what’s the pettiest thing you’ve done at work (or seen done)?

by Alison Green on June 15, 2023

One of the most amusing things about work is how just plain petty it can make people. Here are some excellent stories of pettiness that have been shared here over the years:

• “At one of my early jobs one of my coworkers was a, shall we say, interesting character. She was called out about something in a meeting and was fuming at the rest of us. The next morning she came in, went into the rest room, and then went into her boss’ office to quit on the spot. She left without a word to anyone else. Later it was discovered that she had removed every roll of toilet tissue from the rest room.”

• “I’m a graphic designer for a company that has a lot of athlete ambassadors, and thus a lot of my coworkers fancy themselves elite athletes as well (they’re not). For a New Year’s post on social media, we had a ‘meet the team’ post where everyone on the team had a picture and a bio of them using their favorite athletic product we manufacture. I have one coworker who particularly thinks he’s god’s gift to the world and has a huge ego about his supposed athletic ability, and it drives me INSANE. So as the graphic designer, I built out all of the posts before posting on the brand’s social media. This coworker put one of his personal records in his bio, so I decided to take his bloated ego down a couple pegs and added a zero to the end of his record time. After it was posted, he noticed immediately and had a total temper tantrum, crying about how people are now going to think he’s super slow! It was so *chef’s kiss* satisfying.”

• “When I worked as a cashier in Target, if a customer was especially horrible to me (seriously though, why are some people so mean to cashiers) I would start to scan the items on the conveyor belt slower…and slower…..a n d s l o w e r.. .. .. . .a n d s l o w e r . . . . until I could see them seething at my incredibly frustrating pace. I would take their money and punch in the amount slowly and bag their items at the same pace too. And to make sure they knew I was being a d*ck specifically to THEM, I would then make sure they saw me scan and bag the next customer’s items very fast as they collected their bagged items. I’m lucky I never received a complaint.”

• “A coworker, Jane, was very protective of her lunch hour (and the culture of our office was you eat lunch when possible and sometimes that might be late or early to accommodate other meetings, so her attitude was out of sync with the office). We had a grandboss who liked to schedule meetings right at lunchtime, and when Jane asked for them to be moved for her lunch, grandboss said just bring lunch in with you if needed. So Jane brought in a loaf of bread, peanut butter and jelly jars, and a tray of cheeses and proceeded to make everyone in the meeting a sandwich and cheese plate during the meeting. Neither she nor the grandboss blinked at this, and for a while we all had yummy veggie trays, sandwiches, and once a full salmon (like the entire grilled fish cut into servings conference table side) during lunchtime meetings. It was the craziest showdown ever- and both people were pretty miserable so it was great to watch.”

We need more of these stories. Let’s hear about the pettiest thing you’ve ever done at work, or seen done. Share in the comments!

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  1. Viki*

    Colleague who I hated because he kept talking over me, stealing my ideas, undermining me, very particular about mouses for “his” desk (hot desk situation).

    I swapped the mouse to a different mouse every few weeks when he was away from his desk. He never knew.

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      While I like the cut of your jib, does it count if he never notices? Or does it merely confirm that he is a buffoon, which you already knew?

      1. Double A*

        I don’t think pettiness needs to have an impact; the thing with a petty move is that it should bring the pettiness-instigator some satisfaction.

        OP is doing something petty to prove that Coworker is a total blowhard. They have proof because he can’t actually tell it’s not his precious mouse. However, OP does not need any outside acknowledgment; the fact that they know is reward enough.

    2. Past Lurker*

      I assume this means he never knew it was you, as opposed to he never noticed the change? Lol

  2. TheNatFantastic*

    We had a tutor who would have described himself as a ‘good old boy’. He used to describe ME as ‘the girl on reception’. I am in my 30s and the company’s Operations Manager.

    Every time he called me ‘the girl on reception’ I would find a reason to send him an email and increase my job title in my email signature by 1pt size each time.

    It got pretty big before he was unceremoniously fired.

      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        Guess: expecting the girl on reception and the “snot nosed kid” they just hired to do all the work.

        1. Mrs. Hawiggins*

          I’m trying to breathe from laughing. Seriously this mindset is out there somewhere.

      2. TheNatFantastic*

        He told us there was a hold up on his criminal record check because he had lived in a different country before starting with us (very plausible, in fact, I would expect there to be a delay).

        He accidentally CCd the CEO in an email where he was threatening to sue the government body who conducts the criminal record checks because they had included the fact that he was under investigation for assault of a child (specifically using corporal punishment on a student) on the check.

        Just to be clear, he was not teaching children with us but yeah… that was a big oof moment.

    6. Corporate Lawyer*

      Good thing I work from home, where my loud cackle disturbed no one but the cat. This is brilliant.

    8. nobadcats*

      Excellent. Well done! I’m gonna put this in my petty arsenal for possible future use (no need right now, my peeps at my job are wonderful).

    11. Anastasia Beaverhousen*

      Uggghhh when someone refers to grown women in a company as “the girls” or “girl” I really enjoy finding ways to refer to them as “girl” or “boy” after that. If I’m the “girl on reception”, you will now be “the boy that’s bringing my lunch/coffee” (when they’re just handing it to me or picking it up from the restaurant, etc)

    12. Zeus*

      Not quite as awesome, but I often have people mix up two letters in my name in emails, despite the correct name being in my email address, and usually the signature in the email they’re responding to! Say my name is Kristen, but I get called Kirsten a lot.

      For a time, when that happened I would edit the first three letters in my signature. I’d change the font, make it a different colour, or sometimes just do capital letters (KRIsten). Not super professional, but it made me happy (and occasionally I got an apology back if someone noticed that they’d gotten my name wrong).

      1. Kim*

        I do this too on occasion, but I also deliberately and very obviously misspell THEIR name.
        Is is professional? No. But it gives me satisfaction.

      2. MAC*

        OMG this is brilliant. I have a 2-name first name, and I capitalize both parts, i.e. MaryJane. I constantly get Maryjane (or worse Mary, even though there’s no space AND my signature includes my middle initial to emphasize that Jane is NOT my middle name). I wonder if I have the guts to start bolding the “J” or emphasizing Jane in red or something. Super satisfying to think about, anyway!

        1. Seaside Gal*

          Same in reverse. Using the Maryjane example, mine is Maryjane and I get Mary (which I DESPISE) or Mary Jane or MaryJane. It’s in my dang signature. Get it right. I haven’t corrected anyone through email yet, but man I may start.

    14. Madame Arcati*

      You are officially my guru. Just a few minutes ago I had a request (yet again!) from a team wanting one of my staff to do something not because it’s our job, or the first team can’t do the thing and pretty please can we help, but simply because they are busy. That is not our job or really our problem.
      I offered a polite compromise and enlarged by job title in my sig by one point.

  3. Kimmy Schmidt*

    I’m in a public facing “helping profession”. Before I left my last job, I changed every instance I could find of my contact info to my slacker coworker’s email and told people how happy they’d be to help after I left.

  4. Hills to Die on*

    Not me, but a coworker, T, who was just the biggest Drama Starter. She thought everyone was out to get her, so when her contract was cut short, she was sure we were all involved. Earlier, she had bought and passed around a birthday card for another coworker, M. She told her boss, J, that she wanted to take M’s birthday card with her. J, being who he is, didn’t think it was worth the argument so he told T that she could take M’s birthday card off of her desk. M was upset because it was the first time she had ever gotten anything from her coworkers and J just let T steal it. To his credit, J felt bad and got M another birthday card with a Starbucks card in it and had everyone sign it. J continues to be a bozo in general and nobody misses T.

      2. Hills to Die on*

        J needs a wtf button – he causes more problems than he solves as a general rule. We just try to keep him from finding anything out about our projects. He’s moving to a different part of the very large company so I am taking that as a win.

    3. I edit everything*

      Wait. There was a birthday card for M, presented and opened, and T just…took it? WHY?!

      1. Hills to Die on*

        Petty AF. She thought M was responsible for her contract ending, which wasn’t true.

  5. Ann Onymous*

    This is a story about two people at my workplace – let’s call them Bob and Tom. Bob had a box of crackers at his desk and offered some to Tom. Bob intended this as a one-time invitation, but Tom interpreted it as ongoing permission to eat from the box of crackers and did so a few days later. Most normal people would have a brief conversation, clear up the misunderstanding, and move on. But if Bob were normal people, I wouldn’t be writing this post. Bob called the ombudsman to report that his crackers had been stolen. And because the ombudsman is required to investigate all reports they receive, other people on Bob and Tom’s team got interviewed about the “theft” and whether or not they’d ever had anything stolen. Fortunately for Tom, the ombudsman was competent enough to figure out what had really happened so the only consequence for Tom was that he learned to stay far far away from Bob’s food.

    2. And I'm the alchemist of the hinterlands*

      I would have loved to be an ombudsman for this and just take super, super seriously.

    4. CarrieOakie*

      At old job, I used to have a candy jar on my desk, which was in my office, not an outside area, you had to walk through my door to come in. I bought candy that I liked, so it was a good name brand mix. Usually a mix of Twix, Take 5, Starburst, Swedish Fish & LifeSavers. Some weeks it was chewy candy, some weeks chocolate. People liked my offerings and I enjoyed the occasional visit. If a particular type or flavor ran out, people would ask if I had more and I’d say no, I don’t refill until the jar was empty – this is a free offering, not a restaurant where you can order what you like! Plus I did have work to do, if I stopped to get your specific favorite I’d be working just half the time.

      One week, I went on vacation to visit family. I kept my candy hidden in a desk drawer – like a file cabinet drawer in my desk, behind file folders. Same cabinet I’d put my purse in each day. It didn’t have a lock because the previous desk owner lost the key. While I was gone, the candy jar ran out. Someone decided to refill the jar, which fine enough, but they also then took an entire bag of Take 5’s! They clearly went through the other bags and removed every flavor they liked. I told my boss, because I pay for those things myself on my little salary. His solution was to reimburse me for the lost candy and ask me if I could get a candy that he also liked. He didn’t see someone going through my desk when I was out of office as an issue. The tip of the issues at that place, but I had decided I was leaving already at that point.

  6. Elle*

    I worked for a small non profit that centered around mental health support. Our ED was nuts but a very good sales person. She managed to talk our state’s pediatric professional association into partnering with us on a pediatric mental health conference. She promised connections to celebrities and corporate sponsors. It was all BS. She never had that stuff and after leading the association on for many months it was too late for them to pull out. They had secured a location and began promoting it. Not only were the sponsors and celebs not coming through my ED was difficult at every turn. She would take too long to approve conference materials and have a lot of feedback. I was mortified. Day of the conference and we have a number of attendees. The Professional association put out the worst conference lunch I have ever seen. Imagine picking out the menu with a blindfold. It was like, sandwiches, mac and cheese and pudding. Something weird like that. It was noticed by people at the conference. The association would not return our calls after that day.

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      I am cackling at that menu. Oh my. I know that association is still telling stories about it. “Yeah, they had mini hot dogs wrapped in sushi rice, cheap-ass rolls, and twizzlers, it was wild”

      1. Elle*

        I’m at a different job now but still go to the meetings and conferences the association puts on. They have not recognized me but I’m not sure if they don’t remember or are too embarrassed. I’m mortified every time I see the poor guy tasked with working with my boss.

      2. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

        I think you could get a half sandwich, mac’n’cheese, and pudding at Panera.

        1. Nobby Nobbs*

          Yeah, but there you’re intentionally eschewing a vegetable if you choose those options, not being denied one. Major psychological difference.

          1. Green great dragon*

            Conversely, our company tried serving only fruit for dessert at our annual whole-company whole-day meeting. Everyone was pretty grown up about it, but we had evaluation forms and we used them.

            Last year we had a wide range of chocolate- and cream-based desserts, 2 or 3 per person supplied, and a small, mostly neglected fruit-bowl.

            1. Elitist Semicolon*

              Oh man, I volunteered to be a liaison to new employees in my old job and they held a noon meeting with promise of lunch. The meeting ran over, my assigned newbies didn’t even show up, and their “lunch” was a buffet fruit tray and cookies. On a day when I was booked almost solid and didn’t have time to go get an actual lunch. I also used the evaluation form.

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        Sounds like they watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and learned the wrong lesson, doesn’t it?

      4. Amber*

        Yay! Cheap-ass rolls! I can’t go through the bakery section of the store without giggling anymore!

    2. The Prettiest Curse*

      Sabotage by lunch! All event organisers who over-promise and way under-deliver deserve this fate, two thumbs up from me.

        1. Elle*

          To be fair the presentations were fantastic. Other then the weird lunch people had no idea what a mess behind the scenes it was.

      2. Loreli*

        We had a receptionist who ordered lunch for all-company meetings and never got it right. There were many vegetarians in the office, but receptionist would order pizza – 10 pies with multiple meats and ONE of just cheese.
        Another time she ordered subs from her favorite sub shop (“they have really good rolls!” she announced). There was roast beef with lettuce tomato & mayonnaise, turkey with lettuce tomato & mayonnaise. Guess the vegetarian option?……Lettuce (one tiny limp leaf) tomato (2 slices so thin you could read a newspaper through them) and mayonnaise.

        What made it worse was she’d announce a few days before the meeting that lunch was provided, so people who usually brought their lunch didn’t.

        For the company holiday party (catered, at a function hall), every single food item contained meat, including the green beans, which had bacon crumbled on top.

        Many of our coworkers were Indian and did not eat meat. Spouses were invited to this party, so many attendees got nothing to eat except dinner rolls. No amount of coaching could convince the receptionist to order properly.

        She would also refuse to order any actual dairy for coffee – only non-dairy because “milk is bad for you”.

        1. Daisy-dog*

          Ugh, been there. Went to the company holiday party where I was promised a vegetarian meal. I got to eat mashed potatoes and lettuce w/ Italian dressing.

          But I also had the flipside. A receptionist that I worked with once made me a rice dish for lunch because she’d ordered BBQ and they didn’t have any good veggie sides.

          1. Mrs. Hawiggins*

            I went to a networking thing one time that was being held at a local steakhouse type restaurant – not a chain but a famous one here in the city. Because it was later in the evening and I didn’t want a Flintstones sized steak sitting on me at 8:00, I ordered a vegetarian dish as did the person who eats only that way. We got macaroni noodles with partially melted cheese which looked like the chef hated making it. And hated us. I should have risked not eating and looking dorky. The organizer was mortified and muttered something about, “something for everyone next time.”

            1. Mairsy Doates*

              Just want to go OT and say I love your username. I can hear Mr. Tudball calling her on the intercom.

        2. Green great dragon*

          OK, I don’t know what was going on with the receptionist, but why didn’t the manager make it a firm instruction, not coaching, after the second time? And check the order in time to change it?

        3. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          Long before I became a vegetarian, I learned to *always* bring a meal, even if the meal was being provided that day. I learned the hard way, being a non-driver in a location that had no restaurants to walk to and no public transportation, that sometimes lunch falls through. This failed me once though when I didn’t eat the pizza provided because it was meat with a meat topping slathered in meat and my boss flipped when I wouldn’t eat it after she took the meat off. I ended up eating literal peanuts because if I had brought out my back up lunch, she would have freaked out even worse. (She was a lovely woman, but the vegetarian thing threw her for a loop for a little while.)

        4. Wombats and Tequila*

          > Many of our coworkers were Indian

          A possible cause of the receptionists bafflement. Whatever she liked, believed, or did was the best way, and people who felt otherwise simply had yet to be open themselves to her enlightened path of perfect correctness.

    3. Lana Kane*

      Maybe I’m just not fully caffeinated yet, but did the state professional association create the menu as payback? Or were they appalled by the menu that OP’s non profit came up with.

      1. Elle*

        The association created the menu. They usually put on a good conference with a tasty lunch so this was glaring.

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      Honestly, I would eat that. But yeah, that sounds like “we’re finishing off whatever’s in the fridge/pantry before a big shopping run,” not a catered lunch!

      1. ThatDaneGirl*

        We call that Desperadoes Dinner! As in, any of the many teens in my house can (must?) eat the contents of the refrigerator on Friday nights. To be fair, the do a GREAT job. But in a professional setting, I don’t think I’d chase the cat around the kitchen.

    5. Cannibal Queen*

      ‘I worked at a small non profit that centred around mental health support. Our ED was nuts.’
      I can’t decide if that’s ironic or strangely appropriate.

      1. DJ Abbott*

        Long ago, and far away in my college, it was noticed that psychology students were the most screwed up.
        Trying to fix themselves.

  7. Coffee and Plants*

    I had a coworker who was having a one-sided feud with me because I got promoted to her same position and I think she took it as a threat (even though our work didn’t overlap).

    We had someone bring in daffodils to sell for Daffodil Day and this coworker overheard me say I wanted to buy a few to take home and proceeded to buy every single daffodil before I could get any. She hasn’t been with the company for years, but my coworkers and I still bring this up on occasion. So bizarre, but amusing.

    1. Rose*

      This is actually such a great fundraising opportunity for anyone selling stuff. Got a kid in girl scouts?! Just have Coffee and Plants mention they want some thin mints in front of Crazy Pants and your kid becomes the troop’s top seller!

      2. I Wish My Job Was Tables*

        Spiteful advertising! Probably more effective than people think.

        Signed, a person who once bought a book solely because a person I didn’t like hated the book (book ended up being fantastic).

          1. Kittenrigly73*

            Bwahahahahahahaha! I’ve had many . . . interesting conversations with my public library friends (i’m a hospital librarian) about Chuck Tingle. Haven’t had the opportunity to read him, though.

    2. Charlotte Lucas*

      I had never heard of Daffodil Day before. Sounds like her pettiness went to a good cause.

      1. Mrs. Hawiggins*

        IIRC it’s for cancer awareness, and I remember getting a gorgeous bunch when our company participated. I would have been tempted to buy them all. Not petty, just pretty.

    4. Festively Dressed Earl*

      I wonder how many other good causes your coworker could be irritated into supporting? If she takes enough innocent things personally, you could raise funds to fight homelessness, fund libraries, create green spaces, and get people to stop texting while driving.

  8. BaristaFriend*

    Not me, but a friend of mine was finishing his science-field PhD while working as a barista. He was really good at fast math and would make a point to give jerks the most coins possible for change when checking them out (primarily nickels).

    3. FormerPizzaBoy*

      When I was working pizza delivery, drivers would carry bags of pennies to count out change for those who insisted (instead of tipping).

    5. MissBaudelaire*

      I hope he did it a lot to the people who would wait until you had given the total and started to take their money and then went “OH WAIT!!! Lemme give you a hand fullllll of coins because I hate coins!”

    1. Allornone*

      THIS. Back when I was still in retail, I had a thousand ways to passive-aggressively mess with problem customers in ways that still left them with nothing to actually complain to management or corporate about. Granted, it never solved anything, but I felt better.

        1. dawbs*

          I still ring people up (I work in a nonprofit w/ a gift shop that’s essentially a lovely toy store) as a small sliver of my job.

          But I can be petty. Also note, I’m good at sales. I don’t get commission, I generally don’t try to upsell, but if your kid walks up to me, I can chat for a minute, figure out what they’re interest is and have a demo toy out and them begging for it within 5 minutes–this is a power I use for good (I ask interests, direct a question about budget to the adults, basically if your kid says they like trains and have $7, I can find them what they need).

          But if say, hypothetically, someone was rude as heck (racism/prejudice) to my coworker? well, hypothetically if that rude person’s daughter is eyeballing cars, I can point her toward the matchbox cars (we have some cool ones! affordable. I know how to find the ones that you can attach lego figurines to, where the batmobiles are, where the barbie ones are, etc)
          Orrrrrr I hypothetically pointed the daughter toward the (overpriced) cars that should be illegal to sell. The ones that I won’t even buy my nieces on the other side of the country because they are a sensory nightmare. They are loud (REALLY LOUD music, annoying tunes), covered with flashing lights, and they self-propel, so they IMMEDIATELY drive themselves under a piece of furniture, and get stuck. And no, they do NOT time off, you have to crawl under the desk and fish them out to turn them off. And the batteries last a decently long time.
          They could either deal with tears or buy the car…oh, and I’m allowed to give spare batteries for them; I made sure the daughter saw and heard when I put the extra set of batteries “for later, in case the batteries wear out” into the bag. And handed the bag directly to the kid once it was paid for.

          1. Remote Reliable Remindmenottopissyouoff*

            As a former cashier, you’re my hero. As a parent, I’m terrified.

      2. nobadcats*

        I had a young woman, not an elderly person, when I worked at the Fancy Grocery, who, after I had rung up her entire order and bagged it, said, “Do you need some change?” and proceeded to pull out her pocketbook. I said, “Well, no, I don’t actually–” She opened her pocketbook, which I could see had more than enough folding money for her order (all of about $8), and pulled out five ziploc baggies of nickels, dimes, and pennies (no quarters, of course), and dumped them all on my counter.

        I shot an apology glance at the two regular customers behind her, and proceeded to veeeeeeeeeerrrrrry slowly count her change, which was mixed and scattered everywhere. She started fuming and huffing about my stupidity and why wasn’t I going faster.

        After she finally left, still taking all the umbrage and not leaving any for other people, the regular behind her in line (who’d been laughing up his sleeve the entire time) said, “So, need any nickels?”

        It was petty me and petty regular. I have no regrets.

        1. jane's nemesis*

          “taking all the umbrage and not leaving any for other people” is a great turn of phrase! Love it

          1. nobadcats*

            Thank you kindly! I know it’s not one of my own, but I can’t recall where I got it from, maybe … yes, I think it might from the Animaniacs. “Oh, sure, take all the umbrage and don’t leave any for anyone else.”

            It’s come in handy over the years.

            1. nobadcats*

              Ah, googled it. Two places: Bloom County and Animaniacs.

              I have a head full of weird phrases that have probably displaced many of the actually useful facts in my head.

                1. nobadcats*

                  I hope you know that Berkeley Breathed authorized a Christmas video, “A Wish for Wings that Work,” featuring Opus and Bill the Cat. It’s only a half hour and available on youtube. When I saw it in the video/DVD shop, I said to my boyfriend at the time, “I don’t care if it takes all the money in my pocket and all the money in yours, this DVD is coming home with me tonight.”

                2. Marni*

                  You’re in luck! Berke Breathed has been posting new strips on his Facebook page sporadically for the last 5 years or so. I think they’ve been collected into a new book as well.

            2. Texan In Exile*

              There is a street on Madeline Island (in Lake Superior) called “Umbrage.”

              When we go there in the summer, of course we take it.

        2. Turtlewings*

          “taking all the umbrage and not leaving any for other people” I love that XD

      3. There You Are*

        Same. I worked the customer service counter for a big-box home repair supply company. People who rolled up with huge attitudes suddenly caused me to be hard of hearing and a bit daft.

        The best was a woman who came in with a full entourage of family members and helpers (?). She was dressed to the nines (in a place where you might accidentally get dirt or grease on your clothes if you brushed up against some of merchandise) and demanded that she didn’t want to pay tax, so I had to process her order tax-free.

        What she was actually asking for was to use the store credit card and get her purchases that day on one of our 12-months-no-interest promos, something I did every day as a normal part of my job.

        But I played dumb and kept repeating that I’d be happy to not charge her any sales tax, she just needed to provide me the wholesaler ID and tax number for her company. Which, of course, she didn’t have.

        She ramped herself up into a froth and demanded to speak to a manager.

        When he showed up and told me that she’d meant “INTEREST free” not “tax free” I feigned embarrassment. “Ohhhh! I had no idea! She kept saying ‘tax’.”

        And I got the side-eye from my manager because he knew that I’d known all along what she’d meant.

        But wasting a half hour of her time was sooooo worth it.

    2. Sparkles McFadden*

      Some cashiers at my (extremely local) grocery store will put up their “Lane Closed” sign for some particularly rude regulars. After the rude person has moved along to another line, the sign will come down. Once, I was behind someone when the sign went up, and the cashier waved to me and said “Don’t worry. I’ll check YOU out. You’re a civilized person.”

