and Jamie looks at me and says, ‘Good. Now maybe we can actually get some work done for once.” When Joffrey finally did show up, he proceed to say and do so may dumb things that even the subjects from King’s Landing were laughing at him by lunch. Total dyfunction, but so gratifying. Not sorry.

  5. Thursday Next*

    I was traveling with a colleague internationally and sharing a hotel room with her. One evening, I came back to our room to find her turning the place upside down. She was looking for her passport and airline ticket (that’s how long ago this was). I asked where she’d left them.

    Her answer? In a brown paper bag. Which she’d placed on top of the waste paper basket. The waste paper basket that housekeeping had emptied earlier that day…

    Words were…inadequate to the occasion.

      1. Thursday Next*

        She had a secondary ID that the airport accepted (again, this was a long time ago!) and had initiated the replacement process through her consulate.

        Replacing the plane ticket was an unbelievably difficult and lengthy process–actually more difficult than the passport! But it got squared away just in time to board the plane.

        She was a really experienced traveler, too, so I was baffled! And almost impressed at her level of incredulity that something in a wastepaper basket *would actually get thrown out*.

        1. MsChanandlerBong*

          I am on my fourth Social Security card, and I used to lose my driver’s license, keys, and debit card all the time, but even *I* would never do that!

        2. Liane*

          You’ve got me worried. Considering the chaos of my son’s room, I fear the only reason this won’t be the fate of his passport, is that I am not That Mom who cleans the bedrooms of adult kids. (Now it could still fall into a wandering black hole…)

          1. Just Employed Here*

            Yesterday a colleague found the passport of the child of another person who works in the building in the (shared) photocopier… The parent was on some kind of work trip, but we managed to get hold of her and she came back for it after hours. The child was due to leave for his first international sports camp with his team today at 6.30 am…

          2. OhBehave*

            Those important cards and documents go into our fire safe in the basement. If we need something, we grab it, use it and put it back!

        3. MCL*

          I had to console my sister on an Air France flight once. She had accidentally left her eye contact case at security, so we rigged up a set up cups that she could use to store her contacts in so she could get a little sleep on the plane. Although I had put a note on the cups for the airline crew not to throw them away, they were nonetheless dumped while we were sleeping (totally understandable – the plane was dark and they looked like garbage). Fortunately, my sister had her glasses with her as a backup. Unfortunately, she was just vain enough that this was Not Acceptable. She was in tears in the back of the plane trying to get permission to literally dig through the plane garbage when a flight attendant came to get me to calm her down, and there she was surrounded by a gaggle of French flight attendants cooing in French accents that she was “so beautiful!” with her glasses! I love my sister, and I think she probably would grin and bear it now, but gosh my eyes were rolling out of my head!

    5. Higher Ed Database Dork*

      Ahhh this hurts. Whenever I travel I keep those things on my person at all times, especially the passport!

      1. Anonymosity*

        Me too; I have a thingy that hangs around my neck. If I’m sleeping on the plane, it’s in there, stuffed down my shirt and into my bra.

      2. Tsehafy*

        As some who works at an embassy abroad, please don’t do that. Keep a copy (even a certified copy) on your person and the passport in the safe.

        1. Higher Ed Database Dork*

          Good to know! It’s been a while since I’ve traveled internationally so I will do that next time!

        4. ArtsNerd*

          I had my purse stolen in Italy. Not a wallet. My entire giant, stuffed-to-the-gills purse.* When I went to get the police report** and so forth, everyone was highly concerned about my passport and getting it reported to the embassy. I WAS SO GLAD I LEFT IT AT THE APARTMENT.

          Anyway, don’t carry your passport on your person if you can avoid it.

          * It was embarrassing. I had just pulled out a bunch of cash to get gifts for my family, but on my way to put it back in my room, I ran into friends going to a carousel cafe for the Christmas market, so obviously I had to join. and I thought the spot under my feet was solid, but there was a big ole hole rotating around for someone to grab. But carousel cafe</em.

          **After several attempts across languages to explain that I was not actually on the steps of the Santa Croce church, but on a carousel in the middle of the piazza, and that it wasn't a wallet but my entire bag, I decided that "close enough" was fine. (I could read the Italian well enough to know it was wrong, but not speak it well enough for him to understand my corrections. He could speak English well enough to know I was filing a report for a stolen-thing-with-money-in-it, but not well enough to get more than the broad strokes.)

      3. Snark*

        Oooooh no. Don’t keep your passport on you. Keep it in a safe or locked, secured location. If you’re out and about, keep a copy or some other form of identification on you, so if you get pickpocketed or robbed, you have the passport safe and sound.

        1. Artemesia*

          This is an ongoing argument on Trip Advisor. Many tendentious types insist it is a legal requirement to carry the passport at all times; I remember being at the US Embassy in Paris on other business and being surrounded by semi hysterical travelers who trips had been interrupted by the need to replace their passports. Room safe when in a place and money belt under your clothes in transit.

          1. V2*

            It depends on the country. Some, like the Netherlands, require everyone to have ID on them, and for non-resident foreigners this can only be an original passport (the US passport card isn’t accepted). Other countries don’t require ID’s to be carried.

            1. Sorrischian*

              Yeah, in Russia you are very much required to have your passport and residency documents on your person, so this is one of those things that depends entirely on where you are traveling.

            2. Falling Diphthong*

              Yeah, my son and husband wanted to rent bikes in Germany, but it turned out they would have had to bring their passports. (I assume Germans could leave a more local ID as collateral.)

            3. SavannahMiranda*

              Ummm. Hrm. Lived in the NL for a year and I don’t remember this rule. My passport definitely lived under lock and key in my student housing.

              Although I’m not the type to go much of anywhere on the streets without some form of ID. But certain parts of town in the Netherlands were far too delightful to carry important international documents at the risk of losing them, and one’s lighter, down a twisty staircase.

              It probably is a rule and I never ran afoul of it. But I wasn’t about to risk being That Dumb American who lost their passport to the casual pickpocketry of blitzed international tourists.

        2. Angela Ziegler*

          I’ve just kept it in my shoe under my foot. It’s always with me, it can’t be picked out of a pocket or taken from the hotel room, and it’s not going to fall out. (unless I’m wearing obviously expensive shoes and a thief just HAS to have them.)

          1. ArtsNerd*

            That sounds so uncomfortable! (Also my feet are too small to fit a passport in my shoe.)

        3. Karen Blue*

          yeah expats are technically supposed to carry their passport or EU card at all times here in Germany. No way in hell i would carry round my Australian passport, it’s expensive to replace!

    6. CJH*

      Oof I empathize with this. I had to fish my wallet out of the dumpster yesterday because I left it in a paper grocery bag that I then used to take out the trash. Thankfully I realized early the next morning, since it was trash day!

      Did your colleague get her passport back?

      1. AnotherAlison*

        Perhaps you’re related to my husband. We ate dinner at Burger King then pulled in the driveway at home, and my husband couldn’t find his phone. Turned around, drove 5 mi back to BK, and found his phone in the trashcan. He had put it on the tray and dumped it in the trash. (He tried to blame my son and I because we had watched a video he was showing us, but we were able to prove that he was the last one to have his phone and the one who put it on the tray, ha.)

        1. Sheboing*

          My son did this with his retainer. Called the restaurant when we got home (IIRC a Weinerschnitzel) and one of their employees went through the trash and actually found it. That’s over an above in my book. We got her a $50 gift card

          3. HRJ*

            I used to work at a tourist attraction, and one of the things we did was serve cookies. The transportation was leaving back for the gate with all the passengers when various other employees come in looking around.

            Me: what are we looked for?
            Supervisor: Teeth.
            Me: … teeth?

            Apparently, an elderly gentleman had taken his dentures out and forgotten them, and his daughter was trying to find them while they held up the transport with everyone else on board. We found them sitting next to the coffee and tea machines and cups (ick!), someone picked them up with a napkin, and they took them to the daughter. She just grabbed them, not even taking the napkin. (Double ick!)

            1. Persimmons*

              Digging through trash cans full of food waste for teenagers’ retainers was at least 10% of the job as a waitress, I think. Kids would wrap their retainers in napkins at the table because the parents thought it was rude to leave them in plain sight, they’d forget it, the table would be bussed, and they’d frantically run back an hour later. We couldn’t allow customers into the kitchen due to health code, so we always drew straws to be the one to go trash diving.

              1. KT84*

                I have done the “accidental throwing out to the retainer” thing. At a diner I took mine out to eat and my grandmother and sister through a fit, saying it was gross looking. So I wrapped it in a napkin and into the trash it went. The restaurant never found it. My mother was not thrilled with me for being careless but also was mad at my grandmother and sister for making me hid it.

            2. Anne Elliot*

              My grandma used to do this. Pop her teeth out at the table at a restaurant, wrap them in a napkin, and rest them by her plate. I can’t tell you the number of times her teeth ended up in the trash. It used to drive my mother (her daughter-in-law) bananas.

          4. Miso*

            When I was a teenager, I left my retainer hanging on the wall of our hotel room in Turkey… Totally unintentional, I swear!
            They crafted a little wooden box for it and sent it back, super nice!
            (And might have been a little bit happy I didn’t have to wear it for a couple of weeks…)

            1. AnotherAlison*

              You’re lucky it fit. My teeth seemed to move out of place with just one night of not wearing the retainer. I gave it up for good when my wisdom teeth came in when I was 18 yo. 5 yrs of braces and my bottom teeth all overlap. Late 80’s orthodontia, ugh.

          5. A.*

            I definitely threw out my retainer when I was young and working at a theme park during the lunch rush in the employee only dining room. One of the workers assigned to that area helped me find it.

          6. Louise*

            I was just about to say I did this in middle school with my retainer! I don’t think I ever did find it though…

        2. Arya Snark*

          I work in a wireless related industry. I had a customer (an officer for a huge company) put her phone down on a pile of newspapers then pitch said papers & phone in the fireplace. The stench, I’m told, was quite intense.

      2. Nancie*

        Oh wow, that exact thing happened to me a few months ago, except that I realized what had happened after the dumpster had been emptied.

    7. Bea*

      WUT!? How long was she stranded?! Did she have to pay for the replacement ticket?! Did she get fired because she’s so horribly stupid???

      1. Thursday Next*

        Our boss just laughed and did a lot of work to help her get on the plane as scheduled. She was actually quite brilliant, which made the whole thing even weirder! And very experienced with international travel! Neither of us was living in our home countries at the time, so we were pretty schooled in travel documentation.

        1. Ama*

          I bet it was one of those things where the reasoning behind doing it that way made perfect sense to her at the time, and she forgot the part where to anyone who wasn’t her, it would look like trash. I have worked with a number of brilliant people who have a little trouble remembering the entire world doesn’t follow their thought process.

          2. whingedrinking*

            I know a guy who went to grad school on a full-ride scholarship to do his MA in philosophy (and went on to get his PhD), in a city that was much colder in the winter than the one he was originally from. He got frostbite *more than once* because, although he was vaguely aware that it was below freezing outside, he hadn’t brought a pair of gloves with him and it didn’t occur to him to buy any. So he kept walking to the grocery store without them. His mother eventually mailed him a pair.

      2. A.*

        Firing her seems like a bit of an overreaction. Mistakes do happen. I have never made a mistake like that because I obsessively check over my travel documents but it happens. My friend missed day one of an international conference she was running because she didn’t realize her passport was expired until she got to the airport.

        1. Thursday Next*

          I once realized my (non U.S.) visa was going to expire the day before it did, so I had to schedule an impromptu international trip so I could re-enter on a new, tourist visa. I was scheduled to move back to the U.S. pretty soon, so I didn’t need a more specialized visa.

        2. Anonicat*

          Ahaha…haha…ha. I once missed a flight by TWO DAYS because somehow leaving on the 20th and arriving on the 22nd changed in my mind to leaving on the 22nd, arriving 24th.

          I thought I was going to be stranded in Cairo for Christmas but the men at the airline office were incredibly helpful and also kind enough to not start laughing until I’d left the office.

    8. Oopsy Daisy*

      I was not sharing accomodations with this person, but it’s so relevant I hope everyone will excuse the departure. A coworker I was traveling with went through a very similar thing. He had just finished packing and couldn’t find his wallet with his ID and airline ticket ANYWHERE. He searched the whole room, even opened the suitcase back up and took everything out one by one and looked in every pocket in the suitcase, every drawer, everywhere. Nothing. We had to call the company to reschedule his flight and get him an extra night in the hotel, and he figured out how to cancel his credit cards and everything else sensitive in the wallet.

      Once he’d been rebooked for the night, he unpacked the suitcase again, put his clothes away, and went to move the suitcase into the closet. Which is when he found his wallet, which had been underneath the suitcase the whole time.

      1. Shhhh, its a secret.*

        This is a me thing. Came home from department store shopping, can’t find my wallet. Dig through purse, coat, pants, shopping bag. Call sister who’d driven. She tears apart her car. Comes back, takes me back to the store. Ask EVERYONE. Go home, pick up bag of new clothes, see bright red wallet underneath, create cover story that I’d forgotten I’d come in the house the back way and it was on the porch.

        1. MsChanandlerBong*

          Sounds like something I would do, too. A few weeks ago, I bought some stuff at Ulta. Then I went to another store, put my stuff on the counter, and reached in my purse for my debit card. It wasn’t there. I paid with a credit card so I didn’t hold up the line, and then I frantically searched my bag, called Ulta to see if I had left my card there, searched the car, etc. Turns out that when I threw the card in my bag (there was a long line, so I didn’t want to hold people up while I got out my wallet and put the card away), it slipped into the box for the little perfume roller I bought at Ulta. The box had a small slit in it, and I just so happened to put the card in at exactly the right angle for it to end up inside the box where I couldn’t see it. See also the time I couldn’t find my driver’s license and eventually found it inside a paperback I had been reading.

          1. Anonymosity*

            I lost mine in my car. It slipped out of my wallet (I still don’t know how) and down in between the seats. I thought I’d lost it in the parking lot at the store I just visited, and they didn’t have it either, so I immediately canceled it and drove to my bank to get a new one.

            A few weeks later I found it. Ugh.

            1. Environmental Compliance*

              I also lost mine in my car. It’s still there. My emergency brake has this tiny, exactly credit card sized slit in the plastic. I was getting gas and in the process of opening my wallet to get out my card, managed to drop it and watch it slide perfectly into the recesses of my car. Unless I want to take my car in to take the e-brake apart, it’s going to forever live there.

              The only time I’ve ever had to report a card lost or stolen…

              2. whingedrinking*

                My couch does not have removable cushions and is sprung in such a way that when you sit on it, a gap forms between the back and the seat. A couple months ago I was unboxing my new phone while sitting lengthwise on said couch, and immediately dropped the phone down the gap. I spent twenty minutes elbow-deep in that damn sofa, fishing around (I did finally get it back, but I seriously considered slicing open the fabric covering on the bottom).

                1. MsSolo*

                  The last place we rented had the world’s cheapest ikea sofa that was like this, and had the same experience with both our phones (we had to tilt the sofa up to get them right up against the arm, and then fish around). We lost so many things inside it that when we moved out we did cut a slit in the bottom, extracted my watch, my OH’s sunglasses, several different knitting needles, some money, and a bunch of things lost by previous tenants, and then duct taped it back up. I have never hated a seat more than that sofa.

                2. SavannahMiranda*

                  @MsSolo – that is hill-lair-rious. I mean, I’m sorry you experienced it. But what a great job telling the story. And when the next tenants found the duct tape seam while searching, I bet they felt justified.

                3. Susan Sto Helit*

                  This, but it was a gerbil.

                  Twice. Two different sofas.

                  In both situations we had to cut a small hole in the bottom of the sofa to remove the rodent.

                  The third gerbil to get inside the sofa ended up running around inside the hollow back of the sofa rather than the bottom, so cutting it open didn’t feel like an option (it was a rented student house, and the landlord would probably have noticed eventually). We had to sit there holding the same gap open until the gerbil came out of its own accord.

            2. A.*

              My phone slipped under my seat on my way home at about the same time I got a flat tire. I had to borrow someone’s phone to call my brothers for help. More specifically, a teenager on his bike told me he would be right back and reappeared with a phone for me to use. Then after my brothers arrived and changed my tire, I somehow convinced one of them to retrace my steps super at night including the gas station where I got gas earlier. I found it the next morning under my car seat when I was cleaning my car out. We all laugh about it now.

            3. I See Real People*

              I’ll second that Ugh on myself. My debit card that I was sure had not been returned to me by the department store cashier…found in the recliner a couple of months later when I was moving the furniture around.

          2. Cousin Itt*

            Me and my sister managed a joint version of this. She lent me her ID and debit card so I could go collect something she’d ordered into a store. After picking it up I put them back in the back of my purse (so I didn’t accidentally buy something with her card) and forget to give them back to her. Meanwhile, she completely forgets she gave them to me and thinks she’s lost them. She ended up paying for a new card and ID without telling me and neither of us realised what had happened until I found the original cards in the back of my purse a month later.

        2. the gold digger*

          My husband’s mother called him after they had stayed in our house for our wedding. She couldn’t find her watch.

          Primo and I turned the house upside down looking for the watch. I called every place we had been – I had already had to call these places to find her wallet, which had fallen out of her purse at a restaurant and which meant she did not have her ID to board her flight a few days later which threw me into a panic that they might be staying even longer, but her watch was nowhere to be found.

          I looked again, pulling out all the sofa cushions, looking under the rug, in the laundry, in the folded sheets – everywhere.

          No watch.

          She implied to Primo that I had found the watch and had kept it. That is, that I was a thief.

          Which – even if I were a thief, I

          1. don’t wear a watch and
          2. would never want anything on my body that had been on hers.

          Years later – YEARS – she found the watch in the pocket of a cardigan, something she didn’t have occasion to wear much in Florida.

          She didn’t tell us she had found the watch.

          Primo was visiting them and noticed it on her wrist and asked about it.

          “Oh yes,” she said. “I found it last year in my sweater.”

          1. WolfPack Inspirer*

            I hope you don’t take this in the wrong way, but Primo seems to be an amazing specimen for having been raised by what i can only interpret as a venomous snake.

          2. topscallop*

            1. That’s terrible.
            2. I find things in sweater/jacket/dress pockets and purses I’ve switched out all. the. time. If I’ve lost something, I’ve learned that the first thing I should do is check recently (or not-so-recently) worn clothing with pockets!

            1. SavannahMiranda*

              I think I’m recognizing overlap between that sub and some of the stories on her blog linked above and I think she may already be JUSTNOMIL royalty. =)

              I love our JUSTNOMIL royalty. They are royal for the royal madness they have survived. It’s a meritocracy!

          4. Sleepless in Milwaukee*

            You would never want anything on your body that had been on hers? Except, I guess, her own flesh and blood…

            1. Autumnheart*

              The human body is constantly replenishing its cells, such that every 7 years or so, all the cells in your body have been replaced. So technically, that wouldn’t be the case.

              1. Sleepless in Milwaukee*

                Well, then she could have just waited for 7 years and then worn the watch! Technically speaking.

          5. Scrooge McDunk*

            This reminds of the missing brooch in Anne of Green Gables. Is your mother-in-law Marilla Cuthbert, by any chance?

          6. MissingArizona*

            My husband put his watch in the outside pocket of my purse that I never used while we were traveling. We of course, forgot it was there. Months go by, and the watch is nowhere to be found. He accused our neighbors, my sister, the company company that delivered our couch, everyone. One day I’m looking for a lighter, open the pocket I never use to see if I have emergency matches, boom there’s the watch.

        3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

          I had the opposite thing happen once. Second year living in the US, went to the (home country) ethnic grocery store on the way home, got home, started unloading, one item was missing. Re-loaded the bags (because my home country is famous for awful customer service and I just had a hunch I’d need to), drove back, showed them the receipt and the bags, asked for the item or a refund… One of the store employees went out to the parking lot with me and SEARCHED MY CAR. Did not find anything. Said maybe it’d fallen out while I was taking the bags out and didn’t give refund. I never went to that store again. It closed a few years later and I really wonder why.

          1. Emily S.*

            Reminds me of the time I left a tomato on the little shelf in U-Scan at the grocery store. I was pretty annoyed when I got home and realized it wasn’t in my bag! But that was my fault, completely!

            1. Rebecca Riley*

              Today we went to the store. As it is exceedingly hot and humid, I take a plug-in cooler so that the ice cream doesn’t melt before I get it home. I realized as I lifted a quart of ice cream….that’s not my ice cream! We bought store brand butter pecan, and this was national brand black raspberry and chocolate peanut butter. Next bag was chicken, which I also had not gotten.

              I walked back in and gave it back to them, and they were puzzled too. Someone, probably the person just behind me, has gotten home and wondered where their ice cream and their chicken went. “I know I put it in the cart!!!”

      2. Free Meerkats*

        This one pains me, but here’s my story.

        I was staying with friends in Tucson and had a midday flight out of Phoenix. So I get all my stuff packed up the night before, and put my passport and boarding pass in my shirt pocket – shirt is hanging on a coat tree. Since it’s hot, I don’t put on that shirt, but hang it in the back of the rental car. I get up in the morning, say my goodbyes, and drive to the rental car center at PHX. I put on the shirt, return the car and board the bus to the terminal. I check my left breast pocket and … nothing is there! I check kilt pockets, no passport/boarding pass there either.

        I panic and call Tucson so friend can check my room, the sidewalk and the curb where the car was parked – nothing found. So I stay on the bus back to the rental car center, grab a supervisor at the desk and we go down to find the car so I can search it. Nothing in the car. At this point, I’m resigned to my fate and board the bus again back to the terminal, not looking forward to getting a new boarding pass and later a new passport.

        As I’m on the bus, for some reason I look down and notice that the shirt I’m wearing is the only one I have with two breast pockets, and what’s sticking out of the right pocket? We all know the answer to that one. I call my friend to let her know that I found it. Of course she asks where it was. To this day, she still ribs me about it.

        1. Sheboing*

          I got stuck at kilt pockets. In Arizona. I have to think he caught some side eye for that…

      3. Marion Ravenwood*

        When my husband and I got engaged, my engagement ring was a little too big, and so was slightly loose on my hand. One day I was getting ready for work and all of a sudden noticed I didn’t have the ring. I assumed I’d taken it off to get ready but it wasn’t in my pockets or by the sink. Cue me turning our flat upside down in utter panic trying to find it. (I’d had it on in the flat that morning because I didn’t take it off to sleep, so it was *definitely* still in there.) By then I had to leave or I’d be late, so I reached into the top of my work bag for my keys and there was the ring – evidently I’d angled my hand in just such a way for it to slip off and fall in.

        (I then lost it in a park a few weeks ago when I took it off to put on sunscreen and dropped it in the grass when we had to move, but that’s a whole other story…)

    10. DoctorateStrange*

      This reminds of an event that happened at my library a few years ago. I was in the circulation department at the time and was in the workroom when my colleague got a phone call.

      We have an electronic book drop outside our library. It is something like a drive-thru. People drive there to return their loans and the electronic book drop takes it in on a conveyer belt to the workroom. Naturally, this is favored by many people on the go.

      Well, this woman that called us was upset. She had returned her books weeks ago, she said. She was confused why her account still said that she had those books when she turned them in. We looked around the workroom and on the shelves and found none of the titles.

      My colleague asked her where she returned the books. The patron said that she was looking for the book drop and that it took a while but she eventually found it. She saw a recycling bin that had the sign “Books” and went past the actual book drop to put them there. Again, she did this weeks ago. So, uh, we had to explain to her why that was not a good idea.

      According to my colleague, she was mortified when it was explained to her, especially as she had to pay for five books for the library now.

      1. Nerdy Library Clerk*

        Oh no! Though this is not as uncommon as one might hope.

        A city contractor placed a trash/recycling thing on the curb in front of our branch and we had at least three people “return” their items to it before we managed to convince the city contractor to relocate the trash/recycling thing. And this was clearly marked! One flap had “Trash” on it, with images of items and the other had “Recycling” on it with images of items. None of the items were books or DVDs or anything else library related. Apparently, anything that looks even *vaguely* like a book drop and is located near a library *is* a book drop.

        1. queenbeemimi*

          The single universal truth I’ve learned in my time working in public libraries (3 libraries, 5 years): people don’t read signs.

      2. Persimmons*

        My local Salvation Army put the garbage dumpsters and the donation dumpsters right next to each other. Many, many people threw out their donations for YEARS and nobody did anything to fix the situation.

        1. Antilles*

          I’m actually kind of surprised.
          I would have guessed that at some point, someone would mess up the other way (throwing a leaky bag of trash into the donation bin) and then “welp, there go several days of donations that are now unusable, maybe we should move the donation bin”. Unless people throwing trash into donation bins is so sadly common that it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow.

          1. fposte*

            It is pretty common. The monthly bill for trash at donation centers is therefore humongous.

            That being said, you’d think they’d notice that the bills for trash were unusually high and the donations weirdly low.

            1. The Dread Pirate Buttercup*

              It’s super common. Also common: pooping in a bag and throwing it in the donation bin. Also, sadly, homeless people, usually families, trying to use them as makeshift housing.

              1. whingedrinking*

                …okay, I have decided to just interpret that as people cleaning up after their dogs and mistaking the donation bin for trash, because otherwise I’m going to have to renounce my human citizenship and petition for asylum among the squirrels or something.

      3. Ellery*

        Oh wow. You know I bet she’s not alone in this. I wonder now how often this happens. We used to find trash in the book drops, makes sense there might be books in the trash.

        The only library thing like this I really experienced was a patron running back into the library because he’d accidentally returned a book with the $400 check he’d been using as a bookmark.

        1. Nerdy Library Clerk*

          Yeah… we’ve had people use checks, prescriptions, auto registrations, court documents, photographs, even large quantities of *cash* as bookmarks. Amazingly, we’re mostly able to reunite people with the things they didn’t mean to leave in library books.

          That said, a word to the wise: do not put your valuables in library books and then return the books!

          1. Kelly L.*

            Fortunately, I have a prodigious enough amount of old Walgreens receipts that I’ll probably never need to stuff cash in there. LOL.

            It’s also interesting finding other people’s bookmarks in used books. I think the most memorable was a page of Enya song lyrics.

            1. SavannahMiranda*

              I once found one of those couples coupons, that sort of craft thing where people will write their partner a stack of certificates that can be redeemed for backrubs or whatever throughout the year.

              It was an adorable coupon redeemable for breakfast at one of the hipster diners in town.

              I wondered about that couple for a long time afterward. Are they still together? Did they break up weeks later? Were they just too twee for each other to bear? Were they already broken up and this was the favorite memento one of them forgot in a book? So many possibilities! Such little information!

          2. Antilles*

            Not that I’m doubting you here, but I just don’t understand how anyone could possibly do that.
            Even if you’re reading and don’t have a real bookmark to hand, I just can’t imagine pulling a check/cash out of my wallet rather than, idk, one of the 10 different gas station receipts or a business card or any of the other various useless pieces of paper in there.

            1. Miss Pantalones en Fuego*

              I’ve done it, if I happen to have some cash sitting on the table and need a bookmark. I’ve also bought used books that had money in them, usually foreign currency of some sort.

            2. Not a Mere Device*

              The trick is to get it into the wallet in the first place. I can easily see taking a check out of an envelope, putting it on the table or my desk until it’s time to deposit it, and then absent-mindedly grabbing it instead of the envelope.

              The main thing keeping me safe from this one is my bank’s phone app–checks are deposited, electronically, within minutes after I bring the mail upstairs, and even if I forget to file one, it wouldn’t make much difference if someone had the original of the already-deposited check with “FOR DEPOSIT …. Not a Mere Device” on the back.

            3. Nerdy Library Clerk*

              It’s things that haven’t made it *into* a wallet, as far as I can tell. Like, you get some cash at the bank on your way to the library and stick the envelope in the book so you won’t lose it. Then a brain fart happens, and it’s into the library return bin with the book and the cash. Likewise with all the other things people definitely didn’t intend to return along with their book.

              I must say it wasn’t something I’d have expected, either. But it happens enough that I often wonder if there’s a website somewhere dedicated to all the things accidentally returned to libraries.

          3. myswtghst*

            Not gonna lie, I was super proud of myself this morning when I remembered I stuck my most recent ultrasound pictures in the back of my library book yesterday to keep them safe when leaving the doctor’s office, and pulled them out before I could forget they were there (again).

        2. GreenDoor*

          My library had a U.S. mail dropbox right next to the book return drop. I put my books into the mailbox and my mail into the book drop once. Called both the library and the post office in a sheer panic (the mail was bills to be paid). And both clerks were totally chill about it and said it happens all the time. Apparently there’s a lot of bureaucratic red tape to get the post office to move the mailbox away from the book drop so they all just roll with it.

          I still felt stupid.

          1. Bethany D.*

            Just a few weeks ago my mother accidentally put sent some mail with her driver’s license in the middle! She had dropped the license on the passenger seat in the middle of running errands, then bundled the whole stack of envelopes through the dropbox. She quickly figured out what had happened to it and went back the next morning, but it was already too late. She had to wait over a week for it to arrive in the mail… in a clear-front envelope so anyone could have copied her info… with a cash charge due on delivery. Good grief!

      4. Marillenbaum*

        I’m visiting my parents in Utah right now, and one thing I LOVE about the local library is that they have a drive-through book drop! Thankfully, no one has put a recycling bin next to it.

        1. Emily S.*

          My library has drive-up windows at multiple branches. You can pick up online holds there (during library hours, obvs.), and return materials too. It is THE BEST.

      5. CM*

        This actually sounds reasonable — you’re in a library, there’s a sign that says “books” with a place to put them, you put your books there. You’d think if it was for recycling, it would say “Book recycling.”

        1. Kelly L.*

          My guess was it probably said something like “Recycling: Paper, Cardboard, Cans, Bottles, Books,” i.e. books were part of a larger list of things they could recycle.

    11. Environmental Compliance*

      I once traveled with someone like this. She nearly left her passport *everywhere*. The one I finally lost my temper a little bit was when we were all on our way back to the States from Germany/Poland (I was unofficially her translator/travel guide, since she only spoke English and I spoke conversational German and she glomped onto me once she figured it out), and after a few reminders by people in our group, she left her passport & tickets in the magazine holder on the plane, while we were still in Munich. However, she did remember to grab her stuffed animal. We were all in our twenties.

      She figured it out standing in security to get onto our final plane, and ran up to me frantically asking me what to do, as the security guy trailed after her trying to get her to go to the staff that could help her. FFS, go talk to the plane people and see if they’ll let you back on, but at this point, I’m not missing my flight for you, we only have a 15 minute layover, and you were asked by at least 5 people if you had your passport with you when we got off the plane.

      (They did escort her back, delayed the plane that she was on, delayed the plane she needed to be on, and help her retrieve her passport etc., and were very nice, patient people.)

      1. Arya Snark*

        Did you staple it to her forehead after that because that would be my first instinct.

        1. Environmental Compliance*

          I think someone else threatened to when we got on that first plane. We were all a little sick of her at that point.

          1. Marillenbaum*

            Hi, I see you’ve traveled with my junior year roommate. We were on spring break in Paris, and as the French speaker, she glommed on HARD. Add in being spoiled, needy, and unwilling to even take a simple metro journey on her own (she’d been studying abroad in London; she’d taken some public transit solo before), I was contemplating just vanishing during rush hour and never dealing with her again.

            1. Environmental Compliance*

              I actually had 3 of them glomp on me for that trip. I legitimately went and hid in a local restaurant a few times to get away. None of them were okay with going on a train by themselves, or even just going downtown to shop by themselves. It drove me bonkers. Especially when one of the other of the three Glommers had to constantly be dragged back out of unmarked fake taxis.

              Somehow, on every out-of-country trip I’ve gone on, I end up being the travel guide. Even in Poland, and I don’t speak/read/understand any Polish whatsoever. Apparently being able to read a map and get someplace is a magical skill.

              1. Not a Mere Device*

                Not only that, it’s a skill complete strangers can detect. When I was living in New York, I was approached by people for directions in Toronto, the Boston railroad station, Paris, Hong Kong… Most of the time I was able to answer, too. Including the person who asked me, on my first day in Toronto, where the subway was.

                1. ArtsNerd*

                  When I first moved to DC, I made a promise to myself to remember my early bewilderment and be patient with tourists figuring stuff out – especially the complicated fare system on the Metro.

                  Well that patience didn’t last long, because the questions I would get weren’t actually ones I could answer. There are two that stick out. One was the patriarch hounding me to tell him whether he should get a transit pass or individual tickets, without any context on how much they were planning to take transit… even after I asked for it.

                  The other one was a woman who snapped at me because I couldn’t tell her whether it was worth getting a cab to go from the station to the zoo with a young teen on crutches. I could tell her how far away it was, but she wanted me to make the specific call on whether it was ok to walk. “It’s at the top of that hill right there, at that second stoplight.” “So should I walk or cab?” Isn’t that up to the kid? Is he in pain? How much walking has he had to do today? What are you going to do once you get to the zoo? I still have so many questions about that.

                2. TurquoiseCow*

                  That happens to me all. the. time. Like, it’s the first time I’ve ever been to the place, and I haven’t any more idea how to get around than anyone else, but I am *constantly* asked for directions. Often I haven’t got the slightest idea, but I have a map in front of me (or Google maps on my smartphone) and I can figure it out. Heaven knows why no one else can.

                3. Falling Diphthong*

                  Small blond woman here. Constantly asked for directions, which is amusing to my family because I have an absolutely terrible sense of direction. I look mild-mannered though! While my 6’2″ husband and brother-in-law, who are fantastic navigators, apparently look too tall to approach.

                4. RainyDay*

                  I volunteer as a tour guide. I get asked directions all.the.time, even when I’m not in uniform and just minding my own business (the best was the Midwestern family who interrupted me while I was stretching while out for a run, with headphones on). This occasionally happens when I travel, too.

    12. Collarbone High*

      When I worked for the federal government, it was common knowledge in our department that when people relocated for work, the movers were instructed to just pack everything. People traded horror stories of opening boxes in their new place two months later to find moldy takeout containers or rotting garbage that had been packed, and I was told to put anything I didn’t want packed in my car.

      My colleague placed his entire family’s passports on the kitchen counter the day of pack-out “so he wouldn’t lose them.” Smash cut to him frantically slicing open and digging through dozens of boxes.

      1. Chayary*

        So not work related, bit on a similar note, my parents were helping me move, morning of my mother could not find her one bra anywhere. Gently suggested it might be in a box. Shot down on that possibility. Implication was that this was some mischief done by my little kids. Mom wore a bathing suit under her clothes that day. Found in a box on the other end.

        1. Susan Sto Helit*

          One of my friends has a horror story of her parents helping her brother and his wife pack to move.

          Brother and sister-in-law get to their new house, start unpacking, and come to the box of sex toys. And, upon discussion, realise that neither of them was the one who packed them.

      2. Artemesia*

        I put our garage door openers on a designated shelf in the kitchen and told the packers to leave anything on that shelf for the new tenants — yeah — they got packed. When my parents moved, the movers packed a cord of wood in the garage.

        1. Collarbone High*

          Some friends who were helping us move packed the manual to the microwave, which my mom had put inside the microwave for the new owners. Not sure why the friends thought we’d need a manual for an appliance we left behind.

        2. chilledcoyote*

          We had just had movers move us across country, and they labeled the boxes as they packed. We got to the new house, and there was a large box labeled “Green figurine” that weighed almost nothing. It was in the basement, one of the last areas to be unpacked, but we were dying of curiosity to know what “green figurine” we had, because we couldn’t think of ANYTHING that might be described like that. Finally opened it, and it was a paper mache alligator that my 6 yr old brother had brought home from school on the last day before the move, all alone in the box, carefully wrapped in paper. We thought that was hilarious.