    3. Rose*

      I was behind the jerk in this situation once and although it slowed down my day, it was fantastic and hilarious to watch, esp when the cashier checked me out at the speed of light to make updates or it.

    4. cv*

      When I worked as a cashier, the meaner someone got, the stupider I got. Nastiness rendered me incapable of doing anything except the very basics of my job, and quoting company policy word for word.

      2. nobadcats*

        As to the above comment I made, counting out pennies, nickels, and dimes, I also just got stupider. “5, 10, 15, 25… oh, sorry, miscounted, please forgive me, I have to start again.” So inappropriately satisfying, especially when I got to the pennies.

      3. Texan In Exile*

        It shocks me that more people do not understand and execute the concept of malicious compliance.

      4. TaraGreen89*

        I did a similar thing when I was working registration desks at conferences/trade shows (I did a lot of that pre-pandemic for extra cash). There is a certain type of customer that just gets off on making service workers unhappy – and feels cheated when you (seemingly) don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand their nasty little digs. I basically just pretended I was mildly concussed, cranked my vocal fry up to Barbie on crack levels and politely checked them in. They either got intensely frustrated or deeply ashamed of their behavior. And either way I was denying them what they wanted – a reaction.

    6. FormerPizzaBoy*

      This for sure. I’m always super friendly to anyone helping me (or that I meet really, I’m a kind person), so it so bothers me when people are rude. I’ve definitely been the person behind the ass. I love it when the cashier will apologize to me with the tone of “I’m sorry about this person”. I always reply with “It’s okay. I have all the time in the world.” So be slow all you want, get your revenge!

      I’ve also been the slow on purpose cashier. “Sorry, computer is going super slow” or being sure to be extra detailed in explaining the seating process or the popcorn/drink sizes/upsells when I worked at movie theaters and they are picking their seats.

      1. MissBaudelaire*

        One Christmas season, I was at our local discount store named after military personnel and currency. It was chronically understaffed. I don’t know why. Anyway, Christmas is busy, and it was a super busy day.

        A rather bitter elderly woman was berating the cashier for ‘making people wait’. No matter how the cashier apologized, this woman was not satisfied.

        As soon as I stepped up, I said in a loud clear voice; “Don’t worry! You’re doing wonderful!”

      2. LifeBeforeCorona*

        I work on weekends and often I’m the only person on site. Sometimes I get callers who wants information that they can easily find on our website. Whenever that happens I take my time “finding” the information even though I know it verbatim. If they’re rude, I put them on hold while I search for their answer.

  10. Former Greenhouse Goblin*

    At my last job, I had this coworker who was sweet to all the customers but was a nightmare to her coworkers. She bought this figurine of an African American man playing violin and told my boss it was “his guardian angel” and would bring it out and show customers and talk about “how funny this little black man looked”. It was awkward. So on my last day I took that figure and threw it in the dumpster.

    I should note that we sold garden decor and we would hang flags from the ceiling. I took the Welcome to the Nuthouse flag and hung it right in the front door. It’s the first thing you see when you walk into the shop.

    That place was toxic and I’m glad I’m not part of the main crew. I still maintain the social media pages but don’t interact with my former coworkers.

  11. ChemistbyDay*

    I had a coworker that noticed a misspelling in a customer’s signature. Rather than telling them about it (or mentioning it in an email), in every email conversation he would scroll down to this signature and highlight the one wrong letter. Every.single.time.

      2. run mad; don't faint*

        I was thinking his name was Psmith. “…the p is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.”

        1. Unkempt Flatware*

          Once I panicked on the phone with a customer service agent when they asked for the spelling of my last name (I was waiting forever humming to the muzak and then suddenly she popped in and loudly asked to spell my last name). I said, “P as in pterodactyl”. She just sighed.

          1. Emma*

            My brain has a nasty habit where, if I’m trying to give a NATO for a letter that is also the first letter of a swearword, I will just blank on the actual NATO, or any appropriate alternatives. I’ll just sit there, going “F for…
            …
            …
            …
            …
            …
            FREDDY!”

            1. londonedit*

              One company I worked for had a postcode that ended ‘PB’ (here in the UK our postcodes are formatted like W1 1AA). If we gave the address out on the phone we’d always say ‘P for Paddington, B for Bear’.

              1. radiant*

                Our house number used to be 1d, so I would often say “as in, one direction”, also please use a lowercase d because number 10 are sick to death of getting our deliveries

            2. ADD*

              There’s a funny Dara O’Briain bit where he talks about having to spell out a ticket code for a customer service rep over the phone. He completely blanks on the usual letter associations and ends up saying “G-String” for “G” and “Brazilian” for “B.” As he imagines the poor CSR slamming the “record for training purposes” button on the other side of the line, he cringes as he realizes the next letter is “V.”

        2. Squirrel Nutkin (the teach, not the admin)*

          One of my favorite Wodehouse characters!!! : ) *Leave It to Psmith* is one of the funniest books I’ve read.

    2. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      I don’t know why but this hit my funny bone just right and I’m in tears. That’s hysterical.

    3. CAM Wreck*

      No lie, I get annoyed by public misspellings. I would have definitely communicated the error, but I could also see myself getting frustrated enough to highlight the stupid letter.

    4. ZugTheMegasaurus*

      I had my phone number wrong in my signature for well over a year before anyone pointed it out to me. I think most people just emailed me instead when they couldn’t get through, but still I was surprised that no one mentioned getting the “this number is not in service” message rather than my voicemail in all that time!

  12. Spurs*

    I once worked at a healthcare office that was always busy and paid poorly, so our staff was a bag of mixed nuts. One guy brought in a new pen that clicked, and he started clicking it all. the. time. His coworker (Tiffany) asked him nicely to stop clicking and not only did he refuse, he started clicking it in her face when she around. It became a HUGE thing, with his minions clicking their pens at her every chance they got. She put in her two weeks (don’t blame her a bit!), and about an hour after she left on her last day there was an uproar at the front of the clinic. She had removed the springs from every last click-y pen, and the poor dears had to use basic Bic ballpoints until they went to the store the next day. Well played, Tiffany, well played.

    2. knitcrazybooknut*

      This is AMAZING. And there would have been blood if Guy and Minions pulled that with me.

      2. Spurs*

        Okay, so this is second hand info from like a decade ago, but here’s what I remember.

        At this clinic, the workers all had lab coats, and that’s where they kept their pens. According to Tiffany’s work bestie, over her last two weeks Tiffany would slowly swap out the click-y pens from the lab coat pockets, but left the main ones that people use (most people use the same pen, even if they have a pocketful). Then, in her last hour on her last day, work bestie distracted the offenders with a big spill so Tiffany could take out the last few springs. We had generic company pens that broke pretty often, so it wasn’t weird for one or two of them to act up, so no one was really concerned about them not clicking. But she took the springs from EVERY pen-even the ones in storage. No idea how she pulled that part off, but spite is an incredible motivator! I’m friends with her sister on social media, and by all accounts Tiffany is currently thriving. The original offender was fired a few months later for waving a used needle in a coworker’s face….I could go on for days with stories from that place!!

        1. Mister_L*

          “Waving a used needle in a coworker’s face”. W The actual F? I hope the guy had every possible certification for the job voided.

    6. Mac (I Wish All The Floors Were Lava)*

      I hope wherever Tiffany is now, she’s very, very happy. Absolute icon.

    8. goddessoftransitory*

      Tiffany, you are my soul mate.

      Because pulling that kind of aggressive shit is a good way to lose a hand, but she played the long game.

    9. Donkey Hotey*

      Oooh! Well played, Tiffany.
      I used to interact with a person at church who did that with his Zippo lighter. Clink-clink-clink. One of the last times I saw him was at a campout. We were talking in a group and the clink-clink-clink kept going. I turned to him and said, “That’s a really cool lighter. Can I see it?” They handed it over. I held it in my hand for the remainder of the conversation and returned it to him with a “thanks!” before I left.

      1. Texan In Exile*

        Yes! I was on an 18-hour bus ride through Paraguay. The kid in the seat in front of me was playing with a very noisy toy that seemed to bother nobody else but me. At least, nobody else but me was exhibiting any annoyance at the prospect of 18 hours of noisy toy gun with flashing lights.

        I asked the kid to give me the toy, which he did. (Why are children so trusting?)

        And I kept it.

        After a few minutes, he realized something was wrong and started yelling.

        His mom turned around and looked at me.

        I shrugged.

        The kid yelled some more.

        I finally gave the toy to the mom, but I said, “This toy is noisy and it’s disturbing the other passengers. We have 18 hours ahead of us. Please do not give it to your child until the trip is over.” She was so shocked that she complied.

  13. KatEnigma*

    I don’t think Jane was petty at all. Those “cultures” where you’re supposed to catch lunch when and where you can end up with a lot of people involuntarily not getting a lunch! She was trying to show her coworkers to set boundaries, and OP criticized her for it!

    1. PNWorker*

      Totally agree! I think Jane was right and people shouldn’t just accept that lunch is a casualty of having too many meetings.

    2. Meep*

      +100 I put an hour block for my lunch break just to veg out because people kept interrupting me with complex engineering questions while I ate so I was working 9-10 hours a day with no break. It is common sense.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        I had to do this at OldExjob — people would come in and ask me stuff, and I was off the clock. I wanted to write at lunch also so I would tell them (nicely) to email me and I’d deal with it when I got back. The pissy attitude I got! But I stuck to my boundary and they eventually stopped.

    3. Julia*

      The escalating food offerings are what it beautiful pettiness. Amazing for the coworkers at the meetings though. This is the kind of office battles I love.

    4. zolk*

      every time someone books me for a 12-1 meeting I schedule myself for lunch 1-2. A meeting is not lunch!

    5. lunch is lunch*

      I think Jane was being super reasonable. Legally speaking, lunch breaks are supposed to be uninterrupted sets of time, depending on the area. Where I am, if lunch is interrupted by work the lunch break timer starts back over. So you start your 30 min lunch, 10 min in your boss comes and asks you something… the 30 min starts again.

  14. Anon Shredding*

    A coworker told me they had a terrible, micromanaging boss for a while. It was getting to the point where they were thinking of quitting, which would have really hurt their career. Instead, they started randomly shredding their boss’s print jobs. The boss’s office was a distance away from the printer, and they would stop to pick up multiple jobs throughout the day. My coworker would pick one of the print jobs at random and shred it. It kept the boss on edge, and the IT folks were called to service as well, obviously finding nothing. Sweet revenge!

      2. A Simple Narwhal*

        I mean, yes? All of these stories are childish and unprofessional, it’s what makes them so entertaining!

      4. Good Enough For Government Work*

        I’m glad you’ve managed to grasp the point of the exercise!

      5. Ally McBeal*

        You seem to be lost – this isn’t the “most professional thing I’ve ever done or seen at work” thread.

      6. Petty_Boop*

        In other words: petty, which I believe is the topic of this entire discussion. Also, hilarious. It’s not like the man couldn’t reprint the missing page so in the end a “petty” annoyance with no real damage done. Loosen up a little.

      7. Susie*

        I agree. And pissing off a bad boss like that is just going to make life worse for everyone who works under her, it’s not a thing to feel good about.

    3. irritable vowel*

      Reminds me of the place I used to work where some wag put a label reading “Suggestion Box” on the shredder.

      1. AnotherLadyGrey*

        At a store where I worked, somebody labeled the garbage can “Customer Complaints.” The patrons were not amused but we all found it hilarious.

        1. Cathie from Canada*

          At the college office where I worked, one of the student advisors had a ceramic jar titled “Ashes of Problem Students” prominently displayed on his desk. Funny, yes, but I thought it came across as a bit hostile, too.
          Another advisor had a funny sign that said “Advice: Free. Correct Advice: $5” — until an Asian student sat down one day and started pulling out her wallet after she read it. The advisor took the sign down immediately.

      2. nobadcats*

        Ooooh, this reminds me of another old boss when I worked at Famous Aerospace place. The HVAC was notoriously fickle, and despite locks being put on every thermostat there were still complaints about it being too hot/cold. Finally, my Boss created a graphical interface in, I think, C++ (don’t quote me on that, I’m truly not sure how he did it) where it looked like an analog thermostat, sent it out through a company-wide email, saying, “Now everyone has the ability to adjust the temperature in their area with this downloadable desktop app. Just rotate the dial to your preferred temperature.” It did absolutely nothing at all except allow you to rotate a fake thermostat dial.

        The complaints stopped completely within less than a week.

        2. allathian*

          Yup, it’s the placebo effect again. In some offices they have thermostats that aren’t connected to anything, people can adjust them all they want but nothing happens. But people like to feel that they have some control over their environment, that’s why this works.

  16. desk platypus*

    When I worked at a movie theater it was common practice to give awful popcorn servings to rude customers. We became experts at looking like we were scooping popcorn as normal but would really scrape down at the bottom to get a scoopful of the crumbs. To make it mix better we would do a layer of normal popcorn, big chunk of crumbs, then normal popcorn, then give it a little shake to mix it all. It would end up being about a third of crumbs and 100% satisfaction on our end.

    2. Blue Eagle*

      This is why I always tip the popcorn guy $1 every time I get a refill on popcorn.

  17. NYC Taxi*

    This was back in the day when your keyboard plugged into your computer. I worked in an extremely dysfunctional office with the most ineffective boss you could ever have. He thought nothing about throwing us under the bus to save his own skin. One day when he was out of the office I decided to unplug his keyboard from the computer, but leave the cord in just enough so it looked like it was still plugged in, and kind of forgot about it until the next morning when he started pounding on his keyboard pressing random keys, etc., freaking out about it not working. He called IT to come fix it and then left the room for a few minutes. I plugged the keyboard back in. He came back, the IT guy, who generally acted like all requests were stupid and a huge inconvenience comes in and presses a key on the keyboard and as it is working he keeps pressing that same key over and over while giving our boss the death stare, then just walked out of the room with no comment. Coworkers talked about this story for years even after I was long gone because it was so satisfying to make him look like an idiot.

    3. FG*

      “back in the day when your keyboard plugged into your computer”

      Dude, I would venture to guess MOST people who use a separate keyboard don’t use wireless even now. I work in IT & I have never had a wireless keyboard.

      1. Julia*

        My keyboard is plugged into my computer. The head of IT in my building also has her computer plugged in.

      2. NYC Taxi*

        Oh interesting. I stand corrected then. I haven’t had a plug-in keyboard at my last few jobs, so I thought it wasn’t A Thing anymore! I also work on Macs now, so maybe that’s the difference?

        1. Environmental Compliance*

          Might be an IT thing. Most of my coworkers do indeed use wireless. However, all of our IT staff I have noticed used wired.

        2. NoOneWillSeeThisComment*

          This reminds me of the person who felt they had to describe what white noise on a TV was…it’s still a thing, you just haven’t encountered it.

          It might be because Apple loves to get rid of things people still use (headphone jacks anyone??) but I’m just so sorry you’re stuck working on a Mac.

          2. Princess Trachea-Aurelia Belaroth*

            While I am an Apple user furious over them getting rid of things I still need (I just bought a newer MacBook refurbished without realizing it has ONLY USB-C ports, rendering all my peripherals clunky with adapter dongles), didn’t a ton of Android phones also get rid of the headphone jack?

            I do like the wireless keyboards because I have to constantly change my workspace for different tasks and being able to move it or toss it aside is convenient, but you do have to charge it every few months, and occasionally it de-syncs.

            1. Elizabeth West*

              didn’t a ton of Android phones also get rid of the headphone jack?

              Yes, and I am FURIOUS

              1. Ella Kate (UK)*

                SAME.

                My backup headphones that live in my handbag are wired, and given I use them to stave off overload when I’m out of the house longer than I expected it’s completely impractical to have wireless buds in there.

                (Not to mention I haven’t found a set of earbuds I can tolerate yet!)

              2. coffee*

                I am so, so annoyed by the removal of the headphone jack. It’s a big reason why I don’t want to get a new phone.

                1. not a hippo*

                  I had to break down and buy a new phone last month and I’m SO annoyed by the lack of headphone jack. I know there’s some dongle or some such thing you can plug into the charge port to connect a pair of wired headphones but also…why did all the cell phone manufacturers have to remove the headphone jack??

                2. Grith*

                  The boring answer is that it got to a point where the 3.5mm jack became the defining factor in how thick any phone was. 3.5mm diameter, plus a mm of metal plus another mm of plastic each side and it doesn’t matter how thin you make the camera, screen, USB-C port etc, mi9nimum depth doesn’t change.

                3. Princess Trachea-Aurelia Belaroth*

                  At this point I feel like any thinner and I will snap phones in half. Especially since they are too wide to fit in front pockets! I’m glad they came out with the iPhone SE again or I would need a Fanny pack just for my phone.

      4. Random Bystander*

        I thought maybe it was “when your keyboard plugged into your computer” vs “when your keyboard is plugged into a hub because the number of peripherals have exploded to the point that no computer has enough ports for all the necessary things to be plugged in”.

    5. BurnOutCandidate*

      This happened about ten years ago. There was a character in the department that was called out of earshot “The Toddler” because he often acted like an entitled toddler. (His name was not Todd.) Despite being the one who sat next to him, we got along fine. Our work didn’t overlap 98% of the time. (The other 2% was a file he gave me to archive.) I had my work, he had his work, we stayed out of each other’s way.

      He stepped away from his desk without locking the screen, and one of my colleagues rushed over to his computer for some office retaliation. He took a screenshot of the desktop, moved the Outlook icon to a folder on the desktop (but leaving the space where Outlook would have been empty), and set the screenshot as the wallpaper. The Toddler would come to his computer, attempt to launch Outlook, and nothing would happen because he was actually clicking on an empty space on his desktop.

      “He’ll figure this out in five minutes, tops,” I said. “The first time he saves something to his desktop, it will plug into the first empty icon spot, where Outlook is.”

      My colleague, now deceased (a nasty cancer), cackled gleefully and went back to his desk.

      The Toddler did not notice in five minutes. But when he tried to open Outlook and nothing happened, he became a bit vexed. True, he could run Outlook off the Start Menu, but clicking the icon and having nothing happen was annoying. He restarted his computer. Nothing about the Outlook icon he could see (but wasn’t really there) changed. Outlook wouldn’t run if he clicked the icon.

      He tried again the next day. Nothing had changed. He contacted IT. Something was clearly wrong with his computer. IT kinda blew him off. (“Run Outlook from the Start Menu,” they advised him.)

      A week passed of The Toddler not realizing that the icon he saw had been replaced with a screenshot that showed an icon that wasn’t really there. He cursed the computer, he cursed IT.

      Finally, my colleague who swapped out the wallpaper decided enough was enough. He wrote a note that suggested The Toddler needed to “reset his display settings” by changing his wallpaper, scribbled on a piece of paper that looked like it was torn from an IT manual, and left the note of The Toddler’s desk. He came in, read the note, “reset his display options,” and the Outlook icon disappeared!

      No one told The Toddler what actually happened. He really believed there was something wrong with his “display options.”

    6. Mister_L*

      A couple job’s ago somebody (I think they never found out who) did something similar with the forklift charging-station. Technicians were called, in total 1 hour on site until they figured it out and 2 hours driving time for 2 techs. Needless to say, the warehousemanager was pissed.

      Probably the same person also hid forklift key and stole somebody’s food from he fridge.

  18. Olive*

    I’m sure that the “athletic” coworker was insufferable, but if someone deliberately sabotaged my bio and changed something that I’d put there because it had meaning to me, I also would be beyond pissed.

    1. SGPB*

      counterpoint: having a record time for some athletic thing in your work bio is stupid and no one should care about it

      1. Meep*

        I don’t care for Supernatural, but I don’t go out of my way to be mean to the fans. Because at least they aren’t Harry Potter fans, ya know?

      2. mdv*

        Yeah, but they were an athletic gear company, so in that context, it made a lot more sense. It was the whole point of the social media posts!

        1. Frankie*

          Yeah, I’m kinda of the opinion that putting that record time in there says enough about that person that you can leave it alone.

          I do think it feels different because it’s not like someone bragging about height or something. Athletic achievement can take a lot of effort. Still on the braggy spectrum and I wouldn’t do it, but like, I wouldn’t change someone’s signature if they sign with a particular credential, you know what I mean, even if they were annoying about that credential?

          1. Spencer Hastings*

            Or perhaps the company encouraged people to include that sort of thing? Given that their pictures were of them using “their favorite athletic equipment that the company manufactures”, and all…

    2. Trina*

      See, I pictured that the zero was actually an insignificant digit, like his time was 85.3 seconds and it was changed to 85.30 seconds

      2. Violetta*

        but then it wouldn’t make a difference and no one would think he was slower for it, so that doesn’t make sense with the letter

    3. Tequila & Oxford Commas*

      I’m with you. I am not athletic and not fast but I do put in a lot of effort to run half-marathons, and I’d be really bummed if someone did that to me. In this instance, the petty act seemed disproportionate, especially without any concrete examples of the athletic co-worker being jerky.

      1. Jaydee*

        I mean, it seems like something that anyone knowledgeable about his sport would recognize as an obvious typo and not a genuinely slow time. Maybe it could be an issue with sprinting? But any longer running distance is quickly going to lead to an absurd result when you add a zero. 8 minute mile becomes an 80 minute mile? 30 minute 5K becomes a 5 hour (300 minute) 5k? 2 hour half marathon becomes a 2 day (20+ hour) half marathon? I’d be perplexed if I found out someone had added a zero on purpose to one of my race times. But I’d probably just laugh if I thought it was a genuine typo. I’m really slow – double most of those example race times and you’ll be in the right ballpark – but not *that* slow.

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          That was my thought. Changing 29.47 to 39.47 would still be plausible, for example, but 294.70 wouldn’t be.

    4. Capybarely*

      Reacting with “they’ll think I’m so slow!” to an additional zero says a lot about thesis person, though. That’s obviously a typo for anyone who knows him, if he’s a stranger? :whispers: No one gave it a second glance.

    5. Stuart Foote*

      Same, and justifiably so.

      Let people be a little annoying about their hobbies!

      (People seem confused about what OP did, but an example would be if the co-worker ran a 2:30 marathon, they changed it to 20:30. So basically adding a typo so that no one could know what time he actually had).

    6. Quill*

      My initial thought was that maybe he’d phrased it in his bio to like, obscure the unit? Pure speculation on my part, but I have had to sit through several arguments about units. 6 vs 6:00 can look very different but in terms of time is the exact same measurement. Though, now that I think about it, a 6 minute time and a 6 second time are not both actually plausible, so… I’m guessing you’re closer and it’s changing a 5 minute mile to a 50 minute mile.

    7. Princess Leia*

      I admit I didn’t love that one. It would have been so much more satisfying if she’s found another co-worker with a better time for the same distance/race and made sure that number was highlighted!

  19. MPerera*

    I once worked in a hospital lab where the supervisor was rude, unprofessional and incapable of running the lab effectively. I got another job and gave my notice.

    During my last week, I had to work nights. I’d heard that the supervisor had recently developed a habit of calling the lab during the night, maybe to annoy us, maybe because higher-ups wanted him to show some interest in helping us with our jobs, who knows. Whatever the reason, on my first night he called at 6 am, from the phone across the shared lab rather than the one right by me. I had to leave my work and cross the lab to answer the phone, and all he said was, “Is everything OK?” Even if it wasn’t OK, there would be nothing he could do over the phone.

    On the second day he called at 6 am again. When a technician on the other side of the lab told me the supervisor was on the phone, I said, “Tell him I’m resulting a stat specimen and I can’t talk right now.” On the third day, when I heard the phone ring at 6 am, I ran to the washroom and hid there for a few minutes. There was no fourth call.

  20. VermiciousKnid*

    When I was waiting tables and people were exceptionally rude to me I’d intentionally mess up their orders. *brings out hamburger* “Oh, you ordered the CHICKEN. I’m so sorry! It’ll be another 20 minutes!” They weren’t going to tip, so I might as well deserve getting stiffed.

      2. VermiciousKnid*

        I was a teenager working for a corporate chain restaurant that made *checks google* over $1B per fiscal quarter when this was happening. I estimate that over the course of several years, I intentionally messed up about $150 of food total (about 15 meals), which the staff than ate. I have no remorse.

      3. Water Everywhere*

        LOL. Rude customers will invent something to complain about no matter how perfect your service is. Restaurants can deal.

      4. Unkempt Flatware*

        Come on now. This is the Petty Things at Work post. Let people tell their stories.

        1. Moonstone*

          Yes this exactly! The ENTIRE point of this thread is to share petty stories. For the commenters who are getting upset or who dislike pettiness, I must know – why even bother to read this thread?? Just move on to the next one and leave this to the people who can find the humor in these stories. Ugh…sorry but I truly do not understand some of these comments.

  21. Katherine Vigneras*

    We had a screamer as the boss about a decade ago and he used to make me (a young woman in an admin role at the time) bring him coffee. He raved that mine was the best. That’s because I made him a fresh Keurig every time instead of using the big carafe – because I was secretly bringing him decaf. Sorry not sorry.

    3. Charlotte Lucas*

      Sounds like he needed to switch to decaf. Am I the only one who remembers those commercials?

      1. Decaf or Bust*

        Or there’s “we’ve secretly replaced the coffee in this fanceeee restaurant with Folger’s Crystals”…. :D

    4. IDIC believer*

      I was the secretary in an academic office with 14 professors, all coffee drinkers except me. The only water was from a restroom about 75 yards away and the pots usually had burnt coffee in them by the end of the day. My 2d day I decided hell would freeze over before I spent 10-15 minutes/hour making coffee. So I deliberately made super bad coffee repeatedly and just could not (hah) get it drinkable despite advice. By day 5, the junior professors were assigned a rota to make coffee. (I credit my dad with my deliberate incompetence plan – he only ever vacuumed once in 48 yrs of marriage due to breaking a figurine.)

  22. Middle Aged Lady*

    I worked st a Hyatt hotel that put on a grand Sunday brunch buffet—ice carving, free-flowing cheap champagne, and so on. Working it was exhausting—my thumbs were raw from peeling the foil and popping the corks, the tables were spread across the lobby, which was upstairs from the kitchen so we had to haul stuff up there and haul it down, for $2.11 an hour. But the tips made it a lucrative day. I answered the phone to take a reservation one busy Friday morning at the restaurant because the cashier was swamped. It was for a large party and I told the caller about the 15% gratuity for large parties, and she got snippy and asked why, “since we have to serve our own plates?” In a serious, helpful tone, I told her we could arrange a table where they got nothing to drink, near the busser station so they could retun their dirty plates there, would she like one of those? and in the long silence that followed, I hung up on her.

    1. Sunshine's Eschatology*

      AHAHAHAHA I love this one! It’s really all in the tone, isn’t it? Amazing.

      1. Middle Aged Lady*

        Yes, it is. When I became a librarian and pesky patrons questioned our policies, I put on my bright, kindergarten teacher face and voice and carefully and thoroughly explained every nuance of the history of why we do it this way, speaking very slowly and stopping every minute or so to ask if they understood what I was saying. With one exceptional jerk of a professor, who complained frequently’his magazine’ wasn’t on the shelf fast enough, I explained the whole publisher to US Mail to campus mail to serials department check-in to reference department process. ‘Why can’t you bypass all that?” He whined. He was an accounting prof so I asked him to explain to me what accounting process I would use to track what was received and when to accomodate his needs. And how I would know or prove an issue wasnt received. That shut his pompous ass up.

      2. ferrina*

        Truth! I work in a field where our clients love scope creep. For the worst offenders, they will throw out a ridiculous idea that is triple the cost, and I’ll cheerfully respond: “Of course, we’ll be happy to do that for you! Of course, this isn’t covered in our contract, so I’ll cost that out and draft up a contract addendum for you. I can have that for you by tomorrow. Does that work?”

        Usually followed by the quiet disclaimer that actually they don’t need that, or they need to check the budget first, etc.
        Bonus that occasionally someone says: “Yes, sounds great!” and we get more money and work from the client.

        1. Mister_L*

          I currently work in a transportation adjacent field and often feel bad having to ask our forwarders for an offer when I know that the second the person requesting it sees the price for a priority delivery they’ll decide that the normal transport speed is enough.

    3. Mel*

      I’m curious what you’d have said if she’d said yes? Because getting your own drinks and sitting in a less than optimal place for effectively a 15% discount sounds pretty good.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        I assume they would also have to get the trays of food from the kitchen.

        People who complain about large-party gratuities generally don’t want to do the work themselves anymore than they want to pay for it to be done.

      2. Middle Aged Lady*

        I honestly don’t know! I was young and feeling brash. It came put before I could contain my rage at her cheap attitude.

  23. Magenta*

    I worked in a bank about 20 years ago now. We had a quick deposit box for cheques, you put the cheque in an envelope with your account details and put it in the box. The box was emptied at 4pm and we paid them all in. If your cheque went in after 4pm it would stay there until the next day. There was a sign explaining this over the box.

    We usually didn’t get around to emptying the box until around 4.15 and never ever opened it before 4pm because it was one of the end of day tasks we did once things were quiet. We recorded the time the box was opened in a ledger.

    I woman came in really kicking off that her cheque had been paid in late, that it was in the box before 4pm but not paid in that day. She was being really nasty to the cashier and it was so unnecessary, I tried to defuse the situation, got the ledger, showed her the box had been opened at 4.30, she accused us of lying, saying we had lied about the time etc.

    The money had gone into a savings account and the cheque had cleared so she wasn’t upset because she needed access to the funds, she was upset because she had lost out on a days interest. she went on and on and was causing a scene.

    I got a calculator and showed her that the interest she had lost out on was something like 1.2 pence, not even enough to buy a penny sweet at that point in time. She then started going on about how it wasn’t the amount that was important, it was the principle, she shouldn’t lose out because we opened the box early.

    I went and got my handbag, brought it out in front of her, and the rest of the customers who were watching. Slowly opened my purse, got out a 2p piece and told the cashier to pay it in to cover the lost interest.

    She went very quiet and looked embarrassed, it really took the wind out of her sails. She thanked me and left.

    1. Water Everywhere*

      I am 100% in favour of making obnoxious customers look ridiculous, kudos to you!

    3. CatMouse*

      I love this. I worked at a call center for a bit and at one point the company rolled out a new service and auto opted in exisiting customers. The customers had a 6 month notice through multiple communications. Of course those were ignored and when the service went live everyone was charged a prorated amount to align their subscription renewals. We of course gave refunds if they called to cancel, but anything under $1 HAD to be approved by a supervisor (I think the smallest refund was .07) my supervisor would have gladly been happy to do just give them a quarter much like this!

      1. Nameless*

        it took me a second to get this and now I’m annoyed… that I didn’t think of it first

  24. Dovasary Balitang*

    I once worked in a small office. One coworker got so upset about two other coworkers going out for lunch and not inviting her that she faked heart attack symptoms, made our safety rep call 911, and got carried out on a gurney.

      1. Dovasary Balitang*

        There are other stories I could share about that woman, she was incredibly memorable. But that one is my favourite.

            1. Dovasary Balitang*

              For starters, there were plenty of secondhand stories of her getting completely wasted at parties and barbecues team members would have and trying to take off her clothes. Once, she wiped out at one of these events and gave herself a black eye and a mild concussion.

              She would completely freeze out people she didn’t like. This generally shifted on a bi-weekly basis and depended on who was and wasn’t on her… Let’s call it a sugar list (I’m typing this on my work PC). If you were on her sugar list, her methods of retaliation included: staring at you for several minutes, interrupting you mid-word, running to our department manager anytime you did anything she mildly disapproved of, and other bizarre mischief. One time, I was on her sugar list. She took a document out of my recycling bin and fed it through the laminator without putting the necessary cover on it. The document got stuck and was abandoned until a week later when someone else needed the laminator. I got questioned for it because the document had my name on it. (My response was basically ‘I was born after 1990, what’s laminating?’ And the only person who cared was our nosy receptionist anyway.)

              One of our main responsibilities was a very annoying task. I’ll call it VAT, or vatting, for short. Whenever we got a new employee, their training started with vatting. No one enjoyed doing it. Lady would gleefully take the opportunity to dump all her vatting on the new employee’s desk. I once had to miss an offsite company barbecue because she gave me a bunch of time-sensitive vatting right before we were all supposed to leave for it. When my responsibilities changed, it took weeks of our boss reminding her before she would stop trying to give me her vatting.

              Despite this vatting-related evil, she also liked to swoop in on new people before they realised what she was really like. You ever hear that you shouldn’t trust the first person to try and befriend you in a new workplace? She is exactly why that saying exists.

              If you weren’t on her sugar list, she was uncomfortably affectionate. This includes uncomfortably long shoulder touches and trying to kiss you. One time, she took off her shoe and put her bare foot on my coworker’s desk.

              She loudly hated the #MeToo movement. When an NBA player was implicated of assault, she laughed and said that obviously the woman who spoke out had propositioned him, was rejected, and was acting out to get revenge.

              Toward the end of my time there, I’d had enough and tried to make an official complaint to HR. (The straw that broke the camel’s back was her speaking over me to give our shop floor completely incorrect information regarding employee satisfaction surveys.) Ultimately, HR heavily discouraged me from doing so – I was told my complaint would only be considered if I exhausted all other avenues, such as speaking our boss and skip level about my concerns. The skip level had once sent me crying to the washroom with his unkindness; needless to say, I was not excited to do that and just dropped it.

              To this day, I have no idea why everyone was bending over backwards to protect such an unpleasant person and honestly mediocre-to-bad employee. It wasn’t as if she had great institutional knowledge or any sort of work ethic to speak of.

              1. Dovasary Balitang*

                Oh! This is one of my favourite bits. So our branch was 515 and our sister branch was 198. For orders coded to our sister branch, you needed slightly elevated security access. She kept making so many mistakes regarding how the orders were distributed, I went above her head and got our skip level to reduce her security access; by dealing with the 198 orders myself, I was saving myself quite a bit of clean-up later in the process. Maybe this is my Petty Moment. She never figured it out. According to my coworkers who I’m still in touch this, to this day she believes it’s a system error and no one in our branch can handle 198 coded orders anymore.

              2. goddessoftransitory*

                This woman sounds like a perpetual motion machine of nightmares and I am amazed she hasn’t been invited on a car trip to the pine barrens.

              3. Katrina*

                My response was basically ‘I was born after 1990, what’s laminating?’ – this is amazing

    4. Lana Kane*

      “Mary is there anything we can do for you to help you recover?”
      *weakly* “Yes…come closer, I’m so weak…invite me to lunch next time…”

    5. Trek*

      How did you find out she faked her heart attack because of the coworkers going to lunch? I wouldn’t think she would advertise it.

          1. Dovasary Balitang*

            Correct. $40 for an ambulance ride here and our workplace would have covered that outrageous financial incursion.

    6. Sun*

      This is hilarious but also, I just wanted to save I LOVE your name, Dove is one of my favorite Tamora Pierce characters (next to Daine, my heart.)

      1. Honor Harrington*

        Please. We all know Kel is the real Lady Knight and the star of the series! :P

    8. goddessoftransitory*

      WOW. Can’t imagine why the coworkers wanted to miss out on a nice relaxing lunch with her companionship!

  25. Lurking Tom*

    We had a vending machine in the lobby of the building where I worked and it was pretty much always broken. Most of us knew this and skipped it for the convenience store just blocks away. Well, on our way out to lunch one day, we noticed a sign taped to the machine. It said “Out of Order” in big letters, but there was smaller type below that. It was the expected angry rant, but also had the gem of a line: “YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET A SNACK BY TAKING YOUR COINS, THROWING THEM INTO A WELL AND WISHING FOR ONE THAN YOU ARE BY PUTTING YOUR COINS INTO THIS MECHANICAL THEFT ROBOT!”

    Additionally petty, the coin and dollar inputs and the snack retrieval door were taped shut with probably 20 layers of packing tape. The machine was gone the next day and never replaced.

    2. Mechanical Theft Robot*

      “YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO GET A SNACK BY TAKING YOUR COINS, THROWING THEM INTO A WELL AND WISHING FOR ONE THAN YOU ARE BY PUTTING YOUR COINS INTO THIS MECHANICAL THEFT ROBOT!”

      I’ve been wanting a new handle for a while. Mechanical Theft Robot it is ;)

      2. Amber*

        From Billboard, June 16, 2023

        Hot new band Mechanical Theft Robot owns the charts this week with two catchy singles off their new album Best Before: No Peanuts for You and Hung on the Hook.

    3. Coffee and Plants*

      You just know that was a long time coming for whoever typed that up. Potential years of lost coinage! lol!

    5. PhyllisB*

      This reminds me of when I worked at the phone company. Our soft drink machine was out of order more than it worked. We all complained, and the head supervisor had even talked to the vendor, but nothing ever changed.
      One day I found a comic strip (Shoe, I believe.) Someone was comparing the likelihood of receiving your soft drink to playing the slots. (I can’t remember the exact wording; this was over 30 years ago.) I cut it out and taped it on the front of the machine.
      The next day I came in to work and the cartoon was gone, but the machine never malfunctioned after that.

  26. Everything All The Time*

    Mine are boring petty.

    I wrote very pointed process documents that got colorful edits and highlights to make sure they stood out when the same person had the same problem caused by the same mistake… and so every time he made the same mistake I’d end up having to spend 2+ hours training him on it AGAIN, and then clean up the mistake.
    I started putting notes like “If you’ve read this far, send me a gif of a cute animal on teams” into the document, and then just sending him a link to the document with the page number that’d fix his problem. He left the company months later after taking up more and more of my time cleaning up his work, and I forgot I’d done that.
    Until the Interns started. And my boss sent them the documents which were full of weird formatting and “send funny animal gifs to X person” notes.
    So that was a fun explanation that I ended up not in trouble for.

    1. Elle*

      I have always wanted to add funny notes like that to the quarterly grant report that I am required to submit but am sure the state is not reading. Thanks for living the dream!

      1. Student*

        There is a process for this. Add the word “elephant” somewhere in the document, or something equivalent. If ask about it or correct it, then just waive it off as a small copy-paste error.

        If they don’t ask about it, start adding more. Sentences, then paragraphs.

        I used to do this for school assignments that were graded on page count or word count instead of on quality, especially when it seemed very implausible that the teacher was reading the amount of work they were assigning. I had one particular health class where I filled up a full notebook with a year’s worth of weekly writing assignments that were all jibberish. I just kept getting full scores for them, and they were much faster to produce than the actual assignment, which was supposed to be health-related.

        At the end of the year, the teacher passed around MY assignment notebook, citing it as an excellent example of the type of work he was looking for. I was holding my breath as it got passed around the whole classroom, waiting for one of my peers to point out that my entries were entirely about elephants and nonsense. But nobody read any of it – so I got away with it.

        That class did teach me one important thing that I try to carry forward, though. Don’t assign writing that you don’t actually need or read. If you just need monthly project reports to chart spending, or just need the summary rather than the full details, just ask for the bits you need! If you find you haven’t read large parts of the reports you are getting for several iterations in a row, then reconsider whether you really need them, and how you could better communicate for everyone’s benefit.

        1. The Wizard Rincewind*

          I did this once in my high school career. I had a coach teach my senior year economics course and he was the absolute stereotype of “coach teaching x class”. My friend and I started throwing nonsense phrases into our essays (her favorite was “golden spigot on a stick”) to see if he would ever underline/highlight/comment on them. He never did.

          He also had a great sense of humor, though, so sometimes I wonder if he noticed but thought it was funny and wanted us to keep doing it.

        2. margaret*

          In high school my class schedule was such that I couldn’t take the regular health class and had to do an independent study. The independent study was nearly 500 printed pages of exercises I had to read and fill in. After doing 75% of it laboriously over the semester the deadline was approaching and I wasn’t going to be able to finish. My mom and I agreed no one was going to actually read all 500 pages so she helped me fill in ridiculous answers to the rest. I remember a series of questions asking what I was most concerned about with puberty (I was already 17 when doing this). I responded that I had heard I would grow tentacles, I was concerned what color the tentacles would be, when would the tentacles grow? Turned it all in. Got an A.

          1. Avyncentia*

            Oh my gosh. In high school we had to annotate our books for English and the teachers would check them. I didn’t see the point, so my annotations consisted of copying out passages of the book and writing comments like “this is stupid” in Latin and Greek. Straight As.

          3. linger*

            Conversely, the squid, according to a famous flub by TV chef Graham Kerr (“The Galloping Gourmet”), has … more to worry about from puberty than most animals.

              1. linger*

                “A squid, as you know, has ten testicles…”
                (He meant tentacles, of course. Most male squids have only a single tubelike testis.)

          4. Quill*

            *Laughs in fellow malicious compliance of health class*

            We had to do a unit on drugs being bad. My inner smart-alec presented a 18th century historical perspective on opium. I got an A but I don’t think the teachers appreciated the overaching theme that drugs are a tool of colonialism.

        3. Quill*

          I had an english teacher once who had the bright idea of not actually grading what she assigned… she didn’t last long.

        4. really anonymous for this*

          Oof. I supervise a faculty member who decided, for some unknown reason, that he needed 30-minute recorded presentations on a given topic. In a class of 15 students. And then reached out to me in a panic because he didn’t want to grade all of them, and the students were complaining that he was taking to long to get their grades. I ended up pitching in and grading about 3 hours worth.

          I made him change the assignment to 10-minute presentations there on out.

          BTW, this was “Fergus” from the “intent to flounce” post. Same guy.

        5. MacGillicuddy*

          I had a professor who would draw little shovels in the margin when your text veered from factual to the -er- augmented/fictional. Between one and three shovels depending on the level of platypus pooop you were trying to get away with. This prof was great . You couldn’t BS your way through his course.

          1. Nina*

            My favorite professor in undergrad – who later became my postgrad advisor – would mark (‘grade’ in American) doodles in test papers. I once got back a chemistry test with a) an extremely fanciful tetravalent carbon complex carefully labeled ‘mayapyramidane’ and the place where I’d given an atom the wrong number of bonds circled and b) my answer to the easy-credit question ‘how many rings will PAH C14H10 have’ marked appropriately (that’s anthracene, the answer is ‘three rings’, so of course I added ‘for the elven kings under the sky’ and was rewarded with a gigantic dwarvish G rune)

            1. Greebo's Other World*

              An exam I once sat had a question on sand dunes that I realised I did not know the answers to, so I ended up making a bunch of Dune references and drew a schematic of a worm. I did not fail the paper so can only assume the marker was a fellow fan.

              1. Elizabeth West*

                This is awesome. A schematic of a worm, hahaha, I love it.

                I created a cartoon character in high school and he eventually ended up all over all my homework. I used to draw pictures on math tests when I couldn’t answer the questions — it was mostly him going “I don’t know.”

          2. Artemesia*

            I tried to teach concise generally adjective free writing to high school seniors decades ago. I cautioned against including ‘snow’ which was the euphemism for BS at that time. One of my students made me a wood block stamp of a snow flake that I could use on the papers when grading. Satisfying — and of course the students were in on it. They did improve in their writing.

          3. Elitist Semicolon*

            I had a grad school prof who would do the same thing only with a less polite explanation: “this is where I had to shovel through the bullshit.”

        6. Queer Earthling*

          My dad claims that when he was in school, he and his best friend were convinced their English teacher wasn’t reading their assignments. So in the middle of an essay, the best friend wrote, “If you read this, you’re entitled to one McDonald’s breakfast on me” and continued on as normal.

          When he got the assignment back, up top was the grade…and the teacher’s breakfast order, please and thank you.

        7. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          I used to spend hours each month preparing a report for the director of a prestigious academic institution. It involved exporting data from a large database into a consolidated Excel spreadsheet and adding comments. There was never any feedback, positive or negative.

          Then one day in a meatspace meeting about something else, the director inadvertently revealed that he didn’t know there can be multiple sheets in an Excel document. Which meant that for over a year he had only been reading the summary on the first sheet.

          1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

            As someone who works at a non-prestigious academic institution this comment is ha ha ha ha ha ha ouch my soul

        8. Random Bystander*

          I still remember in my last year of high school (junior year, I skipped senior year), we had to take US history. Every week we had a test that consisted of 30 multiple choice questions and a set of questions: choose 1 of 5 for a long essay (2 pages, handwritten) or 2 of 6 for short essays (1 page each, handwritten). Long essays were worth 70 points, the short essays 35 each.

          Well, as the year progressed, it was rather obvious that our teacher was more than a little overwhelmed, and he wasn’t reading all of the essays. Classmates started filling in their essays with nonsense “Mr [last name], if you read this, I will buy you a Coke” and other stuff. Well, apparently they were so out of practice writing real essays that they were unprepared …. the week before our spring vacation, we had our usual Friday test. Teacher would leave during the test after all the scantron sheets were turned in, run them through the grader machine and then return to write our initials and number right (RB-30, for example). Over the course of spring break, he actually did get caught up and read all the essays … I was the only one who hadn’t filled my essay with a lot of junk and got the full marks for my essays … other classmates had to swallow getting a 30 (F) for that week’s test.

          Lesson: pay attention to things that might change so that you need to actually do the work.

        9. LifeBeforeCorona*

          Our high school history teacher assigned a 5 page report during the last week of school before summer. I wrote out a random chapter from the book and got an A.

        10. Kayem*

          I did this in my undergraduate program. One of my profs was always raving about how great my work was. I suspected he hadn’t read anything beyond the first few papers I handed in (he taught several of my courses). I joked to a friend that I could throw in dinosaurs and time travel into the middle of the paper and he’d never notice. Then I decided to do it.

          For the very last paper in the final course I had with him, I wrote what I considered to be the greatest achievement of my academic career. I managed to incorporate time travel, dinosaurs, zombies, futuristic dystopian cold wars, and squid into an otherwise boring paper on the history of the early 20th century anarchist mail bombs. And I didn’t just throw words in at random, I worked every reference into that thing so it was plausible and written as if I was dead serious.

          When I handed it in, he said “I don’t need to read your paper, I know it’s A-plus material” and handed it back to me.

          And that’s why for all the degrees that followed, if I suspected the prof wasn’t reading my assignments, I threw in random references to dinosaurs and squid without putting any more effort into it.

        1. Nonny Mouse for this*

          Somewhere hiding in the world, is a thesis project.
          If you were to take the printout of the thesis project and zoom in on the title’s underline, it is actually text reduced to an absurd size (like less than 1 pt) that says something snarky about the institution.
          If somene ever does ctrl-all and resets it to 12 pt, I’d be in trouble.

      3. Ally McBeal*

        I used to work for a research firm and one of my bosses hid an Easter egg in one of his complicated spreadsheets with a disclaimer that a special prize would be given to whomever found it first. It took YEARS and we had to scramble to come up with a prize idea when one of his nerdiest/wonkiest clients found it, but it was such a fun day.

      4. JustAnotherKate*

        I use the words Large Labradoodle (in red) as a filler when I’m drafting a grant application or report and need to look something up but don’t want to lose my writing flow by doing it immediately. (Silly word choice, but I was working from a family member’s house years ago when I decided I needed a filler word, and their big silly dog was lying at my feet, so there you go.) I’ve never managed to submit it to a funder, but I imagine some of them would be amused and most would not.

        1. Elitist Semicolon*

          Back when I wasn’t so adamant about having a work computer and a personal computer, I accidentally cut-and-pasted a link to a Toast article titled “Gabbing about God” into a document I was sending to a colleague, my boss, and my department chair instead of the paragraph from a previous version I was trying to copy.