      3. Turtlewings*

        I can vouch for this! When my family was packed out for a move in my childhood, I turned around to find that my suitcase — the one I would be living out of until the household goods made it overseas to our new house — had been packed! A hitherto unexpected force of personality burst out of my timid little frame as I glowered the packer into opening boxes until he found my suitcase AND THE TEDDY BEAR THAT WAS NEXT TO IT, THANK YOU. (Yes, they were in separate boxes, and no, I was NOT going an indefinite amount of time without my teddy bear!)

        After that my parents sent all of us kids to McDonald’s for the afternoon. With our suitcases in the car. They were a little concerned my baby brother might end up in a box otherwise.

        1. Autumnheart*

          But then your baby brother might accidentally wind up in the trash with all the retainers! (j/k)

      4. Antilles*

        That reminds me of a story I heard from my aunt who worked for one of the large moving companies.
        Background: If you’re moving a large across country, it’s usually more economical for them (and cheaper for you) if they store your items for a few days and coordinate with other moves in the same direction. Essentially, they don’t just load up your stuff and drive it in a small U-Haul from New York to Atlanta on its’ own, instead they put all of your stuff in a big 18-wheeler along with the stuff of another couple families whose moves are geographically similar (e.g., Philly to ATL, NYC to Savannah, etc). In the meantime during those few days, your stuff is just stored in their warehouse exactly as you boxed it up.
        So a guy calls their office in a panic because he was traveling internationally the next day and realized that he had put his passport in a box. My aunt explains the above process and he says he can’t wait the extra couple days, he needs it immediately. So he begs them to sort through his stuff and find his passport. Of course, he has no idea what box he put it in and they’re all unlabeled boxes anyways. My aunt reasonably tells him that they’ll need to bill him for it, because that’s potentially hours of work to sort through his dozens of unmarked boxes.
        Between several hours of effort searching through boxes and the overnight FedEx shipping charges to get it to him ASAP, it ended up costing the guy over $800 to get his passport.

      5. Emily S.*

        Yep, one of my friends who was in the military got moved once for a new placement. She was annoyed when they took her sandwich out of the frig, and packed it. Like, ‘I was gonna eat that!’

        1. only acting normal*

          At that point I think movers are just f***ing with people – seriously who packs a sandwich?!

          Top tip that worked for me:
          Anything we didn’t want packed had hazard warning tape stuck to it – folder of papers & crate of tea+coffee+essential supplies in the kitchen, vacuum cleaner, suitcases. All else was fair game.

      6. Bri*

        I used to be army and when you have movers like this you have to pick a room and put everything in there you don’t want them to touch.

      7. Not A Morning Person*

        Our movers packed the city-provided recycling bin. They took it from the driveway. We still have it after a few other moves and use it for glass recycling that isn’t allowed in the regular recycling.

    13. NR*

      On about hour 34 of a 40-hour journey, I found a passport in the bathroom of the Sydney airport. I pick it up to turn it into authorities, but because I’m nosy I open it up.

      It’s my co-worker’s, who was traveling with me in the sense that I knew we had the same flights but who I hadn’t seen since Kuala Lumpur.

      OH BOY was she glad to see me when I found her freaking out in front of the nearest security checkpoint.

    14. Mrs. Fenris*

      Before I travel, I typically take out all the superfluous cards in my wallet…you know, the random store credits/reward cards and so forth. They’re surprisingly heavy in aggregate, and they get in the way. That worked great till I got to airport security and…I had taken out my EFFING DRIVER’S LICENSE. Did you know that you can actually get on a domestic flight without it? You have to show two other things with your name on it, you get your bags searched and the Very Special Patdown plus much eye rolling from the agents, but they will let you on the plane.

      1. Carolyn M*

        “Very Special Patdown” – I am DYING and will forever call it that from now on!

        I had a very special patdown once – it must have been the underwire in my bra or something, because even though all jewelry was off and all pockets were emptied, I kept setting off the metal detector. The poor TSA agent looked mortified … me? I thought it was the funniest thing.

        They asked if I wanted to go into a private room (I was locked into a plexiglass cage at the metal detectors at this point) and I told them no – one of them cracked a grin when I said “never let them take you to a secondary location!” The poor TSA agent was trying to be professional and serious … i was unhelpful. I couldn’t stop giggling and when she announced that she was going to use the back of her hands to feel my buttocks I just went hysterical. By the end of it, the 2 of us were cracking up, it was determined that I was not carrying a machete or claymore, and I rejoined my family. 2 seconds later, my father who had been through security ahead of me, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pocket knife and says “huh – they must have missed this.”

        So yeah … actual knife, no worries … bra with underwires? Make sure you get all up in her undercarriage!

        1. OhBehave*

          I have a friend who was traveling to the DR with his family on vacation. He used a backpack for his carry-on. When they arrived to the hotel and began unpacking, he found loose ammo at the bottom of his bag and in one of the little zippered pockets. (He’s a cop) It was NEVER DETECTED IN SECURITY OR SCANNERS! His wife freaks out and he removes all the ammo, wraps it up and tosses it in the lobby garbage can. Cut to the return trip. Waiting to go through security, he is looking for something in his bag and finds….more ammo! Determined not to tempt fate, he quickly disposes of it in the garbage. I thought she was going to kill him on the spot!

          1. Autumnheart*

            My sister went through a stoner phase in college. My family was embarking on a flight and we were in the security line, when she discovered that she had her pot pipe in a pocket of her backpack. I convinced her that it would be wise to throw it away post haste before we got up to the checkpoint, unless she wanted to face both our mother AND the possibility of being arrested.

          2. Anonicat*

            For a while I dated a law enforcement officer from an agency where they were required to carry a blade whenever they were in plain clothes. He said airport security almost never found it.

          3. AnotherAlison*

            I accidentally put two pocket knives in my husband’s backpack on vacation once, and he tried to go through security with them. They were confiscated, and one was expensive, but I actually think he deserved it. First, I put them in there 2 days before, when we were packing up at a cabin in Canada. . .so don’t be a jerk & pack your own stuff and maybe look in your own bag once in a while. Second, he got one of those random TSA prescreens and went through the prescreen line while I waited in a long line with the kids.

        2. jojobeans*

          LOLOL this reminds me of my last job in a war zone, where you have to get patted down and have your purse searched to enter any building. Seriously, anywhere – they did it at the supermarket.

          With it being a hardship posting in an active conflict zone, an R&R package of one trip every 8-12 weeks (depending on your organisation) is standard, so we all traveled in and out of the country A LOT.

          So of course, entering the airport means going through like seven distinct checkpoints before you even get to the building itself, each of which has a separate women’s search area that is usually curtained off in a little anteroom. There the lady searches your carry-ons, then pats you down. This means you get like seven pat-downs per trip.

          Long story short, some of the women employed to search people can get…a little too comfortable with the people they spend all day touching. Expat women working there often trade stories about being felt up/groped/breast-tweaked, etc. Everyone usually tries to one-up each other, of course, but I think the best I’ve ever heard came after I left.

          Last winter a good friend still working there was evacuated due to a possible kidnap threat against her so she came to stay with me for a couple weeks before leaving on a pre-planned R&R, in order to upset her pre-purchased sequence of flights as little as possible.

          She laughingly told me that one of the women who searched her had added a step: after going over her legs with one of those hand-held metal detectors, the woman then tapped her in the crotch with it (just checking, I guess?!) and then waved her through the checkpoint, completely cleared.

          As someone who regularly was felt up by more women than I ever would have thought possible while working there, that story had me in stitches as it really seemed like the logical next step up from the usual taps and pats by hand.

        3. Elemeno P.*

          My mom uses loose razor blades all the time for opening boxes or letters, and she used to smoke. Imagine her surprise when the fourth time she went through security in the same airport (smoke breaks), they found a full box of razor blades she’d forgotten to take out of her purse.

      2. Free Meerkats*

        Since I wear a kilt almost all the time, I get the Very Special Patdown (VSP) every time I go through the scanning machine, and never when I go through the metal detector. Seems the fabric from all the pleating is bulky enough for the machine to freak out. So I step out of the machine and Assume The Position automatically. And TSA must be used to it, because I’ve had a couple of agents start to get ready for the VSP when I’m walking through the metal detector, then realize I didn’t set anything off.

        1. fposte*

          I had this recently with a travel skirt that I’d worn through the scanner a thousand times before without event. They thought that the breeze from the fan might have stirred it enough to cause a questionable reading.

          1. JanetM*

            I wear ankle-length skirts. I got the VSP and full bag search after going through the scanner because “we can’t see your legs.” I observed that said VSP missed at least three places I could have hidden something, but declined to comment.

            When I got to my gate, I looked down at my bag and discovered a half-full bottle of water in an outside pocket.

            1. Biff*

              When I travel, I wear just a pile of clothes, because I’m almost ALWAYS starting my journey on a Horizon Turbo-Prop. (For those not in the know, these planes are freezing, except for the rare instance when they are a suffocating 86 degrees and humid.) I was in security behind two guys dressed in incredibly baggy clothing (circa Oakland 1996, though this was about 4 years ago) complete with humungous hoodies and those weird oversized shoes.

              Though my clothes aren’t all that obscuring, I got the VSP, not them. I asked and they said “you have on baggy clothes.” I didn’t believe them. I think it MUST be related to layers not actually size of clothing. As in the scanner can see through a big shapeless tee, but it can’t see through a vest, a sweater, a shirt, and long underwear.

        2. Falling Diphthong*

          Never travel with a pasta roller. Not unless you have checked luggage to put it in.

              2. Chicken*

                A TSA agent told me that packages of baby wipes often look like plastic explosives, but I travel with them anyway. Because diaper changes.

  6. Booknerd*

    I had an employee who traveled with me to a library conference. After every session or break, she walked around to the tables and took all of the leftover food. She carried zipper bags in her giant purse for just this purpose. The grossest thing she took was all of the leftover peanuts that were just loose in bowls and had been pawed and fingered by everyone at the reception. She then rummaged through her bag of goodies on the drive home and ate her free snacks, stating that it was too bad everyone else hadn’t been clever enough to poach leftovers for the drive home.

        2. SEM*

          They do if they want to cover the fact that they are food insecure by appearing to be confident and thrifty.

      3. Danger: Gumption Ahead*

        So you worked with my grandma? This was her at every buffet ever. We also left with all the creamer and sugar from every restaurant

        1. topscallop*

          My great-aunt would take all the condiments packages and plastic flatware from restaurants. She was a kid during the Depression, though, so no one ever called her on it.

          1. Emily S.*

            Reminds me of my Grandma, also a child of the Depression. She used to tell my Mom that it used to be exciting to buy bread from a store, because you got to keep the bag it came in!

              1. SavannahMiranda*

                Was your grandma my grandma? When grandma passed and we were cleaning out the house, there was a dresser where two of the four drawers were full of empty margarine tubs. Carefully washed, nested, and packed neatly and tidily. Piles and piles of margarine tubs, like Russian dolls. Years of margarine tubs.

                It broke my heart. It’s what impressed upon me the damage the Depression left on her more than anything else had.

          2. Quill*

            Oh my god, I thought it was just my relatives!

            Grandma and Grandpa both grew up poor as shit during the Depression – grandpa apparently used to eat raw fieldcorn – and since they raised my mother… let’s just say that I will never, ever be able to go someplace in any car my mother has ever seen without toting along two dozen pilfered napkins, a four set of plastic silverware, salt, pepper, at least one kool whip bowl (for the dog) seventeen plastic bags, two emergency water bottles, and a handful of granola bars manufactured during the Bush administration.

          3. Marion Ravenwood*

            When I was at university the chain pub we frequented used to put out baskets of single-serve condiments and we’d swipe them by the handful. The salad crisper in our fridge had a layer of ketchup/mustard/mayonnaise that was a good inch deep by the time we moved out.

        2. brightstar*

          My mother used to put the rolls from Western Sizzlin in her purse, wrapped in paper napkins. She only tried to take the butter packets home once. She would also bring rubber bands with her to take-out lunch buffets to help keep the containers closed.

          1. Quill*

            Okay, I did do this at the college cafeteria in my past, but… usually this was to bring back to sick, hungover, or studying until they were sick friends in the dorms.

            I did once plate and smuggle out an entire fish dinner from a visit day though.

          2. Marion Ravenwood*

            I have picked up rubber bands in the street before. Partly because I’m paranoid my cats will eat them if they’re left outside our house, but also because I’m involved in local politics and particularly during election campaigns rubber bands (to keep bundles of leaflets/envelopes together) are like gold dust.

    2. Bea*

      I’m eating while reading :(((((((((((

      I’m not that icked out about leftovers but we have to at least know each other.

    3. I'll come up with a clever name later.*

      I once worked with a guy who loved pens. Any time he went to a trade show he’d make a sweep of the other vendors and grab one of the free pens they’d put out from each vendor. And then he’d ask co-workers to do the same and give him the pens they got. It was weird. What was even weirder is he used to be really protective of the free pens our company would put out and get upset when someone would take one “they’re just here for the free pen!”

      1. Snark*

        I’ll confess to replenishing my desk pens from vendor displays, but I wouldn’t be protective of those, ffs.

        1. Amber T*

          I admit to being protective af to the pens I bought myself and brought in and keep vendor pens for random passerbys who pop in and go “oh do you have a pen I can borrow?” and then NEVER GIVE IT BACK.

          (I take my office supplies very seriously. Don’t touch my post its.)

          1. Turtlewings*

            A tip my dad taught me for pen-stealers: keep pens with caps, and when someone borrows your pen, give them the pen but not the cap. Thefts of both the deliberate and the absent-minded variety will plummet.

            1. Bea*

              In haven’t had a capped pen since my teen years O.O And it’s not like you ever replace the cap of a BIC once you pop it on the bottom lol

            2. Old Admin*

              That is why I only use pencils at my desk! Nobody wants them, and they hardly get stolen.
              Some people have the gall to complain “why don’t you have pens at your desk??”
              I just smile sweetly and talk about the retro writing feeling. :-D

          2. Ree*

            I use pink ink and purple ink pens(I keep like, adult blue and black ink pens around too, but only for the rare form filling out)
            I find that most people who ask to borrow a pen return it when it’s pink or purple

            1. Amber T*

              Literally everyone wants my purple pens! I’m a color coded person by nature, and we have your standard black, blue, red, and green pens provided at work. I wanted one more color, so I got a pack of purple pens. “Oooh where did you get the purple pen??” Staples. They’re not rare, they’re just not here!

              /rant.

          3. Autumnheart*

            I will sometimes leave a vendor pen at a restaurant or something, if I have extras. It’s like the circle of life.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        I love these details, and the ones about the passport loser being both brilliant and an experienced international travel, because they illustrate that life is a rich tapestry to which “I have a simple, obvious, logical solution” does not apply.

          2. RainyDay*

            I have a reasonable amount of anecdotal evidence that, the more brilliant you are in one area, the less common sense you have. (Worth noting that, according to certain people in my life, I am very accomplished…and once killed a succulent because I forgot plants need sunlight.)

            1. Mid-Atlantic librarian*

              We once had a physics postdoc student house sit for us while we were away for two weeks.

              We returned to find every newspaper we had received during our trip still on the front porch/in the front yard, and water sitting in the basement from a hard rain that had happened days earlier, with wet cardboard boxes sitting in the water. (Fortunately the basement had an impermeable floor, but a bunch of my CD liner notes for CDs in the boxes were ruined.)

          3. SavannahMiranda*

            I am very nearly married to one of them. He is crackpot smart. Can wax poetic about arcana you never knew could be so fascinating. Really sharp.

            The daily grind to find his car keys is grueling. It involves tossed clothes, upended laundry baskets, made beds being pulled apart, and dishes rearranged in the kitchen.

            And every time he walks out the door I yell after him, “Keys, money, phone?”

            He invariably has to come back to grab one of the three. Not sure how one walks to a car one plans to drive without keys. Not sure what he’d do if I didn’t yell after him. If I’m not home when he leaves to go places, he finds himself coming back from the grocery store grocery-less and seeking his wallet fairly frequently.

            He finally got Tile for his keys this week and has begun finding them in record time. He already did the math on the ratio of his hourly rate historically wasted on searching for keys, versus time saved now that he’s gotten Tile, identified it as already having paid for itself, and plotted it’s curve of future profitability.

            Because, y’know, math.

      3. SarahKay*

        My Dad brought back a load of different pens from a teachers’ conference / expo that he’d been to. I was at uni by then, but happened to be home, and when he pulled them out of the bag of goodies he’d acquired I promptly took off all the lids and sniffed each pen.
        Yes, I know, the solvent-y ones are bad for you, but I do like the smell, and I figure the occasional sniff won’t kill me. Sadly Dad’s haul of pens were all disappointingly scentless.
        Dad looked like he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be horrified, and then got an ‘ah-ha!’ look, reached back into the bag, and passed me a booklet on drug addiction! Cue ten minutes of me reassuring him, that no, I really *do* just like the smell….I don’t smell pens in front of Dad any more.

        1. Bryce*

          Back in high school we found out one of our teachers was colorblind when a classmate noticed him discreetly smelling one of the markers. I doubt that was the intent of those annoying “fruit”-scented ones, but it’s a clever use of them.

      4. Persimmons*

        I am protective of the pens I buy myself from Jet Pens, because they’re expensive and I like ultra-fine point. But freebies? Nah.

        1. The Other Katie*

          I carry freebie vendor pens with me as a body shield for my nice Moleskine pens which are now off the market and not replaceable and I am not letting strangers get their grubby mitts on them.

        2. LavaLamp*

          JET PENS! I give them entirely too much money and my coworkers and boyfriend tease me about my pens/planners/stationery obsession.

          I too keep crap pens in my desk for others because people do things like. . . chew on pens or walk off with them not realizing. Or in my case break a disposable fountain pen, then put it back in my cup and not tell me or leave a note so when I opened it the next morning there was ink all over everything.

        4. Andraste's Knicker Weasels*

          I love Jet Pens! And you can pay my Uniball Signo DX 0.28mm black-brown gel pens outta my cold, dead hands.

      5. ScrappyChef*

        When I worked in the courthouse we had to fill all the paperwork out with only black ink. We were always running out of pens. Finally at a conference, at the end of the day, I would go through and take all the free black pens that were left behind. After a 3 day conference my coworkers were doing it too. We had enough black pens to get us through to the conference again next year.

    4. twig*

      My Grandma use to joke about bringing her plastic-lined purse to events like this and buffets.
      Said purse did not exist — she actually was joking. If the food was really good, she’d say “Darn, I should have brought my plastic-lined purse!”

      1. Ambpersand*

        There are so many family stories about my late grandmother and how she used to take the largest purse she had when they would go out to dinner so that she could shovel in the plates, cups, silverware, and other table items to take home. She was born and raised in pretty extreme poverty in Germany until she immigrated to the US in the 70’s, so maybe that was a part of it, but it had stopped by the time I was a kid in the 90’s (thank goodness). My parent’s have tons of stories though about how they would go to visit and she’d try to send them home with a set of salt and pepper shakers from the restaurant they went to the night before.

        I’d be surprised that she got away with it for so long, but she also managed to accidentally drive the wrong way down an on-ramp, lead the police on a chase, hide in a grocery store parking lot, and then get out of trouble by only speaking in German and pretending not to understand the officer. She was a legend.

        1. Jesca*

          My grandmother was a food stealer from buffets. She would also steal like ALL the napkins and straws from fast food restaurants. She was raised in extreme poverty.

        2. Ali G*

          My Bubby grew up during the depression. She was a sugar packet and creamer stealer, basically if it wasn’t nailed down it was fair game.
          The funniest I remember though was when she was at the grocery store and the deli dept had pre-weighed containers of olives. She tried to negotiate with the deli guy to take out 4 olives and re-weigh it “because she only wanted 8 and didn’t want to pay for 4 extra olives.”

          1. Z*

            My grandmother was notorious for her frugality. My dad likes to tell the story about how, when she made strawberry pie, she would go to the store and buy three cartons of strawberries. She’d bring them home, put all of the worst strawberries in one container, take those back to the store for an exchange, and come home with another container of strawberries.

            (Which she would then dump in a pre-made pie crust with that red strawberry goo. It was not a good pie, just a good story.)

            1. Quill*

              My grandmother just picked berries out of the local woods… both near my grandfather’s property and wherever it looked like there were wild berries unattended on public land.

          2. starsaphire*

            A lot of us, I think, had that Grandma.

            I always reminded myself that she was exercising a skill that allowed her to survive with 3 small kids during the Depression, so I wouldn’t get so embarrassed.

            But yeah. Huge purse, Ziploc bags full of rolls, butter, and fried chicken from the buffet, big stack of mismatched linen napkins in the hall closet…

        3. GreenDoor*

          REplace “German” with “Polish” and this could be my grandmother.

          We’d even be at restaurants where they will *bring you extra on purpose* to take home – like Olive Garden where they’ll bag up extra breadsticks – and we’d tell her to just ask. Even her own leftover meal woiuld be wrapped in a napkin and put in the purse. She’d never actually ask for a doggie bag or a box, even for stuff she paid for.

          I’m also the proud owner of a beautiful pile of mismatched white towels, all stolen from hotels by my grandfather.

      2. SeuciaV*

        My grandma did not have a plastic lined purse but still brought napkin wrapped bacon from breakfast to my cousin’s wedding in her ivory satin clutch. At the time she was convinced that the chef at her assisted living facility was a terrible cook and was trying to kill them all with bad food. The (perfectly ordinary looking) bacon in her purse was Prosecution Exhibit A.

        As the purse (which she borrowed from my mother) now has permanent oil stains in the lining I think we all wish she’d actually HAD a plastic-lined purse.

        1. the gold digger*

          I wrapped a piece of cake from my cousin’s wedding in a napkin and put it in my purse. (There was a ton of cake. A TON.)

          I put a photo on facebook and joked about being the little old lady at the early bird special.

          My cousin saw the post and was appalled.

          “WE HAD TAKEOUT CONTAINERS!!!!!” she wrote.

          1. Detective Amy Santiago*

            Where I live, cookie tables are a thing at weddings and people frequently provide take out containers for those and/or cake.

            1. Environmental Compliance*

              At our wedding, our caterer brought takeout containers and packaged up whole meals for people at the end of the night. We had no idea they would be able to do that until the server asked us if we wanted to package it up for us or send it with people. It was actually pretty awesome – they didn’t do the cupcakes, but packaged those as well. We sent a ton of people home with food & cupcakes.

            2. Emily S.*

              Cookie tables are the best, we have them here in Ohio. I had one that was laden with all manner of cookies, and we had little goodie bags for people to fill and take home. I ended up with loads of leftover cookies that summer, in the freezer. They were delicious!

            3. LadyKelvin*

              Good Old Pittsburgh. It was scandalous when I insisted on trays of fruit and veggies and not cookies. I thought I was going to break all the little old ladies of the neighborhood’s hearts, because of course, small town, they were invited and wanted to “help”.

          2. Marion Ravenwood*

            When I got married, at the end of the night we gave people a little striped paper bag (like the kind you get in old fashioned sweet shops) with a slice of cake wrapped in a napkin and a tea bag with a blend of tea we’d made ourselves. I figured that this meant people would actually eat the cake. They did, but we still had the top tier and plenty of the middle left the next day, so quite a few people got multiple bags of cake.

        2. Booknerd*

          I once saw my Aunt Bernice put a pork chop in her purse. No baggie or container or anything. She just folded her napkin around it, dropped it in her purse, and snapped it shut.

        3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

          Ah that reminded me of a big family party that I went to many years ago, that took place in a private room at a Chinese buffet. As my husband and I were eating, my cousin’s MIL, who was the family matriarch, walked over and proceeded to talk at us about something as she stood behind us with her left hand resting on my husband’s shoulder, and her right on mine. Her hands that she’d just used to hold the crab legs, that the buffet is famous for, as she was eating them. Unlike your mother, I was eventually able to get the crab leg stains out of my nice top. I cringed the whole time she had her crabby claw on my clothes. My husband (the ultimate nice guy) thought I was overreacting.

    5. Tragic The Gathering*

      I worked for a large public university where budget was very tight (isn’t it always). Our director was a lovely, brilliant woman in her 70s who’d definitely grown up in a waste-nothing environment. All great, except that when we would hold any events that involved catering, she would harass the caterers at the end in order to take all leftover food, plastic cutlery and flatware back to the office. Even when caterers would tell her MULTIPLE TIMES that they can’t do that due to food safety, she would insist. Then everyone in the office would have to eat leftover catering items, put out at every meeting, for the following week.

      She was insistent that since we had paid for the food, we should get to keep the food. I can understand her thoughts in theory, but it just came off so tacky and unprofessional, and made it look like we were really hard up for cash (which we were but that’s never the impression you want to give off).

      1. Quill*

        Reminds me of catered events at college. Students desperate for non cafeteria food (or just fruit that was actually ripe,) would hang around the library and whisk away the cheese and food trays the moment the alumni were gone, before the caterers could get back.

        … The head librarian pretended not to know about it.

      2. jojobeans*

        Yup, when I worked as a caterer right out of college, we had the same policy.

        It was spelled out in the contract clients would sign, but never failed: every event ended, they come ask if we can box up the leftovers, we tell them they can’t take it for X and Y reasons, they proceed to yell at us for a while, then as soon as we’re out of sight in the kitchen, they grab all the food and make a run for it.

        1. jojobeans*

          And I should mention: these were not needy people living in poverty, broke college students, or food insecure in any way. This always followed these upper-income-bracket people shelling out a ridiculous amount of money for a wedding, or retirement party, or anniversary party, or birthday party.

          They usually insisted on waiving our gratuity (often through complaining about something), as well, despite us making the same as restaurant servers (i.e., less than minimum wage), usually working for 12+ hours with no break, and accommodating all of their awfulness.
          The people who genuinely did not have much money who typically incredibly gracious and were much more likely to not only actually pay the gratuity but would sometimes even slip us some cash.

          Sigh. Rich people, man.

          1. No Green No Haze*

            Yeah. They don’t get rich by tipping the help.

            I live in an otherwise under-the-radar city which is annually visited by several thousand locusts of the shareholder variety, meeting to discuss their wealth management and take advantage of company discounts at affiliated businesses. Rude to the staff, haggling for every nickel, no-tipping canoes.

    6. MCL*

      I was a group leader on a European vacation type thing with, incidentally, another library staffer (MAYBE THE SAME PERSON). She would keep snacks from the breakfast buffet while traveling. In itself, that’s fine – I have been known to keep a piece of whole fruit for myself to snack on later in the day too! But she got really, really judgey when the rest of the group would go to a restaurant for lunch, making pointed comments about how much thriftier she was being by eating snacks pilfered from the breakfast bar and how expensive it must be to eat lunch at a restaurant. And how SHE just needed an apple for lunch and that should be enough for anyone. She was kind of a pill who was judgey about everything, though. Once you understood that about her it was easy enough to tune her out.

      1. Environmental Compliance*

        Augh, my MIL does that. And then gets snitty about how everyone else is getting hangry mid afternoon. “Well you should have taken snacks!!” Okay, whatever, but the rest of us would like an actual lunch!

        1. Toads, Beetles, Bats*

          I have a matriarch-ish relative notorious for saying “I just can’t imagine needing lunch/dinner!” whenever someone has the temerity to insist we pause for appropriate repast. It’s become a running joke.

          1. CM*

            Off-topic but this gives me a flashback to many years ago, having lunch with a boy I had a crush on. He commented on how nobody could possibly eat even half of such a massive burrito… then looked up to notice I was finishing my last bite.

          2. ArtsNerd*

            Traveling with my dad as a child, he’d try to push us to eat as much as possible from the breakfast buffet so that we could skid by on just one late-afternoon/early evening meal (“dinch”.) When I visited the new MLK memorial, I sent him a photo of an engraved quote that mentioned everyone being entitled to three meals a day. Still pretty proud of myself for that.

            2. Inspector Spacetime*

              My family did this too! Free breakfast at the hotel, pack fruit to go, early dinner, only water at restaurants, don’t even think about dessert.

              We were comfortably middle class, but both parents grew up poor so I guess that stuck.

            3. feministbookworm*

              My dad thought that stopping for a sit-down lunch on vacation was a waste of money and of sightseeing time. His midday food of choice was always something that could be bought off a street vendor and consumed in less than a minute, or if that wasn’t an option, then the nearest, cheapest cafeteria. He was a doctor, but remarkably unconcerned about food safety, so we definitely ate some questionable things. In retrospect though, this is probably why I have such a strong immune system as an adult…

              1. ArtsNerd*

                You also probably got exposed to some delicious foods from other cultures that most kids did not! But yes, also an immune system bootcamp.

      2. Marillenbaum*

        WOW. Admittedly, at most of the hotels I’ve stayed at in Europe, taking out extra food from the breakfast buffet was Not Done. Also, lunch is great! She sounds exhausting.

        1. MCL*

          Yes! I should emphasize that I NEVER do this in Europe. Just at some breakfast bars at budget hotels here in the USA where it might not be quite as gauche! She got a lot of side-eye for doing this in Europe.

    7. MsChanandlerBong*

      I used to volunteer with someone who did that, except she didn’t bring Ziplocs, she brought a tote bag so she could take the mini bottles of Smuckers jam and Heinz ketchup that they put out with breakfast. She wasn’t food insecure–she was cheap! Had no debt, owned a huge house in a fancy development, etc. But she never spent a penny if she could get something for free.

        1. SophieChotek*

          I agree. i still have a few! And the mini-ketchup and mini-mustards in glass containers. And the mini-honey in glass containers. Oh and those mini-Tobasco bottles…that I discovered you can now get a World Market.

          1. Rebecca in Dallas*

            World Market has the best mini-foods! I always buy tons of stocking stuffers there.

          2. Emily S.*

            Man, World Market is the best. In the recession, they closed all their locations in my town, and haven’t come back…. it’s a bummer, since now, the closest one is two hours away.

      2. Nana*

        Wealthy cousins travelled to Bermuda annually. Served two mini-pots of jam each day at breakfast; shared one and took the other home. Jam for the year! And cute, too.

    8. KoolMan*

      Not sure what is the problem here? First world problems, probably. Rather than food going to waste but consumed what is your problem ?

      1. MCL*

        My problem was that she was really judgemental about how other people chose to eat. I could care less about her keeping items from the breakfast bar. She could have declined to join us for lunch and eaten her stuff and that would have been fine, but she wanted to make people feel that they were being wasteful for not doing the same. If making other people feel bad is a first world problem to you, I guess I don’t know what to tell you.

    9. Miss Pantalones en Fuego*

      I will admit to using my empty sandwich box to take home some leftover cake from a conference buffet. It was really good cake and I didn’t want to eat another piece, and I could see the catering staff chucking it all in the bin.

    10. A.*

      At my mother’s repass, we walked into the dining room where the food was set up and there was this man shoveling food into his pockets. He didn’t have tupperware just straight into the pockets the food went. We make eye contact with him and he freezes before running out the front door. We actually had no idea who the man was, never saw him before but we all got a good laugh out of it. My mother’s biggest pet peeve was people who packed away food at parties she hosted. Generally as the host, she would be running around trying to ensure everyone was having a good time, so she usually didn’t eat the yummy leftovers until the next morning. So it was only fitting someone would be stealing food at her repass before any immediate family had a chance to eat.

    11. myswtghst*

      Years ago, I often got to travel with groups that included my boss’s boss, who was a “work hard, play hard” type. In addition to volunteering to be the designated driver for most of our group dinners (so I could avoid the pressure to join her in a beer and a bottle of wine and after dinner drinks and so on…), being sober meant I got to talk her out of stealing various pieces of silverware. The most memorable was a metal citrus juicer at a Mexican restaurant that she was just fascinated with, which she kept trying to sneak into various people’s purses / bags until I convinced her she could get one online.

      1. Quill*

        I’m sorry, but what?

        I mean, I spent many an awkward quarterly lunch at my old job listening to my then boss go on about how we should all get sous vides because there was no other way to eat a steak, but at least he didn’t try to steal anything…

    12. Random Obsessions*

      Your coworker is Nanny Ogg, and all other witches on Discworld (except Granny Weatherwax), so I think she’s amazing. :P

  7. MuseumChick*

    This one isn’t that bad. Shortly after I graduated I got an internship at a historic site that provided housing as part of the compensation. A male person I had gone to school with, knew well, and was friends with also got an internship at that some site. We shared an the apartment (2 bed 1 bath) I only accidentally walked into the bathroom once without knocking. We still laugh about it today.

  8. Positive Reframer*

    Camp Intern, so not so much contact with campers lots of cleaning, stocking, organizational things. 7 teenagers, half a house, 2 1/2 day weekends. Professionalism wasn’t precisely a concept. Long back-scratches were a thing, as in 5+ minutes that were sometimes extended into back rubs. There was also the weekend I tried to fry chicken for the first time (or maybe the second) I don’t think it was fully cooked, no one died though.

    1. Positive Reframer*

      There was also the goose battle, some of the geese and interns did not get along.

        1. Positive Reframer*

          I think it was a hockey stick not a broom. There was some sort of long handled thing

      2. Turquoisecow*

        There was a pond on the campus of my old job, and the geese nested there. They would walk across the road, and people had to stop while the babies and parents ambled across.

        I guess there must have been an Incident, because one year we got an email about improving “human-goose relations.” It was hilarious.

      3. Bryce*

        The pond in my hometown had ducks who were nice, and geese who were aggressively territorial monsters. Never trust a goose.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          People keep them as the equivalent of guard dogs for just this reason. Not ducks, though.

          Fermilab has an issue with migrating geese who were like “Hey these cooling ponds are refreshingly warm, we can just live here.’

          1. Anonicat*

            Of all the potential environmental impacts Fermilab must have thought through as they set up…I’d be willing to bet this was not one of them.

        3. Marion Ravenwood*

          My university was built around a lake, and there were bridges connecting one side of the lake to the other. Quite often we’d have stories in the campus newspaper about the resident geese terrorising students and stopping them crossing the bridges on their way to lectures/halls. They are vicious beasts and I must admit they scare me slightly.

      4. Positive Reframer*

        The geese in my current work environment seem to be much more civilized. They were even using the sidewalk this morning.

  9. user6246*

    It’s not hilarious, it’s sad. My first day of work was a company trip to a spa. We needed to share rooms and I shared it with a girl.

    We started to talk about her experiences, my background, etc. She was quite full of herself. While talking I commented that most people on my “level” seemed much younger than me, which was true – I had the same position as people with considerably less experience.

    You can imagine the rest. The very same evening she told my boss I was unhappy about my position. My boss changed her attitude towards me immediately.

  10. Academic Addie*

    I lived in housing with other interns about ten years ago. There were two guys’ dorms and one girls. Each was a 4-room suite. We normally hung out in our dorm, because it was the most central. One of the guys was totally insufferable and weird. No sense of boundaries, or norms. He fell “in love” with one of the girls, a brilliant and motivated young Jewish woman who I am still friends with.

    He communicated this by buying her a Moses action figure, coming to our door, and telling her “I got you a Barbie of your Jesus!”

      1. Danger: Gumption Ahead*

        I think I might pee myself if I don’t let an audible laugh out, but then everyone will think I’m bananacrackers

      2. Anonicat*

        Ah! Anatomically correct dolls are so rare, good to see a manufacturer getting it right.

    8. Spooky*

      That’s it. We’ve found it. We’ve found the best comment on the internet. Tough luck Hanukkah Balls, there’s a new winner now.

    10. Cube Ninja*

      That’s probably the worst way to challah at someone I can think of. I’ll see myself out. :)

    11. Triplestep*

      I just want to know where I can get a Mosses action figure. I want to sit him on my Seder table next Passover!

    14. Nana*

      There IS a Moses action figure. It’s at Something McGee online (sorry…brain fart here). Rubber chickens, odd toothpastes/bandaids…and a Moses action figure.