    2. Kimmy Schmidt*

      Ha! One of my professor friends hides silly little instructions like that in her syllabus to make sure students read it. I think my faves so far are “tell me your favorite rock pun” and “include your favorite dinosaur in the email subject line”. She’s a geology professor.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        I do this when I send my team important emails. “(Subject line) – Response Required!” in the subject line, and then the information, and the last line is “Please respond to let me know that you understand this information and what is your favorite flavor of ice cream.” :P

      2. Third or Nothing!*

        I’ve done this when giving away items on the local Buy Nothing page. I swear every post immediately has someone going “WANT” before really reading the post or considering if they actually want/need the item. So I started saying things like “first person to tell me your favorite animal gets the thing” to cut down on ghosting.

      1. Everything All The Time*

        I got animal and funny gifs on teams, and my manager forgot about it being brought to his attention until they reached one instruction that was “Send a Gif from your favorite movie to the boss.”

        the original ex-coworker hadn’t read a single page or taken notes, and apparently would sit around on teams calls playing guitar instead of listening so now it’s just a funny story.

    5. anonymous regular*

      I teach grad students and have an assignment before the start of term with a similar intent. It’s not even hidden! It’s listed in the syllabus and on the web based portal!
      It’s genuinely helpful for addressing any tech difficulties, and if they haven’t done the assignment by the first class, there are inevitably other issues down the line.

      1. really anonymous for this*

        When I was teaching freshmen in college, I’d hide in the syllabus that they’d get 5 bonus points for stopping by my office during office hours and introducing themselves. This did several things – it made them read the syllabus, find out where my office was and when office hours were, and broke the ice, making them more likely to stop by when they had questions.

    6. FormerPizzaBoy*

      When I was working on my Master’s in Teaching, we had a professor who was pretty awful for a variety of reasons, in which we ended up having a class meeting with our head of department on our concerns. One of those concerns was we didn’t think he was reading our work after the opening. (He was working on his doctorate and was obviously distracted). We all were receiving the exact same notes. We organized a check on his checking our work for when we presented our concerns. In the 3rd assignment, we put in pretty noticeable errors in our work. We still did the assignment but glaring errors. When we still got the same responses, we upped it with after the first page of just filling in with stuff like in this response, things that made it obvious he’s not reading it – jokes, non sequiturs, larem ipsum, etc. For the 4th, we all turned in the exact same paper (while writing our real one, just as had real papers ready to go for the previous ones).
      Luckily, the head of the department listened to our concerns. He finished out the semester and didn’t teach the course next cycle. Being a small cohort, she knew us, and knew we did the work so she wasn’t concerned about us not getting the material despite the instructor.

    7. goddessoftransitory*

      My dream job, since I have folders FULL of funny animals and every other kind of meme required to get a point across!

    8. There You Are*

      In an exceptionally boring graduate-level class (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) all of our assignments were papers and there was no final exam, just one big, honkin’ paper.

      Every single one of my papers had words, at first, and sentences, later, spelled out by the first letter of every paragraph in my papers.

      The first paper, a quick summary of some topic or other, the first letters of the six paragraphs spelled out BORING.

      The next was THIS IS DUMB.

      Then THIS IS NOT RELEVANT.

      Then I’LL NEVER USE THIS IN REAL LIFE.

      Lastly, for the big, honkin’ paper: I DESERVE AN A FOR WRITING ALL THIS BULLSH*T OUT

      And neither the professor nor the TAs ever noticed, even though I made the first letter of each paragraph a point or two larger than the rest of the type.

      At least it made writing the papers more entertaining for me.

      1. Elitist Semicolon*

        My agency had to do daily work logs back in the early days of the panda and, because I love malicious compliance, I did this with the items on my list. They’d spell out things like MURDER, ASSHAT, and , of course, the usual swears. Sometimes I had to really work to find a synonym for, say, “contacted” that would give me the letter I needed, but my favorite was the day I somehow managed to have enough Ws and Fs to spell out TWATWAFFLE.

        2. Nemi*

          outstanding! Reminds me of the teaching colleague who added a plenary option to the WALT and WILF required for lessons – so alongside We Are Learning To and What I’m Looking For, we had We All Now Know…

    9. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      hahaha I was sure my boss wasn’t reading my required weekly progress update emails so I slipped in a few lines of non-work accomplishments like “mastered level 420 of candy crush”

      He started laughing out loud in the middle of our very serious operations meeting while a different manager was presenting. I didn’t get grief for it though.

      1. Elitist Semicolon*

        I feel like anyone whose job it is to have to wade through reports like that probably appreciates a break from the boring of it all.

        1. Macropodidae*

          I went back to school as a “mature student.”

          I took every opportunity to slip in funny stuff. My bio prof was was entirely amused by my paper on wood.

          When I skipped two labs (with notification) in a row due my jerk ex-husband cutting off my phone and credit card out of spite, the very next lab was working with antibiotic-resistant E. coli, he said, “Please dispose of the samples here. Unless you have an awful roommate, then you are free to try to sneak it out.”

  27. ghostlight*

    I work at a large entertainment and theatre venue and pay for a monthly parking pass (not cheap) in a parking lot very close to the theatre. When we have shows, this lot is also used for patron parking, but if I’m coming in for work or to see a show, I just put out my parking pass on my dash and have no issues. There’s a kiosk in the lot for people to pay for parking that I just bypass because of my pass.

    One night, I come in with some friends to see a show, and I walk right by the kiosk like normal. There’s a security guard standing over by the exit though, and he is on a power trip. He starts yelling at me about not paying, I explain that I have a monthly pass, and he says I still have to pay the $20 event parking fee since I’m not working. Fine, I think, I’m not gonna fight with this guy, and I go to the kiosk, put in the employee discount code for $4 parking, and get my little parking ticket.

    I then turn around the line of patrons who are about to pay $20 for parking, and give them the same discount code. Discounts for all!

  28. pettypettybish*

    Started dating (and was broken up by) my former coworker at my previous place of employment during the start of lockdown. When we came back to part time in-office working, he and I were on different days. If I was ever missing a computer monitor, mouse, laptop stand, or cable at my desk I’d steal his from the other side of the office. Never caught because I was always the first in

    1. EBStarr*

      haha, so petty. also, i wonder if you were missing parts because he was stealing from you!

  29. The Prettiest Curse*

    I used to manage an email inbox that received requests for people to be removed from our nonprofit’s mailing list. It was the responsibility of our national office to manage these requests, so we couldn’t do anything except forward them for processing. 90% of the requests were polite or neutral, and I’d send them along as soon as I read them. The 10% of rude requests would still get sent to the national office for processing, just a week or so later than they would have been sent if the person who emailed had been nicer.

    I understand that it’s really frustrating to get unwanted mailings, but the person who reads your email requesting removal is almost never going to be the person who is responsible for your being on the mailing list in the first place. Some of the emails were so nasty that they’re engraved on my memory forever, especially the person who threatened to personally sue me. You also have the option to write “return to sender – unwanted mail” on the mailings and put them in a mailbox – though that’s a slower method than sending a polite request.

    1. anon today*

      I approve! But I will say I wrote a request to be removed from a mailing list like this in anger once, because they got my name and address from the law firm hired to investigate serial sexual assault and harrassment claims from a couple decades before–which I had bystander knowledge of and shared my information only because it was assured to me my information, identity, and contact information was to be kept confidential. Then the org started sending me requests for money before the investigation even concluded. Hadn’t heard a peep from them in over 20 years, not even a newsletter or anything. I was pretty upset that my information had, in fact, not been kept confidential at all and told the donor-request office that, asking they kick my complaint up the line so as not to violate the privacy of the others who participated like I did. It probably came across more rudely than I intended, but I really was upset. (The office apologized and removed my name immediately, for which I sent an effusive thank you email). But I wouldn’t be rude or angry about it in other circumstances.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        I totally understand why you were rude in that particular situation. We didn’t buy mailing lists for regular solicitation requests, so everyone on our lists had donated at some point. Sometimes I would get requests from a relative of someone who was seriously ill or deceased and those people would get their requests forwarded immediately, regardless of rudeness. So it wasn’t every single rude person who got a slower response.

    2. Indolent Libertine*

      I’ve been trying to get my deceased MIL’s name off numerous mailing lists for nearly 4 years now (she was a dear lady who sent $10 to just about anyone who ever asked…). I confess that my tone does change when I’m writing to the same outfit for the 10th-plus time and it still doesn’t stop the mail.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Returning to sender will eventually work, even if they are ignoring email requests. We had the exact same situation with a deceased relative of my husband and it took about 2 years of returning to sender before the mailing volume finally reduced – which is why I can understand that it’s frustrating. If you write “deceased” and “please remove from list” on the front of the envelope, that also helps.

      2. There You Are*

        If any of them come with a prepaid return envelope, add something heavy to the envelope along with the “Remove from your mailing list,” note. The org has to pay more for weighty envelopes.

        I’ve included slats of wood, metal bars, small rocks swaddled in bubble wrap, and even just many, many sheets of card stock, folded tightly to cram more into the envelope.

        THAT seems to get the message through.

      3. zolk*

        If you’re in the states, I’m sorry for this! If you’re in Canada, what they’re doing is illegal and if you report them correctly they can be fined thousands of dollars per day until they fix it.

    3. Petty_Boop*

      I confess to occasionally being a rude responder to unwanted mail, albeit it’s email. Most checkouts for online purchases have at the bottom that little checkbox to “KEEP ME UPDATED WITH MARKETING B*****IT” and I ALWAYS uncheck that box. Yet within 24 hours I’ll get my first one, then 2 or 3 more that week and so on until eventually I blow a gasket. Yes, I mark them SPAM but oh how it chaps me to have to UNSUBSCRIBE when I never SUBSCRIBED in the first place AND I specifically unchecked the box. It is for whatever reason one of those button pushers for me, so if you ever got a nasty unsubscribe from me, I apologize!

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        I don’t know if it’s just that the folks who are on the email list I currently manage are more laid-back than the general population or if it’s because they are usually on the list for work reasons, but I’ve only had one mildly annoyed message in the last couple of years. Let’s hope that continues!

    4. Lizzo*

      I once got wind of someone who had received a mailing about an event we were hosting and had called one of the other departments on campus furious about it. I eventually was put in contact with this person, who sent me a photo of the address block on the mail piece. Someone, somewhere in the mail process, had added a bunch of anti-Semetic slurs to the address information. I don’t recall if/how we tracked down the source of that inappropriate language (we had some external lists we were using), but if anyone ever had a right to be angry about a piece of mail, it was that person.

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yeah, that’s the type of thing where you totally understand why they were irate.
        I never had anything like that, but since the donor services department at our national office was either under-staffed or incompetent, they would sometimes only remove people after a few reminders. Sometimes the original requester would get in touch again, even angrier this time, to ask us why they hadn’t been removed, but unfortunately there wasn’t anything I could do except forward the email and ask them to escalate the removal request. The donor services people were on a different coast to us, so I couldn’t just drop by their desk and wave a stack of paper at them!

  30. squirreltooth*

    A coworker and I were bitter enemies, which was awkward because there were only three people on our team. One time a vendor sent us a gift of cookies to share, and Enemy Coworker intercepted it and ripped apart the card to destroy the evidence that it’d had both our names on it. But I has SUSPICIONS and took the ripped-up card pieces out of the trashcan, reassembled them, and presented the evidence to our manager like I was Kid Sherlock Holmes.

    We were both rightfully yelled at by a grandboss for our pettiness and told to get our act together. Luckily for both our sake, I left the company shortly after; we brought out the worst in each other.

      1. squirreltooth*

        It was more because this was an ongoing issue of escalating pettiness…but I still absolutely think coworker should’ve gotten in more trouble for stealing the cookies. (It’s also easy for a grandboss to think cookies are no big deal when he’s not being criminally underpaid in one of the most expensive cities in the world, I guess.)

      3. Yessica Haircut*

        Digging through someone’s trash can for evidence of their cookie crimes is not a great look. I get it, though; the fog of dysfunctional workplaces brings out a weird side of all of us.

  31. Alianne*

    My first name is a variation on a more common name. It’s FOUR LETTERS, but people misspell it constantly, even when my name is A) in the sig block of the email I sent them and B) part of my actual work email address. Whenever someone gets it wrong in an email, I italicize my name in my sig block in my reply. Second error, I bold it. Third time, I capitalize it. No one’s ever gone more than three, but I’m thinking fonts will have to be utilized…

    1. Corrigan*

      I feel this! I have a name that’s not unusual, but one letter off from a more common name. I’ve just started beginning my response email with “It’s X actually”. Most people are apologetic and don’t do it again, but I did have a co-worker who did it again and she was like “I’m sorry, you just told me this…” Yes, yes I did.

    2. EvilQueenRegina*

      My ex coworker had a last name that could also be a unisex first name, and used to get a lot of emails addressed to Hi Lastname. Her response was usually to put “Firstname” in a much bigger font in her signature.

      1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

        I’m a woman. My first name is not English, and is ambiguous and could also be a last name. My former last name used to be a man’s first name.

        I used to get a LOT of emails calling me sir, and it was fascinating to see how differently (took my recommendations more seriously, took my statements as absolute authority) certain people treated me when they thought I was a man. They were often very surprised to meet me in person or via phone.

      2. Corrigan*

        One of those embarrassing moments that my brain occasionally brings up in the middle of the night is when I sent an email to our IT person (who I’ve never met in person). His name is something like John Sarah (his last name is also a female first name) and I replied “Thanks, Sarah!” I’m sure I’m not the only person to have done this and he’s probably forgotten it by now, but I feel so bad.

      3. Here for the petty stories*

        My male boss has a last name that could be a woman’s name. When eg John Smith responds to him as “dear lastname” he emails them back as “Dear Smith”.

      4. many bells down*

        I went to high school with an “Owen Ryan” and invariably, because class rosters are Lastname, Firstname – he’d start each new semester getting called Ryan and wearily trying to correct the teacher for weeks until the new term rolled around and he had to start over. Whole classes would call out “His name is OWEN” every day at roll.

        1. Quill*

          I have a commonly mispronounced semi rare name and class corrections during roll call still gives me warm fuzzies.

          “It’s [Quill’s legal name]!” every time someone butchered my name. Every time. To the point where neighboring classrooms knew if we had a sub because they could hear the corrections.

        2. Zephy*

          One of the girls I went to high school with had a similar problem. Her first name was both a common nickname for girls and a common given name OR nickname for boys, think “Sam” – not “Samantha,” her legal government first name was “Sam.” She usually went by a more obviously feminine nickname, like “Sammie.” Her middle and last names were both family names and also both happened to be common-if-older-fashioned first names for boys, think “Sam Gregor Henry.” Every new teacher, be it a sub or just the first day of class, would call her government name while taking roll and be really surprised when a very obviously female-presenting student raised her hand or responded “Here!” in a very high, feminine voice.

        3. azvlr*

          When I was a classroom teacher in the early ’00s, the only roster we got before the first day of school had limited characters for the last and first names. I would get lots of Hispanic students with long surnames (because they were hyphenated) and could only read the first few letters of the first name.
          I spend the first class period calling four different Alex???s or Alej??? Was Alexa, Alejandro, Alexanrda or what?! No way to tell other than embarrassing myself every damn time.

      5. Nina*

        My partner has a name that’s pronounced like a very common man’s name (and he is a highly gender-conforming man, so nobody ever makes this mistake once they’ve met him) but spelled like it might be the name of a woman blessed/cursed with nerdy or new-agey parents.
        We sometimes publish stuff together. We used to work in the same very large institution, and a lot of people knew me by sight and knew I was involved with those publications, and we would then have this conversation:
        “Hi, I think I read your paper, are you Jheonra?”
        “No, that’s my coauthor, it’s pronounced John; I’m Nina.”

    3. Anon for this*

      I get this a lot. My first name is “Catherine” and I usually go by “Cathy.” But I always, always, always get people who spell it “Kathy” or even “Kathleen” – my name is spelled out in my signature block and I also spell it when I sign my emails. It irritates the bejesus out of me.

      2. Elitist Semicolon*

        Similar. I’ve had to tell people multiple times and I’m, like, YOU emailed ME first and managed to get my name right in my address. And yet you somehow went from catherine.fakename to “Dear Kathleen?”

    4. The Wizard Rincewind*

      I accidentally misspelled someone’s last name in an email and he simply pointed it out to me without any snark. I apologized and mentioned that I, too, get that a lot with my last name so you’d think I’d be better about it! He responded: “It’s okay. My grandma sent me a card last week with the name spelled wrong and she’s the one who gave it to me.”

      2. PhyllisB*

        I can relate. My own MOTHER, who insisted my first name be spelled the way it is….misspelled my name until I was about 13.

        1. 3DogNight*

          I am the mother in a very similar situation. In my defense, they had me fill out the birth certificate while I was still drugged up from the C-Section, and I forgot the e at the end of her middle name. I spelled it the way I intended to until she corrected me when she was about 20.

          1. Pennyworth*

            My cousin has always gone by a nickname that ends with either an ”ie” or a ”y”. How do I not know which? Because she always signs off with her initial when communicating with the family. Katie? Katy? I have no idea.

            1. Squirrel Nutkin (the teach, not the admin)*

              Yeah, I have a co-worker like this. She goes by Pat, or maybe it’s Patty, or Pattie, or Patti, but I will never !@#$@#$ing know because darned if she ever signs her name. Lady, I want to get your name right — throw me a line here.

    5. Water Everywhere*

      My name gets misspelled all the time as well! If it’s a one-time error that doesn’t affect anything I let it slide but I will correct coworkers who I email with frequently, and if it keeps happening then they get put in email jail. I made a rule that directs emails containing the usual misspelling of my name to the junk folder and will fish them out about once a day. Or so.

    6. Bronze Betty*

      Not work-related, but I had a similar issue with a cousin. For years–even after I had been married for over a decade–he sent Christmas cards with my last name misspelled. Even after I signed with my last name in huge letters for several years in a row, this continued. Finally, at my pettiness breaking point, I sent a Christmas card to him with his last name misspelled. Think Johnson spelled Johnston. My name was spelled correctly by him from that point onward.

      1. Anonny*

        I did a similar thing to a boy in middle school who started mispronouncing my name intentionally. I called him by a similarly changed version of his name for three years…until we got to high school and he finally realized I’d been calling him by a girl’s name all that time. He never did it again.

    7. Nerdgal*

      I also have an unusual, unisex name, and notice the exact same thing.
      Once I flew to another country, 12 time zones away, at the invitation of a colleague who knew me by mail only. Boy was he surprised!

      1. Elitist Semicolon*

        The flip side: I was corresponding with someone in my field named “Kim” and we made plans to meet while she and her wife were passing through my town for vacation. And then, of course, Kim was male.

    8. Cat Lady*

      This also drives me up the wall! I might steal that idea if I feel especially petty one day.

    9. EngineerResearcher*

      Ugh, I feel this! I have a common name with a variation (think Sarah Jones vs. Sara Jones or Katherine Smith vs. Catherine Smith) that gets misspelled constantly! I usually send a teeth gritting polite note about “Just wanted to point out it’s Katherine Smith and KatherineSmith(at)org.com so the emails don’t get misdirected!”

    10. There You Are*

      My name has only one consonant while the more common version of it has two. Think maybe Camila vs Camilla. When someone sends me an email addressed with two consonants, I reply and double one of their consonant. Do it again, and I double an additional consonant, etc. If it’s a short name, I’ll double a vowel on the third time.

      Them: “Dear Camilla…”
      Me: “Hi Jonnathan…”

      Them: “Hello Camilla…”
      Me: “Hi Jjonnathan…”

      Them: “Hey, Camilla, I have a question…”
      Me: “You’ll find the answer, Jjonnatthan, in the XYZ file on the shared drive.”

      Hilariously, the main person who gets this treatment is my direct manager. At this point, I’m not sure if he’s punking me or not.

    11. stratospherica*

      I have a similar issue – my name itself is common where I’m from, and the same name with one letter that is different is very common where I live (think Erica vs. Erika, because that’s exactly what it is). My name is in my signature, my email address, my Teams name, my proprietary chat tool name, you name it, my name is there, C resplendent in its glory. People still find a way to spell my name with a K.

      I’ve been tempted to increase the size of the C in my signature every time someone gets it wrong.

      1. Database Developer Dude*

        DO IT!!!!!!! I BEG OF YOU!!! And come back and report the results. It will be hilarious!

  32. Corrigan*

    We had a “QI Manager.” That was her title. She didn’t manage any people but she managed our internal QI process. I was one of a few “Lead Llama Groomers” who managed different processes and oversaw the work of Junior Llama Groomers but weren’t technically speaking “managers.” She took every opportunity to throw it in our face that we weren’t managers. I have no idea why. Nobody cared about it but her.

    One of the other leads had a project sanctioned by our director to update our guidance documents. QIManager wasn’t informed about this and made a big stink at a large team meeting about how only managers could update guidance and llama groomers shouldn’t be in there. Even though the director supported this project, and we’re the ones responsible for operations.

    We work remotely and at one point QIManager decided that she needed to hear every single thing that Llama Groomers said to each other because it might possibly be about work and help her do her job. She demanded that the Leads add her to the Llama Groomer instant messaging chat (which was about half work stuff and half random chitchat and memes). I told her that it was only for our team and as she wasn’t a Llama Groomer, or our manager, she didn’t need to be in there.

    I didn’t ask for this stupid game, but if she wants to play, I’ll play.

      1. Corrigan*

        Bah! I should have spelled out “quality assurance/improvement” but I like this better.

    2. I edit everything*

      Is it weird that I had the thought, “How do llama groomers work remotely?”

  33. Moira Rose*

    Team Jane! Don’t schedule meetings over the lunch hour! If she took her lunch at 1:45 or something, then she was being unreasonable, but assuming she was eating at a standard time, her desire to eat her dang lunch in peace is way more relatable to me than another manager looking at his full calendar and deciding to stomp over everyone’s lunchtime.

    1. Middle Aged Lady*

      Team Jane! I hate the half-lunch bosses offer when they call a meeting and say you can bring lunch. Lunch is not just about food. It’s about resting and recharging.

  34. Juicebox Hero*

    I accept cash for bill payments. One day, at 11:55 am, as I’m getting ready to go to lunch, one guy comes in with a grocery bag full of rolled change, several hundred dollars worth, and dumps it on my counter. I’m required to count rolled change to make sure there aren’t any foreign coins and that it’s actually the correct number of coins.

    I started counting his change, roll by roll, v e r y carefully as he’s glaring and harrumphing and whining at me for taking so long. Every time he complains, I tell him he made me lose count and I start over from the beginning, even more carefully. Eventually, he figured out that keeping his mouth shut was a good thing, but by the time I finally got done his face was beet red and you could just about see smoke pouring out of his ears.

    It was glorious.

    1. Zephy*

      This calls to mind a Tumblr post about a guy paying the entry fee for a conference in coins – presumably, like your man, thinking it would be le epic trole prank on some poor schlub who has to count all of those coins…except they of course wouldn’t let him into the conference until the coins were counted, so instead he got to stand there and hold up the line for 45 minutes, and when people complained about why it was taking so long, the conference organizers told them “some asshole decided it would be funny to pay in coins.”

      1. JustaTech*

        My friend once had someone decide to make a statement by (attempting) to pay their quarter’s tuition in pennies.
        They waited until the last day to do it as well, when the tuition office was overrun with undergrads in various stages of freaking out that they would miss their tuition payment and the world would end. Everyone was tired and frazzled, and then this person rolls up with a smug smile and attempts to pay in pennies.
        The most senior person in the office said “no, we’re not required to take pennies, you can take those to the bank and have them changed for cash or you can come back next week”. (Cash may be legal tender, but you’re not actually required to take pennies for large payments.)

    2. parking nazi*

      We have a penny policy for people who think they will punish US for their parking tickets by paying in pennies. (FYI – federal law says you’re not required to take more than $1 in coins… we checked!)