  11. Gold Crocodile*

    We had a co-op who would always take more than her fair share of food (we have an office that is stocked with snacks for employees). At our annual summer off-site, we had a clam bake, and there were leftover lobsters. She brought them home with her. My co-op had to drive her home with all the smelly lobsters in her purse. Stinky!

    4. SeuciaV*

      Another moment where an actual plastic-lined purse would have come in handy. (Because you never know when you’ll need to transport leftover lobster, amirite?)

      1. Nessun*

        Last year my boss flew in WHOLE live lobsters (to the prairies!) for us for a social/teambuilding event. At the end of the night, he had six or seven left over, so he wrapped each one individually in a white kitchen garbage bag, and we each got one to take home in the cab! Fortunately, not a lot of scent, and the windows were all open. I’m not a big seafood fan – I texted my bestie and said “meet me at the corner of X St. and Y Ave. and I’ll give you a lobster”…without context, she said it was the best text she ever received. (And she loved the lobster!)

    5. Autumnheart*

      Now I’m laughing conspicuously at my desk at “smelly lobsters in her purse”. That sentence reads like a mad lib.

      1. Autumnheart*

        Also, how big is the dang purse if it can fit even one lobster, much less multiple lobsters?

    1. ContentWrangler*

      I had never seen this before – wow, that poor lower-level employee. Since the company was being so rigid, I really hope the OP paid the lower employee back. It was probably a lot of money that employee suddenly had to spend because of OP’s choices.

    3. EddieSherbert*

      Wow, I missed that one. That sucks for everyone involved.

      I hope OP was able to sort things out… or really, more importantly, her company sorted things out. Because really that sounds like the company’s fault… If I got stranded somewhere over the weekend, I would still be able to contact my manager or their manager or THEIRS, etc. to get help.

      1. clara*

        I don’t think the company was rigid they paid money on the basis of OP saying she would take a certain flight, she then changed the plan and took the difference for her own spending money (Immoral and fraud in many places) and this was way before her weight became and issue.

        Then she took the employees phone and all the money so he had no way of contacting the company anyway then she didn’t tell them until employee reported it. So what could the company do at the time? OP took his work phone and didn’t tell them. Most companies (in my country, not the USA anyway) won’t reimburse expenses if the approved flight and hotel aren’t used. The problem here is the one out of pocket is the lower ranking employee while the OP still got to keep the money she skimmed.

        I’d have sued her if I was the lower ranking employee it sounds like he had little money and she caused him and his sister real financial harm while keeping the money she gained from causing him harm (not her intention but that was the reality). And I’d have fired her if I was CEO for fraud (which she did do and can’t use the fact she panicked at the airport as an excuse for that) and endangering another employee.

        1. EddieSherbert*

          I didn’t see anything about phones? But I missed that she took all the petty cash (which does sound like maybe it was supposed to be shared cash)… yeah, that’s sketchy.

          1. Kelly L.*

            Yeah, it came out later in the thread that the poster had the co-worker’s phone too, for whatever reason.

          3. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

            If you read through the comments on that post the person replied several times giving additional info further on.

      2. brushandfloss*

        The OP in that letter had kept the phones , petty cash and knew their coworker only had low limit credit card. The lower employee was left stranded for two days just because the OP wanted to keep the extra money and booked a non-approved flight and then didn’t tell anyone at their job. I know we’re supposed to kind to LWs but all was the OP’s fault not the company’s.

        1. CM*

          Agreed, and I think the OP fully acknowledged how shitty her behavior was. But putting that aside, the company should have taken care of the junior coworker and reimbursed him for all expenses. The company shouldn’t just tell the junior coworker that he can take it up with the OP. He incurred business expenses that were not his fault. She was acting as an employee, it’s not as if they were on a personal trip together.

          1. Nessun*

            Agreed. The company could say to OP that they are responsible for the cost of lower-level coworker’s flight/meals/etc. and need to reimburse the company…after the company has reimbursed the coworker. It should be between OP and their employers; putting this poor guy in the position of needing to go to OP for repayment is not appropriate.

          2. AcademiaNut*

            Yes, the company should have reimbursed the junior coworker fully, been very sympathetic and given him a few days off to make up for the extra two days of travel, and fired the LW (or at least demoted her, and taken away all responsibility for anything financial in the future).

            This was the one where the LW was embarrassed and upset about the weight issue and the fact that people were talking about her (and mad at the coworker for not keeping it secret)- not the fraud part, or the treating her coworker terribly part, which emerged slowly in followup comments.

      3. DArcy*

        I can’t see how ANY blame at all falls to the company or the airline. The airline didn’t bump the co-worker; the OP did, because she ignored the cheaper airline’s policy of requiring overweight passengers to buy two seats, then decided to resolve the problem by having the airline give her both of the company prepaid tickets.

        “I’m taking your ticket, your company phone, and all the petty cash. You’re on your own now, tough luck.”

    4. Goya de la Mancha*

      Wow, just read that for the first time. I feel like an update would not be a good one, but we can always hope!

    5. Kittymommy*

      Wow! I don’t have any words for that. That’s… bad. An update would be great, and fantastic if it’s a good one, but wow…

    6. Jules the 3rd*

      Or to hear from the employee…

      With luck, it’s a ‘I paid back the employee, this gave me a boot to deal with it with a therapist and things are better.’ We do see those sometimes, they make me happy.

      1. Observer*

        Yeah, that’s the only possible good outcome. Because what that poster did was unconscionable. And, it is NOT all about their weight and humiliation over that. Let’s face it – the first step in that mess was going against company policy and lying about it (the op got the travel plans approved and then changed them to put some money in their pocket). That’s not a mistake made in the heat of a stressful moment.

        1. fposte*

          It was kind of an interesting moment in internet discourse for me–she was somebody very upset and in trouble, she’d been discriminated against for a hot-button issue, and it wasn’t a situation that could be changed now, so sympathy was a natural first response (and I’m perfectly okay with being kind to OPs that screw up–that’s not the same thing as saying that what they did was okay). But even in the best-case scenario she’d totally screwed somebody, and in the likelier case scenario she’d done it for her own financial advantage, and those were bigger issues than what she was upset about.

          1. Observer*

            This is so on target.

            Some people did, rightly, call her out on their apparent lack of empathy for he person they had harmed. When the topic was being discussed, they actually commented that if the coworker had had a CC it wouldn’t have turned into such a problem, and didn’t seem to understand just how outrageous that was.

            There was a very strong sense of “I’m embarrassed because I was an idiot and got found out“

            1. fposte*

              It’s really hard to tell just from posts, but if the shame were intended as a conscious diversion, it didn’t do a bad job of it. And even if not deliberate, some of the shame may come not just from the seat kerfuffle but from the fact that her dubious financial transaction was found out.

        2. Buffay the Vampire Layer*

          She should have been fired for that alone. The company thought it was paying for two employees to fly on a decent airline. The OP cancels that, rebooks two tickets on a shitty airline, and pockets the difference. So her junior employee was suffering before all that happened by having to fly on Spirit International or whatever instead of Virgin. She was enriching herself at the expense of a subordinate from the get-go.

    8. Cacwgrl*

      Ugh, I am completely appalled over the number of comments going easy on the OP there. IMO they deserve every bit of the disciplinary issues being handed out by the organization and would love an update

      1. CM*

        It’s interesting how much we all want to empathize — I’ve seen this in other groups too, where somebody confesses and everybody is like, “Don’t feel bad!” But this OP really, really should feel bad because this story gets worse and worse as it unfolds in the comments and the OP has no excuse for leaving her coworker stranded for days in a foreign country with no money and no phone, AND not even telling anybody who could help.

        1. fposte*

          Yes, that’s what I was thinking too. I do think the company isn’t dealing well with this, so the poor co-worker is getting screwed by his employer as well as his co-worker, but she really buried the lede, perhaps deliberately.

      2. EditorInChief*

        Yeah, incredible. The entire chain of events were 100% her fault. She totally screwed over her subordinate because she was greedy about getting to pocket the extra cash from changing the flight to an unapproved cheaper airline, left him with no money, no corporate card and no phone; I hope he got his money back, whether it was through the company or suing OP. I hope she was fired.

      3. Lilo*

        agreed. i’m also wondering how exactly this played out. did OP sit down and once it was clear that coworker wouldn’t fit, a flight attendant escorted him off the plane? were they both at the gate when the gate agent said OP would need to take 2 seats and OP decided to take both while coworker reluctantly agreed being lower (although this wouldn’t explain why OP left with literally all of the things)? or did OP, upon hearing that there would only be room for one, scurry down the boarding bridge saying something along the lines of “i need to be on this, see you back at work” while coworker looked on helplessly?

        1. fposte*

          Or, as somebody suggests, was he in the bathroom the whole time and just found out when he got to the gate that they wouldn’t let him on?

        2. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

          From the tone of the original post, I wouldn’t be surprised if in her embarrassment and panic she simply pulled rank with him standing right there. Something to the effect of “I’m senior and I’m using both tickets and going on ahead. You’ll need to catch the next flight.” Then grabbed the tickets and off she went leaving him with mouth agape and no ability to push back. He may have been so shocked in the moment he didn’t even have time to discuss money and the phone. It really is a shocking thing too, to leave him without enough money for even food and no easy method of communication — pay phones have all but disappeared these days at least in the US. The only thing that would be even worse is if she had his passport as well.

    9. Blue Clear Sky*

      That is MIND-BLOWING. I went from feeling so bad for the OP at first, but then every update she had, a little piece of truth came out where she had done something awful (took the guy’s phone!!!! Took all the money!!! WTH!!!).

      I would also love an update……although I would be shocked if she was still employed there!

      1. Diamond*

        Yep, I am left with no sympathy whatsoever. I mean, she got fat-shamed and that sucks, but… in the first place she secretly went behind company policy to get extra petty cash (was she intending to keep the leftovers or what??), then she left her junior employee stranded in a foreign country, took his ticket, the extra cash, and his phone (WTF), she knew he had no money, and she didn’t tell anyone he was there. She also doesn’t appear to have reimbursed him after the company refused to (though they should have of course). I mean, come on. You can’t cover all that with ‘I felt ashamed’. She made intentionally cruel and selfish decisions the whole way along.

        1. DArcy*

          I can’t think of ANY reason for her to take his company phone other than to prevent him from “embarrassing her more” by calling the company for help getting home. She mentioned that she KNEW she was cutting off his only possible communication to the company since they wouldn’t take collect calls.

          1. Jan*

            I read it that they had a shared company phone on loan. This would make sense if their regular company phones are on CDMA, and the company keeps a stash of GSM phones to loan to travelers to a GSM only country (i.e. most of the world).
            So in the moment she may have just overlooked that she had the shared phone in her pocket.
            Still does not make any of her behavior right.

        2. Sylvan*

          That is a kind of dangerous situation to be left in: no phone, no money, no ticket home. And did he speak the local language?

          And after leaving him there, OP didn’t let anyone know he was in that situation, needing help. OP’s lucky he’s all right.

  13. MariaTeapot*

    I’m SO fortunate my co-worker living experience went well, really. I was about to be homeless because my landlord decided we all had two weeks to move out. I was freaking out because I refused to move back home again (long story). It was a little weird because my coworker was my boss, but she was compassionate and had a bed. Probably by far the most awkward thing was when I started ambien. I didn’t sleepwalk, but her stories of telling me she tried to drunk walk through the tv were interesting. Don’t drink and ambien.

    *grabs popcorn for rest of stories*

  14. Tiny Orchid*

    I used to work on sailboats – we all lived on the boat and took people out for “adventure sails” where we dressed up in traditional clothing and pretended to fire cannons at the other boat. Well, we actually fired cannons, but they only had flour charges in them (flour makes a great plume of fire but doesn’t actually send anything out the end).

    We had a cook on board, who made us 3 meals a day. It was great! Except that he didn’t ever throw out leftovers. He served us cooked slimy lettuce one day. When it got to be the fourth time or so that something made an appearance (usually disguised in something else), we started to hope that he would take a day off.

    Because it was my job on his days off to go through the freezer and throw away the food that looked obviously spoiled. I’d usually hold an “auction” – I’d hold up a bag of something, ask if anyone would eat it, and if not, into the trash it went. Amazing how hungry we all were on his days off! It took a few tries to figure out the right amount to throw out without arousing suspicions.

    1. Midge*

      The way the story was going, I was hoping that you shot the bad food out of the cannon. :)

      3. Tiny Orchid*

        We only ever shot grapefruits out of the cannon, and only when we were in transit to another port (when we were out at sea and couldn’t see another ship that might have turned out to be a Coast Guard vessel). I wouldn’t consider that “going wrong” – that was a day going very very right!

    2. Amber T*

      Thank you for ruining the illusion that you don’t actually fire cannons (but honestly that’s a fun fact about flour!). I’m distracting myself from the rest of your story because it’s making me nauseous.

  15. Snarkus Aurelius*

    At my first job, I worked for an older woman who, in retrospect, had severe anxiety issues. Every year, my organization put on major conferences. Lower level staff like me were “on loan” to the meetings department to run the check in desk, give out badges, do on site registrations, etc. Instructions were clear: our regular bosses were not, under any circumstances, supposed to ask us to work for them on site.

    During college, I worked in catering so I was very familiar with room set up, place settings, putting on tablecloths, etc. (This is relevant later, trust me.)

    At this conference, my department put on a huge breakfast for public officials. It was a Big Deal. I helped plan it, but I was never at the event itself. That breakfast started at 7 AM (!) probably because my boss was an early riser.

    During this time, I was working late. I wasn’t getting to my room until 11 PM. On the morning of that breakfast, my boss called my room at 5 AM (!). She was freaking out, and it may have been a panic attack. She’d gone to the room where the breakfast event was being held, and the room wasn’t ready. Two hours before the event started. The catering staff were ignoring her, and a hotel manager couldn’t be found. There were only “ugly tables” and the chairs. I tried to explain to her that the events crew goes in the night before to do room set up, and catering does the rest in the morning. I asked if there were caterers there, and she said yes. Then I explained that catering has a staff to guest ratio and not to worry because there would be enough people to set up the room in time. I also mentioned that the tables didn’t have to be pretty because that’s what tablecloths were for. She said that wasn’t good enough, and she didn’t understand why the room and food weren’t ready now. I reminded her food SHOULDN’T be ready two hours in advance or else it would be gross. Nope. She got me and the meetings VP out of bed to come down there and talk her off a ledge. The hotel manager came later. We couldn’t do anything to calm her down. She only did when the place settings were done.

    Yes, of course, the room got set up in time. This was a five star, international hotel! But the meetings VP and I never forgave my boss for getting us out of bed over a non-existent problem that we couldn’t do anything about.

    1. Bridget*

      Omg. I work in catering and I feel your pain. People wonder why we don’t have rooms set hours and hours beforehand and sometimes, with people like your boss, nothing we tell them seems to get through.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        The irony is that my boss kept flagging down catering staff to ask them questions and she was upset they were ignoring her. I wanted to say, “The more you talk to them, the greater the chances your event doesn’t get set up on time! That’s why they’re ignoring you!”

      2. Sheboing*

        Because my mil–and we live in a dusty desert, mind you–sets the Thanksgiving and Christmas table with plates, glasses, cutlery, etc at least a week ahead of the big meal. And we all sit down to gritty plates….

        1. Artemesia*

          I usually set the table for a big event at home either the night before or the morning of — because we have a tiny galley kitchen and I need to get this kind of prep out of the way so my husband can cook. One year I did a last minute perusal of the table for a dinner party just before guests were to arrive. The cat had barfed a nice hairball onto one of the plates — it did reinforce my need to do always do a last minute inspection.

      3. Strawmeatloaf*

        I really don’t understand that. “Why is the food not sitting out for 2+ hours?!” There are only so many things that can sit out for so long without being packaged.

    2. H.C.*

      I used to work in catering too and I’d be horrified if we started putting out food two hours ahead of event start time!

    3. LadyCop*

      I have worked hotel security…and yeah, definitely different people who set up the physical chairs and tables and those who “dress up” everything…which can be done awhile in advance, but if the room was turned overnight, then it would last minute.

  16. Anon for this one*

    I was staying in bunks, although this is as an adult (not camp) as we were working in a remote location. I woke up in the middle of the night to… clear indications that there were two people sharing a bed near me. I just pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep.

    Different place, but similar situation – waking up in the middle of the night to noises that indicate someone… was alone in the bed, but missed having someone sharing the bed with them. I was kinda ticked off in that case that he didn’t bother going to the washroom, but again… it’s just easier and less stressful to have a quiet giggle and go back to sleep.

      1. Anon for this one*

        I will not confirm or deny this suggestion.

        When away from home for a very long time I can appreciate that adults can make their own choices. It’s just weird when you have to deal with the consequences!

    4. Thursday Next*

      This reminds me of a summer camp job I had–camp was on a college campus, and we’d amuse ourselves by reading campus police reports. One stated that a couple was in a dorm bed together, umm…awake…when SUDDENLY they noticed there was an extra person in there with them. Said extra person took off upon discovery.

      Hey, it’s college, folks!

      1. ThatGirl*

        I graduated two years before my then-boyfriend, now-husband, and went back to campus to stay with him over a big football weekend his junior year. We were trying to sleep when his roommate came in drunk, with a girl, also drunk, and they proceeded to get busy in the (tiny) closet. SO. Awkward. And as I told him later, she wasn’t even interesting to listen to.

    5. DaniCalifornia*

      In both of those situations that’s when I would have been half asleep and SUPER annoyed and I don’t censor myself well in that situation. (My husband has had to tell me what I’ve said the next day because I have no recollection of anything I do while asleep!) I probably would have loudly said ‘REALLY?!?” at the least.

  17. Midge*

    I did fieldwork abroad for a number of summers where I would live at a hotel with the faculty who ran the project and the student workers. I’ve gone swimming with world class experts in this field, seen the drunken antics of both students and faculty, and had carpool singalongs with the faculty to 80s hits. All in all, it was weird but great.

    The last year I was there (as a grad student supervisor), I had a male undergrad who sexually harassed me the whole time. At meals he would sit way too close and sometimes put his arm around me, he would make suggestive comments, he and his friends insisted on showing me a picture of when he ran naked into the water at the beach. My favorite was when he was assigned to stay back and help me on a task, his response was to play “Let’s Get It On” on his phone. It was ridiculous. And non-stop since we were living and working together. At the time, I felt too uncomfortable having a frank conversation with him about how he needed to cut that shit out. So strategy was to ignore him, not laugh at his jokes, not engage whenever possible. More than one of the female faculty/staff members commented to me about his behavior. I’m not sure whether the male faculty didn’t notice, or if they saw it but also weren’t sure what to do (and therefore did nothing). Either way, I ended up putting up with this shitty situation for the entire season because I didn’t feel comfortable doing anything about it and my supervisors didn’t do anything on my behalf either.

    1. irritable vowel*

      Sexual harassment and even assault during fieldwork is unfortunately common. I read a study about it where hundreds of women were interviewed. I’m sorry you experienced that and that your supervisors didn’t intervene.

      1. The New Wanderer*

        My friend experienced this in college too, but from a faculty member. It eventually became a court case and was really, really awful for her dealing with the fallout of just trying to protect herself and others (some of whom refused to go on the record) from this predator.

      2. Artemesia*

        I used to start a class in corporate training asking students to come up with a ‘disaster in the workplace’ they had either participated in or observed. These were college seniors and many of them had done internships or been camp councilors or worked low paid summer jobs. The most common story they shared involved sexual harassment. We worked with the stories to explore the extent to which the failure was a matter of poor training or poor management. The consensus on these harassment stories was always ‘management.’

  18. RandomusernamebecauseIwasboredwiththelastone*

    This one is kind of sad… but I’m reminded of the post in one of the open Fridays a couple of months back. A poster left their coworker in another country without money, a plane ticket, or even a phone and then didn’t tell anyone at the company what happened. The guy was stuck at the airport for a couple of days and his sister had to take a payday loan to buy him a return ticket. If I have time I’ll see if I can find it and link it.

      1. Sara*

        I’m not sure why but all the links to comments are just linking to the main thread for me. :(

        1. lisalee*

          You might have to click the link and then give it a second–for me it takes my computer a minute to jump to the right spot. The poster’s name is “no name” though so you can also search that.

        2. essEss*

          I find on my browser I have to wait for the entire page to load and then after about 30 seconds it will jump to the anchor tag of the correct comment.

    3. fposte*

      Oh, I had forgotten about that one. I still don’t understand why some of those actions got taken by the OP, especially the change of the original airline ticket.

      1. RandomusernamebecauseIwasboredwiththelastone*

        The open questions are probably why this one has stuck with me in memory. Well that and I just can’t fathom what that poor stuck guy went through. It is truly unbelievable.

        1. fposte*

          I never was clear on whether he even got told he was going to get stranded or just walked up to the gate only to get turned away.

          1. RandomusernamebecauseIwasboredwiththelastone*

            I don’t think he had a chance to talk to the LW before it happened, I’m inferring this from the fact that it would seem reasonable in the situation that the LW was embarrassed and it would also seem reasonable for the guy to ask for the petty cash and work phone if he knew what was going on.

            For some reason I imagined him in the bathroom as all this was going on.

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        I think the company had her book on an approved airline, probably with costly factors like fully refundable tickets. Once they were booked, at her level she could trade in the tickets (fully refundable) and did, pocketing the difference in cost, and bought new tickets on a lower-priced competitor. But OP calls the cost difference “petty cash,” which isn’t the same thing at all–you don’t get business money for taxis and coffee by changing the plane tickets and pocketing the difference.

        The sort of thing that people might tell themselves is fine–company is willing to pay 2X for this, so if I make a separate plan that only costs X why should they care? And then something goes sideways, the refundable tickets aren’t there, and the company finds out, and it actually wasn’t okay that you pocketed X on each of your previous trips as a bonus.

        1. fposte*

          Yes, I was concerned that financial malfeasance might have been involved here too. Which would be bad enough on its own, but stranding a co-worker because you wanted to siphon money off of tickets–that’s job-ending.

        2. clara*

          Yes I’ve already mentioned no one seemed to pick up on the fact she committed fraud and still financially benefited while her junior coworker suffered.

          1. fposte*

            It did get queried in the original comments, but it wasn’t clear enough to say it was fraud.

      3. momofpeanut*

        The ticket was changed to a cheaper airline so the OP would have more money for petty cash. The OP says this later in the comments.

      4. Jules the 3rd*

        The OP got $$ X for the trip, and had authority to change airlines. OP changed airlines to save $$.

        It was not clear if OP pocketed the delta $$s or they went back to the company, but I had the impression the delta was part of the ‘petty cash’.

        She also said she was coming from a country with extreme weight… focus. It sounds like Japan, which has set a *legal limit* for waist size (link in my name), if anyone wants more context.

        1. fposte*

          I was pretty convinced that the petty cash was not intended to go back to the company, even if it did make it back once they learned about the travel debacle. It also sounded to me like the OP wasn’t authorized to change to the airline she did, because it was referred to as not being company approved.

        2. Safetykats*

          Another part of the problem was that apparently the OP booked both (2) seats, and then when it became apparent that the airline was going to require her to have 2 seats because of her size (so that actually 3 seats would have been needed for both of them to fly) she made the decision to take his seat. The airline didn’t bump him – she did. Which frankly was a pretty crappy decision as technically she was the one who was seat-deficient, not him.

          That said, the company travel policies are a mystery to me from the comment chain. Where I’ve worked, the person who would have been out money on this deal (if anyone) would be the OP. Because of the way we have to justify expenses (govt travel) you have to have preapproval and generally a medical evaluation to have special seating – for example, if you need first class because of a hip replacement, or an extra seat. The approvals aren’t hard to get, but there is a process to be followed and documentation required. We have some heavy people who unfortunately just refuse travel even thought the accommodation isn’t that hard to get. Unfortunately I think there is a lot of shame involved, because I don’t see the same reluctance from people who need special seating because of other medical conditions. They just get the doctor’s letter and go.

    5. Snark*

      I will treasure this story forever, and I hope the poster is able to laugh at it as much as I am soon.

      1. Categorically Cat*

        For some reason, any link I click in any of the posts just takes me to the post on best fictional bosses. :/

      2. Thursday Next*

        That was a tragic story. Stranded in another country, with no money and no phone, and then told I wasn’t going to be reimbursed for the plane ticket my sister had to get a payday loan to cover? I’m not sure I’d ever be able to laugh about it as a disinterested bystander, let alone if I were any of the parties involved.

        1. Snark*

          Oh god, I didn’t scroll down far enough to realize the person didn’t get reimbursed! That’s terrible. And in any case I meant to write the poster’s coworker, not the poster, but yeah…..not a good ending, even if the situation itself could have been funny with the distance of a few years.

          1. RandomusernamebecauseIwasboredwiththelastone*

            Yeah, that one sort of unfolded in the comments, it I was reading it while the updates were coming in and it was like watching a slow motion train wreck as the scope became clear.

          2. DArcy*

            Yeah, the company said they weren’t going to reimburse the victim because the entire situation was OP’s fault; the company fully paid for proper transportation and it’s not their fault that she fucked him over.

        2. fposte*

          Yeah, if I got to funny it would be funny/outraged “you can’t top this.” And it would take a few years of doing well before I could get there.

  19. Sara. if you're reading this...hello*

    I once had a really, really terrible sore throat that developed while on a trip for a conference. My boss and I were sharing a hotel room. She looked at my throat and announced that I had tonsil stones; you could see them in the back of my throat, it was obvious.
    She said if I could just poke the stones out, I’d feel much better. I did not want to do this for many reasons. But, she insisted it would help and I should get over it, and I was miserable, so we sat together in the hotel bathroom while I attempted to use a toothbrush to nudge out these tonsil stones. I whined and she insisted, and then I gagged so much that I threw up. Then we went to bed.

    The next day, I skipped the conference and went to urgent care. I had strep throat, not tonsil stones.

    I have not let her forget this. Neither of us refuse to budge in our positions (Mine: you made me throw up. Hers: yes, but it really looked like tonsil stones).

    2. fposte*

      Even if it freaking looked like tonsil stones, why would you poke around in somebody else’s throat?

    3. Amber T*

      Oh my god… tonsil stones are not painful?? If they’re large enough you can feel them and they’re annoying, but dear lord your boss was so in the wrong here on multiple levels.

      1. fposte*

        Yeah, that was my thought. It occurs to me that the co-worker may have been essentially a pimple-popper operating in a different sphere.

      2. TheNotoriousMCG*

        I would get some that would cause a sore throat, but not strep-level sore throat!

        Plus, the easiest device to use to get them out is a bobby pin in my experience

        1. fposte*

          I think it’s very much a question of individual anatomy and crypt location, but I sure wouldn’t let somebody else in my throat with a bobby pin.

          1. BAL or BLA(h)? Depends on the day!*

            Yeah, I can get away with ejecting those disgusting little bastiges with my finger. Thankfully, after menopause they seem to have stopped. *happy dance*

            1. Just Jess*

              Holy Cow! You can dislodge them with your finger? I have to sense/”feel” them and begin aggressively coughing them up or else they will embarrassingly fly out when I’m vigorously laughing or unexpectedly fall so that I have no choice but to disgustingly swallow them.

              Now I have a new tool in the fight! I’ll just go on and skip that bobby pin method.

      3. What's with today, today?*

        Oh no, they can be agonizing! I had to have my tonsils out (as an adult) because of them. They were so big they were making my throat swell shut and I couldn’t talk. The pain was horrid.

        1. Adele*

          Yup, me too. But when I first got them I was able to pull them out with extra long tweezers. When they kept recurring I had to have a tonsillectomy. Best thing ever–previous to that I was constantly ill with colds and bouts of streph throat.

        2. Amber T*

          Ooh I didn’t realize the stones themselves could make your throat hurt – my bad! I had my tonsils out a year and a half ago so I thankfully haven’t had to deal with them since. Tonsils in general are just awful.

      1. fposte*

        For some people, little pockets in your tonsils can amass solid matter, which initially is small and fairly soft (think, like, wet shortbread) but can grow and harden over time. They’re often asymptomatic but they can contribute to bad breath, and if they get bigger they can be a problem. You can also feel them sometimes, especially if you’re familiar with having them, so that can bug you. Unless those little pockets are really deep, it’s generally not hard to remove the “stones” once you know what works for you. (Waterpiks are also popular there.)

      2. Sara. if you're reading this...hello*

        they’re sort of equivalent to plaque build up, but on your tonsils rather than your teeth. Not everyone gets them (it turns out I never have).
        They actually can be poked out, or dislodged, or you can wait for them to fall out on their own, or I think you can go to the dentist (who would also poke them out, but in a fancy dentist way)

      3. Good, Cheap, or Soon. Pick Two.*

        The first two descriptions describe minor tonsilloliths, or (as they’re more commonly known) tonsil stones. For some people with abnormal tonsil crypts (the “pockets” in your tonsils), matter can build up and harden into stones. Now, if these stones are small and on the surface of the tonsil, they can be mild and easily removed with a water pick. They can range from odd feeling to mild discomfort. If, however, you have deeper crypts, they can build under the surface and become quite large, leading to very enlarged tonsils, increased discomfort, trouble swallowing, and secondary infection. For reference, why they can be this problematic is that ones that develop in occluded crypts can grow to the size of a large grape.

        It’s a condition that affects a portion of the population and it can worsen over time since each stone that you have can increase the size of the crypt it develops in. Waterpiks help you keep the crypts clear of matter, so they’re incredibly helpful… it’s just miserable to shoot water into the back of your throat. For larger stones, people do need to see either a dentist or an ENT. Usually the ENT is a better bet… you can probably guess how I know all of this. Fortunately, treatment options do exist (not just tonsil removal, since your tonsils do play a role in your immune system), including laser resurfacing to reduce the depth of the tonsil crypts. It wasn’t fun but it worked.

      4. Concerned Lurker*

        Also, most people’s tonsils shrink as they age. So, getting tonsil stones tend to happen less as one ages.

      5. Errant*

        For me, they manifest as little whitish-yellowish globs that I suddenly cough up every once in a while. They’re firm enough to keep a shape, but crumbly/soft enough to break up easily. Kind of like a small bit of cottage cheese. They smell bad and taste bad and there’s not much you can do to prevent them – a thoroughly unpleasant minor body (mal)function.

        1. Just Jess*

          This sounds exactly like my tonsil stones. For some reason eating a ton of bread (like eating four large croissants in three days) and eating even just a handful of peanuts are two contributing factors.

    6. batshytecrazy*

      I never heard of tonsil stones before & had to Google search. I was much happier being ignorant :-)

      1. Amber T*

        Yeah, fair warning if you’ve made it this far down and hadn’t heard of tonsil stones before – don’t google search if you’re grossed out easily. They truly are disgusting to look at. I can’t think of a person who’s throat I would poke around to remove tonsil stones for (I’m clearly not a doctor).

      2. Star Nursery*

        Me too! They always say you learn something new each day and today I have learned at least two things. Tonsil stones sound miserable.

  20. Gen*

    We had to take a week long training course in a former country house turned hotel. Because the building had some kind of protected status there was only so much they could do to change the layout and some of our staff got lost constantly. Or claimed they were lost and snuck out for smoke breaks. The smoking shelter was clearly visible from the conference room so we could all see Tristan smoking while he explained on the phone to our manager that he was lost somewhere else in the building. The hotel bar was overpriced and terrible. By the third night the five managers had had enough and decided to strike out across a farmers field towards a village that was rumoured to be nearby. This was before mobiles had easily available maps so these guys just sort of walked off into the fog in vaguely the right direction. By the time the rest of us went to bed they weren’t back but they were the managers so no one felt like they should check up on them. If they needed help they’d call us surely? The next morning four of them turned up for the training looking hungover and worried. They’d got a taxi back but the village was so remote there weren’t any larger cars so the older male manager volunteered to walk back. At nearly midnight, across what turned out to be three fields, in the fog… yeah he wasn’t in his room. Nor was he answering his phone. At this point people started to panic because what if he’d fallen in a ditch or something? They ended up calling the police who came out pretty quickly and were about to head off in search for him with the other managers when he stumbles out of a shed near the main gates. After stumbling around drunk in the fog, losing his phone and getting chased by sheep he hadn’t realised he was nearly back to the hotel and had just broken into the first shelter he could find to sleep it off.

    3. TheCupcakeCounter*

      I might have peed myself I’m laughing so hard (while trying to be very very quiet)

    4. ErinW*

      I don’t know what country you were in, but this sounds exactly like the beginning of An American Werewolf in London. There would have been no wandering unfamiliar villages at night for me.

      1. Gen*

        I am actually in Yorkshire (where that part of the movie was set but not filmed) no one got turned into a werewolf though fortunately

        1. ElspethGC*

          What corner of Yorkshire? I’m from the East Riding, but I was reading through that thinking “Sounds like the Yorkshire Dales…”

      1. Snack Management*

        +1 I’m now imagining a drunk Steve Carrell being chased by sheep in the English countryside at night.

        1. Falling Diphthong*

          Bill Bryson said that the difference between Americans and Brits is how they react to anecdotes about walkers being trampled to death by cows. Americans want to know why you would be walking in a field, while Brits immediately think of another cow-trampling story.

          1. MasterOfBears*

            I’m gonna hazard a guess that Bill Bryson is not familiar with the midwestern and southern portions of America…

            1. Falling Diphthong*

              He’s from Iowa.

              The English are a nation of walkers. Americans… not do much. And there’s an entire different footpath mentality, where American hiking areas are usually only wilderness while European trails will potter through farms.

              1. jojobeans*

                This.

                I grew up in a small farm town in Iowa.

                I can safely say I have never walked through a field with a cow or cows in it, apocryphal stories of cow-tipping regardless…

                1. only acting normal*

                  Whereas I’m a city dwelling Brit and I’ve walked through plenty of fields with sheep and cows in. You do have to be wary of cows, and know when to beat a retreat or just bypass their field.
                  Brits are much less likely to encounter bears though. :)

  21. CatCat*

    Well, an exJob used to host a big conference. Coworker and I were supposed to attend and drive to conference. He refused to travel with me because I was a single woman, and he and his wife had agreed that the other would never be alone with an unmarried person of the opposite sex. He said this to me like it was reasonable at work. I told him it was really offensive. Needless to say, we drove in separate cars. My attitude toward him was never more than icy civility after that.

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Oy. I assume that job reimbursed you both for mileage/gas/etc.

      If I was a manager and had someone tell me that, I would tell them they could either go with their colleague or not go at all because I wouldn’t pay extra expenses to cater to his ridiculousness.

      1. Kelsi*

        This is what my agency does. If you want to go separately for whatever reason, you’re expected to cover your own mileage. (Although usually the reasons are far less dumb than “I can’t be alone with an unmarried woman.”)

    2. Xarcady*

      Wait–so it was okay for him to be alone with a married woman who wasn’t his wife? Seriously, did they think a single woman was, I don’t know, going to rip his clothes off or something, but a married woman was going to sit there prim and proper with her hands folded in her lap, gazing at a picture of her beloved, and muttering prayers for chastity?

      2. queenbeemimi*

        Well, everyone knows every woman’s goal in life is to get a husband– someone who’s already got one won’t be out to steal yours.

    3. Technical_Kitty*

      Wow. That’s…… depressing for their marriage, and more than a little childish.

    4. Cait*

      Wasn’t there a letter here awhile ago … written by a woman whose husband and her had the same type of agreement? In the letter, she didn’t want to go on business lunches with male coworkers I believe?

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Yes, but it was all male coworkers.

        I mean, people who think affairs can only happen between one married and one unmarried person just haven’t been paying attention.

    5. Beancounter in Texas*

      My father once commented that his father-in-law thought it was scandalous that my father should eat lunch in public with another married woman, because people would see! (They’d known each other since high school in the same town.)

    6. Mai Oui*

      Still, I think it’s kind of cool that he actually kept his promise. Many are not so protective of their marriage. It might be time to have a talk with his wife, though. There has to be some element of trust . . .

    7. Persimmons*

      I would have been really, really tempted to say the sort of things I usually just think silently. Like “Tell her it isn’t a problem because you’re gross”.

      1. CatCat*

        I was so shocked in the moment!

        But this was also the workplace where I was refused an assignment I was interested in because “no one would take a woman seriously” doing that assignment. So, yeah. I actually got that to get them to backpedal on that relatively quickly, but after that happened was when I decided to leave and started my exit plan. The assignment where a “woman wouldn’t be taken seriously” actually helped me get my next position so HA!

      2. Treecat*

        The more vulgar “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t f**k you with a dog’s p***y” came to my mind, but I am NOT nice about these things.

    8. yet another Kat*

      Did you used to work with Mike Pence?

      (Please delete if this is overly political/derailing)

    9. What's with today, today?*

      We have a guy like that. We do this program every fall where we give backpacks and school supplies to all the kindergarten students in our county. We all take turns delivering them to the different school districts, in the company car, with our office manager (a woman). Except for one man, who refuses to ride in a car alone with any woman other than his wife because, I’m not kidding, “People will talk!” This co-worker is in his 80s, so boss just deals with it rather than try to change it.

  22. not so sweet*

    When I was a doctoral student, our advisor said two of us could go to this conference in Detroit if we could travel cheaply. So I found us rooms at a private college in the city, and my colleague drove, and I navigated (very helpful for strangers in Detroit). This worked great until the day that we wanted to go to different mixers after the conference sessions. He wanted me to take his car, but I refused because I wanted to drink at the mixer and not have to worry about someone else’s car and Detroit U-turns. So I went out and had a good time and got a taxi back to the college.

    In the morning he didn’t show up at our rendezvous, so I wanted to go wake him up — but it was a Catholic college and I wasn’t allowed to go onto the men’s floor so I stood by the staircase looking for another resident to go bang on his door for me, and eventually I heard what had happened the night before.

    He went out and didn’t drink much, so he had decided to buy a 6-pack on the way home and drink in his room. But it was the first time he was trying to drive in Detroit in the dark by himself and he got lost. He thought he saw a clear new-asphalt parking lot next to the road so he pulled in to get his bearings — and what he’d seen was actually a steep ditch, and his car slid in and got held up on a pole. Eventually someone with a pickup truck and towing cables came by and pulled him out. But for the rest of that trip, I had to climb in and out the driver’s side because the passenger door was broken. AND I had to listen to him complain about MY travel arranging which caused the problem, according to him.

    1. AnotherAlison*

      Sounds like he may have had a little more to drink than he claimed.

      But separately, WTH is the deal with the Detroit U-turns? A few weeks ago, I dropped a coworker off at his hotel in Dearborn, and was sitting in one of those U-turn lanes, next to another car also waiting to turn, when someone came from the opposite direction and split the middle right up that lane, intentionally. Scared the crap out of me.

      1. Liane*

        Sounds like Dallas, Texas. We were always making U-Turns when we went places on the major freeways. It got so bad when we were dropping off a friend at Love Field (airport) that Google Maps couldn’t keep things straight. Friend’s phone was reciting one set of directions and our son’s a completely different one. Both guys were using Google Maps app, riding in our car, and had typed in “Love Field, Dallas TX.”

        1. AnotherAlison*

          I definitely get that–nothing like Google to get you lost in an unfamiliar city, but Detroit is designed to for U-turns. You can’t turn left at major intersections. It’s laid out so that you turn right, go a block or two, then make a u-turn to go left. I’m not a world traveler, but I’m not a shut-in, either, and I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

          2. Red Reader*

            We call that a Michigan Left :) they’re actually pretty efficient under most circumstances, as I understand it.

            1. Annie Moose*

              Yeah, the idea (as I understand it) is that cars turning right are never stopped (because everyone has to turn right), and cars turning left will back up on the road itself, rather than leading up to the intersection.

            2. AnotherAlison*

              So is it legal to turn left on red? I see people who do, and I see others who sit there. (Sometimes people honk, and other times, they all just seem to go along with the sitter.)

              1. Red Reader*

                Yep! At that point you’re basically following the rule to turn onto a one way street, which is the same for lefts as for rights – in Michigan, at least, it’s allowed unless it’s specifically posted no turn on red.

              2. mandassassin*

                Professional driver/CDL holder here: it is legal, at least in Michigan, to complete a boulevard turn on a red light, unless otherwise posted. Just like making a right turn on red. The people who wait at that sort of turn (with no contradictory sign) are wrong, unless they’re trying to proceed straight across the street from the stop line (into a driveway or side street). Not that it stops most people from going anyway, of course.

          3. Annie Moose*

            Ahhh, good ol’ Michigan lefts. Very common here in Michigan, on divided roads. Very uncommon for literally anyone else! Once you’re familiar with them, they’re pretty easy, but if you don’t know how you work, they’re pretty confusing. “I have to turn right to go left? There’s a dedicated U-turn lane?? I’m supposed to turn into the leftmost lane of traffic???”

            For the record: Turn right (east), and briskly get into the leftmost lane. When you see the turning/U-turn lane to the left, get into it. Yield to oncoming traffic and merge in when you’re clear.

            1. Annie Moose*

              Whoops, should have clarified: my example is when you’re turning left onto a divided road. If you’re turning left from the divided road, drive past your intersection and get in the leftmost lane. Enter the turning/U-turn lane to the left and merge into traffic going the opposite way when you’re clear. Briskly get into the rightmost lane and turn right at the intersection.

        2. Erin*

          That’s really interesting. My husband used to be involved with Google maps so I know a bit about it and it seems to be going downhill, not….getting better. (Just my impression, not super inside knowledge, so take that with a grain of salt. :)) But it’s Google, you’d think they’d be on the ball!

          1. sunshyne84*

            I just want them to put the entrance to my apt complex on the map so my uber drivers would stop calling me from the exit gate saying they can’t get in.

            1. Claire A.*

              You can actually request that change! I requested several; there was a whole neighborhood that Google maps thought was only accessible by boat. There was a perfectly nice road….

            2. Teach*

              There is apparently a Google Maps app where anyone with a smart phone can add a location and 360 * photo? Just heard about it at a tech conference in the context of using technology to make underserved populations more visible.

      2. Kelsi*

        I don’t know, I had a similar experience in the car with my mom once, in broad daylight. She was driving and it looked like a turn-off into a gas station driveway–we both saw it! But when she turned it was a four-foot drop off. Thankfully she saw it in time and slammed on the brakes, and also, thankfully, even though we were turning left across traffic, no traffic was actually approaching. She was able to safely return to our lane and turn at the next corner to get to the gas station’s actual driveway (off the other road).

        It was totally scary and I’m sure anyone looking from a different angle thought my mom was drunk, but it genuinely looked like a driveway entrance to both of us.

        1. Ranon*

          There’s about a three foot drop between my works parking lot and the bank next door- one morning we all got to work and there was a car high-centered on the wall between the two lots (there are wheel stops but the retaining wall is flush with the ground and there is no signage). We figure she was trying to cut from one lot to the next and just didn’t see the drop. Luckily the tow truck guy was able to get her car off the wall pretty simply and she was actually able to drive the car away, but what a sucky morning!

          1. Classic Rando*

            My grandma lived in a beach cottage. It’s the last house on the street before the beach, on a double lot with a large driveway. Behind the house was a knee-high fence, a crumbling stone retaining wall, a creek, and a parking lot that was about 3 feet lower than the yard. At night in the summer people used to cut through her yard on foot, hopping over the stream. We had private property signs posted all over.

            One night at around 2am, in the off-season, my tiny Italian grandmother was woken up by someone knocking at her door. A young guy in his 20’s (with some friends in several cars) had driven into her driveway and back yard, and stopped at the fence. Seeing the parking lot beyond, his friends dared him to drive through the fence, and he thought that sounded like fun. Riiiiiight up until the front end of his Explorer swan dived into the opposing bank of the creek and got stuck.

      3. PureMichigan*

        Are we talking Michigan left’s or the U-turns over the overpasses in Detroit? It isn’t clear for the OP, I suspect you’re talking about a Michigan left. But you can’t actually split those up the middle (and if I recall, they’re statistically safer) so I’m a bit lost here…

        1. AnotherAlison*

          I’m talking about a left on a regular surface street (which involves a U-turn, apparently). I’m not from MI so I don’t know all the terminology! I was in the right lane of a double left turn lane, turning into eastbound traffic, and someone was next to me in the right lane. There was another lane across from us that could turn right into the eastbound traffic. Someone came out of that lane, across the 4 lanes of eastbound traffic, and went between me and the car next to me, into the westbound lanes of traffic (going east). It’s really difficult to explain without a picture, sorry.

      5. Minocho*

        We call them “Michigan Turns”, actually. And they’re all over the state. Somehow, some person who liked them because they “decrease cross traffic flow” or some such junk, got into a position of enough power in the state that they’re a thing. I don’t remember them in Detroit as a kid, growing up, much, but they became a big thing, requiring reconfiguring many roads, when I was in high school on the west side of the state.

      6. MusicWithRocksInIt*

        Oh. Michigan left. You mean Michigan left. I am from that area and am reading this going ‘What on earth- you can’t use U Turns around here’ when I finally caught on. They are much better than traffic circles, I can tell you that.

    2. Beancounter in Texas*

      Once upon a time in the UAE, the only way to get to the other side of the street was to U-turn. You could not cross traffic except at intersections.

      1. Grad Intern*

        This is a thing in the Cancun/Tulum area in Mexico too–no left turns, only U-turns, then go back the other way and make the right. They have big signs that say “Retorno” before the turn so you know when it’s coming.

    3. ErinW*

      Other than his being a jerk to you about it afterwards, I feel for this guy because I have done this myself, NOT drunk and NOT at night. It was an unfamiliar town and I figured out I was heading in the opposite direction from what I wanted. I turned into a snow-covered parking lot (I thought) to turn around, but it was actually a ditch with just enough slope (and snow, of course) that I couldn’t reverse my car back onto the road. I called my then-boyfriend now-husband, and we flagged down a cop, and with the two of them pushing, I managed to get back on the road, not without enduring some “How the hell did you do this?” from both of them first.

    4. Not a Mere Device*

      I was expecting this story to end with him explaining himself to either US or Canadian border agents.

      1. AnotherAlison*

        There is a story like that at my company at the Windsor bridge or tunnel, but I can’t remember enough of the details for it to be funny. Basically, someone forgot their ID in a hotel room on the Canadian side, realized it on the bridge, turned around in the middle of the bridge (how?!? – I don’t know if that can be done, but again it was a long time ago), and got stopped by agents. It was especially hilarious at the time because of who it was.

  23. CMart*

    I’m part of a rotational program at my MegaCorp which I think has become a fairly common fixture at a lot of companies. New grads (typically, I’m a career changers personally) come on board as a cohort, spend X amount of time in different positions, “graduate” after a couple years and then get placed in senior-level permanent positions. They often do things collectively as a program; networking events, trips to other locations, charity functions etc…

    The cohort that started a year before I did is now infamous for their out of state trip to one of our plants. They all went out on their last night there and between the 10 people in attendance, none of them were functional enough in the morning to realize that they’d left “Chad” behind until they were 4 hours into the drive back to HQ.

    The tale is now told as a cautionary one by upper management about what “professionalism” means, and an uproarious anecdote by those who have the hazy memories of the incident.

  24. Paper jam*

    I roomed with someone who started on the same day as I did. She instant messaged me at work to say she bought a dog because she thought her cat would be lonely, rather than have a conversation with me like a normal roommate.

  25. Werewolves not Swearwolves*

    Last year I attended a conference on my employer’s dime in an awesome locale that I will probably never get to personally travel to. Someone else from my institution also got to go too and though we were there for different reasons, she attached herself to me like a leach and I’m still mad about it. She wanted to do every meal, every session, break and touristy thing together. She even called the hotel ahead of time (unbeknownst to me) to request that our rooms be next to each other.

    I really regret not being able to politely tell her that I just wanted to be alone most of the time. But she was a known drama queen, so I just let her tag along so she wouldn’t start shit.

        1. Wannabikkit*

          Did you know there’s a spin-off tv series? It’s about to start screening on New Zealand tv.

    2. Lindsay J*

      Hotels really should not honor requests like that unless they hear from both parties due to things like the Erin Andrews stalking.

  26. Anon Good Nurse*

    This was a bizarrely funny travel situation that came up a few years ago. My old job required a lot of travel every quarter (3-4 trips, usually packed into a three week window.) On a good stretch it was exhausting and draining, but our company had been going through a rough patch and we had a lot of unhappy clients. So the mental and physical exhaustion went to 11.

    After a particularly long and harsh all day meeting, my co-worker and I went to the airport. We got separated (not a big deal, I went to the restroom to change my clothes and she went to grab a bite to eat) and figured we’d meet up at the gate. It was cutting it close and we were flying Southwest. I had an earlier boarding position so I got on the plane in a window seat near the back, pulled out my iPad, put on my headphones, turned on the latest Masterpiece theater and zoned out. The plane took off and a few hours later, landed at home. At that point, I took off my headphones and was packing up when I heard my co-workers voice. I turned around to look for her and, lo and behold, she was sitting in the seat next to me. She had pulled out her book and started reading when she sat down and zoned out herself. We had been on the plane for 2.5 hours without realizing we’d been sitting next to each other the whole time!

    (BTW – I always think about this whenever Alison talks about needing personal space on business trips… fortunately, this co-worker and I travelled together and were pretty compatible (i.e., both needed personal space after meetings and respected that…) We each understood how something like this happened after long and brutal meetings. Other people in our organization were shocked and thought we were both just anti-social.)

    3. AvonLady Barksdale*

      That’s a great story! A co-worker and I recently traveled together for the first time and knew instinctively that our travel styles would complement each other. It is SO NICE when that happens.

      1. Anon Good Nurse*

        I love these comments! Everyone at our company was so weird about it! She and I just laughed it off, but it seemed like it made sense.

        It is nice when your travel buddies are on the same page as you! It takes so much of the pressure off. I loved it when I traveled with her. Others… not so much, but that might also explain why everyone else thought it was weird. :)

    4. Lynn*

      A friend and I were on the same flight home from a music festival. She’d gotten a higher boarding number than me (on Southwest) and asked if I wanted her to save me a seat. While I appreciated the offer, my SO and I don’t even sit next to each other on Southwest flights to avoid dealing with a middle seat. No way I’m sitting middle when all I want to do is take a nap.

      1. Rebecca in Dallas*

        Yeah, if we happen to see two seats together we’ll snag them (I’m petite and can fit in the middle pretty easily) but otherwise, we’re like “OK see you when we land!”

      2. Free Meerkats*

        Something that came to a head early in my wife and my relationship was airplane seats. She sits next to the window, takes her anxiety pill, and goes to sleep. I sit in an aisle seat. She said something like, “Don’t you want to sit next to me?” and I said, “Yes, but not in a middle seat, you get a middle seat.”

        Even on a longhaul to Australia, we sat with a seat in between us.

  27. Not Australian*

    I told a desperate co-worker that there was an apartment coming vacant in the building I lived in. She was always beautifully dressed and made up so I thought she’d be neat and tidy about the house. Big mistake. She cleaned out her fish tank and left wet gravel in a paper bag in the kitchen, and when the kitchen ceiling collapsed she collected fallen plaster in my saucepan and left it for me to deal with. I moved out, and changed my job…

      1. Alli525*

        “An apartment coming vacant in the building I lived in” … sounds like OP lived on one floor, and coworker lived one floor above.

  28. Jack Be Nimble*

    I worked as an RA in undergrad, and since we were all SUPPOSED to be BEST FRIENDS 5EVER there ended up being so much weirdness and tension. Gold medal goes to the girl who laid on her back on the floor during our weekly meetings, cried during meetings to redirect and change the subject if people disagreed with her, and held very exclusive nightly “study sessions” which she blacklisted me from because I turned down her invitation once, during the first week of training, after we’d already spent ten hours as a large group that day.

    She was a nightmare and encouraged everyone else to be nithtmares, as well.

    1. DorthVader*

      I’m so glad there’s another ResLifer! One colleague during my junior year decided she didn’t like me, I think because I saw through her BS and didn’t think the sun shined out of her ass? We were in sister buildings, so saw each other at weekly staff meetings but thankfully didn’t work directly together. Well she got fired for getting caught drinking with underage residents and apparently tried to take down everyone else that she didn’t like with her. Two other staffers in her building were fired and she told pro staff that my fiancé, an RA in another building, bought me alcohol. He did, frequently, but the pro staff liked him more than they liked her so they never investigated. I got a Facebook message about it while I was across the country at a conference (the worst week of my college career for many reasons) and couldn’t do anything until I got home.
      Of the 20+ other students I directly worked with in ResLife, I’m still in regular contact with 5 plus my husband. I know WAY too much about everyone else.

    2. Amber T*

      Oh Res Life. I learned SO MUCH about the professional world from being on Res Life and I credit it with so much (it taught me way more than actual college did)… but jeez I look back and think “never again!”

  29. Quickbeam*

    Years ago, I had to do an extensive travel assignment with a coworker. As soon as the plane left the tarmac she became completely dependent on me….how to change money, get on a bus, checking into the hotel, running our presentations, when to eat…you name it. It was like having a barnacle attached to me. When we got back her husband pulled me aside and asked how it went. I gave him the short version and he told me she’s hopeless when traveling. Like completely dysfunctional, I need a mommy.

    We had ended up having a single free day before we returned. She just wanted to sit in the hotel room but begged me not to leave her. I blew her off, rented a car and spent the day sightseeing. When I got back she was in the same chair she sat in when I left….she never moved. Was fine back in the office but she never apologized.

      1. Quickbeam*

        Yes, would have been more helpful if he had warned me ahead of time!! He said he had hoped she’d be better with a work associate.

  30. Jesca*

    I was on a business trip in another country. We were walking across a well lit, spacious parking lot that was between our hotel and this small grocery store. A car sped (yes – sped) out of her parking spot hitting one of the work travelors. When she stopped her car, the car was still on top of the woman in our party. English, while a main language, is not a language people speak for the most part after school, so trying to scream at her to get back in her car and pull forward took about 5 minutes for her to understand.

    Once the woman in our party was freed, the driver came over to profusely apologize and then explained to us how the same thing happened to her last week!!! So, of course, I asked her if this was common and she assured that yes it happens all the time.

    A couple days later a gentlemen the company gave us as a driver hit two pedestrians while driving us through a major city. There were also lots of those electric train cars, so it was not pretty.

    For the rest of my trip, I did not cross any roads on foot unless I had do!

      1. Jesca*

        Yeah, bad Polish drivers wasn’t on the list of things to look for when we traveled there.

        Oh and I forgot! The woman with our group suffered a fractured foot, but was otherwise fine (and very lucky!)

        1. CMart*

          Your story, combined with my experience as a passenger in cars during my trip to Poland, has really brought a lot of clarity to why the only outings we went on were to towns that were exclusively pedestrian-only in the city centers.

          1. Jesca*

            You mean, like, the last-minute-slam-on-your-breaks-going-from-60-to-0mph? Terrible drivers. Haha so bad. We also did have down-time to do some walking tours in the one city we stayed in. Is was not a high-traffic area at all.

            Another time when we walked to a mall near by, I freaking RAN across roads. I mean they wouldn’t even look at pedestrians!

        2. Joan*

          I knew immediately from your story that this took place in Poland. I had countless close calls when I visited Poland for several weeks as a teenager. My second cousin hit my mom with his car (lightly) while he was leaving. Depending on where you are in the country, driving instruction is very, very spotty.

        3. SarahKay*

          Ah, Poland. I had been wondering if this was in Prague, as the drivers there are pretty scary too.
          I got sent there on business and got a taxi from the airport to my city centre hotel. Cue taxi driver speeding down tiny historic city centre streets (many of which had pedestrians walking on the street as well as the pavements) while texting! I just sat in the back, trying not to look, and not liking to say anything because what if that was the final distraction that created a crash?
          The day I was due to fly back Qantas (previously renowned as super safe) had had some sort of crash or incident, which started Australian-but-locally-based slightly-scared-of-flying co-worker saying “oh, Qantas, even you! Even you! SarahKay, aren’t you scared to fly back?”
          “No” I said. ” No I am not. What’s scaring the cr*p out of me is the taxi-ride back to the airport!”

        4. Sanctuary*

          Never go to Georgia then (as in country, not state). Polish drivers are terrified to drive there! (And cars routinely have no bumpers due to previous accidents.)

  31. Magenta Sky*

    I had a modest web business with a friend years ago. We were at a convention in Atlanta, having a good time, not making any money, and it was time to go home. He was on a stricter schedule, so I got him to the airport and headed back to the hotel to pack everything up and check out. And found his wallet, with his ID, on the dresser. A few minutes after his flight was scheduled to leave. And we didn’t both have mobile phones.

    Fortunately, he had spent his entire life working in the movie industry, and traveled constantly, so he smooth-talked his way through security without any ID. (They apparently had a procedure for this, and he wasn’t traveling with any power tools or fake guns – that time – but this was pre-9/11. I have no idea if he could pull that off now.)

    When we got home, he was glad he hadn’t actually *lost* his wallet, but at no point was there any indication that he’d been concerned that he didn’t have ID at the airport. Working in Hollywood gives you a very odd view of the world.

    1. Red Reader*

      When my ex forgot his ID, in a post-9/11 world, we discovered that if you have already printed out your boarding pass, the TSA may, at its discretion, let you through security with no identification but with additional screening. But the airline probably won’t let you have a boarding pass or check luggage without the ID.

      1. Lindsay J*

        Generally, now, you can print your boarding passes at the kiosks and not have to show ID there.

        (For domestic flights only. And sometimes they’ll require you to go see a person in person at the desk to get them for unknown reasons without warning, so I wouldn’t count on it.)

    2. Cordoba*

      There is still an alternate process whereby the TSA can confirm your identity without your photo ID. It is possible to fly without ID, but that’s apparently at the discretion of the TSA folks at the airport.

      The TSA website confirms this:
      “Forgot Your ID?
      In the event you arrive at the airport without valid identification, because it is lost or at home, you may still be allowed to fly. The TSA officer may ask you to complete an identity verification process which includes collecting information such as your name, current address, and other personal information to confirm your identity. If your identity is confirmed, you will be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint. You may be subject to additional screening, to include a patdown and screening of carry-on property.”

      About a year ago I saw this process firsthand when I took a relative to the airport on a day when she forgot her ID. It was about an extra half an hour answering questions like “what month was your father born” and “what was your taxable income last year” etc. She did eventually answer enough questions correctly that they let her board the plane.

      1. ArtsNerd*

        Yep! I couldn’t find my drivers license a few years ago and called the airport in a panic. I was told I’d get an “enhanced” pat-down but would otherwise be ok.

        My license was in my jacket pocket, thankfully.

    3. DCGirl*

      I had an extremely ditzy housemate in college (campus housing). Her parents came to drive her home for Christmas break, and there was a lot of kerfuffle because she was taking a lot of stuff home with them and it had to be packed. After they’d left, I noticed that she’d left her purse sitting on a table in the living room. I lived about 20 miles from where she did, so I called her house and left a message with her brother that I had Lucy’s purse and would bring it home with me the next day. I also gave her brother my parents’ phone number so that we could make arrangements to pick up/drop off the purse.

      The next day, I took the train home. About an hour south of our eventual destination, the train hit a truck that had stalled on the tracks. No one was hurt, but we had to wait for Amtrak to remove the damaged engine and bring in a new engine. This was long before the cell phone era, by the way.

      My mother found out there’d been an accident when an announcement was made at the station where she was picking me up. She went home and spent the day callling the train station to get an ETA on my arrival while fending off calls every 15 minutes from Lucy about when she could pick up her purse as she could not go Christmas shopping without it. I can’t tell you how many times Mom told her that she didn’t know what time I’d get in but would let Lucy know as soon as she found out anything. Mom finally found out from Amtrak that my train would arrive around 8:00 and let Lucy know I’d likely be home by 8:30.

      We arrived back from the train station to find Lucy camped in our driveway waiting for us. Her one word when I got out of the car was, “Finally!” Then she stood in the driveway counting her money to make sure it was all there.

      1. Rosemary*

        “Then she stood in the driveway counting her money to make sure it was all there.”

        WOW.

    4. LadyCop*

      For the record, you CAN get through TSA without an ID. It generally involves them searching you and everything you have with you very thoroughly, but it’s 100% possible.

  32. Non-profiteer*

    This isn’t so much about ridiculous coworkers, as ridiculous employers creating ridiculous situations. For 2 summers in college I worked for a company that ran one of those programs that bring high school kids to DC to an experience that is half educational and half tourism. Some of these programs are run out of conference centers or college campuses, but ours was at a suburban hotel. The program lasted 11 days, and had a 2-week cycle. So you would work ridiculous hours for 11 days, then be off for 3 days before starting over again with a new batch of kids.

    During the 11 days, we were provided hotel rooms – you absolutely could not work for this program if you were staying offsite, it would not be logistically feasible. Most staff came to town for the summer to work this job, or worked in between college years and visits home – and there was no point in spending tons of $ on a DC apartment when you were living at a hotel. But, the program was too cheap to pay for our rooms during the 3 off-days of the cycle, so we were supposed to move out and go stay…somewhere else, the program didn’t care. This wasn’t totally made clear during the application process.

    We discovered that while the program didn’t hold our hotel rooms during the 3 off-days, they did hold some conference rooms, because they had to keep a lot of material at the hotel. This resulted in several of us staying in these rooms during the breaks, in defiance of our employer and the hotel – when you live in a hotel, you get the rhythms down really well. Through strategic use of the “do not disturb” signs and deadbolts, multiple entrances so the front desk staff don’t see you too often, foraging for leftover conference catering food, etc. we were essentially able to squat in a fancy DC hotel.

    This is now my back up plan for if I’m ever in danger of being homeless. So, hey, this summer job taught me valuable life skills!

    4. Undercover Lady Lawyer*

      I really hope that wasn’t Presidential Classroom. I attended as a high school senior and had the most awesome experience. I’d hate to know it wasn’t as cool for the awesome folks who mentored us as it was for us.

      1. Non-profiteer*

        It was not them, but one of their direct “competitors.” I’m not sure my program still exists, because I haven’t seen groups of kids wearing that particular nametag in the last few years (I’m still in DC and see these groups frequently).

        It really was overall a good experience that taught me a lot, and there are much worse summer jobs. Also, yes, I genuinely believe many kids benefited from the experience. But the hotel room thing was absurd.

    5. LadyCop*

      Having worked security in hotels…fancy ones…homeless people do try…but don’t succeed…

      Although, one place I worked had 3/4 of a floor that was essentially a storage room (long story). An employee lived there for about a week before being found. God bless HR because they not only didn’t fire him, they used the EAP, and some other resources to help him out. Last I heard, he still works there.

      1. Non-profiteer*

        I didn’t mention in my original post that, since we lived at this hotel and worked a lot with the staff to run the program, we knew that they were completely incompetent. So therefore not likely to catch us. :)

  33. lady bird*

    Not necessarily a coworker, but when I was in college I did a 10 day study abroad trip overseas. I was paired up to room with someone I knew, but we definitely weren’t close friends or anything. One night, we’re back at the hotel and I’m laying in bed looking at my phone. She gets out of the shower, and upon exiting the bathroom says “just a heads up, I’m not wearing any pants” and I say “haha ok, that’s fine” thinking that she just didn’t feel like putting on pajama pants. Kinda weird considering we don’t know each other that well, but whatever. I get up to take a shower and look over to see her on her laptop, criss cross on the bed, completely naked from the waist down. I didn’t say anything, just got in the shower. When I got out, she was under the covers. Thankfully she didn’t do anything like that the rest of the trip.

    1. AnotherAlison*

      Haha, what is wrong with people? Seriously.

      My son is traveling with his collegiate summer baseball team, and they have to sleep 4 guys to a room (2/bed). There is one guy who is always naked in the locker room, etc. Well, another kid from our hometown (Jack) got paired with him, and the guy was stripped down ready to get into bed naked. Jack asked him if he was going to bed like that, and the other guy said yeah, he always sleeps naked. Jack asked him to wear underwear, and he did, thank God. (You shouldn’t have to ask.)

      1. lady bird*

        Ew! Whatever people want to do in the comfort of their own home if totally fine by me. But for the love of everything, wearing (at the VERY least) underwear when sharing a space should be common sense courtesy!

  34. Former Sign Captain*

    My company produces a lot of conferences and other events, and one of my more reserved co-workers got the job at one session of sitting up front with the cards that tell the speakers how much time is left. Well, toward the end of the session, she gets down to her “One Minute” sign, but Big Media Executive, being interviewed by a radio talk host, simply *would not shut up.*

    So my poor co-worker was sitting and holding, and after a while standing and holding, and then sort of waving, her sign, not able to actually interrupt the guy — until the conference coordinator came in, was horrified to see Big Media Executive still rattling on, and all but ran up there to chase him off. By that time the talk host was just sitting there grinning at, and thereby mortifying, my poor shy co-worker. I later had sign duty myself a few times, and I lived in fear of being ignored like that, but most people were pretty good about it.

    1. Magenta Sky*

      The person with the sign should also have the switch to turn off the microphone and the lights on the stage – and permission to use them.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        A giant hook was good enough for my grandpappy on the Vaudeville circuit…

      2. Alli525*

        I mean, that 100% would not fly – you can’t just cut off the speaker’s mic when they were invited to speak, just because they are running over. This is entirely the radio host’s fault – it is literally their job to keep an eye on the clock and keep things moving in their day jobs, and I’m surprised that this one dropped the ball so (apparently) intentionally and blatantly.

        1. Nancie*

          Yup. The grin tells me that the radio host knew darn well it was his job to shut up the Big Media Executive when he saw the time’s up sign, but he thought it was hilarious to make the shy coworker uncomfortable.

          1. Former Sign Captain*

            Yeah, it went that way in part because, as noted in my reply to Magenta Sky, the Big Media Executive is a huge freaking deal and very aware of it, and also (more to the point, probably) he and radio host are long-standing pals. So RH decided to be amused and sit by grinning rather than get his buddy to shut up.

            Conference coordinators are a fearless breed, fortunately.

      3. Former Sign Captain*

        Agreed! In this particular case, she wouldn’t have been realistically able to use them — the guy was and is a very big cheese in our industry, which is why the talk host wasn’t going to try to cut him off either (actually his job as the interviewer). But there was a time or two I’d have been delighted to cut a microphone or start blinking the lights.

  35. pomme de terre*

    I used to work in athletics so traveling with the team, often on long overseas trips, was the norm. I was the comms person and ended up spending tons of time with the team manager, who was universally hated. Thankgodfully we did not have to share a room but we did share a car. One day she was parking in a tiny garage space. She asked me how she was doing on the passenger side, and I said she was pretty tight. She overcorrected and hit a column on the driver’s side, and told everyone on the trip the accident was my fault for saying she was about to hit something on passenger side!

    Fortunately, she was universally hated so no one believed her.

  36. AnonForThis*

    A coworker did actual damage to the skin on his hands when we were traveling abroad from over washing them. He was convinced that everything in the country was dirty, so every time he touched so much as a door handle or railing, he washed his hands or used anti-bacterial hand gel. Within a couple days, the skin on his hands were peeling off.

    He also received a minor injury (think sprained ankle), but refused to be treated in that country. He was adamant that the hospitals were dirty and ill-equipped and the doctors’ diplomas were meaningless. He wanted to be flown back to the US for treatment.

    And lest you think we were traveling in a third-world country were someone my believe stereotypes about bad healthcare or someplace you need vaccines to travel, nope, we were in Europe.

    1. fposte*

      That sounds like pretty standard contamination OCD, so I’m going to give him a pass on this one.

      1. A Nickname for AAM*

        Or encouraged paranoia: my mom hates that my husband travels to Canada, because she saw on the internet that socialized medicine means people die because Canada can’t afford enough medical equipment and hospitals for everyone.

        2. Falling Diphthong*

          …and then the weak are put out of the hospital and hunted through the streets by polar bears, keeping overall costs down.

          3. FD*

            Can confirm. Source: Live in Minnesota and we know all about the dark secrets of our bretheren to the North.

        4. Mephyle*

          It’s ok, we Canadians are paranoic about using health care in the U.S., too. A single visit to emergency, we are told, for (say) a small scrape or twisted ankle will put you in debt for the rest of your life.

      2. AnonForThis*

        I’ve traveled with him within the US, and he’s never had those issues.

        His response to everything in Europe (e.g. food, public transport, public bathrooms w/o huge gaps on the sides, etc.) was that the US is better. He thought the US was cleaner and that American doctors were more competent.

        1. fposte*

          It doesn’t have to be universal to be OCD. People have all manner of safe and dirty dichotomies in their heads, and the stress of travel can exacerbate tendencies. Washing your hands over and over until they crack out of fear of contamination is strongly suggestive of OCD.

          1. That's me Every Day*

            Yup. I read the first paragraph of the original post in this chain and thought…well that’s me like…80% of the time.

        2. Strawmeatloaf*

          You should remind him that staph infections are pretty rampant in U.S. hospitals.

  37. Adele*

    Not me, but a coworker , pre-9/11 but still in the era of terror attacks and bombs…

    Coworker and Boss traveled to Paris to run a week-long (maybe longer) conference. At the airport coworker, who speaks French, flagged a taxi and spoke with the driver, leaving Boss to handle the suitcases. They arrived at the hotel to discover that Boss had loaded his suitcase into the car but had left Coworker’s suitcase sitting on sidewalk. They sped back to the airport just in time to watch Coworker’s suitcase and all her belongings being blown up on the tarmac by the bomb squad. Boss solidified his reputation as a jerk by never offering an apology.

    1. kbeers0su*

      Seriously? How hard would it have been to throw one extra bag in the trunk? What an arse.

      1. only acting normal*

        It’s not that spectacular, I believe the bomb squad put a cloche over the item and make it a very controlled explosion. But it definitely does happen if the owner isn’t found and the contents can’t be reliably identified.

  38. RoadsLady*

    Here’s a few camp counselor tales.

    The first involves a friend of the family, knew her since infancy, turned camp coworker. She has her fine qualities, but she is also spoiled rotten. We weren’t sure if the summer camp gig would be her speed, but she was 20-something, an adult and all that.

    She tried to reschedule breakfast. She had taken a kitchen position and thought they had to get up too early to prepare the morning meal. So she scribbled out time on the paper calendar and was caught trying to get on the computer to change the file. Like it would make a difference.

    Same girl (again, early 20s) called her mom to yell at the camp director.

    Another involved a director who disappeared after prep week never to be seen again after leaving a strongly worded note to everyone.

    There’s also tales of lighting hand sanitizer on fire but we all did that…

  39. Ambpersand*

    I was once traveling as a group leader for a student study-abroad trip and several interesting things happened during and on our way back from our last leg in Amsterdam:

    1. The *married* company sponsored tour guide got stinking drunk at a bar with the group, bought several bottles of wine, and then invited two young female students up to his room for a little more Amsterdam “fun.” We immediately reported him to the company who organized the tour and they were understandably concerned.
    2. A student in the other group traveling with us purchased a large amount of edibles from one of the local shops, and when he realized that he couldn’t try to fly back to the US with them in his luggage, proceeded to eat ALL of them at once on the bus to the airport. I was very glad that we were on separate flights.
    3. A female student in my group, who had taken a trip to the Harry Potter Studio Tour during our stay in London, bought a wand from the gift shop and was almost detained by the Netherlands airport security agents because they thought it was a weapon and didn’t understand English.