      So, the policy was to make an appointment, with me, to come in to count it all out, and I had a very scientific method of counting (stacks of 10 coins on a template page per coin size, so I could pat it with my hand to see if it was all level). Then they had to wait out in the lobby while I had it “verified”… in our coin counter. No one ever knew we had it, and that was really the point!

      Do yo know how long it takes to count out $25 in pennies when steam is coming out of your ears? I do! (about 40 minutes)…

  35. Yvette*

    OK I totally read it as “prettiest” and “pretty” and wondered what was going on until I read the part about the toilet paper.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      Maybe the toilet paper was kept in those decorative little roll covers.

      My mother had those growing up. They lived on the top of the toilet tanks and god help you if you actually used the roll of TP that was inside the cover. We also had decorative soaps and towels no one was allowed to use.

      1. Trixie Belden was my hero*

        My mother had “regular wrapping paper” and the “good wrapping paper” for Xmas presents. However, there was never a present good enough for the “good wrapping paper” One year my sister was in a hurry and used some of the “good paper” Mom was not happy when she found out and read sister the riot act. For decades after at every gift giving event someone would ask “Did you use the GOOD WRAPPING PAPER?” It continued down to the 2nd generation and then trailed off when gift bags were invented.

      2. coffee*

        Sudden flashback to the time I visited my aunt and had to debate between extracting the toilet paper roll from under the toilet paper doll, asking if there was another roll somewhere, or just scuttling off and leaving the problem for the next person.

        (I extracted the roll and then later confessed to my dad, who was confused about what “doll” I was worried about, and then unconcerned.)

        (The toilet paper doll was like a Dolly Varden cake, except instead of a skirt that was actually cake, it was a skirt covering a roll of toilet paper.)

        1. Sharpie*

          My nan had one of those, the difference being that was the next roll.of paper to be used because there was literally nowhere else to stash a spare (her house was built in the days when it was common to have the toilet in a separate room from the bath and sink, and there wasn’t enough room in there to put ANYTHING else!)

          1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

            Wait, is that not what the toilet paper doll is for? To store the next roll to be used? I think you did right, coffee!

            1. Dahlia*

              Yeah that was the point of them!! Ours was a mouse. You just put a new one under when you use that one so there’s always a spare.

        2. Juicebox Hero*

          We didn’t have toilet paper dolls, but we did have an air freshener doll for those Renuzit cone-shaped air fresheners. The problem was, the doll’s body was glued to the top of the cone so in order to put a new air freshener in, you had to pop the cone off both the new and old air fresheners and finagle the old cone onto the new freshener without making a huge mess or (horrors!) getting freshener goo on the doll’s dress.

          You didn’t even get much scent because the skirt blocked most of it. The whole thing was just asinine.

        3. Francie Foxglove*

          Toilet paper Infantas. My grandma and a lot of her neighbors had them. No shame in taking out the spare, as long as you got a replacement from the pantry.

  36. Up and Away*

    The radio in our office gets on my nerves in the worst way. It’s too loud, and I often don’t care for whatever they have on. I’ve asked many times to have it turned down to a set level, but it keeps getting turned back up. It’s a Bose, and our CEO also has a Bose in his office; so I will often borrow his Bose remote to turn down the volume on the shared radio. No one has figured it out yet.

  37. Theatre Mouse*

    Worked in a theatre that decided to switch from allowing us to just claim hours for the shifts rota-ed, or extra hours if you explained why, which would be capped at the half hour. So stay 15 minutes late past your call get paid for 30, which is what they charged companies. New boss implemented a clock in system so you’d get paid /to the minute/ only, but you could clock in and out on your phone so long as you were in the perimeter. So when I was on lock up duties instead of going “We walked out the door on time and it took 5 minutes to lock up I won’t claim it” I’d wait to clock out until I’d locked all the doors, moved my car off site and locked up the car park.

    Petty, yes, but it made me feel better.

    2. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      It sounds to me like you were not clocking out until you were done working, so…not petty?

  38. Liz the Snackbrarian*

    I worked in a public library. One woman came up to the desk to complain about the state of the restrooms and water fountain, which were actually very clean. How dare there be actual water in the bowl of the water fountain. I said “Thank you for letting me know, I will let the custodians know.” She said, “I’ve never been in this building and I’m so disappointed this is where my tax dollars are going” so I said “Ma’am, I also pay taxes.” Her response was “Do you notice these things?” and she walked away.

    Why do people think I have that many effs to give?

    1. Gene Parmesan*

      It is unfortunate that she was unhappy where $.003 of her tax dollars ended up, and proceeded to use $.005 of it telling you about it.

      On the plus side you actually made money during the conversation and all they made for themselves was grouchiness!

      1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        I am charmed and immediately thought of someone who would love to have it on her desk.

    4. Sharpie*

      When you are NOT at work, please look up Thomas Benjamin Wild Esq on YouTube, I think you will very much enjoy ‘I’ve No More F***s To Give’

    5. Elitist Semicolon*

      I have a friend in a related field whose response to comments like this is, “figure out what percentage of my salary comes from YOUR PERSONAL taxes and that’s what percentage of my time I’ll give you.”

  39. GardenGirl*

    Had a Asst Office Dir (AOD). who was a real piece of work. One day overheard him bragging about driving well over the posted speed limit thru a small “town” he had to drive thru to get to our office. My neighbor was a LEO, whose territory was along this road. I gave him a description of the vehicle and tag number and about what time AOD would be coming thru. A few days later AOD came in late, mad enough to spit nails. Seems he was pulled doing 15 over the speed limit and got a ticket for over $300!

    2. Beth*

      It took me a moment to realize your neighbour is a Law Enforcement Officer, not a Leo in the zodiac (although he could be both).

    3. Leo the lion*

      Not me in the UK finally figuring LEO is a Law Enforcement Officer, and not a lion or a star sign.

  40. Nusuth*

    I used to work at a nice-for-the-mall clothing and home goods store, and as any retail employee can attest, we saw our fair share of whack jobs dead set on creating the largest scene they could for an extremely nominal amount of money. I worked a lot, and often people would come in and end up yelling at a cashier near me something like SHE (pointing at me) told me yesterday I could return this!!!! (and I definitely had, but they were enraged that they couldn’t get cash -only an exchange – without ANY proof that they had actually purchased the item. You know, how stores work.) My small-time, petty move was to feign absolute ignorance that I had ever seen them before. You know, I’m sure someone told you that, I talk to a lot of people, maybe it was me but I don’t believe we’ve spoken, etc etc. It didn’t do much except make them feel crazy, which was reward enough. I should’ve gotten in trouble but usually these people were already annoying enough that managers had skipped past accommodating and were being firm.

    1. Zinnia*

      On a similar note – I used to work at a retail pharmacy in the photo department (back when 1 hour photo development was still a thing). There was a nasty, unpleasant woman who visited the store often and would complain to the managers about the cashiers often, leaning over the photo desk and getting into their faces while she was upset that the teenaged employees weren’t fawning over her and licking her boots.

      One day I was handling film in the department and Nasty Woman saw me and started to complain that I told her she could return her product (let’s call it a razor) without a receipt, the day before. Since I was out of fucks to give, I put the filmstrip down on the counter and walked over.

      “Yes ma’am, are you certain it was yesterday?”
      “YES!” she spat.
      “It was yesterday at 3pm?”
      “YES! I AM TELLING YOU-”
      “And, please pardon me, but it was this razor, correct?”
      “YES! YOU STUPID IDIOT! GOD!”

      I smiled at her and said, “I’m very sorry, but I wasn’t working yesterday.”

      “THE DAY BEFORE, THEN!”

      “No, I apologize, but this is my first day back in several days, and this was out of stock before I left, looks like we got some in while I was gone.”

      I smiled again while Nasty looked like she swallowed a lemon. My managers shooed me away.

      I still sometimes think about this encounter with pleasure.

  41. ReallyBadPerson*

    Not an employee, but a customer story. I was in line at a grocery store deli counter listening while a very elderly woman explained to the rude jerk of an employee that she needed her sliced meat placed into a plastic container, rather than a bag, because she had great difficulty opening plastic bags. Well, he wasn’t having it. He got angry, told her it wasn’t possible, but then complied anyway, very, very slowly. He practically hurled it at her when he had finished. So I decided I didn’t want the guy anywhere near my food. Instead, I raised my arm in a blessing and said: “May you never grow old enough to lose any of your abilities,” and walked off. I hope he thought I was some kind of evil witch with the power to curse him.

    1. nobadcats*

      Wow. That was just crappy of the deli worker. When I worked in a deli, “Want it in a 1lb deli instead of a bag? No problem!” Especially if the customer was elderly, which most of our clientele was.

      I think all of us at a certain age know that with the deli price label, the plastic deli bag is difficult to open and ends up in shreds. Just like standard plastic grocery bags, tie it in a double knot and for me it’s like a combination lock. I often yell, in my own bathroom, at “child-proof” caps on meds, “Someone fetch me a child of five to open this dang Tylenol bottle!”

      Well done you on the “curse”! I curtsy to you.

      1. Silver Robin*

        This does not work for all meds, but for those that come in those orange bottles in the pharmacy there is a way to close them and avoid the child proofing: flip the lid! The normal way, with the wider part of the lid facing down, is child proofed. But, many of those lids *also* have the screw cap part on the “top” so if you flip it upside-down, it just becomes a screw cap! Saved myself much consternation.

        1. nobadcats*

          Yeah, I know! I always ask for my scrip meds to be flipped to the non-child-proof side. “What? I’m an elderly spinster, is my cat going to open this bottle? No. Please stop with the child-proof cap.”

          It’s like a a USB plug, 50% chance of getting it wrong, and it’s wrong 100% of the time, and the pharmacy, 75% always the flipside child-proof cap. Just staaaaaahp it! And every child I have known, even my kids that I taught, could open the child-proof bottle in a hot second. Again, “Fetch me a child of five!”

        2. Random Bystander*

          Oooh … I am now reminded of a time when I was 20. I had had an accident ice skating (another skater grabbed me by the elbows and used me as a cushion for her fall … I did a two-point landing on my right wrist and right hip). Well, upshot of the wrist injury was that I was going to need surgery, and I had seen the doctor/surgeon who would be doing the procedure for a morning appointment, and then he said that he had an afternoon surgery opening if I wanted it (I had driven myself to the appointment), and I jumped on that, because I was in college and this was in between semesters and otherwise I’d have had to have surgery mid-semester. Well, I was given an rx for pain post-surgery, and wouldn’t you know it that they put it in the child-proof mode. I had my hand in a bandage that was almost the size of a boxing glove, and I’m right-handed, though this injury did make me border ambidextrous. No one was home when I got home, and I was sobbing by the time my Mom (first home) did get home “please open this bottle!”

          Seriously, we don’t all need child proof caps (currently, the youngest human in my house is my youngest son who is 22–the cats fortunately don’t have the capacity to open the bottles, although they have been known to treat them like toys if I forget to hide the bottle in the cupboard.

      2. Alisaurus*

        Most child-proof caps – like on Tylenol – are just a larger cap with little clips that sits over an actual screw-on cap, so pushing down on it makes it catch. If you push upward on the larger cap, it will come off of the smaller one.

        I realize that might not be the easiest-to-understand explanation, so here’s a video to explain it better: https://youtube.com/shorts/Zu0NAg5fm9Y?feature=share

        1. nobadcats*

          It’s not that I don’t understand the mechanics of the cap, it’s that it’s HARD for me to execute the procedure to open it with my own bare hands. Please understand, it’s just not that easy for some of us as we got older.

          With my San Pellegrino and other bottled liquids, I use my pliers (always on my kitchen counter) to open them since my hands aren’t strong enough for the twist off. Medicine caps, with the push/twist are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish which also involves my knees, a washcloth or dishtowel, and a sh*tload of swearing that startles my cat awake.

          1. Amanda*

            Next time you get blood work done, as if you can take the tourniquet home with you. In all likelihood, it’s single use anyway, and they are going to throw it away. They make an AMAZING bottle opener for twist tops.

            1. nobadcats*

              It’s not that easy for some of us. I’ve tried this before, and… ended up with the pliers and my nail file trying to get the thing open. People have different abilities and they often differ by age. Right now, I can’t wear over half my bracelets unless they’re bangles, the others which are gemstones with lobster claw closures, I can no longer manage to clasp at all. Something I did not have empathy for when I was in my 20s working a jewelry counter.

              1. Dahlia*

                I’m disabled, so I’m aware. But your comment seemed like you didn’t understand that they weren’t just trying to explain the mechanism. Apologies for misunderstanding.

                You can get a 12 pack of magnetic clasps on amazon for about 10 bucks, by the way. I have them for my necklaces. Like these https://www.amazon.com/Dsmile-Magnetic-Lobster-Necklace-Bracelet/dp/B01NASHR96/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=magnetic+clasps+for+jewelry&qid=1686948084&sprefix=magnetic+clasps%2Caps%2C311&sr=8-5

                I would also recommend a jar and bottle opener like this https://www.amazon.com/Opener-Bottle-Kitchen-Ketchup-Blue-Green/dp/B07NTLFXRL/ref=sr_1_10?crid=3USCRENX4O80T&keywords=jar+opener&qid=1686948090&sprefix=jar+opener%2Caps%2C154&sr=8-10

                Those are things I find very handy as someone in her 30s who’s disabled. :)

      3. Mister_L*

        I guess this employee sucked, but depending on where you are there might be hygiene procedures preventing people from fulfilling that request.

        1. Dahlia*

          I’m pretty sure they mean the plastic containers that they use for deli salads, not her own plastic containers.

  42. Mayor of Llamatown*

    An echo of the Target cashier: I worked in an upscale flower shop while in high school and college (early 2000s), as a cashier. Saturday and Sunday mornings were always busy with people picking up floral arrangements for celebrations or parties. Our checkout counters were set up in a square around a countertop work station – it added to the fancy feeling (no real lines, lots of space to wrap bouquets) but it meant that when things were busy it was sometimes a bit crowded and hectic back there. Think like a scene from a restaurant kitchen during rush with people working around each other, squeezing past one another, passing things back and forth, etc.

    One lady (stereotypical suburban Karen) at like 11 am on a Saturday came in to get some sort of arrangement she had ordered. There was of course a line up of people getting flowers. I rang up her purchase. Usually someone else would take the lead on boxing an arrangement but of course, everyone was busy. So I brought her order over to the wrapping station behind our counters to wrap myself once I was done ringing her up. Because it was so busy, none of the boxes had been made up ahead of time, so I had to build the box, and I’m having to wait for the stapler, the tape, etc as everyone else is boxing up arrangements as well. Definition of a traffic jam.

    At this point she started whining. Literally whining, like a child. About how long it was taking. Specifically saying of me, “She’s taking forever.” Implying I’m doing it on purpose. She’s whining about how the cake in her car is going to melt. I offered that if she wanted to go wait in her car to cool it down, I could finish wrapping it and bring it to her car (which was something we were allowed to do if a person asked for it, but it wasn’t a standard thing we did). She whined loudly “No, I want you to finish wrapping it already!” At this point my assistant manager steps in with over-the-top concern, just to get this lady to stop whining. I remember my manager saying “Your cake isn’t something we can control, ma’am, we’re working as fast as we can.”

    Because she’s busy complaining to my manager, and not leaving for her precious cake, I started adding tons of bells and whistles, like Mr. Bean in Love Actually. Special tissue paper, folded fancy. Ribbon curls. An enclosure card on a stake. If she’d just calmed down and taken it, she would have been gone five minutes earlier.

    I truly hope her cake didn’t melt, but I also hope whoever got that arrangement enjoyed the ribbon curls.

      1. Mayor of Llamatown*

        Thank you! I didn’t want to ruin someone’s day so I just made it extra sparkly :)

        2. Charlotte Lucas*

          As someone who worked in an ice cream shop, I say that it’s her own damn fault if she didn’t plan her errands to pick up the cake last.

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            THANK YOU. I get soooo many customers whining that their pies are cold, and it’s because they picked up their food and then ran fifteen errands!

          2. Mayor of Llamatown*

            RIGHT!? It was a sunny day in June. It wasn’t unseasonably warm, it was just…normal warm temps. She could have paid $7 to get the flowers delivered if she had to go out of her way to pick them up. I just had no sympathy for her.

            Truly, as the OP said, people are so mean to cashiers for no reason. You can always tell who didn’t work in retail (or who has since made so much money that they no longer have grips on the reality workers deal with.)

            1. allathian*

              Yeah, this. I’d like to think that I’m a decent enough person that I’d treat retail employees well even if I hadn’t worked in retail myself in my teens and 20s. But my experience certainly ensured that I do just that. I never blame cashiers or servers for things that are beyond their control. I’ve submitted a few complaints when it’s been necessary and done so through official channels while sticking to the facts of what happened without assigning blame.

    2. K*

      I’m a little disappointed that you’re choosing to perpetuate the streotype by calling her out as a “Karen”. It’s unnecessary. You could absolutely get your point across without that.

      1. Magenta*

        I agree, no matter how it started, it has become a misogynistic slur now and it is used to silence women, particularly older ones.

        1. Lily*

          A friend said to me recently, when I referred to someone as a “Karen”, that derisively using the name in that manner is “Just another way to tell women to shut up.”

        2. Tired*

          You’re neglecting the class aspect (and, as Database Developer Dude points out below, race)

      2. Database Developer Dude*

        Considering the six letter word starting with n that gets thrown at me regularly, and the way the moniker “Karen” started out, by the ACTIONS of some people, I’m somewhat less than sympathetic.

        Come back with your complaint when they start lynching middle-aged white women with bad haircuts.

  43. nobadcats*

    My petty wasn’t actually IN the office. I had an incredibly toxic boss at the beginning of my career. She was in charge of the word processing and proofreading department at Fancy Accounting firm. She’d choose one person to be her “pet” for a few months and drag them into her office for hours every day, telling them all her life story, her troubles and woes in her love life, her gyn health issues, really inappropriate boundary crossing and line stepping. I was too young to understand that this was so wildly out of the norm, that I just went along with it. I was her pet for about three months, my work not getting done due to her emotional bleeding for hours every day. After some imaginary offense, she’d pick a new pet.

    I quit that job with in a blaze of profanity and no notice after one too many insults to injury and being written up for, I sh*t you not, “not being nice enough to Boss.”

    Some months later, I was at a restaurant that the office would often frequent. They had a giant glass fishbowl on the hostess desk in which people would throw their business cards to get a free lunch in a drawing. I noticed that Old Boss had about 10 cards in there. When the hostess left to help another customer, I dug out every single card of hers I could find and chucked them in the bin out on the street.

    In my defense, I was left unsupervised with the bowl.

      1. nobadcats*

        “Not getting a free lunch on my watch, bitca.” Dusted my hands off, then flipped my pillow to the cool side and slept the sleep of the just

          1. nobadcats*

            You know it! Very old typo from 257 years ago, when dinosaurs walked Earth, and there was no glamour.

    3. My Name is Mudd*

      This is perfection. Actually hurts no one, and the annoying person doesn’t win free stuff.

    5. ReallyBadPerson*

      This is the ideal petty. Only you know what you did and there was no collateral damage.

  44. Amy*

    my org used to not provide plant-based milks (in 2017) and i didn’t realize as I had just started–so then the owner of the soymilk LEFT AN ANONYMOUS POSTIT on the empty carton on the kitchen counter stating it wasn’t for sharing–I was mortified and outed myself as the stealer by posting in the all-office skype chat that I put a new carton in and that I’d be happy to split/take turns in the future–no one ever fessed up and I never figured out whose handwriting it was! My office has now gone vegan so totally moot point but seriously still a mystery…

    1. Kit Kendrick*

      I used to bring in my own milk for tea and cereal in the morning because our company only provided powdered creamer. I am sure each person who put a splash of milk in their coffee thought “I’m just taking a tiny bit, it won’t make any difference,” but I was only getting to use half or less of any container I brought in. (Everyone knew that the office was not supplying milk, so it was not a matter of thinking it was communal.) I took a sharpie and drew a frownie face on the cap of my milk. I felt incredibly childish and petty, but the milk ‘shrinkage’ did stop.

    2. Nina*

      My last job, I was in the satellite office of… let’s call it a tech company, close enough, but we had an added frisson of ‘if I fuck up too badly at work there’s a very real chance someone will actually die’. Long hours. Head office decided we could have a snack budget. The snack budget was set based on costs at head office, which was in a very large and very expensive city and most of the snacks were like, fresh-made catered food.

      We were in a very rural area and the nearest place to get food was the supermarket in the village half an hour away. Our logistics coordinator was given control of the snack budget and he went absolutely nuts with it. Gallons of milk. Every kind of dairy-free milk (people had preferences!). Every kind of cereal bar and instant noodle and yogurt and soda the supermarket carried. He made a feedback sheet on the snack cupboard door (list of all items in the cupboard with boxes letting you rate them from 1-5; too many 1-star ratings and the item disappeared, enough 5-star ratings and every other product in that range would also appear to be assessed) if you put something in the suggestion box it would show up the next week.

      It was insane and beautiful and head office never said boo about it.

      1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

        I know we all hate pizza parties, but this kind of perk in a workplace does genuinely improve morale.

        In my first proper job, the office had a weekly supermarket grocery delivery. I don’t particularly remember much about it except that we always had pink grapefruit high juice (er, cordial? does a similar job to kool-aid but is a sort of syrup concentrate made with real fruit that you reconstitute with water from the cooler). Beautifully sharp and refreshing.

        1. Magenta*

          Robinsons Pink Grapefruit squash is my absolute favourite! I’m going to go make a glass right now!

  45. Cat Tree*

    This is passive aggressive more than petty, but I’ll share. I work on a sub-team of 4. We all report to the same manager but we’re fairly independent because it’s a high level job. Currently I’m the only woman on the team, although this is largely coincidental right now. The weekly group check-in meeting that a previous (female) coworker arranged expired. For months there were vague comments about “the meeting should be restarted” but nobody ever volunteered. The comments started to get more direct, such as saying them right after I talked about something else. I refused to ever pick up on the hints. It dragged on long enough that our boss started asking us when we would re-start the meetings.

    One day I mentioned something and one guy said something like, “yeah that would be really good to bring up at our weekly meeting”. And I said something like, “great idea, can you put something on our calendars?” It was hard for him to refuse after that setup so he did it and it’s not my problem now.

    3. Rainbow*

      Ohhhhh yes. When I was in grad school, someone requested me to my face to do a task, “because the last woman did it”! I, despite generally being quite agreeable, said no, due to his wording. Nobody did the task…

  46. Constance Lloyd*

    My now husband and I met as coworkers. When we started dating, we also began looking for other jobs. On his last day in the office, I made an elaborately decorated sheet cake to share with our coworkers. I’m talking intricately piped flowers, vines… and the phrase, “Good Riddance.”

    It turns out not everyone knew it was his last day. This would not have been a problem, except the previous day was also the last day of another coworker few people could stand. For the rest of the day several of my coworkers thought I had made a cake to celebrate a former colleague’s departure, AND NOBODY TOLD ME.

  47. Petty please*

    I had a manager who was petty and a micromanager. She was about two inches shorter than me, but she always wore three-inch heels and I usually wore flats in the office. On days when she was especially frustrating, I would change into heels and make a point to stand close to her so she had to look up at me. She never failed to comment on me being taller than her.

    2. ScruffyInternHerder*

      Hee hee hee

      Technically I was a willing participant in the pettiness, so it counts right?

      The characters:
      Jimbo, he with attitude and added issues of not really believing women should work (at all) AND purposefully leaning into the stereotype of a shorter man in a male dominated field.
      Me, a woman with a pretty technical job in said male dominated field.
      Willers, my supervisor with whom I got along, who had little to no patience for Jimbo’s daily chest-puffing and nonsense.
      Bert, the site supervisor; he’s not employed by the same company that Willers and I work for, but he is employed by the same company as Jimbo. He’s on the same page as Willers.