    1. Snark*

      So would being uberstoned make international air travel more or less tolerable? I’m on the fence here. If you can’t feel your face, you can’t feel the cramped legroom, but at the same time, feeling like the flight attendants were out to get you for nine hours would be pretty oppressive.

      1. Ambpersand*

        The perk would definitely be that you would be 100% relaxed, but the paranoia? That would be horrible!

        However I hope that he had plenty of paranoia because this particular student was intolerable even when sober. For context, he was 19 years old at the time and from the rural Midwest. The first day he flicked a cigarette in the middle of our large group (he apparently couldn’t wait to smoke or step off to the side) and I was the unfortunate recipient of the down-wind ash… Right in my eye. Later, he loudly proclaimed his plans to all of us on the bus about his plans for Amsterdam- to make it to as many brothels as possible, sleep with as many sex workers as he could manage, and drink and smoke as much weed as he could in the two days we were there.

    2. Toads, Beetles, Bats*

      In my experience, everyone in the Netherlands speaks flawless English. Maybe they were just Slytherins?

      1. Ambpersand*

        Yeah, we were really surprised- it was the first time we’d had an issue with the language barrier. But maybe they were just messing with her? It was pretty funny to try to watch her pantomime “this is just a toy, I swear!”

        1. Toads, Beetles, Bats*

          I’m going with: Slytherins taking the piss. Unprofessional and uncool, sure. But you have to admit it was classic improv comedy.

          1. Lady Phoenix*

            Or it could have been Ravenclaw. Some of them are about as snobbish as Slytherins

        2. Miso*

          Yeah, I bet they were just messing with her. The Dutch are generally really good at English, and at an international airport probably even more so. And it’s not like they don’t know Harry Potter ;) (Although The did give them horrible names… *shudder*)

        3. only acting normal*

          They we’re definitely messing with her. :-D
          Almost everyone I encountered on holiday in the Netherlands spoke impeccable English, their border security would not be the exception.

  40. GG Two shoes*

    Oh, I have got so many stories about this former co-worker.

    Catty and I were traveling to a conference in Florida from the midwest. Catty is not only very scatterbrained and disorganized, but also very adamant that she is neither of those things. So we make it the hotel to check in when she realizes her wallet is missing. She’s one of those people that carries 6 bags for a three day stay so as she’s looking through it all, I’m just waiting patiently. She can’t find it, like really can’t find it. She had it at the airport but now she INSISTS that it was stolen- between the airport and the hotel. I put her hotel on my card and we go to our rooms. I assume she will find it there. Nope. So It’s still gone when we go to fly back…
    Have anyone ever tried to get on a plane with out an id or any form of identification? It’s a NIGHTMARE. Everything took 45 minutes longer. Anyway, we return home and she’s calling the credit card companies, gets a new id when… She gets her wallet back in the mail. She had left it in the cab.

    1. Snark*

      I had a coworker who always had two suitcases and a carry-on with her for 2-3 day work trips. I had….a backpack.

      1. EddieSherbert*

        I’ve never understood it. Even doing a 5-7 day long trip, I can fit everything plus some extra clothes in a regular carry-on bag.

        But, based on many of my friends, family, and coworkers, I think requiring 2-4 bags for literally any trip of any duration might be normal? Hahaha…

        1. Jules the 3rd*

          A lot depends on shoes – if you think it’s important to have perfectly matched outfits, that often means different shoes for each one, and they eat a lot of space.

          My bag carriage depends mostly on how many different things *might* happen – ie, do I need to pack a swimsuit? evening dress? travel food? Three days at grandmas = .5 – 1 bag per person. Three days at a hotel for an event = 1 clothes bag + 1 food bag + possible ‘Nice Clothes / cosplay’ bag.

        2. Fish girl*

          But what if I pee my pants 5 times a day for every day of the trip!!!! This is how my brain convinces me to over pack every time.

          1. Laura H*

            That is a legit possibility for me, and while I can rewear worn but not soiled shorts- fresh undies please!

            Traveling is hard.

        3. Snark*

          My approach when traveling is that everything works with everything else and everything can be washed in a sink and air-dried. I end up wearing a lot of neutral colors, but that’s fine.

          1. Annie Moose*

            Yeah, my main strategy is to never bring clothing I’m not actually going to wear, and assume I’ll wear everything more than once. If you bring a really eye-grabbing outfit that can only be worn in a particular configuration, it might be cute, but you’re just wasting space!

            I also try to bring clothing that can be dressed up/down easily–e.g. I’d rather bring one casual sweater that works with both jeans and a dressy outfit, than a sweatshirt and a dressy blazer. (or for shirts, bring tops that work with both jeans and a cute skirt, rather than separate T-shirts and dressy blouses)

            1. Falling Diphthong*

              I’m still mourning the loss of the thin black zipping sweater from REI my daughter gave me one year. It was my default travel sweater–compact, went with everything, the perfect level of dressy enough to wear with a nice dress but casual enough for hiking…

        4. Annie Moose*

          I just traveled for six days in one carry-on… actually, because I was flying Spirit, it wasn’t even a real carry-on, it was technically a personal item.

          Now, I’m not suggesting this is an ideal for all scenarios, but… most people pack way. too. much. (I was well-trained on family trips as a child, and I’ve gotten increasingly minimalist as an adult. Who wants to haul around six bags when you’re on vacation…)

          1. AnotherAlison*

            I went on a school trip to Spain when I was a high school senior, and I had a huge suitcase (pre-full sized roller bags), a carry-on roller bag, and a backpack. Ended up being cold, so I wore the same sweatshirt and jeans for 2 weeks, and had to lug around a bunch of warm weather crap for no reason. Lesson learned early. We just went to Hawaii for vacation, and I told my husband to bring a jacket (Big Island), and you should have seen the horrified look on my face when he tried to pack a hoodie. Do you know how much room those take up? Does he not own a space-saving windbreaker?

            1. Concerned Lurker*

              Everyone knows you wear the hoodie on the plane. Then it can double as a pillow of you aren’t cold ^ ^)b

      2. Turquoisecow*

        My stepmother-in-law brought three suitcases for a long weekend to my sister in-law’s wedding – apparently she hadn’t decided which dress to wear to the ceremony so just brought a bunch of them. I mean, she was willing to pay for the checked luggage, so okay.

      3. only acting normal*

        I always have about half the luggage of my (mostly male) work travel companions. My record was a 10 day business trip with only carry-on – although no laptop back then.
        Only thing I missed having was eyebrow tweezers, because apparently I’m part gorilla and my eyebrows grow all over my face without constant vigilance.

      4. BananaRama*

        I had a work trip with my team, the lone female. They were joking about how much stuff I probably brought. Plane lands, they walk over to the bag pick up, I don’t. They had a carry-on and a checked bag, for a 3 day trip. They couldn’t understand how I just had one carry-on yet manage to put together 3 professional outfits for the trip.

    2. strawberries and raspberries*

      Sort of related- when I was on my study abroad program my partner for our big project was also my roommate (big mistake), and one night we took every night bus all over Prague after hours because she couldn’t find her Burberry scarf, which she said she had saved for months to buy and was crying real tears over, and when we finally got back to our apartment after hours of fruitless searching, she was so upset that she didn’t even notice the scarf sliding out of her jacket sleeve and onto the floor. So I’m like, “Uh, can you look at the floor for a moment?” and she was like “NO I DON’T WANT TO LOOK AT THE FLOOR YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND” and when she finally caught my drift and saw her scarf on the floor I thought she was going to actually explode. We took time apart after that.

      1. CMart*

        “Who could possibly look at floors at a time like this?!?!?” Ha.

        Oh the awkward silence I’m imagining ensued.

    3. Working Hypothesis*

      Unfortunately, I know EXACTLY what it’s like to try and get on a plane without an ID or any form of identification. What’s more, I was coming from the Middle East.

      This was a personal trip. My then-fiance and I were in Israel. After twelve days of bouncing around from hostel to hostel, changing almost every night, we discovered on our last evening in Jerusalem that somewhere along the way, the documents baggie containing our passports and airline tickets had vanished. Our flight went from Tel Aviv in three hours, and it was already around 10PM.

      The only reason we survived the incident without trauma — though definitely not without freakout!! — was that we were, at the time of discovery, in the presence of a friend we’d made who was an expatriate Canadian. He’d lived in Jerusalem for several years and knew ALL the tricks. He dragged us into a taxi, which he directed to the personal residence of the American consul, whom he knew as a friend. He got the poor guy out of bed (by this time, it was 11-something), explained our situation, and made him write us up an official document explaining why we didn’t have passports, and confirming that we were indeed American citizens who should be permitted to go home.

      While all this was being written up, our friend was on the phone to the airline, negotiating at a blistering pace in loud and profane Hebrew. He ended up getting us onto a plane that left a few hours later than our original one, with no more expense than a $200 total ticket-change fee for each of us. We took our letter from the consul, thanked him profusely and apologized for waking him up. We embraced our friend, thanked *him* profusely, gave him our contact information and begged him to stay in touch. Then we got into yet another taxi (which our friend had summoned for us), went to the airport, meekly gave our names and paid our flight-change fees, and got on our plane.

      At the other end, we handed over our letter from the consul instead of our passports when we went through customs. The agent asked us for the story, which we told. He commented, “Hmm. You were very lucky,” to which we fervently agreed, and then he let us through.

      I have no idea what would’ve happened to us if we *hadn’t* had an incredible person with us who knew everything from how to negotiate a flight change in Hebrew to where the consul would be at 11PM. But I’m very grateful he was there. And no, sadly, he never did get in touch… after we got home, we never heard from him again.

  41. ANONANONANON*

    In my second year of professional work I attended a national conference for my field. There were a group of us in the same role in our department, and two Director types. Myself and several of my peers and the Director attended the conference together. One night after sessions were over my peers and I went out to explore the city and to get dinner. Coming back into the hotel lobby we find Director somewhat drunk with several other high-profile folks from our company/the field. Somehow we get on the topic of one of my peers who did not attend the conference, and whom many of us struggled with on a daily basis, whom we’ll call Bob. (Bob was generally difficult to work with, did not manage his people well, rarely volunteered for extra work, never wanted to do anything outside 9-5 despite the fact that this is a field where we all know that’s not possible, regularly made sexual/sexist jokes, etc.) Director proceeds to be very honest about their feelings about this Bob and then starts calling Bob names, with one of the more obscene ones- “f***stick” eventually sticking. This caused general hilarity amongst the group and became Bob’s secret nickname. Little did Bob know, and he always looked confused when the term was thrown around in group meetings after that. Probably not the most professional behavior by Director, but we felt vindicated knowing that they understood our frustrations with Bob.

  42. LadyMountaineer*

    Not me but my husband. He was the Director of Labor Relations for the largest economic driver in our region. 20,000 employees, etc. It was trying. (He’s a Project Manager now.)

    He had a distraught manager in his office who was romantically entangled with another same-level manager who each covered different areas of infrastructure for the organization. There were issues with her and she was eventually let go but for a while it was an awesome ride of dinner time stories.

    They had moved in together and she stopped paying rent, preferring to use the money on booze and drugs. My husband counseled him that he could not take action at work but it would be wise for him to retain his own counsel and evict the freeloader.

    She pooped on the top of their stairwell when she received her first eviction notice.

  43. San Diego*

    Nothing “bad” happened, but I was required to share not just a room but a BED with my boss while traveling…yes, we are the same gender, but STILL.

    1. Liane*

      Yikes! Please tell me that you sent this as a question to Alison. Because there was a post like that a few years ago, and I don’t want there to be 2 employers like that! (Even one is 50 too many!)

      1. San Diego*

        Nope, that wasn’t me! My boss did not know ahead of time that there would not be enough beds for all the employees at the space we were renting…but she also did not bother to check and, once she realized the bed situation, did not seek another solution. All of the men (we were the only two female employees on the trip) got beds to themselves.

      2. San Diego*

        Also, same boss, a few years later…required us to go on a work retreat located in “class 3 – possible evacuation” zone near a raging wildfire. As in, the area wasn’t being evacuated currently (class 1) or soon (class 2), but could be evacuated if the fire spread. The fire did not spread and we were fine, but we couldn’t go outside *at all* because it was so smoky (local officials were recommending that anyone going outdoors wear a mask).

      3. Grad Intern*

        There are unfortunately more than two! I worked at a nonprofit funded by an umbrella group that funded other nonprofits too right after college, and they made the entire entry level staff at multiple nonprofits attend training out of town. They told us we’d be in a hotel, but neglected to mention sleeping arrangements. So I walk into a hotel room…and see two other young women already in it. Sitting on the two beds. Four total strangers expected to share a two bed hotel room. I called down for a cot because I’m a super light sleeper, but it was still extremely cramped in there! And when we asked, all the higher ups treated this a a completely normal thing–that they were all doing too! Needless to say, this organization was dysfunctional in other ways too, and I didn’t stay very long!

  44. LadyMountaineer*

    Another obligatory “not me but my husband” (see above comment):

    A junior staff member returned back from a conference with a bunch of senior staff. One Executive VP thought that the right thing to do the first night of the conference was to get all of the lower-level (mostly young women) staff drunk (which didn’t work as they secretly poured out their drinks) and ask a bunch of questions about their “first time.” He didn’t pass go or collect $200. He was sent to rehab immediately upon landing.

      1. Anonicat*

        They actually do, but like drug/alcohol rehab it only works if the rehabee wants to change.

  45. Anon for this one*

    All during conferences:
    * Coworker who was cheating on his wife was telling her that he was with me because he knew (rightly) that his wife knew I wasn’t a threat. I found out about it years later.
    * One year our boss wasn’t attending. Another coworker skipped out on pretty much everything and then lied outright to our boss claiming to have attended all the things.
    * Conference roommate (same person as listed above) found items left by a previous occupant in the hotel room. Instead of calling down to the front desk, announced everything was fair game and packed the items in their luggage.

    1. Lynn*

      A co-workers got so drunk his girlfriend (who happened to live in the city where our training was) locked him out of their room. He slept in and decided to order porn. Skipped at least half a day of the training and then was the first to praise the sessions he missed. As if none of the rest of us noticed he was missing, since we all sat together. You don’t order porn on the company dime. But he was not disciplined beyond having to pay for it.

  46. strawberries and raspberries*

    When I worked in TV production in a previous life, I had SO MANY horrible stories involving traveling and staying with coworkers. Most of my coworkers were great, and we fortunately had our own rooms, but it got so goddamn rough to stay in hotels and eat chain restaurant food and be doing 20-22-hour days per diem for weeks at a time, especially when you spend most of those days in such close quarters with everyone. We were also working in reality/docudrama, so we really needed to be mindful to keep disagreements out of sight so that the participants wouldn’t pick up on any negativity and try to play us off each other to stall production. I can think of one particularly heinous shoot in Michigan where literally everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, including but not limited to: 1) an apocalyptic snowstorm 10 out of the 14 days we were onsite, 2) the family we were working with all having walking pneumonia (but insisting they were fine, of course) and ultimately infecting me and two other crew members (and one of my well coworkers getting snippy when I asked him to please assemble me a PB&J because I didn’t want to touch the food), 3) the toilet in my Residence Inn room getting totally backed up in the morning (after an unfortunate case of TMI) and my coming back to find that it hadn’t been cleaned due to short staffing on account of said snowstorm and the room smelled like the Black Plague (and the hotel actually tried to give me grief about switching rooms), and 4) my coworkers and I ordering a pizza very late one night because we still had to do prep for the next day and asking the deliveryperson to please also bring beer and we’d tip extra and when he arrived he was like “YEAH WHERE’S THE PARTY” and was disappointed to find that we were grown-ass adults tired at the end of a workday and not underage girls. We actually had a running tally of all the things that went wrong from start to finish, and by the time we landed in New York we were at like 252. I have no idea how I did that work for as long as I did.

    1. Magenta Sky*

      I have a friend who works for a prop company, who has traveled for work to every continent except Antarctica. Love to hear his stories, but would never want to live his life.

      You always take your tools with you as carry-on luggage (with appropriate paperwork). If the airline loses your clothes, the production company will give you cash to buy what you need, but if you lose your tools, the whole production is shut down (at tens of thousands of dollars a day) until they’re found. At LAX, where there is an intense mutual hatred between airport security and the movie people, he’ll drop his tool box (sometimes with power tools) onto the x-ray machine without any warning, and when they start to get excited, he’ll tell them “Oh, you’re not really interested in me. You want the guy behind he. He’s got the guns.” And mean it. (Again, with paperwork – and they’re prop guns, not real ones). (I’m not sure if they can still do this, post-9/11.)

      They did teach the baggage apes to pay more attention to “Handle with Care” stickers though, with a very realistic booking dead body prop in a crappy box, that burst open on the baggage carousel.

      1. strawberries and raspberries*

        It’s funny you say that, because one item on our 252-item list of everything that went wrong on that shoot also involved a delayed flight owing to an improperly packed empty prop gun. I think I slept for two consecutive days when I got home.

  47. anon for this one*

    Last summer I worked as an intern with my denomination’s conference. When we got to the hotel for our church-wide conference, we found that they had booked hotel rooms for everybody except the interns. We were able to get a room for the weekend, which we discovered had bedbugs the next morning. Also, on the first night of the conference, the interns had to stay late at the convention center to help finish things up for the night. We spent about a half hour trying to get out, not because of traffic, but because with us being the only two people left, we accidentally got locked in the parking lot. So that was an experience.

    1. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

      *proceeds to scratch my arms furiously*

      Bed bugs are just about enough to completely ruin anything.

    2. Linda Evangelista*

      Oh I am furious they decided the interns weren’t worth booking rooms for. And not telling you!! Ugh.

      Me @ every employer: TREAT YOUR INTERNS BETTER OR DON’T HAVE THEM.

    3. Roja*

      That’s unbelievably crappy to not only not book your rooms, but expect you to pay for your own housing and not even bother to tell you.

    4. Claire A.*

      It is a worthwhile skill and habit to check hotel rooms for bed bugs. My sister (an entomologist) recommends checking the underside of the bottom sheets and mattresses for blood spots/bugs/ odd dust.
      So far, I haven’t found any, but she has on several occasions (she travels a LOT).

      1. Oxford Comma*

        While I have never found bedbugs by doing this, I have found blood stains large enough to suggest that someone has either given birth and/or been murdered in the bed.

        I second the recommendation to check as your sister describes.

  48. Blue Anne*

    Not me, but when I first got back to the USA I worked a crazy nightmare job run by an extremely unscrupulous couple. They also have rental properties. (Relevant.)

    We are based on the Midwest but they also had a couple people working in Florida, and they had lived there for a while. A couple weeks after I started they brought on a sales guy who I liked a lot. They hired him for the Midwest office, but wanted him to visit Florida with them to meet the other guys, see more of the product, etc. They said that one of their rentals in the city was empty so they would put him up there, he’d have an apartment to himself. Cool, fine.

    When he got back he told me that they had just bought this apartment, with plans to do rehab to it. Not only was there no furniture, all of the utilities were off, and walls were open, tools were scattered around, etc.

    I wish I’d told him to run right then. We both stayed for a few more months and still get in touch to trade war stories sometimes.

  49. Megan*

    Here’s the flip side: sometimes rooming with a coworkers can be a good thing!
    My very first conference, as an early-20s grad student, Houston in May. There are a bunch of us (6? 8?) piling into a hotel room, but we’re all arriving on different flights.

    I get there first, drop off my suitcase, change into a new dress, and head down the street to the conference. Where I quickly realize that the new dress is shorter than expected, and Houston is windier than expected. I can’t leave the conference without risking a wardrobe malfunction.

    Cue panicked texts to everyone sharing the room , one of whom arrived shortly with emergency pants from my suitcase.

    2. Zaphod Beeblebrox*

      And here’s a good example of two countries divided by a common language.

      In the UK, pants are what you’d be wearing under your dress anyway……..

  50. SMS*

    One of my employees secretly brought his girlfriend to a conference we traveled to together. I asked him a few times during the conference if he wanted to meet up for dinner after we were done for the day and he declined, but I didn’t think much of it–I understand needing some personal space. On the last night, he introduced me to someone he was sitting with at a networking event, but not as his girlfriend, and I assumed they had just met a few minutes earlier.

    Months later, I realized that she and I actually do offsite work in the same building, but it’s so big that we hadn’t encountered each other before. She came up to me in the hallway and greeted me by name, but I drew a complete blank–I have a terrible memory for faces. She reminded me with, “I’m Bob’s girlfriend–we met at the conference.” Guess she didn’t know she was a secret.

    1. SMS*

      The thing is, I wouldn’t have been at all upset to know he had brought her…he only spent time with her after hours and maintained a professional focus on the event during the day. I wish he had just told me!

        1. SMS*

          Definitely not married, but could have had more than one lady…this particular relationship ended so accrimoniously a few months later that he flat-out refuses to work at that site any more (but his role only requires that he go there 1-2 times per year, so others are usually willing to trade places with him on those days and it doesn’t impact our work much).

  51. EddieSherbert*

    Several years ago, when I was pretty new to the workforce at ToxicJob and basically never stood up for myself for anything, I had to go to a conference with a coworker who was afraid of flying in a city 900 miles away.

    Management decided she could ONLY go if I agreed to drive with her. For some reason. And they told her this, and then she begged me to ride with her… so of course I said yes because I didn’t want to be “the reason” she couldn’t go.

    It was awful. So. Very. Awful. AFTER I agreed I learned that she also gets motion sickness unless she’s driving, has a “small bladder” so we had to stop every hour, and gets really bad cramps if she’s driving for more than like 8 hours so we couldn’t drive longer than that per day.

    So we left after work one day. Drove like 4 hours total. Stopped overnight. Drove like 8 hours (which took us almost 12 hours). Stopped overnight. Finished the drive and got there for the conference starting the next day.

    It was a two day long conference.

    And then we did the same thing in reverse driving home. O-0

    No flipping clue why the company approved that steaming pile of complete and utter nonsense of a trip!

    1. EddieSherbert*

      The constant bathrooms stops on their own were no big deal! I totally try to be understanding and have a few family members that I know we’re stopping if we’re driving more than an hour anywhere… but on top of everything else, by the time we were on like day 5 of driving and bathroom break #52, I was at BEC level with this woman.

      1. AnotherAlison*

        Ugh, you are much more patient than me. Travel efficiency is kind of my thing, and I’m easily annoyed by people who bring a lot of travel drama on a trip (thinking of some specific relatives). I know it’s not their fault, but geez, you’re afraid to fly, you have to drive yourself, you have to stop hourly, and have an 8 hr. limit. The Universe wants you to stay home!

        1. EddieSherbert*

          RIGHT?!
          I learned later that this trip was only the second trip she’d ever gone on in the 12 years she had been with the company (everyone else did at least one trip per year!).

  52. Xarcady*

    At a conference. The Executive Director of our organization hooked up with a woman who was also attending the conference. For the whole week, every event, every lunch, every dinner he attended, the woman was with him.

    Another conference, a month later. Same woman in attendance. Conference was in Vegas. On plane trip back home, Executive Director confides in me that they got married during the conference, but I can’t tell anyone, as they are planning a big white wedding in a few months.

    She moves to our area. They have big white wedding, which was a flaming disaster due to being held on an island and a hurricane and ferries running late.

    One month later, they divorce.

  53. Fly Eagles Fly*

    I had a one-week training course in Detroit back in 2006 with “Larry” and “Bob.” Fortunately, we didn’t have to share a room, but a few moments stuck out.

    1. For three of the five nights we were there, Larry bought a 12 pack of Miller Lite and some beef jerky and disappeared to his room instead of going to dinner. How he lived to his mid 50’s doing that, I’ll never know.

    2. One of the two nights we ate together, we went to TGIFriday’s, where Larry and Bob talked endlessly in hushed whispers how unsafe we were and how uncomfortable they felt because most of the customers were black (the fact that half of them were in business clothes, clearly coming from work seemed to have no impact on their opinion). They gave me stupefied looks when I made idle chit chat with people at the bar coming back from the men’s room.

    3. Bob was a big-time conspiracy theorist and one of his favorite topics was to ramble on about how no one has ever landed on the Moon. He also wasn’t totally sold about chem trails either.

    They were both long gone by the time I left the company in 2010.

    1. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

      My favorite response to people who don’t believe in the moon landing is to say, “What? You actually believe in the moon?” And watch the chaos ensue.

      1. Fly Eagles Fly*

        Wish I’d thought of that, or anything else more clever than trying to actually argue with him.

        I talked with Larry maybe 3 or 4 times in total after that trip, but Bob and I worked in the same department for a while. Bob had other quirks that turned people off, such as changing his sports allegiances every few months (depending on who was playing well) and then pretending he’d been a fan for years, telling jokes that he’d clearly heard somewhere else and claiming them as his own, and talking badly about his girlfriend often enough that I wondered what their relationship was like. All of that came afterwards, which meant that he may have been on his best behavior in Detroit, surprisingly.

  54. Ama*

    This was my dad’s workplace, not mine, and it happened years ago, but I remember my dad’s exasperation when it happened (and in hindsight, it was a really good lesson for me and my siblings).

    Two of my dad’s colleagues went on a business trip. One of them had worked at the firm for awhile and was generally considered a solid employee and the other had just started less than a year earlier. On the first evening of their trip they went out for the evening (they were in a city known for its nightlife, although I don’t believe it was Vegas) and ended up spending considerably more than they had planned, most of which wouldn’t be reimbursable under the company’s travel policy. The senior employee talked the junior employee into canceling one of their hotel rooms and sharing rooms for the rest of the trip, but submitting reimbursements as if they’d kept both rooms, in order to recoup some of their costs.

    I should mention at this point that these were CPAs working for an accounting firm and this story takes place immediately after Enron/Arthur Andersen, leaving the entire industry on high alert for any ethical/financial misconduct. So of course their falsified hotel room receipt was easily noticed and the junior employee quickly admitted everything that happened. Both employees were fired immediately.

    In my dad’s telling of the story he noted that he was pretty sure the senior employee had been the instigator of the scheme and that he felt bad for the junior employee, but there was nothing he could do at this point but find another job and learn from his mistake. And a young Ama and her brothers learned a very important lesson both about how NOT to behave on business travel, and on not letting a senior coworker talk you into doing something wrong. (A lesson I have unfortunately had to call on in my career.)

    1. pandq*

      “(A lesson I have unfortunately had to call on in my career.)” I would like to hear THAT story also!

  55. Technical_Kitty*

    When I started OldJob I had to move to another continent and my first day of work was an in-company conference (lasted 3 days). People from the same department from multiple sites gathered at a resort (vineyard and golfing) to have talks and do some team building.

    I showed up and had a room that opened onto a small vineyard. It was awesome. Anyways, this was for the biggest company of it’s kind in the world, in it’s most profitable sector. So they were generous with a lot of stuff. Gourmet food, alcohol everywhere (we were supposed to bond), ridiculous activities (sailing, golf, tours, etc.). Well, at something like this, around 200-300 people attending, there are bound to be shenanigans. Nothing funnier than walking in on said shenanigans. So this is how I met more than a few of my single (and not so single) co-workers for the first time. Helping people to the bathroom or nearest bush to be ill, walking into and very quickly out of rooms or hallways where people were …. getting “close”, and the capper, the idiots who decided streaking while drunk in the dark was a good plan. It was actually a pretty good place to work, but I will never forget my first intro’s to many of my co-workers.

    And yes, these were all adults, almost everyone at least a few years out of school, many in “responsible” positions.

  56. Nicole*

    My last job was with a non-profit. Travel budgets were tight, and on the rare occasion that travel happened, it wasn’t uncommon for employees of the same gender to share a hotel room. Two of my coworkers were in this situation and sharing a room. After a shower, one of them just paraded out into the room naked as if it were totally normal to be naked around a coworker. My other coworker was horrified, but the naked coworker didn’t seem to think it was a big deal at all. Oi.

    1. TheCupcakeCounter*

      See now this would have been me in high school and college. I was a competitive swimmer and then long time lifeguard and pool director. Basically I grew up in a locker room so being naked with my teammates and coworkers was the norm.
      I do understand that it is different in a office type job but I could see me not picking up on that right away.

    2. zora*

      I worked for a small nonprofit where we had to share rooms. But only a group of three of us traveled most of the time, so I had to share a room with my direct supervisor. Which was already awkward as it was, but it got worse.

      The first night of the first trip, it’s getting late, like after 11, and she still has all the lights on and is reading a magazine in bed. So, I put on my eye mask and earbuds and try to fall asleep. But: All the lights, so I keep waking up. Finally, I realize it must be really late and the lights are still on, I look over, it is 2am and she has fallen asleep with the magazine in her hand. So, I get up, turn off the lights, finally fall asleep.

      About 30 minutes later, I wake up when she turns All The Lights On Again. With no comment and goes back to bed. I don’t know what to do at this point, we already have an awkward relationship and I am so exhausted I can’t think straight. I suffer through the night and struggle through the next day on almost no sleep.

      After 2 more nights of awkward games with lights and me turning lights off in various combinations and her always turning them back on, I realize that she just won’t let our hotel room be dark, ever. And no amount of sleep masks and pillowcases over my head will allow me to sleep because it is so bright.

      I still didn’t know how to say anything because it had gone so long without us talking about it, it was even more awkward, so the rest of my time at that organization I made up imaginary friends I was saying with whenever we traveled, and paid for my own Airbnb’s out of pocket, which I actually couldn’t afford on my salary, so I regularly had to borrow money from my parents.

      I am totally traumatized about sharing hotel rooms with coworkers.

  57. Emily*

    While working for small nonprofits, I was used to sharing rooms during travel.
    However, one year, the finance manager decided, when booking our rooms, that it was totally acceptable to put THREE adult women in one hotel room. Because I was the youngest, I was given a trundle bed.
    No. So much no.
    The following year, I was pregnant and absolutely insisted on a real bed.

    1. Delta Delta*

      Ooh, no. I don’t love sharing a room but I understand it. 3 adults in 1 room, and involving a trundle bed is too much. Yikes.

  58. Mariposa*

    I had a coworker who brought in some squirrels into work that he killed in the parking lot and proceeded to skin and fry them in the break room. He kept a B.B. gun, a small fryer, flour, seasonings, and oil in his car “just in case.” It took being prepared to a whole new level.

    1. AnotherLibrarian*

      I’ve eaten squirrel. It actually tastes pretty good, but this… this is just freaking weird.

      1. Delta Delta*

        I’ve had squirrel, too. It’s fine. Growing up we had some relatives who would eat squirrel and sometimes gave my family some. It seemed disrespectful of the animals not to eat them. So, my dad cooked them and set them aside to cool while we all went out somewhere. when we came home we found several little piles of bones; apparently cooked squirrel was too delectable for the cat to resist, and he had his way with them. It seemed almost poetic.

    2. motherofdragons*

      This is disturbing on multiple levels. The one I’m currently fixated on is the MESS, I mean my god, skinning an animal in the workplace breakroom??? Beyond. I’m stunned.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        I picture his wife saying “Not in the house”–like people who tell fisherpersons not to think of handing over their catch until it has become a fillet–and he rolled with it.

    3. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

      Did he ever actually work? That would take so much time.

    6. TheCupcakeCounter*

      My mom had someone grab fresh roadkill (as in they saw it happen fresh) off the side of the road and put it in the employee fridge. Just in a ziplock type bag (so completely see through).

      Mom works at a hospital.

      1. You can take a boy out the country..*

        Ah memories… years ago, my now ex husband, an avid bow hunter, killed a deer in a park close to our suburban (not rural) neighborhood. At the time he had a company car (sedan) while I had a new high end SUV. Guess how he transported the carcass from the park?

        I can still picture that beautiful creature’s head hanging out of the back hatch.

        1. nonegiven*

          DH, 3 days after his gallbladder surgery, strapped to the luggage rack of my Subaru!

    7. Jukeboxx32*

      You didn’t work for the government by chance did you? Some of the most outrageous people I’ve ever worked with have been in state jobs and this sounds like par for the course at my Old Job.

  59. Mrs. Landingham*

    I worked for a city agency that covered a lot of areas and that had one centralized office and many sites. I worked for Central in a small department. One of the things my department oversaw was this agency-wide Teapot program (very niche) that we had started in two of our sites and were expanding to the rest. As the National Teapot Conference approached, a small group of us planned to go and the two site directors of the active Teapot programs were encouraged to attend. There was money in our budget to cover all. Site Director 1 makes all his reservations and submits all this paperwork. Site Director 2 keeps hemming and hawing about whether he can go or not. And it is not until the day before that he says he can’t go. Our Central team travels to the conference, we meet Site Director 1 there. Day 1 of 2 goes well. It is somewhat oddly received that we have only one of our Site Directors and not the other, but not the end of the world. Because it is so niche, everyone sort of already knows both of them. So his absence is notable. At the close of Day 2 (which was a short day – so ending around noon or 1) which concluded with a final presentation and remarks and lunch, Site Director 2 walked in. I see him walk in. His car is literally parked right out front on a MAJOR STREET OF A MAJOR CITY in front of the event space. He makes it in time for the final presentation. When that ends and the wonderful speaker asks for questions, Site Director 2’s hand shoots up. What? Thankfully, he is not anywhere near us because he launches into one those uber embarrassing, “well I don’t have a question, but I just want to say…” nonsense self-congratulatory humble-braggy rants. He says what a wonderful conference this has been (were you a ghost and here in secret?) and how much he has learned and goes on and on. Conference ends. We go to approach him to be like, “what the heck!?!” and he hightails it out, gets in his car, and immediately leaves. TURNS OUT…he told his boss at the site that he “ended up deciding to go at the last minute” and attended Day 1 and Day 2. But, again, he told all of us at Central he couldn’t attend. It was like he told his mom he was doing one thing and his dad he was doing another. He then had the balls to ask for reimbursement for everything (hotel, travel, meals) – did he not realize we were all their too the entire time? Did he also not realize that the City agency we worked for required, you know, receipts? So he eventually backed off and dropped the matter. When Site Director 2 applied for a position with us months later, I tried to remind my boss about this debacle, and boss said that that was ridiculous and that we probably “just missed him.” Dude, the conference only had like 75 attendees. I also saw him enter and exit his vehicle on Day 2. I am sorry to say that my boss hired him and the shady behavior re whereabouts continued unchecked for YEARS. Both boss and Site Director 2 were ultimately fired and I have a nice new job.

      1. Mrs. Landingham*

        EXACTLY. People who don’t know city jobs definitely raise their eyebrows more at things like this. When you’re in city service…meh…

  60. Very Anonymous*

    I had to share a hotel room with a coworker at a conference once. She got rip-roaring drunk during a happy hour event, and for reasons that are somewhat unclear, decided to lock me out of the room. Like, bolted and chained so I couldn’t use my key card to open the door. (There was significant drama around this; too many details to explain, but it was clear she wasn’t letting me in) I had nowhere to go, and all my clothes/toiletries/conference materials were in the room. Luckily I had driven there, and it was in September so the weather was still warm, so I ended up sleeping in my car. The “apology” I received the next day was her saying, “hey, so that was fun last night, huh?”

    1. ContentWrangler*

      Wait, so it wasn’t like a she bolted and chained the door and then passed out in bed? She was awake, realized you were locked out and refused to let you in? That’s crazy.

      1. Very Anonymous*

        Oh no. There were attempts to open the door and her screaming through the crack in the door that I couldn’t come in. I left and came back, thinking she might have cooled off of whatever unhappiness she had (which, really, I have no idea; it all seemed gin-fueled). I tried again, and this time she got out of the shower and stood in the doorway screaming at me, wearing a hotel robe and with her hair dripping. The screaming had largely to do with ordering a pizza. It made zero sense.