      Daily stand up meeting, I find myself frequently standing next to Jimbo. This is always orchestrated by Willers or Bert, or a combination effort thereof. I stand approximately 8″ taller than Jimbo. I don’t have to say anything, but everyone in the room can see that Jimbo is STEWING. Apparently I have some nerve, both being a woman and being not-average-height. Given what an outsized jerk Jimbo is, this daily shenanigans is enjoyed by anyone paying attention.

      1. Arts Akimbo*

        This is genius-level petty, because technically no one is doing anything at all, you’re just existing! Existing next to him, in a way that no one in their right mind could call you out on.

        1. ScruffyInternHerder*

          Added bonus that the person he’d be complaining about me existing to….was one of the orchestrators of at least half of this shenanigan!

          Most mornings after morning stand up, we’d be leaving and as soon as we were out of earshot, Willers would be doubled over and howling with laughter. It was epic!

  48. And I'm the alchemist of the hinterlands*

    My brother works for Disney World. And although they do have lots of rules and they have to be careful, they can have sneaky moments of evil with customers who deserve it. Once someone called my brother “Hey you!” and asked for directions to a specific attraction. My brother sent him out of the park instead. One of my brother’s coworkers worked for a concierge for one of the high end resorts and dealt with all sorts of nut jobs who would go to him expecting him to fix whatever they were unhappy with. Once someone was being extremely belligerent on the phone and asked him to put his manager on. The employee graciously said he would and put on a recording of Goofy singing happy birthday.

    1. squirreltooth*

      I used to work at Disneyland and was much more weirded out when people called me by name rather than “hey you.”

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I have seen so many Disney cast members at the admissions turnstiles for the parks carefully not correct folks who are pitching screaming tantrums about how they shouldn’t have to wait in line to get into the park, they have reservations in 20 minutes at (restaurant, ride, or experience that is totally in a different park than the one they are waiting in line to get into that they can absolutely not get to in 20 minutes) and it makes me BEAM.

    3. FormerPizzaBoy*

      One of my former jobs was a downtown big tourist city location. Often would give directions. Nice? you get to your destination. Rude? You’re going somewhere else.

      1. Cathie from Canada*

        When my son worked at a pharmacy in downtown Vancouver, tourists often asked the staff where such-and-such was. One of his coworkers would always wave toward the waterfront and say cheerfully “Its two blocks down and to the left!” And off they went.
        It’s become a catchphrase in our family.

      2. JustaTech*

        My high school was in the downtown of a major East Coast city and one year there was a meeting of some kind of major international group (the World Monetary Fund? Something like that) that brought out a ton of weirdo protestors.
        It made the subway a mess, everyone was late for class and these people were (generally) real jerks. It was also surprising because we were many subway stops from the location of the thing they were protesting.
        So when a guy dressed as a killer GMO corn asked my friends and I for directions we were super helpful – and sent them out of the city.

      3. nobadcats*

        Not necessarily job-related, but when I lived in Seattle and worked downtown, lots of tourists would come up to me and ask where they could find the Space Needle. I’d check the map in my head and send them in any direction that was opposite the Space Needle. I mean, really, you’re holding a tourist map IN YOUR HAND, just… look up, for goodness sake, the Big Pointy Thing can be seen from pretty much everywhere if you’re downtown.

        This kind of stuff happens to me in almost every public space I enter. Walgreens, the liquor store, DMV, the vet, the library, public transit, Paris, Glasgow, Saigon, et. al., I guess I just project competence, safety, and “someone who might know things.”

        1. FormerPizzaBoy*

          The city in my story was also Seattle. Since I downtown, near the convention centers, it was usually “where is Pike’s [sic] Place?” or to Pioneer Square (I did work in Pioneer Square as well for another business. this one based in tourism so I couldn’t be as loose with directions). The good directions and the bad directions were essentially the same, with the direction changed. Nice? Take a left, walk until you hit the water, take a right. Rude? take a right first, then walk uphill for a while.

        2. FormerPizzaBoy*

          The city in my story was also Seattle. Since I was downtown, near the convention centers, it was usually “where is Pike’s [sic] Place?” or to Pioneer Square (I did work in Pioneer Square as well for another business. this one based in tourism so I couldn’t be as loose with directions). The good directions and the bad directions were essentially the same, with the direction changed. Nice? Take a left, walk until you hit the water, take a right. Rude? take a right first, then walk uphill for a while.

        3. SnappinTerrapin*

          A man drove onto the car lot where I used to work, rolled down the window, and asked me for directions to a dealership across town that sold cars manufactured by a different company. Initial response: “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know.”

          He raised his voice: “WHAT???!”

          I very slowly said: “I. do. not. know. where. that. business. is. And. I. do. not. care. where. they. are.”

          He got mad and started yelling about how I didn’t have to be rude about it. I walked away, wondering if he had ever gone to McDonald’s and asked for directions to Burger King.

  49. Admin Amber*

    We had a terrible human who insisted on having her phone volume turned up all the way so when she got a call everyone on the cubicle farm could hear the ringing. I used to go into her office and turn down the volume all the way. I don’t believe she ever figured it out. She was later fired for being a terrible employee. Not sorry.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      My coworker did that when we had our old handsets pre-lockdown, then would sit there ignoring her phone and waiting for someone else to pick up.

    2. Bronze Betty*

      I should have done that to a former co-worker from several years ago. Her phone did not actually ring, though. Its “ring” was a voice saying, “You have an incoming call. . . You have an incoming call . . . ” And she would frequently leave her desk (well, maybe it just felt like it was frequent), and we all would hear this message repeating until it finally went to voicemail. An actual ring would have been less annoying.

      1. Bronze Betty*

        Note: This was her cell phone, not her work desk phone. Back in the days before most offices required your cell phones to be on silent/vibrate.

        1. Emma*

          Ah, in my office we all know how to silence each other’s phones. It’s just one of those things – especially if you’re a single parent, which lots of my colleagues are, you can’t put it on do not disturb; so instead when you get back someone will say “so and so called you, I rejected it”

      2. Don't make me come over there*

        I used to have a coworker who would take all his calls (personal as well as professional) on speakerphone. In an office with 6 other people. I knew all about his mortgage, his dog, his nephew’s math tutor. One time he joined a webinar, with the audio on his speakerphone, and GOT UP AND LEFT THE OFFICE. I got up and disconnected the call. I don’t understand some people’s thought processes.

    3. nobadcats*

      Petty confession: with my co-irker who did this, one desk away from me (we’re all editors, so the office was very quiet–we’re all WFH now), if she was in a meeting in a conference room and her cell started kicking off for minutes at a time, I would silently get up, grab her phone and either put it in the freezer or bury it under the stacks of takeaway plastic utensils and paper plates in our kitchenette.

      It was loud enough that she could find it later. Never pegged me as the culprit. Still have no regrets.

  50. Melissa*

    I had a coworker who just absolutely hated me. (*I* think this is because I was good at our job and she was not, but she probably has a different take on it.). One time at a party there was a “guess how many beans are in the jar” thing. Fun, silly activity, that nobody took seriously; whoever guesses the closest gets to take the jar of jelly beans home. Well, I guessed the closest and won— let’s say there were 75 beans and I guessed 77. Well, this coworker made a stink because she thought the rule should be “closest guess without going over.”

    2. Narise*

      So was she closest without going over and would someone else had won? Trying to figure out why she cared so much.

      1. Melissa*

        I don’t 100% remember, but I don’t think her guess was even close! Nor did she know whose was. She just knew she didn’t want ME to win.

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      Jelly beans. Where even when you’re buying fancy ones the cost for a bag of hundreds is under twenty bucks. WELL under.

    4. Gumby*

      You can’t change the rules retroactively!

      Though I did spend much of this week playing cost proposal The Price is Right wherein the proposal rules have an upper dollar limit and everyone proposing tries to write a budget so as to get as close as possible to the limit w/o going over. But you can’t just say “it will cost $500,000” – you have to say who is working on the project and how many hours and what materials you are buying and what your indirect rates are, etc. I got one proposal within $10 of the limit by switching one hour of work from a senior llama groomer to a junior llama groomer and I am inordinately proud of that!

  51. Hannah*

    I was sent to an annual conference that lasted a few days in another city. I wanted to ask the hotel for a mini-fridge as I tend to have leftovers from any restaurant meal and I wanted to be able to save them/save a little money on meals. Somehow, I had difficulty getting my hotel phone to connect to the front desk but I eventually successfully made my mini fridge request. After I returned home from the conference, the Director of my organization informed me that my hotel bill had 1 unauthorized phone call charge of $.50 from the conference trip. Apparently, I had somehow made an external call using the hotel phone when I’d called to ask for the mini fridge. My Director called me personally to inform me I had to pay the $.50 in order to settle my hotel bill with the org’s finance dept. (in a completely different bldg). That day. He called at around 4:30pm. Speedily, I went to pay the $.50, but was informed I needed a specific form in order to do so. I asked what the form was and was told that “my director should know what the form was”. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to reach the Director/his assistant until the next day, but when I did his assistant relayed the correct form to fill out, so I filled it out and returned to finance to pay the $.50. Nope, wrong form. My Director would have to request the correct form from someone (my memory of the details are fuzzy) which would then be sent to me. Over the next couple days, both my boss and I were daily subjected to calls from the Director via his assistant asking when I was going to pay the $.50. His poor assistant understood that I was unable to pay until I was given the correct form — that the Director needed to request for me. My boss kept reminding the Director to request the correct form, but the Director still kept telling his assistant to pester me about it. Finally, I got the correct form and I dutifully paid the $.50. I still have the carbon copy receipt proving it somewhere. The worst part was that I never even got my promised mini fridge while I was at the hotel.

    3. CommanderBanana*

      JFC.

      I once got an email (the day after I had major surgery) from the head of finance asking me to repay $2.32 for a pack of gum I had bought on a trip because “gum wasn’t food” and therefore wouldn’t be reimbursed.

      This is the same head of finance who somehow didn’t catch an employee embezzling over $100K over the course of 2 years.

        1. AFac*

          At one of my workplaces, it was because they didn’t catch the person embezzling $$$$ that we subsequently had to justify all costs in sextuplicate using whatever form they deemed correct depending on the phase of the moon.

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      FIFTY CENTS. Man, those quarters should have been on his closed-forever eyes!

      1. Hannah*

        Lol – one of my friends joked that I should have sent 2 quarters to the Director interoffice mail with a note – “here’s the $.50, you handle the paperwork.”

  52. Janeric*

    I once had a deeply unpleasant coworker for fieldwork. We were compiling a plant list for an area and he INSISTED that stinging nettle was an unusual mint. He wouldn’t accept “I accidentally walked through it and know it’s stinging nettle, trust me” as an answer. Finally I said
    “Fine, grab a specimen and put it in your bag.”
    He grabbed a big handful, a pained look crossed his face, and then he agreed that it WAS stinging nettle.

    Where I get real petty is that I’d ask him what “that weird mint” was the whole rest of the season. I don’t think he ever learned to identify stinging nettle by sight.

    3. Quill*

      Oh, fieldwork.

      I will admit that I take more joy in this than I probably should, given my background in “nobody mentioned the large hole in the ground and therefore I ate dirt” type of fieldwork.

    4. Warrior Princess Xena*

      How do you get someone whose job it is to compile a plant list and not have them be able to recognize stinging nettle??? I’m by no means a plant expert but I can ID the plants that can bite back in my area.

      1. Tau*

        Maybe it’s just me but it feels like the woods around here consist to 30% of stinging nettle and even some of the parks are infested (I am in a major metropolis and had to yank a coworker from another climate zone away from danger at one point). You learn to identify that shit early, or suffer.

    5. Charlotte Lucas*

      Ok. I have to admit that I was thinking longingly of all that free stinging nettle. (A bath in hot water & it’s a tasty green for a frittata, etc.)

      1. Emma*

        Please come visit the path I cycle down for my commute sometime, one woman’s very sore ankle is another’s tea.

    6. Juicebox Hero*

      Awesome.

      When I had a field biology class in college, the first things we were taught to identify were poison ivy, ragweed, and stinging nettles because the college didn’t want us coming back with rashes, allergy attacks, or handsful of pain. It left me with permanent weed-dar.

    7. allathian*

      Stinging nettles make a great substitute for spinach in soup, pancakes, savory pies, and omelettes when you pick them young and blanch them. You can also dry them (without blanching) or freeze them after blanching.

      We lived in a fairly rural area when I was a kid and I grew up foraging edible plants like stinging nettles, as well as picking berries and mushrooms.

  53. Anon for this*

    At a previous job, I managed someone who had legitimate food allergies. The whole team knew this, so whenever we brought treats in for the team, we made sure to include something this person could eat. If we went out to lunch, we made sure it was a place where this person could order something. The director of our department (who was my manager) didn’t believe food allergies were A Thing, so she would make a point of calling out this person every single time. She was a terrible boss and an overall miserable human being for many other reasons, but this issue in particular really got under my skin.
    On my last day there, I invited my team to go out to lunch with me, but didn’t invite my manager. I made sure she knew we were all going out together and she wasn’t invited. Yes, it was unkind and I still feel badly about it.

    2. AnonToday*

      Don’t feel badly! People who ignore allergies that make people severely ill are dangerous.

    3. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Man, I can so relate – both to doing the pettiness (what a jerk! I hate it when people decide other people’s lives experiences are Not A Thing and then decide to exert some kind of authority over them) and to the guilt afterward.

      If you still feel badly about it, it might help to do some visualization or feel into that feeling, and let warmth, compassion, or whatever else seems like it would be helpful flow into it.

      Imagine apologizing to her (or to her higher self if you prefer) and her accepting the apology with grace and understanding and releasing you from this guilt.

      Just something that works for me sometimes.

      1. Lily*

        “Imagine apologizing to her (or to her higher self if you prefer) and her accepting the apology with grace and understanding and releasing you from this guilt.”
        I like this.

    4. K*

      Legitimate food allergies? Are you implying that some food allergies are lesser important? Or illegitmate?

      1. Ancient Llama*

        Assume positive intent: some people refer to things that aren’t actual allergies as allergies just because it is easier. I am one of those: I have a caffeine intolerance (per dr it is not an allergy) that gives me shortness of breathe, migraines (yes I get the irony that many migraine pain relievers have caffeine because it helps them, but not me) and other issues. It is just easier when I ask if the root beer is caffeine free to say I have an allergy than explain all this to the server.
        So assume Anon is not saying there are less legitimate food allergies, please.

        1. Zweisatz*

          +1 I have food intolerances, but they won’t kill me because they’re not anaphylactic.

          I do think it is completely okay to make the distinction between “will make you miserable temporarily” and “can suffocate you”.

          I don’t feel it implies my issues aren’t “real”.

        2. Database Developer Dude*

          If it helps, Barq’s is definitely NOT caffeine free. That’s why I usually go for it. I remember it by saying “Barq’s has bite”.

      2. Lily*

        I work in healthcare, where allergies and tolerances tend to be lumped together. We sometimes need to distinguish between a “true allergy” and an intolerance. It doesn’t mean we’re doubting that allergies are real.

  54. Barnacle Sally*

    My former boss was an extreme micromanager and as a result every staff had a petty moment or 2. Some highlights– The boss insisted on a daily morning meeting to go over the previous day, including all 30 staff members previous day. My coworker who was the assigned note taker promptly changed the Meeting Minutes title to the F/U Sheet (Follow Up Sheet)
    My first week there I realized how micro managing the boss was when I walked upstairs to use the restroom and he met me outside his office demanding to know why I wasn’t downstairs doing my job. I informed him I needed to use the bathroom and he became very deflated and flustered and began stammering “oh…of course, yes please do” while backing away (I guess bodily functions escaped him?) From then on anytime I went upstairs to use the facilities and saw him I cheerfully and loudly let him know “Using the restroom!” To which all the other managers would wonder amongst themselves why I announced it and the story would get told and the boss would be embarrassed all over again. Ha!

    2. Julia*

      I had a manager who did that to me and was never embarrassed when I said said I was in the bathroom. It ended with me having to write on the office whiteboard that I was at the restroom.

      That boss also wanted me to track my time in 15 minute increments because he was convinced that I wasn’t evenly splitting my time between two work sites. I dutifully did this and carefully noted the amount of time I was spent filling time tracking information. After 6 months of time tracking I demonstrated that I was indeed divvying up my job correctly. I asked if I could stop tracking my time. He was reluctant to let me stop because he was convinced I would eventually realize it was beneficial. I was eventually able to convince him that no I didn’t find it personally satisfying or helpful.

  55. Admin Lackey*

    At a terrible admin job I had a number of years ago, one of the more senior admin staff was a huge bully and just generally unpleasant to be around. Management knew she was a problem, but wouldn’t do anything other than give her warning after warning that never went anywhere.

    Our jobs overlapped a lot and she was a daily source of stress, but of course I had no power to push back and she knew there would be no consequences for treating me badly.

    However, I was always among the first people in the office each day. Once every month or two, after she’d been particularly bad the day before, I would go to her desk and turn off her wireless mouse. She would spend a few minutes clicking fruitlessly before figuring out what was going on. At first she seemed to think she had turned them off and then forgotten, but I think she eventually realized someone else was doing it. But she had way too many enemies at work to have any hope of narrowing it down to me.

    Pointless? Big time. But it was a small thing I could do to annoy and inconvenience her that she could never trace back to me, so I reveled in this small act of vindictiveness…

  56. urguncle*

    My first job out of college was a call center for a Big 3 auto company. Technicians would call in and get permission to change special parts under warranty in exchange for the “core” so that the engineers could study what went wrong. We had a questionnaire of 21 or so questions, but once you became decent at the job, you could skip or answer a lot of the questions without asking the technicians. Techs did not get paid for this time, so they were eager to get through this as soon as possible. My call resolution time was 6 minutes. The average for the department was 12.
    We did have an older guy, George, who used to be a car salesman, but picked this job up in retirement part time. He was very slow and loved to tell stories to the technicians halfway through the calls. 40+ minutes later, he’d let them go. There was a lot of misogyny from every direction at that job, so when a technician called up, heard my voice and let me know that he didn’t think I’d understand what he needed, I had no problem letting George know that someone was asking for him by name. Made George’s day! He was excited to get such a complicated case. A full 90 minutes later, he hung up and let me know it wasn’t complicated at all, he just had two or three claims to get through, although that guy seemed like he was in a real hurry.
    Same place, I did bilingual claims for some Canadian dealers. Lots of them loved to tell me that they didn’t like my accent, so I’d offer any time to put them back in the English line if they preferred. Magically, they were able to understand me after that.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Ha, I love routing the sexist technicians to George! The punishment fits the crime.

  57. WellRed*

    Not super interesting because my office is too nice but had a coworker who found a pink razor scooter with a bell and took to driving it around the office dinging the damn bell. I finally hid it on her.

    1. Bronze Betty*

      I have questions. Did she find it? Did she figure out that she was annoying the office? If so, did she stop doing it?

      Since I wasn’t there, it does sound fun to ride a scooter around the office, ringing a bell. Maybe before or after hours.

      1. WellRed*

        I eventually gave it back after a month or so. It wasn’t even that well hidden! She did stop riding it around however.

  58. Oryx*

    I was a solo librarian at a career college and the library was sometimes assigned as a classroom. One evening, a teacher was there with her class. The students were in there taking an exam for her class and she spent the entire time talking to another teacher. The library was a small room and they were not quiet (well, the other teacher was; I think she didn’t know how to get out of the convo). It was annoying me and I wasn’t even taking the test, so I politely suggested if the teachers wanted to chat they should do it in the hallway so the students could have a quiet space for their exam.

    She was big mad and a couple days later when she was next in there with her class she pulled me out into the hallway to tell me how incredibly disrespectful it was to talk to her like that in front of her class (nevermind she was the one being loud while they were taking a test) and I was not allowed to do that to her again.

    I just stood there, smiling placidly as she ranted, and said “I promise, that will never, ever happen again.” She walked away smirking, convinced she’d somehow “won” the conversation.

    A few hours later, I sent out an all staff “Thanks for the memories folks” email because it was my last day and she had no idea.

    1. EngineerResearcher*

      This is perfect, there’s a little part of me that hopes she wonders if she contributed to you leaving.

  59. Pangolin*

    Years ago I was working with an external contact had a name that can be spelt with or without one letter – Rachel/Rachael, Stacey/Stacy, Sara/Sarah etc. One time I wrote the wrong spelling in an email – which is, I grant, very irritating: it isn’t that hard to spell a name properly when it’s right there in the ‘from’ bar etc. When she replied, she stuck an R in the middle of my name. I replied, spelling her name correctly, and apologised for the typo. For the rest of our correspondence she spelt my name wrong, differently every time.

    1. Stokes*

      This is amazing. Spelling your name wrong the first time is great, but the commitment to keep doing it? Pure gold. Sounds like she really had an axe to grind.

    2. Ally McBeal*

      Man, if I thought I could get away with permanently and deliberately misspelling the name of everyone who’s ever misspelled my name, regardless of whether they apologized for the one-time mistake, I’d live a happy life.

    3. Not a Penguin*

      which is hilarious since in our house, Pangolin is one of the permutations of how Benedict Cumberbatch can’t say Penguin.

  60. I knew Wos*

    At a previous job in a small company, we had only one IT guy. His name was Wos (for waste of salary). Wos spent most of his time doing crazy projects he dreamed up that did nothing to help the company, while ignoring his real duties.

    One day we turned (the developers) off the laser printer for some random reason. That’s when we found out he monitored EVERYTHING and got mad it was off. So he came out and turned it back on.

    Well ‘ol Wos was a big thorn in our side, so one of the developers (Hilarious Hank) turned the printer back off to annoy him again. The printer was on the next day. Then the network cable was unplugged, that got fixed. So Hank cut the network cable, plugged it into the printer, and hid the cut end where the cable snaked under furniture so it wasn’t obvious.

    In the end Wos, who never said a word to us doing all of this, put in a nearly hidden network cable and plugged everything back in. But when Hank turned off the printer power… it stayed on.

    You see Wos had opened the printer (poorly, breaking some plastic) and bypassed the power switch so it wouldn’t turn the printer off anymore and we couldn’t mess with things.

    1. allathian*

      Ouch. Now I’m all for pettiness in the workplace when it’s warranted, but I draw the line at sabotaging equipment. Both Wos *and* Hank should’ve been fired for intentionally damaging equipment owned by the company, and they should’ve been required to pay for getting the damage fixed as well.

    2. Lizzo*

      One of my colleagues (whose role was primarily IT, but he was not in the centralized IT department) updated the message on our laser printer so that when it was waiting between print jobs it said “Insert Coin”.
      Not petty, just amusing. I still chuckle when I think of it.

  61. The Wizard Rincewind*

    It’s not as funny, but I had a coworker who would make the weirdest, most nitpicky “suggestions” when editing things I wrote. Like…clearly there wasn’t a lot to edit there but they felt like they HAD to say SOMETHING, so it would be stuff like “should we say that [Donor X] is based in Idaho if they have a vacation house in France?” or “I personally don’t use the word ‘genuine’ in this context” or “we should double check if they spell their name with an H”.

    I began to take it as a sign of pride, because the more inane the suggestions, the fewer actual issues there were with the original piece.

    1. ferrina*

      Truth. I’m in a client-facing field where clients love to provide feedback on whatever we give them. I coach junior staff that “the more petty the comments, the stronger the work. Nitpicking small issues means they couldn’t find any big or medium issues”

      2. Anonymath*

        I tell my students this as well. By the time I’m commenting on very minor issues in their papers it means that overall their paper is very strong and there is nothing major to improve.

    2. DisneyChannelThis*

      I went the other route with a guy like that. I’d deliberately leave a easy to fix typo or missing thing in it, then they win and it’d be something I’d want to fix anyway instead of getting bogged down in 20min discussion of whatever inane thing they dreamed up to add when there was no issues….

    3. Siege*

      I build in “the magician’s choice” now. Deliberately put something wrong into a document or a design, and then either the micromanager catches it and feels good that they did or I fix it after they’ve signed off on it, but it saves so much time in stupid conversations about “can we move the bar half a pixel to the left?” (Absolutely not a joke, I have had that conversation, regarding a web page that would display differently for different screen resolutions, so, uh, your half a pixel micromanagement can eat a bug. Every designer has had that conversation.)

      I also don’t like the people who think that because they once renovated a bathroom they can do my job (graphic design), but that goes beyond petty to “actively try to infuriate them in a way they can’t complain about,” so it doesn’t belong here. Surprisingly, you can use a lot of the kind of direct communication Alison often recommends to make people really mad, if they’re the kind of person who just wants to be mad and not the kind of person who wants to figure out how to not be mad next time.

      1. Siren of Sleep*

        Provided they’re not immediately behind you, with that half a pixel one that’s when you say “Sure!”, do absolutely nothing, then tell them later to take a look at the “revision”. Bet they start saying it’s perfect then lol.

        1. Siege*

          You can do it when they’re behind you too, if you don’t save the file. Strangely, it is then perfect!

      2. Zarniwoop*

        “actively try to infuriate them in a way they can’t complain about,”
        Examples, please!

        1. Siege*

          Once a coworker sent me two photos to use with an article. One was a headshot and the other was a group shot. I sent it to our external partner, who did what any sane person would do and ran the group shot at the top of the article and the headshot by the byline. Coworker freaked out because OBVIOUSLY I should know that the smaller headshot should have been at the top of the article, never mind that it would have looked terribly blown up to the correct size. I spent a long email exchange being entirely reasonable, and when I said “for future articles, please let me know what layout you’re thinking of so Partner and I can avoid making this mistake again,” she got so mad she cc’d our boss. Our boss then spent an hour berating me by phone and “problem-solving” my lack of communication skills (because I didn’t magically know that we were supposed to do something so monstrously stupid) and I kept being entirely reasonable and acting like this was a reasonable conversation to have and I was invested in finding a solution, and finally, when I explained my comment for the third time, she said “…oh. You really were just trying to solve the problem, weren’t you?” It was, frankly, hilarious, and had major positive knock-on effects for me and less positive ones for That Coworker, so win.

          And it just really works to go into every angry conversation (my workplace allows A LOT of bad behavior, including by me) practicing open communication and proactive problem-solving and being egoless about things that someone (my boss) is going to rewrite anyway. And if that’s a dishonest use of Alison’s advice, I don’t really care, because it works with some of the most aggressively narcissistic and sociopathic people I’ve ever met, including the person who tells everyone how terrible I am to work with because I sometimes tell her no. What I really tell her is “no, we can’t do it that way but here’s a very similar way that will get us close to those results with our available technology/brand standards/assets/time.” What she hears is “no.”

          Being aggressively reasonable, assessing where you can seek help and where you can vent, articulating your specific needs (I have AuDHD and my boss is learning to work with that, if slowly), communicating openly and professionally, and generally being extremely professional to anyone you have noted is, was, or will be a problem works. And half my coworkers are too self-absorbed to see it happening to them.

    4. JustaTech*

      I have a coworker (at a distant site) who would do this kind of thing – he had some Feelings about commas. No one would have really cared except that he would only announce his problem with your comma, or change the spelling of a word to the UK spelling (we’re in the US), *after* the document had been reviewed by 8 people and was already in our painfully complicated document control system.
      So his issue with that one comma meant that 8 people had to re-sign off on the document. Usually 8 senior, busy people, on a document that was needed in a hurry.

      So people just stopped assigning him documents that someone in his position *should* have been reviewing, because he was such a pain.

      1. allathian*

        It may have been strategic on his part. Perhaps he hated that task so much that he made it intentionally difficult for everyone else so that they’d stop assigning the task to him? If that’s the case, it clearly worked.

        1. JustaTech*

          Maybe? He’s quite senior so if he really didn’t want to do it he could have delegated it to someone else. Or he could have just skimmed and signed – for each individual it’s not that much work to sign off, it’s just when you have to wrangle 8 people to sign off on a thing that it gets to be a real PITA.

          I had another coworker (a peer) who had a similar thing about commas, but after two or three documents she started asking me “do you want a content edit, a light copyedit, or the full comma attack?” so I know it’s a thing for a lot of folks, but at least some people have the self awareness to realize that other people don’t care and it can take a lot of time.

  62. Irish Teacher*

    Not sure if this counts or not, but one of my colleagues retired a few months back and on the last day, he made a speech, as is normal, thanking us all, especially those in his department, the SNAs, etc, but then adding there are some people he really did not want to thank, including a couple of previous principals who were the nastiest, most vindictive people he’d had to deal with and how grateful he was for his colleagues who were the people who made the school run so well, despite some of the management.

    The previous principals were not there to hear this, but the chairman of the board who had been involved in hiring them was and people were wondering if he got the point or if he assumed the guy was clearly referring to principals hired before he was involved in hiring.

  63. Single Parent Barbie*

    After getting laid off from my previous job, I spent several months working as a waitress at a 24 hour restaurant that sells a lot of Waffles. There was one woman who had worked for the company for decades and claimed she was “the next in line” for a promotion (but never was because she was a witch.) She had a serious power trip and was nasty to all of the other employees.

    I have an old fashioned name (Think Gertrude) but have always gone by my nickname (Trudy.) She would always call me Gertrude and I would tell her I prefer she call me Trudy and she would say she loves Gertrude because its her granddaugher’s name and I was like yes but mine is Trudy.

    The next shift she would still call me Gertrude. Finally one day, I had stepped off the floor and was standing in the back by the doorway and she was on the other side of the restaurant and starts calling for me in her loud, screetchy voice “GERTRUDE”

    I ignored her.

    She kept yelling “Gertrude. GERtrude. GERTRUDE”

    I still ignored her.

    She probably called me LOUDLY a dozen times, and I continued to not even flinch. Meanwhile everyone else in the restaurant kind of slowed to a stop as she continued to try to get my attention.

    Finally, the light bulb went on (slowly, dimly but on) and she says “Trudy”

    I looked at her, smiled and said “yes? how can I help you”

    The best part was everyone laughed at her.

  64. Truthfully*

    I think we can call this one…the ashes. When I was a secretary I used to wash everybody’s coffee cups at the end of the day. It never bothered me to do this. I just considered it part of the job. For some reason my co-worker decided I shouldn’t have to do this, and that it should be the cleaning people’s responsibility. She was the type of person you didn’t argue with, so she spoke to someone to arrange this.
    Drinking my coffee in the weeks after, I kept commenting to her “My coffee tastes like ashes!” It finally dawned on us the cleaners were using to same rags they used to clean the office ashtrays to clean our cups.
    Needless to say I soon had this job duty back.

    4. Warrior Princess Xena*

      EW EW EW

      I get that you didn’t mind the job duty but holy crap, the cleaners should have definitely been taken to task for that. It seems incredibly unsafe.

  65. Coverage Associate*

    When I get really mad at my firm, I take all the practice guides that are my personal property home so no one can use them.

  66. "It's Katherine"*

    I worked at a university and there was a chief officer (reported directly to the president) who I kept ending up on the same committees with me. He was in general a very genial guy but from our first meeting he kept calling me by a nickname. For example, if I were “Katherine” and only used “Katherine” professionally, he would be calling me “Katie.” At first I’d say, “It’s actually Katherine” and he’d apologize and then a month later in a committee meeting, he’d say, “What do you think, Katie?”

    And then one day I was out of f’cks to give and so I nicknamed him back: “Well, Timmy, I was thinking…” And everyone kind of froze because I was about 3 levels down on the org chart from “Tim.” He was oblivious.

    And so it kept on. For years. We’d run into each other at the campus coffee shop and he’d say, “How are you, Katie?” and I’d say, “Just fine, how about you Timmy?” If it was my turn to take notes in a meeting, I’d label him “Timmy Jones” as in attendance. Once we were presenting to a faculty body and after he off-handedly mentioned me as “Katie”, I found a way to say, “It’s great to work with Timmy!”

    And when he heard I was leaving the university, he stopped by my office to say, “This place is really going to miss you, Katie.” My reply, “Thanks so much, Timmy.”

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      I am laughing out loud at this. I mean seriously, head back and just laughing in delight. Love it!

    2. backstory*

      I know people like that. He probably is patting himself on his back to this day about how folksy and in touch he was with “everyone” (extrapolating from misread interactions with ONE person) and what a great guy he was…. he has “the common touch”…. Academia….

  67. AnonToday*

    Target one reminds me of when my brother got his first job sacking groceries: “If they’re mean I put their milk on top of the bread” LOL

  68. Rose*

    Pettiness for good/as ally ship:

    My old company was mostly amazing people, but one senior member of the leadership team, Ben, was an insufferable, extremely sexist jerk. Like many insufferable, sexist jerks, Ben would always downplay or ignore women’s suggestions, and then praise men who said basically the same thing.

    One day in a team meeting, Ben asked for a proposal, I made a great one (if I do say so myself), and he said I was missing the mark and shut me down. A male coworker, Drew, who I didn’t know well and had mixed feelings about, repeated my suggestion almost verbatim. I decided I didn’t like Drew as Ben praised his idea as fantastic.

    But then… When Ben was done, Drew gave huge, a shit eating grin, and said enthusiastically “Thanks, Rose just said the exact same thing and I thought it was great, so I wanted to repeat it.” Ben turned purple with rage as Drew smiled innocently, and everyone else launched into planning my idea.

    Needless to say, I decided I freaking love Drew, and we remain on great terms.

      1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

        Any other response would be unprofessional, such is the level of Drew’s awesomeness

    6. many bells down*

      I had a very similar issue with some tech volunteers that I was supposed to be managing, but they’d ignore me about 80% of the time and keep doing what they’d always done. A younger male co-worker took it on himself to just repeat everything I said, at which point they would act on it.
      Good Guy co-worker eventually left and it seemed to click at that point that I actually did know what I was doing. I counted my final victory over them last week when they asked for help setting up their new laptop because they didn’t know how to bypass the “sign in to a Microsoft account” screen.

    9. Alice Quinn*

      Love! Reminds me of a time when we were all signing into a team meeting, and some people were in the office and some were signing in remotely. It happened to line up that day that most of the in-person attendees were male and more women on the team were Zooming in (including me – I actually was recovering from Covid, which is why I wasn’t in the office). One of the men in the room, I’m sure in an attempt to be funny (and I think he may not have realized they were connected to audio), said, “Why are all the girls working remote today??” One of my favorite male colleagues replied, “Wow, what an incredibly offensive and off-putting thing to say!” Many were the virtual high-fives he received from the women on the team!

  69. Anon PM*

    Ha. I just now did something fairly petty. I sent an email to a project team member asking for the status of a task. He emailed back that he hadn’t done it because I hadn’t sent him the info he needed. So I forwarded him the email I sent him last week with the information he needed, with a “per my previous email”. So moderately petty. But real reason I did it was because about 7 years ago, at another company, both of us in different jobs, he threw me under the bus for something that had nothing to do with me, in an email that was eventually forwarded to me. Never forget!

  70. ferrina*

    I wrote a very petty resignation letter. The situation was ridiculous- I worked in a high pressure industry where I had to spend 6+hours per day in close quarters with my team. I was supposed to be team lead, but one of my team members decided she hated me. Literally did the opposite of anything I said, and repeatedly told me what a terrible person I am (nothing actionable, just my “personality” and “everyone hates you”). I’m a former conflict resolution trainer, so believe me when I say I tried every trick in the book. My boss refused to intervene or move me to another team- even though there was an opening on a team that wanted me. She wanted me to spend 6+ hours per day with someone who hated me, openly insulted me and undermined my work and “find a way to make it work”

    So I resigned. I typed out a lovely resignation letter that was very flattering (if grammatically a little odd). My terrible boss actually preened when she read it.
    But if you took the first letter of each sentence, it read:
    F*** YOU

    3. Another Kate*

      My brother did something similar in high school — he had a teacher with whom he had, shall we say, certain conflicts (in all fairness, my brother was a handful, but that didn’t mean that the teacher didn’t also suck). When he turned in his final paper, the first letter of each line spelled out something EXTREMELY rude and insulting. We don’t know whether the teacher ever noticed, but he never commented on it.

    4. Tl12*

      I have done something similar. Years ago I took an especially unpleasant standardized test with an ungraded essay section at the end. I was quite frustrated by the time I got to that section, so I wrote a perfectly coherent essay in response to the prompt, with the first letter of every row spelling or an expletive directed towards the test.

      1. Coverage Associate*

        I am thinking of a test like this, and I think the essay got scanned and converted to text or something. So you didn’t even risk your chances with any school that might read the essay.

  71. Rosie*

    One colleague marked every single one of her emails to me low priority. My boss outranked her boss; we were peers but she thought I was too young to be working at our level (I was two decades younger than her) and chose this way to make her resentment of me felt. It was very impressive.

  72. The Prettiest Curse*

    I thought of another one! Since I still have a green card, I have to pay US taxes even though I now live in the UK. To file my US tax return, I’m required to get some tax information from the pensions department at my current (large) employer. The first year I was working here, I sent the request in March and got back a super snippy email saying that I had to send the request in January so they could provide a detailed summary. (Fine, but obviously I didn’t know that, or I would’ve sent it earlier.) Turned out the less detailed information they sent me that year was totally fine. But this year, I sent a request for the detailed information on the first working day of January, and will do that every year for the rest of the time I work here. Your fault, snippy pensions guy!

  73. Gondorff*

    Not my firm, thankfully, but at my friend’s firm, one of the managers works mostly remotely from a different state, and comes into the office about once a month for a week. Every time she comes in, the batteries from her mouse and keyboard have mysteriously disappeared (assumedly from being stolen by a coworker too lazy to go to the supply closet to get their own?). The last time she was in the office, she worked late after everyone else went home. When everyone arrived the following Monday, all of the batteries from all of the mice and keyboards in every cubicle and office had been removed. No word yet on if anyone stole her batteries this time around.

  74. Juicebox Hero*

    Pettiest thing I’ve seen:

    For just over a year we had a horrible employee. We are municipal government and this person was secretary to the municipal council and administrator. It’s a very important job because there are strict state laws regarding records retention, disposal, timelines, ordinances, etc.

    She was a know-it-all who minded everyone’s business but her own – she botched up some of my material so badly (“you were on lunch! I was doing you a favor!”) that I had to read her the riot act. She never bathed and wore the same dirty clothes every day so she stunk like an outhouse full of dead skunks in August. She just loved talking about her sex life and drinking despite being told multiple times to stop.

    Our manager tends to get compassionate at the worst possible times, so she kept giving Miss PITA second chances and convincing the administrator to do the same until this past February when she finally screwed up something badly enough that she got fired. Once she was gone it turned out that she’d literally done nothing but play games on her computer the whole time she was employed – checks weren’t cashed, records weren’t kept, building permits and stuff like that were never processed – and worst of all she threw away a whole bunch of resolutions and ordinances that she never bothered to sign, seal, and file, and hid others.

    She refused to tell anyone where she hid the stuff until she was threatened with arrest, because of that whole pesky state law thing.

    Council had to redo all the ordinances and everything that were never processed properly or were missing and it took several people months to catch up on the backlog of her other work that never got done.

    The administrator got his revenge by refusing to give her unemployment and drafting a resolution naming her by name and listing all the things she hadn’t done. By law, resolutions have to be published in the newspapers before being voted on by council, so it was about the most thorough and comprehensive revenge he could have gotten.

    Thankfully, her replacement is nice, competent, focused, and CLEAN.

    1. allathian*

      Ouch! I totally understand the impulse and certainly the incompetent and nasty employee was lucky not to get arrested for breaking all those state laws, but was that public shaming really necessary?

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        Yeah, I personally felt that going that level of scorched-earth on her was going too far but I had no say in the matter.

        The pettiness was on every level in this situation.

  75. RJ*

    Team Jane! I used to be of the mindset ‘lunch whenever’, but it slowly led to some serious problems with boundaries and WLB at various jobs. I now WFH, but I take a full stop at lunch, eat away from my computer and try to go for walks several times a week. It has made a world of difference. This is a team I am proud to be on.

  76. Ladybugger*

    I was once sorta fired (the conversation ended “so you’re resigning” and I was like “uhhh??” so I don’t think they wrote down “fired” on the paperwork. Nevertheless that’s basically what it was.)

    I hated that job – I had been there just 6 weeks and my supposed manager had:
    1) chastised me for eating inside away from the group at a BBQ that was “for me” (it wasn’t, it was their monthly employee BBQ)
    2) demanded to know, when I mentioned I had run into a couple coworkers at a local sandwich shop and had lunch with them, if they had “talked about her” and told me all about how they hated her and why (no one mentioned her at all)
    3) disappeared for 3 weeks on vacation and when she came back asked me why I thought I had the authority to start writing an X Plan (I was the X Manager).

    Anyway a year later I sent her a glitter bomb envelope through one of those sites that was popular at the time. I still think about her cleaning up glitter and thinking everyone was out to get her. It probably didn’t occur to her it was the person who worked there 6 weeks and had a talent for holding a grudge.

    1. ferrina*

      I had a boss that once literally opened a conversation with “So what’s the scuttlebutt? Anything about me?”

      It was a yellow flag at the start of a red flag parade. If your boss was anything like my boss, that glitter bomb was well deserved (I’m pretending like we had the same boss, because I’d love that woman to be glitterbombed. She also desperately needed some sparkle in her life)

  77. badly semi anonymized*

    This was years ago, but I was angry about my then workplace dealing really badly with a specific unusual situation. I wasn’t the only one; the office did not seem to care, and the problem got worse. Normally I don’t do social media. But I created a throwaway account on Reddit, found an active subreddit about interpersonal drama, and lurked until I had the lay of the land. I wrote about the specific unusual situation, made sure it was badly semi anonymized, and let the post rack up more and more views and outraged comments. One night I went to a public library, printed out Reddit post, then smuggled it into work and left it in the printer pile on a Friday evening for the administrator to find. He was the most gossipy person in the office by a mile. I waited until I heard a couple of people discussing “that Reddit story” and then emailed a link to it to my boss saying, “Hey, just a heads up, I heard about this and I’ve read it now and I think it might be about our office.” This didn’t actually change anything about the specific unusual situation, which is part of why I decided to leave. My boss read the post and agreed with me that someone from our office had written it about us, but also told me – erroneously – that he had already long since addressed the specific unusual situation and it was over and I shouldn’t worry about it. (I’ve never been sure whether he believed this himself or whether he was lying to me.) So nothing much came of this effort, and I joined the many people who had left. It did make me feel a teeny bit better, however.

    1. Hlao-roo*

      May not have changed anything in the office, but kudos to you for a well-planned and well-executed stealth operation!

  78. PotteryYarn*

    One of my responsibilities is distributing our company announcements. When my colleague, who is a HUGE pain in my side, recently got promoted, their boss wrote up an announcement about the promotion and included a sentence that was probably intended to say the colleague was good at problem-solving (and if you’re only skimming the announcement, that would be how most people would interpret the statement). But the way it was actually worded suggested that the colleague is actually creating these problems, which is honestly how things generally play out with this colleague. Normally this is something I would fix before sending the announcement out, but oops, I must’ve missed it!

    1. Hlao-roo*

      Ha! When I was younger, I thought that “how do you solve a problem like Maria?” from The Sound of Music meant that Maria was a great problem-solver and the other nuns wanted to be more like her. Took a few years before I realized Maria was the problem they were trying to solve. I am imagining this announcement had similarly ambiguous wording :)

      3. linger*

        “PITA has been proven responsible for a wide variety of issues with X Department…”

  79. Put the whole ream of paper in the machine*

    We would generally keep a box of copy paper next to the copy machine so that it would be easy to replenish when it ran out. One day, a co-worker was using the machine and it ran out of paper, and there wasn’t any next to the machine. She asked where the paper was. I told her it was downstairs in the closet. She proceeded to get some paper and finished her copying job. Next time it needed replenishing (quite soon actually), I went downstairs to get paper, and saw that this co-worker did not put a ream of paper in the copier, as a normal person would do, but took out just enough sheets to finish her job, and left an open nearly full ream of paper downstairs in the closet.

    1. Rainbow*

      Next time they need the sugar refilling for their tea, I’d love to see a sugar tub with a single teaspoonful of sugar in there.

  80. Another Kate*

    When I was in college I had a job taking pictures at fraternity parties — I was the “Party Pic Chick.” (This was pre-cell phone, so if you wanted pictures of yourself dancing on the hood of Biff’s car with a lampshade on your head, you had to hope that the party photographer had caught your moment of glory and then you had to pay for a print.) Most of the partiers were nice, if a bit goofy, but I had one drunken jackass who was all “Hey, Party Pic Bitch! Over here!”

    Obviously, that would not stand, and you’d better believe that I made sure that every picture of him I took that night cut off right down the middle of his body.

  81. Human Embodiment of the 100 Emoji*

    When I was in college I worked summers at the only coffee shop in my small hometown, where almost everyone was a regular. If someone was regularly rude to me or I knew they didn’t tip, I added the extra 25 cent charge for “ice” to their order. The button on the register was of course supposed to be for people who asked for a cup of ice to-go, but I called it the “rude tax”. Only one lady ever caught me doing it, but unfortunately for her I was the most reliable employee at that coffee shop so I was basically untouchable. I still stand by it – be nice to your baristas.

    1. FormerPizzaBoy*

      In one former job, the POS system was pretty loose, where you could add charges (or create discounts) easily without any manager overrides. Since it got lost in the abbreviated jargon, customers couldn’t tell. I never did this to create charges (did use the made-up discounts though for nice people) but many of my coworkers totally did.
      At a different one, every summer we’d run a “donate a dollar and write your name on this shape to post up” sort of thing (aka a tax write off for the corporation). Many would just add this to sales to people who aren’t paying attention. Since the button to add it was right next to the ring up button, it was easy to play off the “I mis-hit the button” if anyone noticed.

  82. Catabouda*

    My coworker Peg was convinced that coworker Pete was going through things on her desk after hours. Supervisor did not believe her.

    So she got one of those joke scratch off lottery tickets that looks like a winner, but it says right on the back that it’s just for fun or whatever. She left it under several pieces of paper on her desk. As in, it wasn’t immediately visible to anyone unless you were snooping.

    Pete SENT HER AN EMAIL telling her she should be more careful about leaving such a valuable item on her desk.

    Peg forwarded the email to the supervisor and HR, asking them to address the issue of Pete going through things on her desk.

    Supervisor could no longer deny it was happening, and Pete was pissed off at getting written up about it “he was just being helpful!” Gosh, Pete was such a insert your favorite insult here. I was so happy she thought of something like that to catch him.

  83. Sundance Kid*

    I worked in a small office in a previous job. About 20 people, half architects who tended to develop nervous tics when design elements of the office are out of whack. Post COVID, the office layout was condensed to accommodate new hires. (Densification with masks on . . . great.) My desk moves so that a very bright window shines directly onto my monitor creating some nasty glare. I ask for a better shade to block the sun; denied because it wouldn’t be uniform and they won’t replace all of them. Can I move? No, all spots are taken.

    So I taped up copier paper over the existing shade, purposely seeking out the blue painter’s tape from the supply closet and making sure the seams of my handiwork were very visible. It’s very effective at blocking the sun! I come in the next day, it’s taken down. So I do it again. It gets taken down. I wish something bigger changed, but ultimately there was a polite conversation where I was asked to please just not use the blue tape so it looked nicer.

    I found a new job a few weeks later, but that’s a good news post for another time.