        1. ContentWrangler*

          That is bonkers. Did she ever face any consequences? Unless the company was super dysfunctional, I feel like “got so drunk you verbally attacked and refused to let a coworker into their room so they had to sleep in their car” is a firing offense.

          3. Very Anonymous*

            Yes, the company was very dysfunctional (this isn’t even the worst of the stories, but it is among the funniest). I decided to lay low about the whole incident and keep my distance. There were weird office dynamics, and had I told our manager it likely would have turned into a “well, why didn’t you help her?” sort of situation. Not wanting to help or even talk to her, I kept a polite distance.

            About 2 months later she ended up having another spectacular meltdown – this time at work – and left the office in the middle of a workday. Then she just sort of never came back. Turned out to be a self-solving problem. I worked there a couple more years and while I was there the story became part of office lore.

      1. Very Anonymous*

        I don’t know. I didn’t ask. In hindsight, it probably would have been good to do that. I think at the time, though, I probably just wanted to get away from the screaming, dripping co-worker.

  61. Ruth (UK)*

    I once spent a summer working in a youth hostel in rural England where board in dorms was included. I was 18 and the youngest though most were early 20s so it wasn’t a huge gap. It was a really old building, quite isolated and next to a grave yard and church. The staff kitchen was in the old basement. A bunch of the other staff decided the basement was haunted, and as the only person who did not believe this, I often had to accompany people down there in the evenings as they wouldn’t go alone…

  62. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

    As a camp counselor as a teenager, I once shared a cabin with another counselor who was a sleepwalker. She would just get up in the middle of the night and walk around the cabin. We also once had an incident where a counselor took a group of 10 year olds on a snipe hunt in the middle of the night in the woods. A child got lost, and was found hours later, sobbing in the woods. The kids who didn’t get lost all got poison ivy. There was also a pillow fight incident where a child hit his head on a tree after being hit with a pillow by a counselor and got a concussion. He was hospitalized for 2 days. I have seen him since as an adult, and he has no memory of that entire summer.

    1. KatieKate*

      ….I also have a pillow fight concussion story, and am now wondering if this was a Wisconsin camp in the mid-2000s

      1. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

        Ohio in the mid-2000s, but apparently pillow fight concussions are more common than one might think!

    2. Collarbone High*

      This isn’t a co-worker story, but I can’t not tell it if we’re talking camp counselor disasters.

      One year at Girl Scout camp I had the good luck to be assigned to the very nicest cabin — a brand-new, two-story A-frame.

      The first night of camp, the counselors decided to scare us by sneaking up the back stairs and knocking on the window of the emergency exit door. We definitely got a scare when the counselor’s hand went right through the glass, slicing her wrist and sending blood everywhere.

      1. GraniteKiwi*

        Continuing with camp counselor stories, when I was 14ish I spent the summer at an all girls camp. We went on an overnight offsite adventure, and when we arrived at the state park we were camping at our counselor’s boyfriend showed up! This was absolutely against the rules, but we never said anything because romantic (barf). As an adult I’m horrified on so many levels. We had some other issues on that particular trip, but that was by far the most unprofessional.

    3. Teach*

      Oh, camp!
      We accidentally knocked a kid out – playing Red Rover. This kid was determined, and the 19 year old male counselors decided he would not Come Over and clothes lined him in their overzealous athleticism.

  63. Cassandra*

    This is a bit tangential to the theme, but it’s my favorite story, and I thought a nice story would be, well, nice, so:

    During a conference-related trip to Europe (I’m from the US), I was stranded by the Eyjafjallajökull eruption. I let my friends know my status on social media, as you do. One of my professional friends, with no prompting from me, then got in touch with a social-media acquaintance (they had never met in person!) in the city where I was stranded. This acquaintance had a colleague in the same city who was in the process of moving in with a significant other…

    … such that she was not living in her still-furnished apartment. Which she offered to me for as long as I was stranded (it turned out to be a week). And would not take a single currency unit in exchange, though of course I bought her a nice gift.

    People can be pretty great.

    3. AvonLady Barksdale*

      I learned about the power of social media when a friend moved to Europe. Social media can crush our souls, but it does wonders when it comes to connecting people all over the world. I like this story.

    4. Marillenbaum*

      I love this so much! Once, I was on a business trip in Philadelphia and my office card hit its limit (Accounts was supposed to raise the limit because I did so much travel, but they didn’t*). My credit card had been frozen because of attempted identity theft, so I only had my debit card–which meant the hold on the account was such that I had literally NO money for food and things (I had to call my mom and ask her to send me money through Western Union. I cried. I was 23.) I posted about it on Jezebel’s weekly open thread, and a woman from the commentariat got in touch and took me out to dinner.
      *I emailed my boss as soon as I found out (like, 2 AM). Thankfully for me, he was a workaholic who always had his phone on, so he called my Accounts rep at 8 AM at home on a Saturday to make her come in and fix this; they’d known I needed a limit increase for over two weeks, so there was really no excuse)

  64. Bianca Margarita*

    This is such perfect timing, I’m leaving this Saturday to be a camp counsellor for two weeks! The director of the camp insists we all use a set of ancient walkie-talkies to communicate around the site, and it’s the bane of my existence. You can barely understand anything anyone says into them, they pick up radio signals from passing long-haul trucks half the time, and even when our staff do remember to use them it’s almost always to make a poop joke.

    This is the camp I attended in my teens, so I feel a bit like I’m seeing how the sausage is made. When I was 14, the staff and instructors seemed like these hyper-competent, responsible demigods; from this end I can tell that they (we) are actually just a bunch of nerdy, sleep-deprived goobers holding the camp together with pipe cleaners and a prayer.

    1. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

      Yep. I continue to help out at the camp that I grew up going to as a kid, and I can totally attest to this. Those awesome counselors that we had as children? They were just as lost and clueless as we are now.

    2. Counselor*

      Yes! I became a counselor at the camp I went to as a child for… 9 summers? Sometimes when I tell my parents stories of my years working there, they’re like “and we trusted these people all those years to take care of you – should we have? I don’t know anymore.”

      1. Bianca Margarita*

        Yyyyup. The funny thing is, I’ve heard that my camp I work for has really shored up professional norms in the last five or so years…looking at the way the camp is now, I can’t even fathom the shenanigans that must’ve gone on when I was a camper.

      1. Bianca Margarita*

        I have a theory that something about being out in nature/away from the routines of regular life makes people get extra in touch with their bodily functions.

    4. Teach*

      I was a counselor at a camp that used some empty buildings and barracks on a National Guard post. We also had walkie talkies, borrowed from military supply. One day we discovered that if we all switched channels, they were so much clearer! Thus ensued a blast of poop jokes and things like:
      Group three leaving for Mess, over!
      Group four right behind you, under!
      No, over, not under!
      That’s what she said! etc…

      Until we heard a stern non-college-dufus voice commanding us to get off the priority channel because we were interfering with a helicopter training exercise….

      We also had a hand-through-glass issue during an after bedtime scary story fiasco. And a guy grabbed a sheet from the office during a whole camp skit to make a quick toga and realized mid-skit it was from a prolific bed-wetter. We made a song about it, naturally.
      Because it was a barracks, there were only group showers. No stalls, no curtains, just a big tiled room with a dozen shower heads. Being college kids, we just rolled with it. Quarters were cramped so we had to institute a warning before bending over to shave legs so your butt didn’t end up in someone else’s face. On the weekends we drank beer in the shower and tried each other’s shower gel before going out. Good times…

  65. mark132*

    This isn’t really something all that wrong. But it was with coworkers. We were at Fort Irwin doing some training in the desert, and it was toward evening and the wildlife was getting active. We watched a coyote run into our tent and we were wondering what the hell it was doing, but before we had time to do anything, it ran back out of the tent with an MRE in it’s teeth and disappeared quickly. It was really bizarre, so some “unfortunate” soldier didn’t have an MRE to eat the next day.

    1. Construction Safety*

      Coyotes are career criminals. I’ll bet that wan’t its first burglary.

    2. Cacwgrl*

      Ugh, is it sad that my first thought was “yep, that’s what happens around here…”. The joys of desert life. Folks not familiar with the area, this is real life!

  66. Volunteer Enforcer*

    This is really mild in comparison to everything else I’ll bet. I was going to drive myself and a colleague to training. We agreed a pick up spot – I thought I knew where it was. I turned up at what I thought was the spot, but my colleague meant somewhere else that was the same sort of building. Thankfully it was very nearby. Where I live there are two petrol stations very close to each other – I thought she meant one but she meant the other.

  67. Tau*

    I am sort of astounded I don’t have a story to share here, because I spent two years working at a company that would send us to work at a client site for long periods of time, and for the long-running ones instead of putting us up in a hotel room they’d rent flats and have the people at that client site share. I spent one and a half years in a two-person flat with the only other dev on my project, which meant that not only was I working extremely closely with this guy day-to-day I was also living with him; I went into that going “uh, if we don’t get along this is going to crash and burn horribly“… but it was fine! We got along fine! There were no real problems!

    In fact, I actually can’t remember hearing about any flatmate meltdowns anywhere in the company through the gossip chain, which is a surprise. (Although if they’d put me in with the guy who vaped inside and played loud music, there would have been one.)

  68. Bee*

    I had a summer trail maintenance internship. I lived and worked in very close quarters with my coworkers.

    I found a house with three coworkers and we were illegally kicked out two weeks into a six-month lease when the owner sold the property and told us the new owner would not be honoring the lease. (We were given until the end of the month to leave.) I found a room in a nearby town that was willing to rent to me month-to-month. My coworkers found a mobile home / trailer outside of town. The house I was renting in had two decks and a grill; theirs was surrounded by poison ivy.

    If the work sites were too far from our base town we had to camp. We had our own tents and we stayed in drive-up campgrounds, so we could bring essentially whatever we liked with us. One guy had a cot and piles of pillows and bedding which took up a third of the pick-up’s bed, which didn’t leave much space for the rest of our personal bags and work equipment.

    We had to start work very early in the morning, but I was the only one to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I had ear plugs and an eye mask and ended up being the only person capable of functioning in the mornings.

    Things went downhill when I was temporarily assigned to our partner crew. One of the members of that crew would constantly make crude sexual comments about any girl or woman he saw between the ages of about 15 and 50. He got kicked out of the place he was renting and decided to contact my landlady and rent another room from her in the house I was in. I never left my room if he was around and commuted several hours to my boyfriend’s house for weekends. I filed an informal complaint against him on the last day of work when I found out he wanted to come back next year. (A formal complaint would have meant attending hearings with him, and the manager had already decided he would not be re-hired based on my informal complaint.)

    Overall it was an “interesting” experience and one that I don’t need to go through again.

  69. JustaTech*

    An epic tale from before my time at CurrentJob:

    My company was opening their first commerical plant, first of its kind in the world pretty much. It has to be inspected by a Major Federal Agency, and said agency wants to make sure that the plant can run at full capacity. Since running this plant is very specialized, the team from the pilot plant (at headquarters, back on the other coast) is flown out to do this hugely important, vital, exhausting work. If the new plant fails the inspection the company will go under and the entire industry might get frozen right then and there. So no pressure, right?

    So the home team flies out, landing in the afternoon, with a 18+ hour day planned the next day. So what does the boss do? Suggest everyone go have a drink in the hotel bar (to combat the time difference? who knows). So they do. And then two guys, the best of friends, the terrible L&L (initials have been changed to protect the guilty), get in a fight. L1 says “hey man, you’ve had enough, let’s go to bed” to L2 who promptly punches L1 in the face so hard that L1 now has a broken orbit and has to be taken to the hospital. At the hospital, L1 can’t be released because his blood alcohol is too high. So he’s not working.

    L2 managed not to get hauled off in cuffs, but is so utterly hung over/ still drunk the next morning that he is also incapable of working. So now the team is down two people, which means no relief staff. Which ended up meaning, for some people 8+ hours without a bathroom break.

    Through the heroic action of everyone else, the inspection is passed, the company is saved and everyone goes home.

    L&L? They got a mild talking to. Left of their own accord years later.
    (This story was relayed to me by one of the people who had to pick up L&L’s slack, mostly so I would never accidentally hire either of them back.)

      1. JustaTech*

        You’re one of the few people int he world who know how to do that specific thing at that time, convince other people you’re in a protected class, and, most likely, have photos of management in compromising situations.

  70. Environmental Compliance*

    I traveled as part of a oceanography competition team in high school. The organizers put all the students up in the bunk dorm rooms on a nearby campus, which for us students, was fine. However, our (same gender as myself and another student on the team) coach decided she would also stay there with us, and proceeded to openly change in the room with us, and have lengthy discussions with us while in her bra.

    I once had a hotel room that was connected to my boss’s hotel room (not on purpose, just where we were placed), and my boss got offended that I would keep that door locked between the two rooms. To be honest, the hotel staff had locked it (I assume), I just never unlocked it because there was no reason to use that door. Same boss got very offended when I declined one dinner out with her and her friends after the 4 hour drive to the location in the morning followed by a 9 hr conference. She would also throw a fit if anyone invited me to drinks/dinner/lunch.

      1. Environmental Compliance*

        Something about needing to tell me something, but no real explanation given for why it had to be 1) right then and 2) in person and not through text/email/etc. When I refused to keep the door unlocked she gave me the silent treatment for the rest of the night.

        I’m pretty sure she thought I was her work daughter (gag) and assumed I wanted her to be my work mom (double gag). She was clingy & needy at best.

  71. Roxie*

    I used to work at a place that was, at best, dysfunctional. Things that went on included:

    * A woman who ran conferences – away from our home city – was afraid to spend the night alone so she brought her mother to the conferences with her.

    * A woman in the office who ordered food for meetings would order much more than was needed, on the pretext of being able to offer lunch for all staff, would pack up all the leftovers to take home for her own dinner.

    * A man who made a fuss about having the company pay for him to call his so-dear family when he was traveling on business was having an affair with an associated woman in a different city. He would attach himself to any travel that might be considered to pass through that area, arrange for an extended layover in her city (two days at least) and charge the company for his travel and a hotel during his layover.

    1. ArtsNerd*

      If you’re afraid to spend the night alone in new cities, maybe conference planning isn’t the right career for you…

  72. Counselor*

    Oh gosh. I spent five years as a camp counselor (four living in rooms/bunks with both children and other counselors, one living in a room only with other senior/supervisory counselors but still in the same building as children), continuously within a square mile of all other staff for six weeks. Really, any job that depends on hiring a few dozen people mostly of college age, giving them 24/7 contracts for more than a month, depriving them of sleep, and depending on them being almost entirely on-site is going to have a lot of… interesting behavior. Most of the time, most of the counselors weren’t that bad, but some of the time and some of the staff… let’s just say I don’t even know where to start.

    I worry that my sense of professionalism is very, very skewed. My work history basically consists of: volunteering as a teen (around horses), my mother also a volunteer there; aforementioned camp counselor; smattering of undergraduate small-liberal-arts-college on-campus jobs; grad school labs – none of those really seem to lend themselves to developing professionalism.

  73. TheCupcakeCounter*

    Hubs tends to talk and have active dreams when he is stressed. I have been punched, kicked, almost had my finger broken, as well as had several conversations with Hubs when he is asleep. My favorite though is when a very pregnant me got hit in the face because Hubs was doing the backstroke in bed trying to swim away from the jellyfish. Being a former competitive swimmer I told him his form sucked, showed him how to do it properly (which resulted in him being smacked in the face), and then going back to sleep while he tried to figure out why the hell I was hitting him.

    When Hubs is sleep talking we like to call his alter-ego Bob. When working with the travel coordinator on a work trip they asked him about the possibility of rooming with another employee. He told them he couldn’t because he already had a roommate – Bob. So much confusion ensued because there wasn’t a Bob scheduled to go on the trip and my name is Cupcake.

    2. FrontRangeOy*

      My husband “sees” squirrels of many different colors when he sleep talks. You have to watch out for the purple ones. They’re out to take over the world. /humor

    3. nonegiven*

      Like the 3rd time I woke up when I hit the floor, I demanded my own room. He woke up and bitched at me for being on the wrong side of the bed. He wouldn’t let me back in on my side.

  74. misspiggy*

    I stayed in a staff house while reviewing a humanitarian programme in a fairly dangerous location. It was the kind of place where expats are advised to keep as low a profile as possible and respect local traditions, which included not drinking alcohol. Staff depended on good relationships with locals for the programme to succeed.

    The house was shared by several expat staff, the director and her husband. I noticed a bit of frost between the director and the rest of the staff. The reason became apparent when she told me how excited she was about the bar her husband was about to open directly across the street, as it would give him something to do. It was going to be a roaring success because all the military contractors would love it. Short of painting a massive target on the house, there wasn’t much more she could have done to threaten the safety of her staff.

    As soon as I got back I knocked on her boss’s office door for a quiet chat. The bar did not go ahead, and the director’s contract ended early. Phew.

    1. Observer*

      I’m so glad you had that chat!

      It’s hard to fathom what this pair were thinking. But, it’s good that someone did something about it.

  75. Fabulous*

    I once worked at an amusement park with dorms onsite for employees. There was a majority of international employees in the dorms with wildly poor standards of cleanliness. Some highlights include: I can’t tell you how many times I walked into the restroom and people hadn’t flushed the toilet, leaving baby-sized turd floaters. The floor of the restroom was constantly covered in soapy water because they always dumped out their dirty dishes tub onto the floor rather than into the sink or showers. Also, the laundry room… once I took someone’s clothes out of the dryer because they’d been in there for over 2 hours seems i needed to use it, and I stacked all the clothes neatly on a nearby shelf. I came back shortly after i started the dryer to find it left opened (so my time would run out) and a used condom left in my laundry basket.

  76. Drea*

    I worked for a non-profit where every year they hosted a major training for all staff in the city I was located in. Despite my position having nothing to do with events, I got roped into helping. I spent a fourteen hour day running all over the city and at the end of it, was told I was not allowed to go home and sleep in my own bed, but had to stay in the hotel. And not only did I not have my own room, I didn’t have my own bed, and was told to crawl into a small double with a senior staff member I had never spoken to before who was already asleep and immediately rolled over and started spooning against me.

    This was immediately followed by a week long mandatory staff vacation — not a retreat, a vacation — at a fancy ski resort where I shared a room in a house with six other staffers. There was so much drinking and so much hooking at every level of the organization that the experience really turned out to be the turning point of me deciding that I would rather work retail than stay at that job.

      1. ArtsNerd*

        This isn’t unique to nonprofits! Also #notallnonprofits

        (Plenty, though, yes. My motto is “Every job is dysfunctional. You just have to find the dysfunction that works for you.”)

    2. Grad Intern*

      I’m pretty sure I also worked there–and left extremely quickly! They all acted like sharing beds was a fun cool thing! And that we should all be excited to use half our PTO on the mandatory vacation!

  77. Longtime Listener, First time Caller*

    I thought I didn’t have a story, but I totally do! It was a terrible work trip that was made OK because of kind and gracious coworkers.

    When I was new to professional work, I was also a new mom (I interviewed 9 months pregnant, had my son the day after my interview, started the job six weeks after having my son, which in retrospect, was too early… I was miserable).

    I went to a conference while I was still breastfeeding and realized when I got to the airport (an hour and a half away from my house) that I forgot some of my pump supplies. Luckily some coworkers were leaving on a later flight and stopped by my house to get them. But I still didn’t get to pump for like 8 hours. Painful.

    Then when I got to the destination, the hotel had overbooked rooms and didn’t have a room for me. AND there were no rooms in the immediate vicinity because of several different football games going on in the area. The hotel staff was completely unhelpful and unapologetic.

    I called my coworkers who were out at a bar. They were already sleeping two to a room, but graciously said I could sleep in their room that night. The other coworkers were close friends, so they didn’t mind sharing a bed. But seriously, I was mortified, tired, missing my kid. I almost booked a return flight home that very day.

    1. A.*

      I think it is completely awful that more hotels are beginning to do this practice. They should be charged double and triple fees when they oversell rooms.
      We were at a wedding and they overbooked alot of the rooms. Seems like they just never stopped taking reservations and payments. It was awful. So many guests were left without a room and we had to double and triple up on rooms and share beds. Even the bride and groom had to share their wedding suite!! I think hotels that do this are especially egregious because you are stranding people.

  78. Orchestral Musician*

    As my name suggests, I’m an orchestral musician and travel to perform with many different orchestras. Most of these groups are made up primarily of freelancers coming in from out of town to play for a week and then moving on; it’s pretty standard practice to provide hotels for musicians to stay in for the week. Since they’re orchestras with fairly small budgets, having a roommate is fairly standard.

    What’s not standard is having to SHARE A BED, which I found out was the case with one orchestra when I arrived at the hotel! I happened to be rooming with a good friend and we’re both fairly chill — but I was horrified at the lack of professionalism. I can’t imagine how it would have felt to have to share a bed with a random coworker whom I’d only just met, which was the case for a lot of the musicians.

    I never went back to play with that group again, but since then I’ve heard some more horror stories. They recently moved to a host families model where donors to the orchestra will host musicians at their home — and a friend reported that she and three others had to share a room with four bunk beds and a dog who peed on their suitcases (the host just laughed it off).

    1. AnotherAlison*

      Sharing rooms with random strangers should never be an option that anyone considers. Would it be out of line for the orchestra to just pay you the room allowance, and then you could book your own room, or coordinate your own room sharing via a social media group or something? (I realize that was one orchestra, and not your problem anymore. . .)

      I’ve always wondered a little bit about people who volunteer to host. This summer, my son is staying with a host family when they’re at their home stadium. His family lives in a modular home, they all sleep with the doors open, and they turn off the A/C at night. His friend’s family lives in a million dollar home and bought a car for him to use over the summer. You never know what you’re going to get–and that goes both directions.

      1. Orchestral Musician*

        Well…some orchestras will give you a stipend if you want to find your own housing, but if a group doesn’t, then because you’re on a contract basis for about a week at a time, there’s not a lot of room for negotiation. And because the competition for jobs is so fierce, if you take issue with the contract, they’ll just find another person who’s more thirsty for work.

        That’s really unfortunate about your son! I’ve had pretty good luck with host families myself but it’s true, it’s a mixed bag.

  79. Never Again*

    Hooo – boy. I was offered housing through work and then told it would be in the same house as my manager. In retrospect I should have declined but I wanted to save money. It was a big house and I took a room on the other end of the house and worked hard to not see her in my down time.

    Manager became passive aggressive about non-issues around the house (and I’m not exaggerating about that – I left a literal SPOON in the sink) to a degree that created an untenable living situation and inevitably led to a tense work environment. She did not even own the home but when I “went over her head” to ask the owner of the house about rules such as guests, room use etc she would blow up at me and say I was being disrespectful. When I pointed out she was my boss in the work place but that I was allowed to speak to the owner of the house about my use of it, she just became more passive aggressive.

    It came to a head where she told me that she never wanted me in the house anyway and had been forced into it by the house owner, which is something that a) I had no idea had happened and b) was therefore in no way my fault, but certainly made me feel awkward. It was horrible and try as I did to be respectful and leave her alone, it led to some pretty nasty feelings on both sides.

    TLDR: Don’t live with your manager / co worker, and if you do: write up house codes and make them super clear even if it’s awkward in the beginning!

  80. Kimberly*

    I went to a teaching conference in Connecticut. It was held at a University and you were housed in a dorm. My teammate and I were in the same dorm room. it was very small. There were two bunk beds push up into opposite corners, a narrow aisle between them and a small pathway maybe 2 feet wide from the foot of the bed to the wall with the door in it. It opened into a common area that shared another similar room and a bathroom.

    I had warned her that I’m a sleep talker and walker. Because of the sleepwalking, I sleep in clothes that could be street clothes when staying in hotels and such. One night she was woken up by people from the other room because when they came in, I flew out of our room then just stood there staring at them. She told me to go back to bed and I did. The next night she and I were watching a DVD before bed. I fell asleep. She told me later the people came into the common room while she was awake and I again flew out of bed and stood at our door. What freaked her out was it looked to her like I passed through part of the upper bunk. The opening at the foot of the bed was very narrow and I flew right through it. I’m dysgraphic with dyslexic tendencies. One of my problems is I’m not left or right sided and have major coordination issues, so athletic ability is not something I have.

    At summer camp years before I slept walked out of my upper bunk repeatedly. Landing on the floor of the pier and beam cabin with a resounding boom each time. The councilors didn’t believe I was sleepwalking and punished me instead of moving me to the empty bottom bunk that was on the same wall as the councilor top and bottom bunks. My cousin was in the same cabin and finally threw an epic fit threatening to tell our parents the councilors were endangering me if they didn’t move me. Shocked the hell out the councilors. We had been put in the same cabin to teach us to get along because we spent most of our time bickering. Apparently, they didn’t read the info our parents provided that stated – 1. We were first cousins 2. We both sleepwalk and should be on bottom bunks.

    1. AMPG*

      Have you ever seen Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk with Me”? He’s got some amazing (and terrifying) stories. Hopefully you’re under a doctor’s care.

      1. Cristina in England*

        “What happened to the TiVo?”
        I will never forget the This American Life version of Sleepwalk With Me. Might relisten tonight.

  81. Buzz*

    Oh jeez. Here we go.

    I participated in an AmeriCorps-like program. The program didn’t place us in communal housing, but many of us found roommates who were also in the same program. My two roommates ended up being placed in the same school, which caused a lot of friction (they couldn’t get away from each other ever). One roommate had cats they didn’t have time to take care of, and the other had a boyfriend who is kind of a jerk. The cat would chew through his laptop chargers (he targeted them specifically) and the roommate’s boyfriend would lose his shit and call the other roommate terrible names. It was a really contentious situation all around.

    I have tons of camp stories to sift through, so I’ll come back to this. Stay tuned.

    2. The Schwa*

      I did an AmeriCorps program for two years, once as a team leader and when I was a team leader my bosses and I were trying desperately to not get dragged into just a horrific living situation between some corps members (who were thankfully not placed together). We actually took a lot of care when placing people in teams to avoid placing roommates together, but the situation went on the entire year despite THREE moves.

  82. Arya Snark*

    It wasn’t sharing living quarters but I once shared a car with the husband of my manager for several hours.
    I was a very junior level employee attending my first conference in Orlando, FL. While some of the sessions were interesting, many were of no benefit to me so my boss told me to go to the beach with her husband. He was a very likeable guy, very funny, laid back and personable…basically the polar opposite of his wife. I accepted but “forgot” my bathing suit so I could avoid that aspect. The beach was fine – we pretty much just waded and had lunch, then drove back to the hotel. Throughout the day, he told me story after story about his bitchy, uptight wife and the ridiculous things she had said/done. Nothing creepy or weird otherwise, but still inappropriate. Thankfully, I managed to not say much to him despite the fact that I didn’t really like her much.

  83. Goya de la Mancha*

    “My” story is so tame compared to some of these…

    About 10-12 employees from our company were at a 4-day conference. I was room sharing with Katie and our good friend Jewel was room sharing with Laura. So after the first night’s post dinner social hour (roughly 7:00pm), Katie and I invited everyone in our group back to our room for drinks and chatting, almost all of them came by for at least one drink. At 8:35pm there was a call from Laura, asking if we had seen Jewel because it was “so late!”. We told her Jewel was still in our room chatting, and Laura then asked when she was planning on coming back because she was worried about her being out by herself at night. Which comes across as really kind, but essentially led to Jewel having a curfew for the entire conference, and no one wanting to room with Laura ever again.

    1. AvonLady Barksdale*

      Yeah. That’s not “kind”, that’s busybody-ish. Now, I would have no problem with saying, “Hey Laura, I’m going to sleep, can you give me an idea of when you’ll be back so I don’t freak out when the door opens at midnight” or something similar. I wonder what Laura would have to say about me and my colleagues staying out with clients until 2am during a conference.

      1. Goya de la Mancha*

        Yeah, I can see why someone would think that. Knowing Laura though, she’s just a worrying type person, so I don’t think there was anything other then real concern for Jewel’s well being. She’s a great person and most people have zero issues working with her…she’s just not into our brand of fun ;)

        1. ArtsNerd*

          Even so, I get extremely annoyed with people who express these types of concerns. “Text me when you get home” is never going to happen. I live alone. I almost never have anyone with me when I’m traveling to and fro around the city, and I manage all right. There’s a vanishingly small chance I’ll even remember you asked me to do that when I walk in my front door. The fact that it’s largely gendered doesn’t help.

  84. FormerHigherEd*

    I used to work as a residence hall manager at a college (I know we’ve got some other higher ed AAM readers, so I am VERY much hoping there are some other housing staff that can chime in, there’s some truly weird things about that field). None of us technically lived together, but as we were all friends outside of work and all lived in on-campus apartments, it very much had that “perpetual summer camp” feeling to it. We were all young professionals who felt lonely on our tiny campus in our tiny college town, so we’d regularly have staff hangouts with booze and board games (what can I say, groups of 24-year-old new professionals have amazing judgment). We were always safe and reasonably well-behaved, and nothing truly weird ever happened (which is why I’m hoping other student affairs people can chime in with something a little more wild), but I now realize that these kinds of hangouts were…not normal in the world of work. I’m no longer in higher ed but every now and again I find myself thinking “Huh. ‘Our whole team went to my coworker’s home and got drunk in our pajamas until 2am’ would make an amazing AAM post title.” :)

  85. Higher Ed Database Dork*

    I had a coworker (oft referred to here because he was awful in so many ways – Office Creeper) who came to only a couple of conferences with the rest of us, and then was informally banned from them because he was insufferable. He wouldn’t attend sessions and complained about the few he did. He’d disrupt all our conversations about what we learned to explain why it would never work. He’d gripe about the food. He’d follow the rest of us around just to talk at us, instead of letting us listen to sessions or network.

    And when it came time for dinner, he’d want to go to the expensive restaurants – like $100/plate – and then whine when no one else wanted to do that. Picking out a restaurant for the group was so frustrating with him because he refused to back down from his expensive choices, and then get angry when he told him he could either go by himself or go with us to the cheaper place. So he’d chose to come with us, and sulk the entire time.

    He wasn’t picked to go to any more conferences after these couple of times, and so then he griped about that. Such a lovely person!

  86. IDeas*

    If you’re missing your passport, and you own a car, look in the crevice between the seat and the door. My ex-husband never dropped his passport there, what are you talking about?

    2. JustaTech*

      My coworker and I once spent 10 frantic minutes searching for all the credit cards and IDs my boss had accidentally thrown all over our rental car (as we were filling it up on the way back to the airport). We found everything, but it was hard to be sure because it wasn’t our stuff.

      Also, this is why wallets (or even money clips) are useful.

  87. Serin*

    1. There was a very disreputable place called the Rocket Motel near where I used to live. I mentioned it to a friend who was a Salvation Army officer, and said, “That place is probably full of people having affairs,” and she said, “Actually it’s at least half full of Salvation Army camp counselors who can’t stand to sleep on the ground for one more might.”

    2. No stories about traveling with my current co-workers, except that if you can look around and see five award-winning, interesting restaurants and one Jimmy John’s, all of them but me will always vote to eat at Jimmy John’s.

    3. I traveled with a group of newspaper coworkers to a wedding; we were all fresh out of school and broke, so we had six of us sharing one hotel room. Instead of an alarm clock, there was an alarm in the TV, which, unbeknownst to us, had been left set for 5:30 a.m. So in the dawn hours, an unfamiliar noise woke us all up in an unfamiliar room. I opened my eyes to see our foods editor blearily hitting the TV with her shoe and shouting, “No, television! No!”

    2. Errant*

      I am worried that I might work with you, because I have done that Jimmy John’s thing to my coworkers several times.

  88. LadyKelvin*

    I was doing field work in the Galapagos Islands during my Master’s with my two (female) peers and my (male) advisor. We were snorkeling around one of the less visited islands to do sea turtle habitat surveys, which my two peers and I had been doing for a couple of weeks before my advisor joined us. Prior to travelling to the island from our home base I insisted that I rent a wet suit, it was during a la nina and the water was freezing. My advisor also rented one and once we reached the island proceeded to put it on, backwards, in front of us wearing a speedo. Now the speedo isn’t unusual for a wet suit, but to have an out-of-shape 60-something guy put it on wrong in front of all of his 20-something female students was pretty gross. At least we can all still laugh about it.

    1. CM*

      At first I read this as the Speedo being on backwards… not sure you would be laughing about it if that had happened!

      2. LadyKelvin*

        Oh gosh that would have been worse. But the rest of the story is that he stayed on that island for a few more nights while we went back to the home base and then he proceeded to tell us about how he had to wash his underwear out in the sinks. Academia has no semblance of professional boundaries, thank goodness I’m out.

        1. Anon for this one*

          On academia having no boundaries: The director of a centre I worked in once told us about his colonoscopy. In detail. Too much detail.

          He also biked to work and would sometimes keep his tight lycra bike shorts on during the work day.

          Great guy, but prone to TMI.

    2. Anonicat*

      I went snorkeling during the free afternoon at a conference once, and in the evening was telling the head of one of the other labs that I’d seen an octopus. He immediately joked, “Oh, was [my lab head] there?”

      I was sadly too young to sieze the opportunity to say, “If you know he’s like that then WHY are you still letting him supervise young women?”

  89. Spills*

    This was my first day at my new job and I got on a flight and flew to Whistler, BC (from NYC) for my first event. I had only met my boss once before in the interview, but we had been communicating via email, and the company seemed on top of things. They had booked my flight, transportation, and hotel, and everything seemed taken care of.

    Everything with my travel went flawlessly until I arrived at the hotel. When checking in, they proceeded to give me a key to the room, and said that my boss had arrived earlier and checked in. Cue the horror — I had not realized that we would be sharing a room – NO ONE had said anything to me to indicate that. To add to that, I had just come from another high-frequency travel job, for a non-profit no less, and where they insisted that we were all adults and we should have our own rooms.

    As I’m walking up to the room, I’m trying to convince myself that maybe we have a suite with a couple of bedrooms, and it won’t be so bad…then I open the door to the room, and encounter stuff strewn EVERYWHERE. It seriously looked like a clothing bomb had gone off. Turns out we were sharing a single room, and it was one of those European style rooms with the two single beds right next to each other. My boss was not even there to greet me, but she showed up shortly thereafter, and was not in the slightest bit ashamed that the hotel room looked like a tornado had ripped through it and that this was my first impression of her.

    I then spent the next week getting to know my boss while also showering/sleeping/dressing in extremely close proximity to her, and she was not a pleasant person. What a bad omen for the next three months — it was a whirlwind of bad management and terrible immaturity on her and the company’s part, culminating in me getting let go, although she had neglected to set any sort of goals, despite my repeated requests to do so. In fact, she rarely spoke to me at all, instead choosing to message me via our instant messenger, despite the fact she sat 3 feet behind me.

    I should have run at the first sight of that hotel room!!

  90. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

    Figured this thread could use a cat story. Back in Home Country, we used to get assigned to our jobs straight out of college, and were also assigned beds in a dorm-like building, three people to a room. I had one roommate that I worked together with, that was also an engineer, and another who was an accountant someplace else. Engineer had a boyfriend in the nearby big city, who was a grad student and lived in the college dorms, and she stayed at his place overnight a lot. One day, she came back from visiting him bearing a black kitten. She said the kitten belonged to some friends of her boyfriend’s, who had gone home for winter break, and she’d volunteered to catsit for them, so here’s the kitty, “you guys take care of her, I’ve got to go back to Bf’s place, cya!” and she left. Accountant and I went to sleep, and the kitty, of course, did not! We had the room setup so that we had two tall bookshelves, one on each side of the room, separating the room into a kind-of kitchen/breakfast area and a kind-of bedroom, so my and Accountant’s beds were each behind a bookshelf. Kitty decided it was great fun to climb on top of a bookshelf and to then jump down on the sleeping human below! She took turns, too. She’d wake me up, then Accountant, then me again and so on. After Kitty landed on my head a fifth time, I got up and walked to the end of the hallway to use the shared restroom. As I was walking back, I saw the door of our room open and a small black cat FLY out in a perfect parabola, hit the ground, and take off running in the direction of a stairwell. I was like, okay, we can get some sleep now before it’s time to go to work! The next morning, Kitty was nowhere to be found! In the evening, a woman who lived on a floor was in the shared kitchen telling people that she’d found the cutest little black cat that morning in a stairwell, and her son had always wanted a cat, so it’s perfect. Kitty went on to live with that family, they built a house and moved into it and took Kitty with them. Kitty’s original owners did not seem to mind in the least!

    2. TheCupcakeCounter*

      So I totally get being annoyed at kitty but OMG I want a kitty to do that to me right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

      1. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

        Yeah, we were 19 and 22. Accountant had also grown up on a farm with farm cats. My outlook on cats is VERY different now than it was then!

  91. Mouse that Roared*

    Going to another location of our state agency (in Texas), we fly out for a two day, one night trip. I was her supervisor and the only person who would put up with her. She was also a hoarder, both at home and at work.

    At the airport, she’s digging through her purse. It is packed FULL of things, and the strap is held on with a safety pin or something. It must have weighed 10 pounds. But you know, why carry one pen when you can carry five? Just in case something needed to be signed in green ink.

    This woman had arthritis in both hands, and would not shake hands with anyone, because it was painfull. I can honestly understand that.

    Anyway, she needs to check in her suitcase. She cannot find her drivers license – and this is post 9-11. They open up her suitcase and the guy removes a small ironing board, and searches through the rest of it.

    I’m standing off to the side so she can handle things herself, but I do ask her later if that was an ironing board in her suitcase. Yes. It was there so she could use it as a table, in bed. For one night.

    why on this green earth would you load yourself down with so much crap? It was frustrating. I had to carry the damned suitcase.

    1. Lady Phoenix*

      You said it yourself, she IS a hoarder.

      I dunno what to say but I would have definitely calledbher out for all the useless sh1t in her bag, though it would mostly out of fustration.

      Also she’s have to handle her own suitcase.

    2. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

      AN IRONING BOARD. !!!! AS A TABLE IN BED. Please excuse me while my mind explodes.

    3. Other Duties as Assigned*

      Re: Ironing board travelers. Some years ago, I was riding a passenger train in a remote area of Ontario. It was one of those handful of trains which still exist in Canada (and Alaska) that will stop anywhere to pick up or drop off a passenger. They serve folks who have homes or summer cabins in the wild where there is no road access; the train is the only way to get to and from these locations. If you want to get on, you go to trackside and flag down the train, like hailing a cab. If you’re riding and want to get off, you alert the conductor who will stop the train at any random point you say (like “three telephone poles past milepost 155”).

      Anyway, we’re riding along in a completely remote area and a 30-ish guy tells the conductor he wants off in a mile or so. He grabs his backpack and heads to the door. Once we’re stopped, he gets off and walks to the front of the train where the baggage car attendant hands him a large box tied with twine. He hikes this up onto one shoulder (groceries?). But then, he’s handed his other checked item: a full-size ironing board. He puts this under his arm and disappears into the woods. All I could think was: I live in a large American metro area and don’t even own an ironing board. Further, were I having to pack things into my home in the woods, an ironing board would be far down my list of essentials. It made me wonder what sort of life he lived.

  92. Glowcat*

    Nothing really crazy, but once we had a conference in Denmark and we had the social dinner on the ferry that goes back and forth from Denmark to Sweden. A bunch of us decided to drop off in Sweden and check the night life there. We got off, but had to go through custom and one of us, being from outside EU, got stopped and had to talk his way to the other side. We then tried a few pubs, witnessed a very drunk Swede thrust a toothpick *through* his cheek to impress us and in the end I threw up while waiting for the return ferry.
    My, if it was hard to follow the talks next day!!!

  93. B*

    I once worked very closely with a candidate on a campaign, and traveled and stayed in supporting housing with them on a weeks long activity heavy publicity stunt. Part of my job when we sat down to work together was to fill a bin with hot water and epsom salts so they could soak their feet. When we ran out of epsom salts in the middle of nowhere, I had to drive 45 minutes to the nearest pharmacy to replenish our stock for the rest of the journey.

  94. Kari*

    I worked at a fancy resort in Northern Minnesota for three summers. For $5 a day you could live on site in an old cabin. There were about 30, college students living on site those summers. Oh man… so many kids with time and money and really no adult supervision. Lots of drinking, hooking up, skinny dipping, going to bed at 4 a.m. and at work at 6:30 a.m. for the breakfast shift (great parenthood training), cabin wars (think walleyes hidden under the floorboards), swimming, golfing… As long as you showed up for work and were polite to the guests, you were good. Basically, the three best summers of my life.

    1. JustaTech*

      Walleyes, like, pike? Like someone hid *fish* under the floor of a cabin?
      *blinks*

      1. Inspector Spacetime*

        It’s a common prank. Because it starts to smell bad? People will hide fish in cars, too.

    2. Trout 'Waver*

      Ah, the ole Wiley Walleye gambit. That’s what bullheads are for. Don’t waste a perfectly good walleye.

      1. LadyCop*

        I’m so glad I’m not the only one who thought it was a waste of some tasty walleye!
        SKOL

  95. C-Hawk*

    I was working with a small arts organization, and we had an event in my undergrad college town (it’s a Power 5 school, and in a town that only exists because the university is there). I was excited to go back, especially since the nature of our work meant I would have most of the mornings and early afternoons free. Well, I was traveling with one of the directors, and he said that our client was willing to host us at his house. Then we get there, and I find out that there is only one guest room… Turns out the director told the client (with whom he was friends) that I would be perfectly fine sleeping on the couch in his living room… Two things: 1) I never said this, and 2) the “couch” was actually a love-seat, and I am over six feet tall.

    This was not, however, the worst thing about traveling with this director. Once he realized I planned to spend some of my free time seeing my old friends and favorite hangouts (I drove myself separately in my own car—with no mileage reimbursement—specifically so I could do this), he suddenly had all kinds of things he wanted me to do for the client. These are things that we were never contracted to do, fall way outside my job description, and were quite obviously just him coming up with stuff so I wouldn’t have free time. Whatever, he’s the boss… He asks me if I know a good coffee shop to work in; of course I do, I wrote half my term papers there. We get there, and he tells me to get to work (I haven’t even ordered coffee yet), and when he brings coffee back from the counter, tells me I owe him $1.50. He then does absolutely no work, telling me the point of the coffee shop was for him to have a place to sit and read while I worked… He even got pissed off at me for “wasting time” when I got up to get myself a second coffee after two hours.

    Midway through the coffee shop BS, he asks me what I’m planning for dinner. At this point, I’m 100% sure there is no chance of him not being a jerk, so I tell him I’m going to my favorite burger restaurant in town (this place has won multiple “best-of-state” awards). Nope, he tells me… He told our client that as thanks for letting me stay on his couch, I had offered to buy and cook dinner for us and his family. Not both of us, just me (and no, at no point did my boss buy or cook the client dinner during our stay). Boss looks at me and says, “well, the client already believes you said this, so if you want to back out now it’s going to look bad for you.”

    Now, this client is an incredibly nice guy, who never would have agreed to any of this had he actually known what was going on behind the scenes. He’s also someone with whom I wanted a good relationship after I left this organization. And I really have no issue making dinner for people gracious enough to open their home for me. So I did the client right, but made sure that I actually took credit for it being my idea to cook for him. Boss proceeded to get mad at me in private because he told me he wanted the client to think it was his idea that I cook, and he just told me what he did because he thought it could get me to foot the bill instead of the organization.

    I was never so happy to have driven rather than flown, because even though it meant 1,800 miles of driving each way, I could leave as soon as I was done, and fume in private before getting home. Once home, it took seven drafts of a resignation letter before my wife told me it wasn’t too inflammatory. I put that thing in a drawer, started my search, and thankfully managed to get a much better paying position.

    1. fposte*

      Holy cow–this is an echo of the famous story about candidates having to make dinner for twenty people, except they at least know they’re going to have to do it.

      I mean, I can cook and I like cooking, but I’d be sorely tempted to hand out nuked mac ‘n’ cheese and peace out.

      1. ArtsNerd*

        I have several nightmare stories of working in performance, but never have I ever had to squeeze onto a loveseat and cook anyone dinner for the honor of doing so.

        1. ArtsNerd*

          Side note: I don’t envy Alison’s task of narrowing down the competition for the best/worst stories. There is just so much gold in this comments section, it’s like every one is my own baby.

      2. C-Hawk*

        At least karma was on my side after this… The job I wound up getting called me about two weeks after we got back (I had not applied for this position specifically), brought me in for one interview and hired me the next day. Boss had interviewed with them twice for this exact position, and they failed a search rather than hire him. Boy, was he pissed off. At one point, he tried to tell me that I should decline their offer and tell them to hire him because it was only fair that he should keep making more money than me. His reasons for this included that the current organization didn’t allow reports to make more than their managers, and that my wife and I were childless (by choice) and he had three kids.

    3. Effie, who gets to be herself*

      Ooh, I have a horrible being voluntelled for cooking story too! I’ve posted this in a free-for-all before but I think it fits here too, so enjoy :)

      Warning: this is long

      OK so I was interning with a nonprofit with a group of people much younger than me in life experience, not just in age, and the organization didn’t really have a line between business and personal life, much as I tried to maintain it. (In fact they frowned on it, saying I was too distant and needed to get to know my fellow interns better…) So a guy who works at a company the nonprofit was affiliated with invited a bunch of his coworkers and all the interns over for a night of food and fun.

      I was a minority race. Let’s say I’m a Siren, okay? So I’m a Siren, and everyone else is an Elf (all my fellow interns, the community where we lived, the guy host, all his coworkers, everyone). And he invited us over for a night of “Undine Food”. He’d printed little flyers with the name and theme of the evening out to give them to everyone and everything (left them on all our desks).

      The thing is, “Undine” is an old word with a lot of historical baggage that really shouldn’t be used in polite company to describe people and their cultures anymore. Also I majored in Underwater People Group Studies at university so I’m extra-sensitive to words like these which people in this little community in the middle of nowhere are I guess not (since that wasn’t the only time in that internship that someone used that word to refer to me).

      So all this is to say, I didn’t really want to go. But my roommate and fellow intern begged me to go and kinda guilt-tripped me into going. She promised me if I wasn’t feeling it we could leave (it was her form of transportation and I couldn’t really operate it safely).

      We arrive at Clueless Elf Guy Host’s house, and she makes a beeline for our friends as soon as we get in the house. I grab her and say, “Wait! We should find our host and thank him for hosting.” She’s like, “oh, that’s a good idea, I guess my parents usually do that! Ok let’s go.”

      We find Clueless Elf Guy Host in the kitchen and he’s prepping Mermish food. At this point, he didn’t know me personally, didn’t even know my name. He looks up and sees us and as I’m opening my mouth to say “Thank you for inviting and hosting us, CEGH” he cuts me off, points at me and says “Thank God you’re here! I need you.”

      Faint alarm bells are ringing as I say “You…need me?”

      He points at the prepped food and says, “Yeah, you can make Mermish food, can’t you?”

      I was completely gobsmacked. And I was in his house, and I felt like I had to be a good guest. And I nodded.

      CEGH: Great! Then you can make these Mermish biscuits!

      Me (still speechless): O.o

      CEGH: Wait, you do know how to make this right?

      Me (pride stung into speech): I do, but I can only make it Siren-style. I’m not Mermish.

      CEGH: Well, no one’s going to be able to taste the difference. Don’t worry, I’ll help you! *disappears*

      Now, reader, if it were NOW or even a few years past that day, I would have said something along the lines of “Yes, and it’s $20 an hour for me to cook” or “I was under the impression I was a guest” or “Let’s go home, Roommate” or just looked at him and walked away as soon as CEGH pointed at and interrupted me. But it wasn’t now, it was then. So, I…cooked.

      I stood and cooked for 3 hours straight. I cooked Siren-style Mermish food, Nymphish food, and Naiad food. People popped in and out of the kitchen to watch me cook (one friend did help me for a bit and kept me company for at least an hour. He gets some stale brownie points for that). Did I get to socialize (the point of going to this little gathering)? Barely. Did Clueless Elf Guy Host help me? He showed up to tell me what to cook next and told me where stuff was in the kitchen. Did he thank me or bark orders at me? That stunt caused me to stop what I was doing, raise one eyebrow, and look at him, which caused him to fall back and apologize profusely. I wish I’d stopped then. But I was stuck in this little tight-knit community and I was already in pretty deep and I could not deal with the intense social ramifications of being rude, which most likely would have ended up being disciplined through work and being made to write a letter of apology and self-criticism report (no, I was not working for Communist China, though sometimes it felt like it. The organization really liked beating their people down and remolding them).

      Also, I had no way of getting home. My roommate was having a whale of a time in the living room, socializing and eating and mingling and eating. I could hear her. And I knew her well enough that she would not have been willing to give that up because I felt uncomfortable. And public transportation was pretty much non-existent. Trust me, I had no options but to stay at that ghastly little soiree. So I kept cooking.

      I was proud of my cooking abilities and ironically had been secretly wishing for more chances to cook. Not like this, though!! The thought of spitting in the food didn’t even cross my mind, also probably because my “friends” (fellow interns) were eating the food too (my family asked about that when I told them the story). I didn’t eat anything that I cooked because I was too mad and anyway if I’m going to eat Underwater People Groups food I would just eat Siren-ish food, not Siren-style Mermish/Nymphish/Naiad-ian food (and also had eaten dinner before the party since I was afraid of what would be served).

      And you know what my roommate said on the way home? “Weren’t you afraid the food wouldn’t be authentic?” (!!!!!!!) It took some time for me to calm down and explain in words that it’s not appropriate to press your GUEST(S) into forced unpaid labor. I believe asking if her parents would ever do that made it click for her. She also said her parents wouldn’t throw a theme party and not have everything prepped ahead of time. Life experiences, yo.

      Also? The first thing I was making, the biscuits? They’re light and delicate-tasting no matter what style you cook them.

      He deep-fried them before serving them.

      2. curious*

        Wow. Just….wow. I can’t figure out what the real world equivalent for “undine food” is but damn…that is something else. CEGH just expected you to cook for everyone? WITHOUT EVER ASKING??? I am impressed with your restraint. Do you know whatever happened to CEGH?

        1. ArtsNerd*

          “Oriental” is one (of several) real world equivalents.

          I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Effie! Holy shit.

          1. C-Hawk*

            I was thinking the same thing about Undine. Also, I love that Allison let holy sh•t through uncensored. This definitely called for it.

            1. Effie, who gets to be herself*

              Thanks guys!

              My roommate (and most of my coworkers) exhibited tons of other racist behaviors, so I don’t really count her momentarily mildly “getting it” as a win.

              Yeah, he was too busy “hosting” to cook. Asshole.

              I don’t have an update, except the PTSD from working there :/

              Oh, and I think everyone else had a great time at the party.

            1. Effie, who gets to be herself*

              I’ve explained above why I couldn’t, without losing my entire community’s support and then most likely my job :)

      3. C-Hawk*

        Holy sh•t… I honestly can’t believe you managed to hold your tongue through that whole party. I’m glad at least your roommate finally got to hear how pissed off you were, and it does seem like she learned something, but damn…

  96. Natasha*

    During three overnight trips where I stayed at my co-worker’s house to save our small business some money, they got into massive arguments with their spouse that included shouting and slamming doors while I was there. I found reasons to not stay there after that. They’ve since divorced…

  97. Murphy*

    My husband used to have to go on regular work trips with several of his co-workers for 2 weeks at a time. They didn’t have to work on the weekends, so they had a free weekend in between two weeks of work. The company reimbursed for all meals, including alcohol. Several of my husband’s coworkers would go to a sports bar at noon and spend the entire day/evening drinking on the company’s dime.

    Because these trips were so frequent, my husband asked for some kind of reimbursement for recreation (he wanted to rent a bike) but they wouldn’t.

  98. LizB*

    Working as a camp counselor at an overnight camp, several of us counselors shared one room and all the kids we were in charge of shared a room down the hall. One of my coworkers had a really bad summer cold, and the nurse gave her a dose of Nyquil right before bedtime… but then for some reason she didn’t go to sleep right away. If you take Nyquil and don’t go to sleep before it totally kicks in, you will be EXCEEDINGLY loopy. I diligently wrote down all the hilarious things she said as we tried to convince her to just go to sleep instead of rambling about cupcakes and Catholicism. (We were all good friends, and this was absolutely done with love and not to make fun of her — she found it all hilarious as well the next morning.) Some of my fondest memories of that job.

  99. Nonprofit Princess*

    I had to travel with my supervisor to a conference in a popular tourist town. We both knew we were going to share a room and I figured I could work with it for a few nights. It was a relatively large conference and, when we arrived at our hotel to check in, we discovered we had a room with a single, king sized bed. When we asked to change, we were told the hotel was booked up and so were all the neighboring hotels. *Eye roll*. But what else can I do? Turns out, my boss loves to talk on her cell phone with her husband at all hours, loudly, and with over the top innuendo. It also turns out that she likes to lounge around the room in her bra. I would wake up early to try to get ready and get the hell out to give her privacy. Come out of the bathroom and she’s topless, reclining on the bed while cooing to her “schnookie ookums” and has her stuff spread all over so I can’t easily escape the room. Fine. I will go out on the balcony and enjoy the sea view so she can go to the bathroom. Half an hour later, nope, still toplessly gossiping with her hubbie with no signs of shame. I climbed over her luggage and got the hell out of there. Made it hard to look her in the eyes for the last year of my job.

  100. Moonlight Elantra*

    At my last job, I got sent to Disney for a conference with my boss (the communications director), our CFO, and one of the staff accountants. The CFO was like a sweatier, more aggressive Michael Scott who was best friends with our CEO, so he got to do whatever he wanted.

    The conference was for users of the association management software we used. Our CFO had no idea how to use it, but he was upset that some of us got to Florida (we were in IL and it was February) so he invited himself along. We get to the hotel and he immediately declares that he has nothing to wear in this weather, so he blows off the whole first day of the conference to go shopping. He buys himself a WHOLE NEW wardrobe of summer clothes (which he then expenses back to the company), along with whole cases of water, boxes of cereal, bags of cookies, etc., even though it’s only like a 4 day trip. He blew off almost all of the conference to go to different parks and couldn’t understand why we didn’t want to accompany him. (We actually were interested in the sessions/workshops, and also no one could stand him.)

    The last night was the last straw. We had no dinner plans, so my boss, the accountant and I decide to head over to the mini-golf course at our resort and then have burgers and beers on the beach. We’re just about to head over when CFO comes barging in an announces that we’re going to go into Orlando to go out for steaks. But burgers! Mini-golf! We implore. No one really wants to go into town. Finally, CFO threatens to FIRE us if we don’t go with him and also he already made the reservations, so it was basically, get in the car and shut up.

    We go to a VERY nice restaurant, where the three of us proceed to get blind drunk out of spite on $20 cocktails (CFO didn’t drink, so he had to sit there and watch us enjoy ourselves and then drive us back). Our bill ended up being like $700 for four people. I remember very little from that night other than I ate one of the best meals of my life but for the life of me I can’t remember what I ordered. When we got back, our CEO was FURIOUS with the CFO for all the expenses he submitted and I promptly started job searching.

  101. RedSonja*

    In grad school, I was on an academic competition team. Because academia, we were staying in the cheapest hotel the school could find, sharing rooms. When we arrived at the hotel, we found a lobby that led straight into a carpeted courtyard with an in-ground swimming pool. The entire hotel reeked of chlorine, and the rooms were TINY. Someone said that the hotel had previously been a low security juvenile housing facility, which wouldn’t surprise me. The night of our arrival, my roommate and I went to bed early-ish, since we were competing the next day. The other team members went out drinking, culminating in one person going missing, us calling his phone repeatedly until he finally answered. He was too drunk to tell us where he was, but fortunately a kind employee at the Burger King he had passed out at told us where we could collect him.

  102. luckykitty*

    So I used to work in the indie film world (which is mostly terrible), and one year after we survived a large international film festival with no major meltdowns, our boss (completely terrible) decided he’d reward us with professional massages at a nearby place.

    Except this was a non-trendy part of Brooklyn full of warehouses and parking lots, and the nearby place was not a spa but rather a vegan cafe with a ‘treatment room’ in the back.

    And because he was cheap as anything, he had purchased only a few individual massages and one ‘couples’ massage’ to save money. so guess who got to have a couples’ massage with her immediate supervisor instead of lunch one February day 3 or 4 years ago!

    NB: we stripped down to undies, but no further. It could’ve been worse.

    1. ArtsNerd*

      I’m glad you don’t work there anymore! I work at an arthouse cinema, which appears to me to be far and away the BEST place to be in indie film, in terms of quality-of-life. I’m a venue geek in general, so it works well.

    2. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

      I had a boss at my first two US jobs in the 90s who wanted to date me, nevermind the fact that we were both married to other people, who did not approve of that. I went on an overnight business trip with him once at Job #2, where he told me that the owner said he and I had to share a motel room. The owner was notoriously cheap, so at that time, I bought the story, but now, 20 years later, I am REALLY wondering if the owner even knew he’d told(?) my boss to sleep in the same room with his female subordinate. I am likewise wondering whether yours booked a couples massage for you and him because he was cheap, or because he creepily wanted to get a couples massage with a subordinate and make it look like a workplace perk?

  103. Fish girl*

    Okay, I’m not sure if my story will count, but when I was a junior in college, I took a biology class that ended with a trip to Central America to do some fieldwork. One of the field stations we stayed in was a good 3 mile hike from the nearest road. We all stayed in the same bunkhouse, a large room on stilts (for the rainy season) with 14 bunkbeds in it. Details to set the scene: Mosquito nets for every bed, scorpions running amok, and howler monkeys in the trees right outside.

    My bad knee was killing me after the hike in and, after complaining enough, my lab partner agreed to give me the lower bunk and he’d sleep on the top. I woke up in the middle of the night hearing someone screaming bloody murder. When I opened my eyes, I was standing next to my bunk bed, blood covering my hands and face. Eventually, I realized that I was the one screaming and stopped. Everyone in the bunkhouse woke up in a panic and my screams even woke some of the workers a half mile away.

    One of the massive boards on the top bunkbed had fallen off in the night and hit me in the temple and I guess I leaped out of bed without realizing it (without tangling in the mosquito net too!) My friend above me felt the bed give way and clung onto the side rails so he wouldn’t fall down as well. Head wounds bleed a lot (apparently I looked a bit like Carrie during the prom scene), but there wasn’t that much damage once the bleeding was stopped. I only got a small forehead scar from it. I found out later that if it was serious enough to need real medical attention, I would’ve needed to be helicoptered out by the air force. (I’m slightly disappointed this didn’t happen, because it would’ve made the story even better!)

    A year later, I went on the same trip, this time as a Research Assistant and slept in the same bunk bed (but with no one on the top bunk that time!). There were still my old blood stains on the pillowcase and the workers there remembered me as “the screaming girl”.

    1. Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins*

      I am so sorry that happened to you, but I could not stop laughing while reading (I’m obviously a bad person.).

    2. ArtsNerd*

      Oh, this counts. This counts a lot. Holy cow. Also – it’s not surprising that they didn’t buy new pillowcases, but it is still gross that they didn’t buy new pillowcases for that bunk.

    3. miyeritari*

      this is VERY funny now but i can oNLY IMAGINE HOW FCKING HORRIFYING it must have been at the time.

  104. LordBute (Sweden)*

    When the volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010 I was on a work trip with 8 other people. We were testing a new system at another site. This was a big project with people from 4 different countries in Europe. Big deal for all parties involved.

    In the morning of day 4 out of 5 we saw that part of the airspace in northern Norway was closed due to the ash cloud. This had happened before and we thought nothing of it. (We work in aviation.) A couple of hours later things had changed. We heard that Swedish airspace would probably close the next day. It was decided to rebook our tickets for that evening and leave a day early.

    We took two cars to the hotel to check out and collect our things. On the way back to the test site (near the airport) things changed again. We had to take next flight if we wanted to get out of there. Rebooked again.

    At the gate our manager was not sure of his decision. “Two more days of testing-and we just left!!! What if there is no closure…”

    We got out. Swedish airspace was closed for 4 or 5 days and flights seriously disrupted after that. I call it the Great Ash Escape.

    1. ArtsNerd*

      Oof! I’m glad you escaped! That messed up travel for quite a long time, if I remember correctly. We had to cancel a show because our performer couldn’t get to the US from England.

  105. Sphinx Cats and Jehovah*

    I was an intern for a small museum one summer and there were two weeks when I would staff evening events and then have to be back on site to set up breakfast the next morning. Although I only lived an hour away I thought it would be a good idea to stay with one of the museum volunteers overnight. One of the volunteers who offered was very new to the organization and we didn’t know a whole lot about her, but she seemed nice and so I accepted. After the evening’s work I follow the directions to her house, which is deep into the woods with no cell phone service. I get there and she introduces me to her husband (who is obviously not pleased to have a house guest) and her five sphinx cats (the hairless cats for those of you who don’t know. I am very much a cat person, but those five creatures were a little unnerving in the setting. I made sure to lock my bedroom door that night and couldn’t help thinking what an excellent setting for a horror movie this house was. The next morning they invite me to sit down with them and say a prayer. There were many mentions of Jehovah and I start to clue in. Yes, she had invited me to stay because they were Jehovah’s witness and wanted to convert me. Thankfully I’m the daughter of a Methodist minister and quickly shared that fact, which they respected enough to not press me too hard. And I respectfully accepted the brochures they offered me. I did not spend another night there.

  106. DCGirl*

    In my Big Five accounting days, I had to attend a tax managers conference at a resort in Carefree, AZ. Said Big Five firm, to save money, booked these big conferences in the off season in various locations, so it was July and the temperature was well over 100, which made the January conference held at a lakefront hotel in Chicago look every so much better, but I digress…

    The resort had a hotel building, but was also developing a timeshare resort that was about to go online. When I arrived, I was told that, for the first night of the conference, there was no room for me in the hotel so they were putting me in one of the timeshare units that night. A handful of conference attendees were similarly affected. Since I hadn’t rented a car, I was told to call the front desk and they’d send the shuttle for me. So, after the opening dinner, I took the shuttle to my unit for the night.

    The next morning, I got dressed and packed to go back to the hotel to have breakfast and check in. I went to call the front desk for the shuttle only to look around the room and realize that it had no telephone. Apparently, that was one of the last steps in getting the timeshare units ready for guests. Alas, this was the pre-cell phone era. I was a speaker, so I had to get to the hotel. It didn’t look anyone else was staying in any of the nearby units. I was desperate.

    I started walking the mile back to the hotel, in my nice business clothes, rolling a suitcase behind me, in the Arizona heat. Suddenly, two coyotes appeared from the brush and ran across the road in front of me. Terrified, I decided to head back to the unit and bang on every door in the building for help. Fortunately, it turned out one of the most senior partners in the firm was also in one of the timeshare units, and he had a rental car.

    1. ArtsNerd*

      Well then. That’s a scene straight out of a very dark comedy. I hope you didn’t have to leave the hotel at all for the rest of the conference.

  107. MasterOfBears*

    I’m sure this will be mild compared to some of these, but I have fond memories of the event. One of my coworkers sharing a field house one summer had made a project of working his way through the entire Criterion collection. He knocked on my door one evening to ask if I wanted to come watch with him. “Sure, what’s the movie?” “Uh…it’s called ‘Deliverance.'”

    Further prodding revealed that he knew NOTHING about ‘Deliverance’ and had no idea what he was getting into. (I also hadn’t seen it, but I knew it by reputation.)

    My entertainment for the evening was watching HIM watch ‘Deliverance’ completely cold. It was some first class grade A squirming.

    2. Cornflower Blue*

      I had to Google that movie now to find out what’s so horrific about it and OMG I would feel so awkward watching something like that with a coworker!

  108. CanadaNarwhal*

    My company held an annual retreat where everyone went to a remote camp with some very nice cabins to stay in for the weekend. It was completely optional, and significant others were encouraged to attend. I was only a month into the job, so figured that going would be a good chance to get to know some people. I brought my fiance with me, and we were assigned twin beds in a loft area of one of the cabins.

    Well, one guy who had a room in our cabin had a bit too much to drink one night, and puked all over the kitchen in the cabin before collapsing into his bed to sleep it off. Cleaning it up was decidedly NOT MY JOB, but the smell was horrendous. And since we had a loft area instead of an actual room, there was no way my fiance and I could shut a door to keep the stench away from us while we slept. I was also too shy to ask anyone else to help out (being new to the company), so we held our noses and cleaned as best we could. So gross!

  109. Cat*

    Didn’t have to share a room, but traveled to a work event about 3 hours away. A few work friends & I carpooled. One of the women hurt her back really badly and I agreed to let her lay her head in my lap, as sitting for too long was painful. Annoying, but fine. She took a painkiller. There was going to be an open bar at the event, I agreed to monitor her to make sure she didn’t drink too much while on painkillers. That went out the window really fast, I tried a couple of times to make sure she was okay, and she brushed it off like everything was fine. It wasn’t, she was unraveling.
    An NFL player was in attendance, as was a minor celebrity, who came with his girlfriend. She was trying to inconspicuously dance closer & closer to minor celebrity, though it was VERY conspicuous & he looked weirded out. Then she set her sights on the football player. The biggest issue? She asked me to hold on to her wedding ring. I politely declined. She was hanging out with the football player the rest of the night, heavily flirting and embarrassing herself in front of all of her colleagues and bosses. Her boss actually confronted her about how drunk she was (again, brushed it off, “I’m fiiiiine!”).
    She disappeared for a while, and I started to get nervous that she’d cheat on her husband. I was going to text her to have her join us at a bar after the event, realized I didn’t have her number. I thought to Facebook message her, get to her page & realize she shares her page with her husband (#redflag), so I give up & go have fun. She runs into the bar we were all at a bit later with a girl I’ve never seen before yelling “[important guest to the company] STOLE HER PHONE!” repeatedly.
    The next day, she downplayed everything, asked how our nights went. When my coworker & I told her that we wrapped it up around 1AM, she tried to make it sound like we were the crazy ones (we definitely kept our drinking in check, because, well, it’s work function. Even after the event ended, I still don’t want my coworkers to see me wasted). So, she goes “Wow, you guys went harder than I did! I went to bed before you!” And another coworker goes “ummm no you didn’t, I saw you at the bar with [football player]. You guys shut the bar down.” Then I had to deal with her hungover head in my lap for most of the 3 hour drive back. I was somewhat cold to her for awhile after that, her behavior just really turned me off. Nice girl, bad decisions.

    1. A.*

      There is no way I’m allowing my coworker to ride 3 hours with her head in my lap. I don’t want my coworker’s head in my lap for even one second. I do not care how much her back hurts. Add to that a hungover coworker the next day. Nope nope nope nope. Her back would just have had to hurt. Not my problem. You are a saint.

    2. ContentWrangler*

      If this was a prescription painkiller, she shouldn’t have been drinking at all. That she asked you to monitor her (adults can monitor themselves) to make sure she wasn’t drinking “too much” is ridiculous, especially too much is anything at all when on pain medicine.

  110. Lady By The Lake*

    I had just gotten a job with MegaCo but hadn’t started it yet — but it had been announced. I went to a conference for an organization I am actively involved in (and had been for years). I know EVERYONE who regularly attends these conferences and count most of them as good friends. A woman who worked at MegaCo at the same level I was coming in at introduced herself to me, which was great, but then she took it upon herself to be my “host” at this conference — a conference she’d never been to for an organization that she was not part of (but I was). She would officiously introduce me to people who I’d known for years and try to arrange my schedule (“Don’t worry, I’ve set up lunch and dinner for you!”). Let’s just say that she made a fool out of herself — people still joke that it’s too bad she isn’t around to introduce me to my close friends (who don’t know her from Adam).

  111. ArtsNerd*

    This one is a bit different, in that it was really good that I was rooming with my coworker.

    I held a paid internship in grad school, where I worked with a close friend who was an employee there. Our employer paid for her to attend a conference, and not me (as is appropriate.) But I was able to volunteer at the conference and share a room with her, which was a great opportunity for the price of the train ticket. One night, several friends from my home town were in the same city as the conference so we got together for drinks. I, uh, overindulged and became very intoxicated.

    When I stumbled back to our room, I absolutely woke up my sober coworker, and started rifling around because I couldn’t locate my phone. “Sawright, it’ll turnup inthamrng” I decided and crawled into bed. “No, you’re calling it from my phone, right now.” A man with a thick accent answered, and simply said “this is my phone now.” Me: “sawright, I’ll call Verizon in the morning” and started to roll over. “What!? No, we’re doing it right now.”

    I’m grateful to this day that she was willing to take care of me like that without resentment! It could have been a very very expensive trip if we hadn’t shut down that account / disable international calls.

  112. Darth Brooks*

    I traveled to Las Vegas and stayed alone in an apartment owned by my boss. I’d gone there to clean up a mess caused by another manager’s embezzlement and sudden firing. That manager had been living in the apartment where I was staying until he was fired the week prior.

    In the middle of the night, two of the former manager’s friends, who apparently hadn’t yet gotten the news that their friend didn’t live there anymore, started banging on the door. I planned to ignore it (young woman alone in Vegas in the middle of the night) but they kept pounding on the door.

    They said they were there for their friend, and I yelled through the door that he wasn’t there anymore. They wanted to come in, but eventually left after realizing he wasn’t actually there.

  113. I Herd the Cats*

    I was in my early twenties in my first job, when I was given the exciting-to-me opportunity to travel with the COO to a company event in NYC. He’d be doing COO-ish things; I was handing out company info packets at a conference table, but so what?! We were staying in a ritzy hotel and I’d never been to New York before. He was also a very nice guy.

    Two things happened. First, I went to the “breakfast suite” or whatever they called it while still in my bathrobe and with my hair up in a towel, because that’s how we did it at the Super-8 at the beach. When I rolled in at 8am everyone in the room, including the COO, was fully dressed in their suits and ready to head out. Awkward.

    Second, we flew out to Boston (our next stop) on a tiny plane, just ahead of a thunderstorm. There was MAJOR turbulence. I wasn’t scared, exactly, but the plane’s bouncing up and down made me throw up several times, and I may have gotten a little on the COO (who was sitting next to me.) He had to help me climb down the stairs when we got there, I was so wobbly.

    What’s amazing to me is how nice he was about the whole thing. I ended up staying at that job for several years, and we still chat occasionally. I was lucky to have him as a mentor when I was young and really clueless about professional norms.

    1. AnotherAlison*

      I’m dying over the bathrobe story, even though puking on your COO is probably much worse. All my family vacations growing up involved a Super 8 and a continental breakfast, although I think we always got dressed & probably had the luggage in the car before breakfast. We never stayed anywhere more than a night. You gotta keep moving. See the country! My sister and I call my dad the vacation dictator.

    2. A.*

      I was on vacation out of the country once and this man was coming down for breakfast every morning in a purple bathrobe. I thought he was obnoxious because he was the only one at breakfast in a bathrobe. It took me a few days to realize people were asking for his autograph. He was Chad Ochocinco.

  114. Debbie Downer*

    The year after high school, I went on a nine-month youth volunteer program where we travelled to three different communities with a group of 17-22 year olds. Beyond the standard binge drinking and lack of boundaries you’d imagine from kids that age, we also had several incidents that were particularly ridiculous/awful, including:

    1. The time a boy in the group was volunteering for the Humane Society and was sent to bathe the feral cats. When he opened the crate, one cat jumped onto his face, hissing wildly, and then escaped into the vents, where it lived for the next two weeks. The staff at the Human Society were super unforgiving about this.
    2. When the 18-year-old skater boy roommate from Quebec who was obsessed with smurfs, repeatedly injured himself by practicing his ollies in our tiny basement, and at one point started saving his own urine in bottles in our shared fridge so he could drink it later (he’d found some bogus health blog that recommended drinking yr own pee).
    3. Having a series of three-hour meetings so we could develop an elaborate set of bylaws re who gets to call shotgun for our shared van.

    3. frystavirki*

      Oh, god. “Bathing the feral cats” sounds like a punishment detail possibly covered under the Eighth Amendment. They already don’t like you! Why not put them in something they also do not like and then touch them? Poor guy. No sympathy for pee bottle guy, though. What the heck.

  115. GlitsyGus*

    The story I really want to hear is the one the burglar told his buddies after Allison’s interns made him tea then left him alone in the house to continue his theft-in-progress.

  116. coffeeandpearls*

    During my Resident Assistant training retreat (aka camping with your co-workers), the following conversation was had while making s’mores:
    Me: This campsite is so isolated and creepy.
    New RA: My uncle is in prison for two counts of murder.
    Me: Oh no, New RA! What happened?!
    New RA: Nothing. He didn’t do it. Do you want to know a good way to get rid of a body?

    His idea involved pigs. I hate camping.

    1. AnotherAlison*

      Not to be a downer, but a small boy in Kansas City was killed by his stepmother and father and fed to pigs, so that’s kind of not at all amusing. What is wrong with your coworker. . .

      1. AnotherAlison*

        (Oh, and obviously they got caught, so it’s not necessarily a great way to cover up the crime anyway.)

        2. coffeeandpearls*

          It won’t surprise you that he was fired 6 months after that. Looots of New RA stories could be told.

  117. Newlymadehobo*

    Worked at a summer camp in the US for a few years as one of the few American counselors, most were international which was really fun for the most part. One year though we had a young counselor, 18 who was from another country, hook up with one of our older campers, 16. They were caught (on a trail by other campers) and while it was consentual it was also statutory rape in my state. The counselor was fired and then deported because they broke their Visa. Long story short, sex at camp never ends well.

  118. ndn*

    I have a team member, “Sally,” a woman in her 60s, who earns extra income by AirBnB-ing out two of her bedrooms. A couple of years ago, “Mark,” a man in his 20s joined our group. He mentioned pretty early on that the 60-minute one-way commute was getting to him so once his lease was up, he’d be looking for something closer to our office.

    A couple of weeks later, Sally mentioned off-handedly that Mark had done XYZ the night before – I asked why she knew about Mark’s off-hours activities (not that it was a problem, it was just strange). Oh, she said, I didn’t tell you? He moved into the downstairs bedroom, he’ll be there for at least a couple of months while he looks for a permanent place nearby!

    Within a couple of weeks, they were fighting constantly – and since I was their manager, I had to deal with it. He missed a deadline – she’s making irrational demands – he’s just not as good as his predecessor was – she never made the request of me she’s claiming she did. Finally, one day, I gently asked Sally if maybe part of the issue was the cohabitation situation – no, she said, her irritation with his work had NOTHING to do with the huge mess he made in her living room last weekend! I literally burst out laughing at that point… much to her dismay. When he finally moved out a few weeks later, things did get better fast – but I still tease him about the fact that moving in with a coworker at his brand new job was maybe not the smartest decision he ever made.

  119. JustaTech*

    This isn’t a funny/terrible story so much as an important lesson about traveling for work.
    Many years ago I was at my first professional conference (alone). One night the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate (or we should have, most people didn’t seem to bother). As I shoved my feet in my sneakers I thought to myself “This is why we wear PJs”.

    Recently I related this story to a coworker I was going to be traveling with and she exclaimed “Oh, I would never have thought to pack pajamas!” TMI, but an important thought: in the unlikely event that you have to evacuate your hotel in the middle of the night, make sure you’ve got clothing you’re willing to be seen in by your coworkers.

    1. Close Bracket*

      One of my buddies in grad school, a guy, once called me, a gal, in a bit of a panic the day he was leaving for a conference at which he would be sharing a room with his advisor bc he had forgotten to pack jammies. He asked me whether I had any boxer shorts or anything that I could bring in with me. I guess it’s not that outrageous to expect a woman might have a pair of boxers to sleep in, but I was a little bit like, the hell? You know I’m a woman, right? He was lucky that I had a pair of boxers that were recently acquired swag from a job fair. They were still in the package, and I told him to keep them.

  120. Tangerina*

    I’m going to post what went RIGHT for me instead :)

    Years ago, I traveled several times a year with my boss, and we had to share a room. One moment stands out to me as my go-to example for how everyone sees the world differently.

    I have horrible balance and spacial awareness. I can’t look at a room, turn off the lights, and navigate on memory alone. It will most certainly end up with stubbed toe or worse.

    One night, I got out of the shower to discover that he’d turned the bed-side lamps off, so the room was completely dark. “He’s being inconsiderate AGAIN!” I thought to myself, as I stumbled to bed in the dark. The next morning, I brought it up over breakfast. He thought that *I* was being inconsiderate for expecting a light to be on while he’s trying to sleep.

    It turns out that he has amazing spacial awareness and memory but can’t sleep with any amount of light, where I have zero spacial memory and can sleep in full daylight. People are different! Don’t jump to the conclusion that someone is deliberately being lazy, inconsiderate, or dense.

    I couldn’t STAND that guy for the first six months I worked for him. After all our travels, including amazing shared experiences and driving through hurricane Irene, he has become one of my closest friends.

    1. Erstwhile*

      Communication is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? (I’m a little bit of both of you… I don’t have great spatial awareness either but can only sleep well in full darkness.)

  121. KarenH*

    Oof!!! Or: How I Learned A Coworker was a Hoarder

    When I first got into the printing industry, it was with financial printing–the folks who produce all the SEC reportables and IPOs for companies going public. You know, the stuff only accountants and lawyers actually read.

    Because much of our work involved documents that had to be filed with the SEC (quarterly and annually), we had a big busy season from February through April, and our main site would provide temporary onsite help to our big city offices in NYC, Boston and Atlanta. The year we helped out the Boston office, our company rented 3 executive-type furnished apartments and we took turns for 1 week or 2 week assignments. I had one 2 week assignment and then went back for a 1 week assignment, taking over for a coworker (Agatha) who couldn’t stay for 2 full weeks. While she was there, she emailed me several times asking what I wanted from her left over groceries and I just told her to throw everything out. I should have seen what was coming when she wrote back to say that was wasteful.

    Now mind you, she’d only been there a week.

    When I got to the apartment, the first clue things went wrong were that she’d never told the front desk she was checking out and I was coming in, so no maid service had occurred. I got the key and the front desk assured me they’d have a cleaning woman up before the afternoon.

    When I got inside this 1 bedroom apartment…oh my. Damp towels were everywhere–Literally 7 damp towels laid around the living room (including the sofa). The bed was made, but a shambles. The toilet had not been flushed…and it wasn’t only liquid waste in there. There were dishes in the kitchen and she had indeed left me all her left over food. The garbage can was filled to overflowing despite the fact that the garbage chute was directly across the hall from the elevator on all the floors. She had dumped old coffee grounds on top and they’d fallen to the carpeting below. There was a 2 foot stack of newspapers!! (she’d been there ONE WEEK). And in three hours or so a cleaning woman was going to come and think *I* had trashed this apartment so terribly.

    It was so bad I left my suitcases unopened by the front door and went across the street to a quickee mart for cleaning supplies. I flushed the toilet and then dumped about a cup of dishwasher detergent into it. There was no toilet brush in the apartment, but I hoped the bleach would at least disinfect the scum on the water line in the bowl. I began washing the towels I found strewn around the place. I stripped the bed (fortunately there was an extra clean set of sheets in the closet) and remade it.

    I emptied the contents of the fridge and the cabinets where her extra food was stored and ultimately hauled more than 13 (grocery store sized) bags of trash to the chute. The towels and sheets/blanket took more than 4 loads to clean. I ran the dishwasher (small) twice and washed up anything that didn’t fit in it by hand. I scrubbed the inside of the fridge and all the counters. I cleaned up the coffee grounds as best as I could.

    It literally took me over 4 hours just to get that apartment into a shape where I wouldn’t die of embarrassment to have the cleaning lady come inside. And I tipped her a twenty when she walked in the door. That was nearly 20 years ago and the ONLY thing I remember about that apartment was cleaning it. And I was there a week.

  122. Nardole*

    About 10 years ago I worked in a summer camp in the US where two of the counselors in my unit had an epic week long argument that culminated in one throwing the others ipod down the long drop (sorry I can’t remember what this is called in other countries, think a toilet that goes directly into a hole in the ground rather than flushing into pipes).

  123. Herder of Teenaged Cats*

    I’ve got a longer story I’ve been meaning to write in about for months. I hope it makes sense. It’s a really unique program so I’ve done my best to hide the details with GoT references. It’s also my first time posting, so thanks for this perfect topic.

    I work in another country, let’s call it Dorne, as part of a teacher exchange program with Westeros. I’m an alumni from the program’s glory days who was brought back due to Westeros’ inability to find a teacher with my qualifications (a common problem due to the shortage in my area of Westeros , alas). While Westeros was responsible for recruiting me, my contract is officially with Dorne. Westeros required me to sign a Code of Conduct and to submit monthly reports, but otherwise has little to do with my day-to-day responsibilities.

    Part of the agreement with Dorne and Westeros is that Dorne provides subsidized housing for us foreign teachers. It does this by having us live in a special apartment building. We all have our own apartment, fortunately, and we share this building with teachers from other countries (Dothrak and Valyria, among others). Dorne is responsible for maintaining this building, but otherwise all of the teachers here are left to govern themselves.

    It’s basically anarchy. Due to high turnover, many of the norms that had been effected in the building during my previous tenure have been lost and forgotten. Because Dorne is a popular country with a high demand for Westerosi speakers, the minimum qualifications for Westerosi teachers here is a bachelor’s degree. Thus, most of the Westerosi “teachers” here are 22-year-olds fresh from college with little – to-no work experience, and with degrees in pretty much every field except education. Upon arrival in Dorne and the unstructured apartment building provided, many of them devolve back to their high – school and college student behaviors. So basically, it’s like living in a dorm here, but with no RAs to maintain any kind of order.

    A certain clique has taken control of the building, and they use peer pressure and bullying to run it as they please. It’s been such a mess that the outer Dornish community has become aware of it, and upon my return many of the locals vented to me about the problems they’d been seeing and dealing with (public drunkenness, noise, disrespect, shoddy teaching, skipping work, etc). I made the clique aware of the community’s concerns during a meeting to encourage them to resolve these problems in – house, but it didn’t go over well. While my title is actually higher than theirs, due to my certifications, and on paper I am a their manager, I don’t actually have any authority unless my Dornish boss gives it to me. That hasn’t happened, and my relaying of the Dornish locals’ anger was not well received (being yelled at by an ostensible coworker isn’t how I’m used to being treated professionally). I became the building pariah, and anyone seen being friendly with me could expect similar treatment. (Ostracizing, sabotage, extreme gossip, etc. Like, comparing me to “the ooze from a burst cyst”and using my private images in memes, as some recent examples.)

    My day to day work keeps me sane, as my Dornish school is lovely, with clever students and passionate colleagues. But each evening, I have to return to this hellhole. I have been documenting all of the dumb things the other Westerosi have done to me and meetings with my bosses in Westeros and Dorne have been held. They agree it’s a problem, but both countries refuse to take responsibility for it. As far as Westeros is concerned, this dorm doesn’t qualify as part of my working environment, even though we do teach lessons here and are required to live here. And even then, their position is that there isn’t enough proof to do anything, since I’m the only person who has named names in my reports (I had witnesses, but now none of them come forward after Westeros bungled protecting their anonymity, and some of them started getting harassed too). And even if others came forward, Westeros is now arguing the code of conduct is unenforceable since they aren’t actually our employers. (the document stipulates that violations will result in termination, and I’ve got plenty of proof of multiple violations over many, many months). And even if it was enforceable, it’d take months to build a case and then to ask Dorne to fire them, and by that point their contracts are up, so I just have to endure basically.

    Dorne, perhaps because of the cultural differences or Westerosi difficulties, just wonders why they’re acting like children but won’t do anything because it’s not taking place at school. Even though they’ve been dealing with community complaints regarding Westerosi teachers which have escalated into city hall hearings, which is decidedly bad news. Perhaps because the complaints to city hall painted the entire program in a bad light, Dorne has at least started to take a more active hand in managing things, slowly and behind the scenes, and I’ve been asked to be part of those negotiations.

    For now, I’ve been offered the consolation prize of knowing that the clique’s contracts are nearly up and they’ll be leaving Dorne soon (I pity the workplaces in Westeros that will be taking them on). The universal opinion in this area of Dorne is “good riddance.” People here are excited to get to the hard task of salvaging the program to better meet the needs of the Dornish people. And maybe things will get better for me after a year of dealing with this petty garbage, who knows? On the bright side, all this mess helped me find AAM, and reading up about workplace bullying has been extremely cathartic. I’d love to see a post someday of how to interact professionally with bullies after you report them and your boss does nothing, though. Jumping ship hasn’t been an option (though I had several offers during this mess), because I’d leave classrooms without a teacher if I break my contract early.

      1. jolene*

        I second nonegiven. At the very least, I’d have told my bosses I’d break it if they didn’t rehouse me.

    2. Keyoke*

      Good for you to stick with the contract! The students don’t deserve to lose a great teacher like you!

  124. Forrest Rhodes*

    In my 20s, decades ago, one summer I worked for a river company in a western U.S. state that shall remain nameless; we took tourists on single- to multiple-day trips on various wild rivers. The outfitter was a great guy; but considering the times and the nature of the business, he sometimes had to cut corners financially with the employees (true of many wilderness-type outfits then).

    One of my favorite memories is the time the outfitter had several of us employees spend a between-trips week in a condo he owned in a small town near the river: Guy A, Guy B, romantic partners Guy C and Woman D (both of whom worked on the river trips), and Woman E and her brother F (both also employees)—and black Labrador dog G, who belonged to a non-river-company friend and was spending the summer with Guy C and Woman D.

    Seven days. Six humans and a good-sized dog. In a studio condo on the third floor of a building with no elevators—taking Dog G out for his morning and evening relief sessions had to be carefully and accurately timed. And this being the small-town West before the advent of all-electronic-entertainment-all-the-time, TV was nonexistent and the local radio station shut down at 9 p.m.

    We impoverished river rats had exactly zero money for the local bars, so our evenings consisted of Woman D reading aloud some chapters of the book she was immersed in at the time: “Mountain Man” by Vardis Fisher. Actually, considering our lives on the river, the subject matter was a pretty good choice, and we all kinda enjoyed a week that combined 1800s entertainment with late-1900s electric lights and indoor plumbing.

    To me, that’s still one of the best summers ever. My romance with Guy C lasted about a year, but we remained friends and I ended up living in that small town for another eight years or so. I thought I’d fallen in love with the man, and I had, but it turned out I fell more in love with the place … but that’s a whole ‘nother story …

    Hope this fits the criteria.

    1. SarahKay*

      I was expecting a story of an epic falling-out, and instead got a really sweet tale – thank you.

      1. Forrest Rhodes*

        Thanks, SarahKay. Yeah, that whole summer was a fortunate confluence of a bunch of people who genuinely liked each other, loved what we were doing, and found something to laugh about in pretty much every situation. I felt lucky to be a part of it—for a whole bunch of different reasons!

  125. Jay*

    Way back in the long, long ago of 1999 I landed a wonderful internship on a tiny tropical island in the Florida Keys. While my technical title was Education Intern, for all practical purposes I was the odd job man.
    I loved it. The place was paradise. I often had the entire island to myself and all of my jobs were absolute joys. I still consider this the best year of my life. However, there were a couple of more, ahem, adventurous, moments.
    The one that sticks out the most was Hurricane George, a massive, monster of a storm that devastated the Keys over the course of several days. On the first day of the storm, before I had had a chance to evacuate, my manager comes to me with a very special assignment. You see, one of the V.I.P.’s of the Foundation that ran the island had moored his boat at our docks. And the post that he was tied up to had just snapped off! What could we do? This was, after all, the personal boat of one of the biggest of wigs. A V.I.B. if you will. Fortunately, the winds were actually helping to keep the boat near the island, although it was slowly spinning away, the broken post serving as an anchor likely helping quite a bit as well. We had to act fast. Could we arrange a rescue boat? Not a chance in this weather. Well could we throw some sort of hook or something out there? Sadly, none of the fishing gear on premises was heavy duty enough to haul in a boat. No, the only thing my elders and superiors could think of was a rescue swimmer. Someone needed to tie a rope around their waist and swim out to the boat and then use the rope to haul it in! Well, they all said how much they would be more than willing to do it, you understand, but it would clearly take a young, strong man and a good swimmer to boot. And they were all well over 60. Oh darn. I’m sure you get the drill. Cut to a couple of minutes latter and I’m standing on a disintegrating dock with a length of rope tied around my waist with the other end tied around a large tree, hoping that the sharks had had better sense than I did and evacuated to someplace safer until the storm let up.
    As you can probably guess, seeing as I am here to type this today, I did in fact manage to make it out to that boat without running afoul of a Greater North American Unexpected Shark (my least favorite shark, although one I have encountered on more than one occasion). I even got it pulled in and secured to the sturdiest remaining pieces of the dock and the big old tree.
    And when the storm was passed I used some of my $200.00 hazard bonus on a spiny lobster pizza, conch fritters, and beer. Lots and lots of beer.

    3. Menacia*

      Dang, you should have arranged for much more than $200.00 as a hazard bonus! I guess you got a good story out of it though!

  126. Anonymous123becausewell*

    I don’t know where to start. So – maybe at the end is best. The boss at a small firm (under 30 people) was fired after 2 years and a *lot* of shenanigans – from the horrible yelling loudly at staff and organisational/host people when at an international conference…to table dancing…to spending time with a woman he paid for her services in a vehicle hired for him by a representative of the country he was in….he was a nightmare to travel with for any of the staff.

  127. Friday Night*

    I work in academia, and was sharing a hotel room at an expensive conference location with a grad student well into her degree (this wasn’t her first international conference). While was technically senior to her, I don’t manager her and don’t have a lot of control over her behaviour.

    I booked the hotel room 3 months ahead of time, and showed her how to go through the process of applying for a travel advance so she could pay for her half of the hotel room without getting stuck with it on her credit card waiting for the reimbursement. (That can be excruciating when your a student) .

    I took a week off sometime between the booking and the conference because my dad had surgery, and I couldn’t check my work email (it’s blocked when your out of the country)

    When I got back I found out that she had decided her mom should come along. She had sent an email to my work address asking if it was ‘ok’ if her mom stayed in the room with us, then booked it when there was no reply.

    When I got back I told her that it wasn’t ‘ok’.
    She came back and told me the ticket was already booked, and non refundable and asked again, I still said no.

    She came back and told me that her mom would have time to check into another hotel because the flight arrived too close to sundown on Friday. (We are both jewish, but I mostly don’t follow those rules). She pressed me pretty hard in front of a the rest of the team (but not out boss) and I eventually said fine, her mom could stay until sunday morning. (The conference ran from sat-thurs)

    The room was two double beds, those first two nights were awful and afterwards she and her mom kept coming in at odd hours waking me up (she was barely at the sessions) even though technically she slept elsewhere the rest of the time.

    Oh, and she packed up and left without paying her half of the room so I was stuck with nearly a thousand extra dollars on my credit card which I had to fight to get reimbursed since she had applied for the advance.

  128. Erstwhile*

    On a recent trip the person who coordinated the function decided she didn’t want to drive herself (it was driving distance for some, flying distance for others) so she talked a co-worker into driving. She then spent the week insisting that he take her to the venue so she could oversee the set up, only to the restaurants she liked, and to the store in the evenings to shop, etc. He really wanted to pawn her off on someone else for the trip home, where she filled his ears with all kinds of complaints about co-workers, but he’s way too nice of a guy. (But he won’t do that again!)

  129. ReanaZ*

    I worked at a residential summer camp one summer. My bunkmate brought a CD alarm clock which was a nice perk–I’d rather wake up to music than blaring or beeping. Except she lost her case of CDs somewhere while traveling and only had the single Jack Johnson CD which had been in the player. Which she played every single day. For months.

    I’ve never been able to listen to Jack Johnson again. That was 10 years ago.

    1. Wendy*

      Not work-related, but my husband has had an Enya CD stuck in car’s CD drive since shortly after he got the car in 2009. There are worse albums to have to listen to, certainly, but when we take long road trips I insist we take my car instead (which not only has a functional CD player, but also a port I can plug my phone into…)

  130. Paige*

    I’m sure this will be rather tame, but I did my internship for grad school abroad and shared an apartment with five other women. I was almost 10 years older than a pair of them, who both insisted on Skyping their families/boyfriends/fiances/pets every single morning AND evening when the time zones were favorable. The internet only worked in the living room, so we got to hear ALL their conversations ALL THE TIME. And of course I got the stink eye the two times (exactly two!) I Skyped with friends the entire summer for “making too much noise.”

    Another aspect of this pair being young and even more broke than I was their terrible, terrible cooking skills. I’m talking white rice for weeks (and then wondering why you feel like crap). I on the other hand had learned how to cook cheaply and well many years before, and regularly made proper meals like a real grown-up. Instead of curiosity, I got a lot of “why does it stink like garlic in here?” “My, you’re really taking up a lot of counter space.” “Make sure you wash all those pots, ok?” “Can you try to take up less space in the fridge? There’s not enough room for my peanut butter/Coke/single sad carrot/gigantic pot of leftover plain white rice.”

    The power went out multiple times (yay, developing countries!) and this pair whined about taking cold showers. I and my fellow older roomies on the other hand just woke up early enough to heat a giant bucket of water on the gas stove and had relatively pleasant bucket baths every day. Did this inspire them? Nope.

    I had never imagined I would be chastised for being, well, better at adulting. I have never felt so old and curmudgeonly.

  131. Valenonymous*

    I worked for a month as an intern in northern Wisconsin at a primitive skills school–think “Naked and Afraid” type living conditions, only we had an office and Internet access that we used during the day. One of my coworkers–I’m not sure what he did, precisely–shared a cabin with two of us women. (Luckily I had a curtain separating my living area from his–but that was it). In his early 20s, he blatantly hit on me and my roommate, a 45-year-old lesbian who just laughed at him. Also, as part of the experience, we were all required to be on a primitive diet (think paleo, only more extreme, meaning basically fruit, nuts, some veggies, and whatever meat could be hunted and/or scavenged–yes, we ate roadkill). This coworker also must have weighed upwards of 300 pounds, and nobody could possibly maintain that kind of weight on this diet, so I did some investigating, and found out that he was regularly going out and buying burgers and buckets of fried chicken from the local gas station, closing the door of his room gorging, himself on it and disposing of the evidence. Then because of all the unpurified stream water we were drinking, we all got giardia and had to be quarantined from the rest of the school, which meant we weren’t able to leave the cabin and had to do our business in a bucket full of sawdust until we were declared cured. (They invited me to return permanently at the end of my internship. I turned it down, needless to say).

  132. Anon for this*

    For awhile I worked at a job that involved a lot of walking around in the desert. This was an unimproved site way off the main road and at least an hour from any plumbing, so we had porta-johns. One day we hear over the radio that CoworkerA just pooped while walking (we hear this from Coworker B, who was walking behind him). A could have said on the radio that he needed a break and gone to the porta-john, but he decided to just poop while walking and shake it out of his shorts. He didn’t even warn B to look out for it.

    We did not live nearby, we stayed in a local hotel during this time. Many of my coworkers were young, just out of college, so they spent a few hours in a bar on the weekend. Apparently (I was not present), while drunk, they decided to “finger wrestle”. Basically you lock middle fingers and twist until it hurts so much that one person gives up. When you’re drunk, your pain threshold is much higher. One coworker broke his finger. He had to have emergency surgery. Obviously my employer flew him home.
    He wasn’t allowed (medically) to return to where we were working, but he couldn’t really be replaced. So he was forced to come into the office during our work hours (which happened to be night for him) and be ready to answer the phone if we needed anything (which we did, we would call him 3-4 times a day).

    Another time, after drinking to oblivion, a coworker decided to take a shower once he got back to the hotel room. You know how hotel housekeeping closes the drain when they clean the shower? He was too drunk to remember to open it. He took off all of his clothes, then laid back in bed and fell asleep.
    He (and another coworker who was across the hall) were woken up by pounding on his door. It was the (female) manager and maintenance. The tub was overflowing OUT INTO THE HALLWAY at this point. Coworker answered the door totally naked (across the hall neighbor testified to this).

    Those were interesting times…

  133. Lady Phoenix*

    I don’t have a crazy story.

    Last year I had to do a big food convention for the first time and it was in a coty several hours away. I asked the conpany if I could bring my mom and they were fine with it.

    We were given dinner vouchers, so I treated my money to a nice dinner. The next day was the big food event and my mom stayed in her hotel room and worked, only going out every now and then to see the festivities (but never bother me). She kept to herself, watched the ocean (our hotel was in a beach city and our room was on beach side), read, and get her own work done.

    This year, I went to the event by myself.

  134. Coleen*

    I traveled to a conference with a group and during one of the conference sessions, a male colleague (who I have worked with before but we don’t work in the same office) fell asleep on my shoulder for the entire session. (And I am female about 20 years younger than him.) It was so awkward and I didn’t know what to do so I just let him sleep. He never said anything after. Neither did I. Apparently the first rule of work conferences is you don’t talk about work conferences.

  135. Stemmie*

    I’m at a nonprofit that trains teapot manufacturers in a new manufacture technique, and our research partners use this technique to make pots. I recently traveled to a national conference to co-present on a project my org has been doing in collaboration with numerous partner orgs. Our star partner presenter had to cancel for illness at the last minute, so we were scrambling to find a replacement. We found a different partner to sub, and even covered part of the cost so that she could afford to go. (It’s more common for attendees to pay out of pocket.)

    I should add that it was important to bring a partner: even though this technique produces highly-trained teapot-makers and benefits factory communities immensely, it takes a lot of initial investment, and old-guard teapot producers aren’t easily convinced. Without participation from a partner org, my factory conversion presentation wouldn’t carry much weight. I had about a week to work on the presentation, but she was busy right up until the conference, so we agreed she could wait until the day before our presentation to add to my material and practice together. I guess agreeing was my mistake.

    The day before the presentation, she arrived on about two hours’ sleep. We worked for a couple of hours, had a nice meal, and then she left for a walk around the neighborhood. At 4pm, she texted that she was dead tired, and wanted to crash instead of staying up to work. I thought given her lousy sleep the night before, that was reasonable.

    She didn’t get back to the hotel until 10 – I was worried she’d fallen asleep on a train or something. Nope: she came home hammered – slurring, barely standing, and accompanied by a bartender from the bar around the corner from our hotel. (I confirmed with a different bartender later that she was merely hammered and not drugged.) I heard her collapse in the bathroom, dragged her to bed, got her a trash can, turned her on her side, and spent the next three hours writing talking points and rehearsing answers to questions that we were supposed to be working on together – in her room, so I could watch for rolling and choking.

    The next morning, she got up and acted as though nothing happened. l was pretty annoyed but I thought maybe she’d blacked out. I just said “You really had me worried last night – I’m glad you bounced back.”
    She said, “Why, what’d I do?”
    “The bartender from the place down the street walked you home?”
    “Oh. Yeah, he was nice. I talked to him a while.”
    And that was it! She didn’t have questions. She wasn’t surprised. She didn’t apologize. She didn’t joke. And we headed to the conference hall like that. The presentation was actually pretty well-received despite some early technical hiccups, so I wasn’t even sure I could make much of a point by talking to her about her bender afterwards.

  136. CallMeFrank*

    The following incident happened about a decade ago. The company I worked for employed many “base level” workers who lived together in offsite accommodation. I lived two doors away and being the designated “grown up”was in charge of any issues that may come up. The employees were paid on a monthly basis so at the end of each month I had to brace myself for the inevitable shenanigans that would occur. This particular night nothing untoward seemed to be going on so I settled in before being abruptly awoken by someone hammering at my door. One of the employees, very sober and very annoyed proceeded to explain in broken English that his house was full of prostitutes and he’d like them removing post haste. So being the grown up I went round there and found an unknown male passed out drunk on the hallway floor. His lady friends were all sat, smoking furiously with a delightful buffet of vodka and hardboiled eggs to amuse them in the living room. The guest of honor (the one with the money) had long since vanished but was located soon after. He’d locked himself in the bathroom and had passed out on the toilet! This led to a problem. The prostitutes would not leave without being paid. Plus the gentleman who’d driven them to the house was the unknown male laying on the hallway floor. I had no way of paying them as we couldn’t free the guy trapped in the toilet and no way of getting them back to from whence they came. Also the ladies were getting rather angry by this point! So somehow I summoned a reservoir of inner strength no known to me and got the prostitutes to leave by pointing at the door and saying “No” a lot. The driver guy I managed to wake up with a bucket of water and bundle out of the door. At this point they staged a very loud sit in protest so gathering together what money I had the five prostitutes and their soaking wet driver were bundled onto a bus never to be seen again. As for the guest of honor he awoke several hours later and proceeded to crawl around the open area behind our houses in his underpants while barking like a dog!

  137. EnoughFolkKnowThisStorySo...*

    Oh, man. I just remembered another travel story where I was perhaps That Co-Worker.

    So my org expanding rapidly into Big City halfway across the state, and I took on an extra assignment to run trainings a week out of the month in Big City for most of a year. I didn’t like the hotel they normally booked people into–it was a bit far from the training site (closer to the new office) and it didn’t have breakfast (I could reimburse meals, but there was nothing nearby and it was irritating), so I found one I liked better for the same price and the office manager was happy to book that.

    A perk was that no one else from my company used that hotel; I am queer and non-monogamous but was not out at work at the time, as we were in Texas. I spent enough time in this city to have made ummfriends, and it was nice not to have to sneak around if I occasionally entertained overnight guests.

    One morning, I rocked up to the (very lovely!) breakfast buffet with my ummfriend, kind of half-dressed (work shirt over pajama pants, messy behead bun)…to see the perfectly polished Senior VP of my division loading up a plate. I panicked, snapped “I’m sorry, but uh for now I don’t know you!” to my ummfriend, and stepped away just as the Senior VP–a kind but deeply awkward human who had met my more serious partner in Home City–saw me and waved. He invited me to join him for breakfast, and I spent the most bizarre and uncomfortable breakfast of my life making cheerful smalltalk with the Senior VP in my pajamas while my poor ummfriend shot me furtive “What The Fuck Is Happening????” glances while I apologised super hard with occasional glances. He also disliked the other hotel and thanked me for recommending this one to the office manager.

    Luckily my ummfriend thought it was hilarious and this story is made even better by later finding out the Senior VP and office manager were secretly dating for months, until he accidentally sent an emotional intimate SMS intended to her to the SMS list for his entire department.

  138. Jenny with the Axe*

    This is maybe more of a “what has gone wrong when on a company retreat/kick-off thing”, but it certainly involved coworkers and travelling…

    I worked at a place in Stockholm, but we had a separate office up in the north of Sweden, some 1000 kms away. We spent a few days doing training (my department was the sysadmins, theirs was tech support, so they needed to know what we were doing), and after that we would all go off to a kind of retreat thing. That turned out to be a three-hour drive in mini buses, to a restaurant out in the middle of nowhere. And the big surprise was that we were all supposed to sleep in “kåta”, which is a kind of teepee-like structure used by the Sàmi, built out of wood and reindeer hide, and with the floor covered by pine boughs and reindeer hide to keep warm and dry.

    This would have worked fine, if the temperature had remained below freezing. However, the previous day had seen an unexpected thaw. The floors of the kåtas were not dry at all, at this point, and there was no backup solution in place.

    Most of the other people went off to the nearest town to get drunk in the evening. I and five or six coworkers did not. Instead, we took our sleeping bags and headed for the only building in the place. It had a sauna and showers, but more importantly for us, it had a second floor with some sofas. One of the sofas had a roll-out bed, and using the sofa cushions we ended up with enough place for all of us to sleep in reasonable comfort. (I ended up sharing sofa cushions with my only close friend in the company, leading to a lot of leering from certain coworkers the next morning – but the other option would have been for someone to sleep on the floor.)

    So we were dry and happy. Until sometime around 3 am, when the people who’d been out drinking came home and turned on the sauna. It became *very* hot upstairs. It wasn’t possible to open the windows. The drunk people were loud, and someone managed to sit down too heavily on the only toilet in the house, breaking the couplings so it didn’t flush anymore.

    We really didn’t get much sleep that night, and we still probably were the ones having the least uncomfortable night of all…

    I admit to being fairly unhappy at the time, but after a while, this just became the story I always trot out whenever a company retreat or other trip doesn’t go as planned. Some years later, we were at one where the representative of the travel bureau had messed up so half of the group barely got any dinner after waiting around in the cold for hours. The manager was anguished at how bad it was for everyone. He did cheer up a bit after I told him that that trip was still really far from the worst one I’d been on!

    (Oh, and the guy I shared cushions with? Three months later we started dating. We’ve now been married for sixteen years. Several of our old coworkers are still convinced we had sex that night, never mind that there were three or four other people in the room, one of them in the sofa right next to us.)

  139. springbored*

    I started a new job, but I didn’t have transport to get there. My new boss happened to drive right past my house so we car-pooled for about six months until I got my own car. I think it was helpful in some ways (I felt closer to/less terrified of my boss than my coworkers did), but also not good in others (I felt tied to his schedule, and it set a bit of a “teenager being driven around by parent” vibe).

    We were listening to the news one morning on the drive to work, and the subject of voluntary euthanasia was brought up. I am very strongly pro VE, and had never before encountered anyone who was opposed to it … until now. I made some comment like “about time VE is back on the agenda”, my boss expressed his astonishment that I would support people being “put down like animals”, and the fight was on.

    We did at least have the common sense to drop the subject after a couple of minutes (it was clear neither of us was going to change our minds) but it was a veeeeery quiet car ride the rest of the way into town.

  140. M*

    My ToxicJob straight out of uni several years ago required quite a lot of travel around the country to run events. One particularly memorable trip, the staff member tasked with booking accommodation managed to book an apartment to be used by six people that required payment-on-arrival. This wasn’t discovered until we arrived and went to check in.

    Now. At a sane company, this would not have been a problem, because the senior manager travelling with us had company-credit-card access. However! This was an incredibly badly managed non-profit, where as best any of us could tell, the company accounts were ran out of an account in the CEO/founder’s name, and she – while in the habit of routinely putting expensive boozy lunches with friends on the cash-strapped charity’s expenses – was too cheap to pay for a bank account with more than one card attached. The card lived in her wallet, for the purposes of said boozy lunches, and when the staff who used it to, you know, pay company expenses, needed it, they needed to give her several days’ notice to make sure she’d actually come into the office.

    So, no company card. Senior manager, who was earning nearly double what the rest of the staff travelling with her were, promptly declared that she *could not possibly* afford to pay for the apartment herself and be reimbursed later, someone else would have to do it. While three of the six panicked and Senior Manager tried to bully the desk staff into letting us into the apartment without paying (she was a real gem), one of my more competent colleagues and I called the Executive Director, got her to commit to clearing a reimbursement by the end of the week, and put it on my card. Competent Colleague paid for my (thankfully, expensible) food for the rest of the trip, because, y’know, six-person-apartments-for-three-nights are… not in an entry-level salary range.

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