    1. Llellayena*

      I think they deliberately design buildings in architecture schools with serious flaws in them just to train the architecture students to look around and spot them in every building, hence the twitching. -From the person who’s architecture building had an open grate on every level including the roof immediately in front of the door you had to insert your code to enter (cue trying to keep your paper-and-wood model dry when entering during a rainstorm…)

    2. Nina*

      You and my dad would get along. His office was moved to cubicles, and then to low cubicles (that you could see over even when seated so I’m not sure what they were for). He asked for his office back. No. He asked for a corner placement away from the glare and most coworkers (he uses voice-activated software). No. He asked for opaque curtains. No. He took me and my brother into the office one weekend and we installed in his cubicle:
      – five massive bookcases taller than he was, most of them against the window to block the glare, and one in the ‘doorway’ of the cubicle so the doorway became narrow enough to block by hanging his outdoor coat in it
      – cardboard moving boxes nailed to the cubicle wall to increase the height (I was a small child and ‘helped’ by decorating the outside of the boxes with what I now know was atrociously ugly scrawling)
      – a tarpaulin over the part of the window not blocked by the bookcases
      – Road cones on top of the bookcases to fill the space between the bookcase and the ceiling.

      I’m told when the architect responsible for designing the flash new office space came to visit, the poor guy shit a brick. Dad has an office with a door now.

  84. thebadge*

    I think I was the petty one. At one office we had an overzealous guy whose role was cyber security + physical security (truly I’m not sure what his job title was and this was early ’00s before cybersecurity really became mainstream). Anyway he went on crusade for everyone to always wear their work badges. Ok, not uncommon, but this was a small office ~50-60 people. It was a bit of overkill. He was the guy who would take your laptop if not locked to the desk to the highest ranking person in the office so that you’d have to go collect it. Same with badges, etc.

    So anyway… badges. I stopped leaving mine on my desk after the first time he took it. Then I proceeded to leave it totally visible but just inside my purse. He wouldn’t go into someone’s bag or purse. Then when he started jumping around corners trying to catch me without my badge I started to carry it with me. Like physically carry it in my hand. He spent the next 2 years trying to catch me out for not having it. I spent the next 2 years carrying it with me vs. wearing it.

    I think it became more of a game than anything for both of us. He was a little uptight but an alright guy. I suppose I was more than a little contrary but technically in compliance.

  85. Jane Bingley*

    I interned at a politician’s office for a summer. There had been a professionally organized and successful sit-in at another level of government a couple of months before, and it inspired a number of people to copy the technique.

    One day, the assistant and I are working in the office while the politician is off for the day. A man comes in and announces he’s doing a sit-in for his cause, and he won’t leave until he achieves it. It was absurd, impossible, and utterly out of the scope of our politician’s work (think: I won’t leave til income tax is illegal).

    After trying to reason with him for about half an hour, it becomes clear he’s not going anywhere. So the assistant and I shrug and get back to work. He sticks around for another hour or so, loudly complaining in a very distracting manner. Eventually she sends me a text: “let’s try to embarrass him out.”

    We start a loud and very open conversation about our periods. How heavy our flows are, what different products we’ve tried, and their various pros and cons. He lasted about another minute and a half before slinking out, never to be seen again.

    3. Dr. Doll*

      I worship at the feet of your brilliance and I am so going to do that if I need to some time.

  86. Loose Socks*

    I worked in a private preschool. There was a child in my class that clearly had struggles well beyond what the preschool could accommodate. Even with his own 1 on 1 shadow, he was regularly injuring other children and teachers, myself included. I was going home daily with bruises, bleeding wounds, once even a black eye because of this child. While I don’t blame the kid, I definitely blame the director for allowing it to go on without intervening. When she did, it was to ask us to put all the incident and injury reports on one sheet instead of a sheet for each report, as the mom was complaining about having to sign so many forms (found out later that wasn’t the case, the director didn’t know what to do about him and was embarrassed, so she wanted the stack on her desk to not look so overwhelming).

    Finally, during the last week I worked there (2 week’s notice already submitted), every time this child began to get physically violent, I took him to the directors office, put him in, and shut the door. She began to show bruising and scratching. I heard the day after I left, she dismissed him (and recommended a child care facility that specialized in behavior problems. I had given the director all the information for this facility, called them to verify this was a situation they could help with, and made sure they were accepting children his age range months before this. She expressly forbid me from telling the mom about it.)

    To be clear, the child was 3 years old at the time, and I don’t hold anything against the kid. He was a great kid with big emotions that he didn’t know how to handle. We just didn’t have the training to be able to handle such physical aggression.

    1. rinathin*

      This is so sad. The kid would have thrived so much more with the right support, and the director wanted to actively prevent the mom from knowing there was a place that could provide it. At least he ended up there eventually.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        Early intervention is key for kids like this. I’m glad he got the right placement, but it’s sad it took so long.

    2. ferrina*

      Good for you! We had a situation like this in a daycare where I worked, and it was awful for everyone. Our center didn’t have the resources to accommodate the kid, and the classroom only had 2 teachers (enough to stay in ratio for all the kids). One of the teachers pretty much had to follow him around all the time while the other teacher dealt with all the other kids, so the other kids didn’t get as much attention as they should have. And our poor, poor teachers should have gotten hazard pay (they were great teachers, too!)

      The parents actually asked if we were the right place for the kid, and the director talked a big game about how our center was the right place. She didn’t have to deal with this every day. Eventually the parents moved the kid to a facility that could actually meet his needs (I don’t know how it happened, but I know the director wasn’t a part of it).

      If it’s any consolation, if you were at my center, I heard the director was later investigated for being too chummy with her boss when they took a cruise together, and they found enough incompetence to force her out (we were a govt provider, and she had almost lost the government contract several times by letting her favorite teachers misbehave without repercussions)

  87. Joyce to the World*

    I was the victim in this petty parade. I was put in charge of a group of temps assigned by an external placement agency. One temp thought she should be hired on full time. However, she was late daily. We had cameras. She had to sign in manually in a notebook with her start time. Fudged it daily by about 30 mins. Then she spent all day surfing the internet. She put her window very small at the bottom of the screen, but we all knew what she was doing. She got let go after the camera feeds were viewed. She thought it was all my fault. Went to her local library and used one of their computers to sign me up for all kinds of fun things. Dating sites, hair loss, magazine subscriptions etc… Then she sent several hate emails to me directly. I had to file 2 police reports and they paid her a little visit. For years I continued to receive junk mail and emails because of her. I finally had to change my work email address to make it stop, but every once in awhile I still get junk emails. It’s been over 10 years now.

  88. debbietrash*

    In high school I worked at a gas station associated with a large retail chain (I’m in Canada — I feel like my fellow Canadians can guess the chain). Folks would be incredibly rude to us on a daily basis, so pettiness by the employees was a common coping mechanism. Some personal favourites:
    1. Whenever a customer escalated to the point of shouting and yelling in the store (this happened a lot — calm down folks!) my manager would shut the interaction down with, “you have a nice day!” in the sweetest, most cheerful tone with a jovial wave of the hand. Any time the customer started up again, he’d give them another “You have a nice day! Have a nice day. *You* have a *nice day*” until they stomped out like upset children.
    2. Anytime someone talked down to me (I was a 17 year old girl at the time, and this was most often adult men) I would just fix them with my b*tchiest resting face as if to say “I am not paid enough to deal with your BS” until they moved on and/or let me answer them.
    3. A local car dealership would refuel their vehicles at our location. The guys who’d come in to refuel the vehicles acted like they were such hot sh*t to the point that one swaggered into the store and just tossed/flicked his company credit card on the counter in front of me. I picked it up and toss/flicked it back to him, the card ended up in the candy display, and he had to go fish it out.

    1. ferrina*

      “You have a nice day”

      I’m picturing this as Lord Vetinari’s “Don’t let me detain you”

  89. NewNameForThis*

    Mine will probably pale in comparison, but I had a boss who was VERY impressed with himself. We worked in an office where fancy advanced degrees were common (think like a fancy law firm, but without the culture of hanging diplomas on the wall) and he was literally the only one who had his diploma hanging/was the only one where everyone knew where he went to school/who talked about where he went to grad school. He also knew NOTHING about my area of expertise and micromanaged me because he was clearly threatened by this.

    So, he assigned me to get speakers for an event. It was a complicated lift, and I went to check in with him about where I was in finding speakers. And he said “Oh, I went to University of Pennsylvania, so I will reach out to my contacts there to see if they have any ideas.” And for the first and last time in my professional life I said “oh! What a great idea! I will check in with my Harvard classmates and professors.”

    I felt like a pretentious snob (because that’s how ppl react. I’ll tell people I went to Harvard for grad school in normal convo, but never in this one-upping way) but it was worth it.

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Ha! This is great. My social work supervisor had a similar experience. He became a cop (to save the world), discovered that was not the way so he became a lawyer (so has his JD and can technically be referred to as doctor), discovered that wasn’t the way either, so got his master’s and doctorate and license in clinical social work.

      But he wore like t shirts and comfy khakis and looked and acted pretty unpretentious.

      So he was at a meeting with some school of social work big wig, who also had a doctorate, and he called her by her first name. She didn’t know who he was and said ‘actually, Mike, it’s Dr. Smith’. He said ‘sure thing, Dr Smith, and you can call me Dr Jones!’

      2. allathian*

        Yeah, but given the sexism women and female-presenting academics are subjected to, including by their students who call them by their first name even if they’d call a male-presenting Doctor or Professor, insisting on the title can become almost reflexive even if it may be inappropriate in certain circumstances.

    2. Catabouda*

      I got to watch something similar at play between two lawyers who were trying to boast bigger than the other and it was truly something else to see.

    3. Rainbow*

      OOH YES. I ended up at a social hangout a few years ago, where I met a friend of a friend’s partner – a man who thought he was better than eeeeeverybody else around because he had an undergraduate degree from one of the 2 unis broadly considered most “prestigious” in our country. I thought I’d better be polite, and asked him when he graduated – it was several years prior and he no longer worked in the field of his degree – although he said he was a sure shot and so brilliant at his field that he would definitely walk into a job “any time soon”. Dude kept going on and on about it, and it got to the point where people were desperately trying to change the subject.

      Anyway at one point later, I mentioned something about how I enjoyed X activity in uni. Dude’s ears pricked up. He sniffed disparagingly, “oh? And what university did YOU go to?”. I replied with the name of the other so-called “prestigious” uni (that is really bs, there are a great many great unis here and also who cares), and may god forgive me but I could not resist pointing out what type of degree I’d got (higher than his!) and that I’d since gone onto further study and then worked very happily in my field, which I truly love, ever since. The dude looked CRESTFALLEN and barely said a word the rest of the night.

      Imagine caring that someone you didn’t know had a slightly higher qualification than you, in a totally different field, when you’re in a bar for god’s sake. Brain worms.

  90. CTA*

    I’m a web developer. At a former employer, the marketing team was given access to our JIRA board (ticketing system) so they could submit requests. The company had gone through a reorganization, so the marketing team was all new folks. It was also 2020, so I hadn’t met any of them in-person or even virtually. The marketing team was given training about how to submit requests. This included some etiquette, such as don’t change your request after a developer has started work on it; ask first.

    As we approached our busy season, I noticed the marketing team was not following these rules. It was starting to get unreasonable. For example, a task that normally took 20 minutes turned into a three day task because they kept changing their mind. I tried to just roll with it because 1) I was trying to be supportive of our busy season (sometimes priorities change) and 2) my manager was on PTO and I didn’t feel like this required me going to my grandboss (a C-suite executive) about this yet.

    One day, I picked up a request that really required me to follow up because it would look weird on the website. This wasn’t my objective opinion. If I completed the task as written, it would get flagged during QA testing. I messaged the person who submitted the request. Even though our conversation was online messages, I got the feeling she was trying to shut me down because she didn’t really address what I had explained to her. I also felt she was trying to put me down because her response included talk about how “other businesses do what she is requesting.” I was also slated to be laid off in a few months, so I don’t know if that had anything to do with her behavior. Maybe she was just used to having people do what she says. I wasn’t sure if it was a shut down or maybe she hadn’t understood. We were all working from home, she was a new employee and new to our busy season, and she was also a Director and higher up than me.

    I decided to just do the ticket as requested since I had it in writing that there was nothing “wrong” with the request. I knew my work had to be reviewed and I knew it would definitely get flagged. I didn’t foresee how bad things would go down. The person who reviewed my work was my grandboss! Even though he was C-suite, he’d review the work from developers so he could stay in the loop about code changes. He followed up with this Director because he had the same questions I had. The Director tries to save face by saying she hadn’t “really looked” at the screenshot I sent her (!), she thought I was “questioning the request” when I had contacted her (!!), and that I had completed the request wrong and had changed the wrong thing (!!!). She not only didn’t look at my screenshot, she also didn’t read what I had wrote. I wrote that screenshot was of the website BEFORE her requested changes and she thought it was a screenshot of the changes she requested. So she was accusing me of completing her request wrong when she forgot what the website looked like. My grandboss had to tell her that what she was citing as “wrong” was actually the website as it has always looked.

    I had been applying to new jobs and I ended up receiving a job offer after this incident. So I gave notice and I left them during the busy season. I’m glad I didn’t have to put up with these shenanigans anymore.

  91. HannahMiss*

    My first job was a theme park photographer, where we’d take people’s pictures then hand them a claim card. Our system was set up to scan the cards, but it would occasionally hiccup and photos wouldn’t attach correctly. It was such easy to look up lost ones, but it was still an extra step for the visitors and the lines could be long at night.
    One night I was working an event with my work BFF. I was shooting, and they managed the line. The next visitor in line was excessively rude to them, and they generally had a pretty high tolerance for rude customers. As they lead the family into position, my friend just hissed at me “Lose them.” So I took perfect photos for them (no reason to complain about quality) and pretended to scan the card with a huge smile, pushing the photos through once they left so as not to inconvenience the next party. Would these people ever know why their photos were missing? No, but I hope they had fun looking for them.

  92. RedinSC*

    THis JUST happened yesterday.

    We had a pot luck on TUesday, someone brought tri-tip in for the BBQ, and was going to eat it the next day for lunch, because there was left overs (actually enough for 2-3 people).

    When he got in, the tritip wasn’t in the fridge, when asked where it went, someone pointed to an office door. When confronted, the guy who took the tritip said, I thought it was for anyone…. BUT he took enough food for like 3 sandwiches.

    On top of that, he left the dirty dish in the sink, came back to our building when we were all sitting in the kitchen eating lunch, threw half a sandwich away, and put another dirty dish in the sink and walked back to his building!

  93. Corporate Goth*

    Let’s see, where to begin…

    OldBoss didn’t like my Keurig – which was only the communal coffeepot due to a lack of plugs in my office – and kept threatening to get rid of it, so I took it home. He then complained about having to purchase coffee.

    PreviousOldBoss was such a nightmare that I scheduled a ten day vacation to avoid her going away party. I would have been expected to say nice public things about her and couldn’t do it.

    Left an organization after several decades and found out they weren’t planning a going away or anything, which was wildly against cultural norms. So I took the unit sign off the wall – my poor attempt at boosting morale, though I’d planned to leave it originally – and walked out with it as my going away gift to myself. It’s currently in a closet where it belongs, but it still provides grim yet satisfying glee on occasion.

  94. The Ammo Dump*

    I had a coworker who brought in Nerf weapons to make our department more “fun”. At random times (which seemed to be selected for maximum disruption) he would start firing one and see if anyone would get into a gunbattle with him. Sometimes my teammates would oblige.

    I found this annoying, but enough of my team was participating that I didn’t think there was any point in speaking up. So every time a piece of Nerf ammunition landed in or near my cube, I would stick it in a drawer in my desk that I started privately thinking of as “the ammo dump”. I don’t know if he ever noticed his supplies were slowly decreasing.

    Eventually he left (and I got to take the lead in cleaning up a couple of big work messes that he left behind) and took his Nerf weapons with him, and I forgot all about them. When I left, I forgot to clean out that drawer. I’ve wondered what the next person to use that desk thought when they looked through it.

    1. New Mom*

      We had people do this at a job I was at and it was really annoying! I think they thought it was playful, but we would be in the middle of something but then would have to stop and have obligatory “fun” for enough time to please the higher ups and then we’d go back to our meeting. I’m so glad when someone complained and it stopped.

      1. Mac (I Wish All The Floors Were Lava)*

        Wait, are you serious, because if so, this is the best thing that’s ever happened on AAM.

    3. Silver Robin*

      Oh the Nerf guns bring back memories…

      I had a job with folks doing trading and their IT team way back. Sometimes they would end the day with a nerf battle. A lot of the folks I worked with in the IT team were of the same generation and immigrant background as my parents; also men while I was a young college “girl”. They all genuinely liked me (I think/hope) but there was definitely some “idealistic young lady” vs “logical STEM men” stuff going. One day I mentioned how silly the Nerf “rebelle” line was and some of the subtler sexism going on in the ad campaign.

      One of the guys was particularly obnoxious in his humor and would needle me every so often. He definitely thought my feminism was “cute”. On my last day, I came to my desk to find a tiny Nerf pistol – from the Rebelle series, of course – and on it was a note via label maker that read, “for your service at the [company] zoo”.

      I have since lost the pistol, but I have a photo somewhere and it always makes me laugh.

    4. H3llifIknow*

      Ughhh I worked on a govt aircraft program….one that started with the letter “F”. One grou of guys who worked the program were such… frat bros! They’d throw stuff at each other over the cubicle walls, and one guy would bring his guitar and just … play his guitar whilst his “fans” sat around him applauding etc… THEY DID NOT DO ANY WORK. I left after only a few months, vowing I’d never ride in one of those aircraft if given the opportunity because these guys were not exactly diligent!

  95. Anon for This*

    I had arranged an internal transfer at my previous company, and my soon-to-be manager was so positive that it would happen on a certain date that she insisted that I cancel leave plans I had for that day. I canceled the leave, trained my replacement, the date came and went and I… waited. And waited. And waited.

    About five weeks later I was told that the new position had been eliminated.

    Shortly after that, my manager wondered why I gave only 48 hours notice instead of “the professional courtesy of two weeks.” I pointed out that technically I’d given notice over a month ago and walked out the door to a better job.

  96. Beer bandit*

    I mentioned this in a “stories of revenge” thread a while back, but about fifteen years ago my boss at a small retail store decided to buy a dive bar he frequented as a “fun” side business when he learned the owner was selling it. He spent so much time at the bar (and with the bartender there he had started dating) that a lot of important work around the store wasn’t happening. I had just been made a manager and would have been happy to take care of these things, but he didn’t tell me or the other manager that they needed to happen so stuff started to pile up. A few of our best vendors were suddenly being paid late and it was my job to placate them even though I knew it was because my boss was sinking money into the bar and I was pissed off at him and didn’t want to delay payment to the vendors at all.

    I highly suspect that everyone on our small staff (maybe six folks at the time) was close to quitting at some point or another during that holiday season, as everything got more chaotic and the boss was increasingly absent and distracted and loved to talk about how he and his new girlfriend “never spent more than fifteen minutes apart for the past six weeks” and things like that. (This man was in his late 30s at the time, I believe, but talked about this relationship like he was in middle school.)

    Well, the relationship imploded after about two or three months and the bar was condemned and he scrambled to extract himself from the situation. We had a lot of space in our store’s back room and once he sold the bar, he brought all the beer to the store and kept it on a part in the back room, cases and cases of cans and bottles be said he’d do something with eventually. Some of my coworkers made jokes to him like “oh you should give us some” but he waved it off.

    I didn’t bother to ask or make jokes about it! I was in the back room most of the day, since I dealt with invoicing, ordering, etc for much of the time, and whenever it was just me back there, I’d go over to the pallet of beer and take one or two bottles to slip in my bag to take home. It was never much at a time, and honestly a lot of the beer was cheap or a kind I didn’t like, but I eventually smuggled away all the amber ale and vanilla porter and enjoyed it at home. I know I was technically stealing from my boss but I did it guilt-free as my own petty revenge for the huge amount of stress and extra work (for a few months I was coming BACK to work from 8:30-10:30 pm on Friday nights to take care of the huge mountain of paperwork he abandoned without telling the other manager and myself we needed to learn how to process it) he put me through during the entire bar saga.
    A final fun fact: the bar was called Hell.

  97. Breaking Dishes*

    This whole thread may be my favorite AAM of all time (or at least this month). It’s making my day. Funny, quirky stuff that I’d never imagine. Truly, sometimes truth is better than fiction.

    1. allathian*

      Yeah, I feel like if these stories were pitched to studio executives, at least some of them would be rejected as “too unrealistic.” Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

  98. AnonForThis*

    I had a former boss (administrator for my department, not my direct supervisor) who was terrible and had a huge turnover, so he started marking everyone who left as “ineligible for rehire.” Since our institution was very large in terms of employees, this was bad as people might want to return after working elsewhere.

    I was stuck with crappy raises and no opportunity for advancement, so I sidestepped the mark on my record by applying to and getting a job in another department, thus transferring instead of leaving the institution entirely. He didn’t like this for a number of reasons, including that transfer vs. leaving entirely was increasing in frequency after word got around amongst us, plus I was in a specialized position that was hard to fill. He told me that I had to give him a letter of resignation – when I wasn’t resigning at all – so I consulted with my soon-t0-be-new manager and crafted it as a notification of transfer letter with no mention of leaving the institution or anything, and made copies to keep.

    When it came time for my departure, he made it known to the others that departmental funds or space couldn’t be used for my going-away party (claiming it was because I technically worked ‘for’ other bosses even though they didn’t pay my salary), even though I had been there for years. The bosses who actually supervised my work and who worked with me on a daily basis paid for a going-away party in their own space, out of the main office, and gave me presents and wished me well. The administrator finally begrudgingly said on my last day that the big cake – which was a decorated (but no words on it) sheet cake brought in for a monthly birthday celebration – was also for my departure as well. I took a little piece and left happily.

  99. Hiphopanonymous*

    I worked a 9-6 job that required coverage specifically during those hours. A peer of mine would frequently “forget” to take lunch because “they were so busy” (they weren’t, everyone knew it the person in question included) and would dip out at 5 even though we were salaried exempt. They were able to fly under the radar enough that our boss typically wasn’t aware. Myself and the other peer at our level were pretty damn annoyed every time it happened but didn’t want to snitch.

    One day I had a particularly crazy afternoon due to things out of my control and legitimately missed lunch because it was so chaotic. In our group chat my boss proactively told me I could leave at 5 and I responded with “Oh are you sure? I’d hate to leave you guys hanging for the last hour of the day, I know how inconvenient that would be for coworkers A and B” and they said back “It’s fine, it’s just a one-off thing and you busted your tail today”.

    The peer who always forgot to take lunch miraculously never forgot again after that.

  100. Rachel*

    I think what people don’t realize is that often your retaliation to somebody makes you just as bad as them.

    Like the graphic artist. That is a story about two annoying people. Not one.

    Everybody knows this, right?

    1. Lance*

      Sure, pettiness isn’t generally a good way to handle things… but that’s really not the point of this whole post. The point is just for anecdotes and the like.

        1. Gemstones*

          Why does the athlete guy need comeuppance, though? He doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong. He’s just a guy who’s proud of his athletic prowess…why is that so bad? Imagine if he wrote in to AAM with, “Hey, the graphic artist at our company has always seemed standoffish and a little mean, and when the company put out a post about various team members, the artist intentionally got the time on my record wrong. Is this a big deal?” It’s hard to imagine Allison not responding with a “What on earth?!”

        2. Spencer Hastings*

          Personally, I like comeuppance narratives when they’re about natural consequences…too many of the ones here are just @$$hole-to-@$$hole combat, IMO.

    4. Llama Identity Thief*

      You’re completely right.

      Sometimes, we wanna root for the villains we find justified. This post is one of those times. Despite being a workplace advice blog, not every post here is about how to conduct yourself in the most professional manner possible.

    5. LadyByTheLake*

      That’s why this is called the “petty” thread, not the “awesome” thread. The pettiness is the point.

    6. ComputerJanitor*

      There’s a difference between good and entertaining. Nobody’s holding these stories up as examples of proper office behavior.

  101. Bored Lawyer*

    I graduated from law school at the height of a recession. It was a nightmare to find jobs, and a bunch of promised jobs were rescinded. One of my friends got a lead from a professor about a paid fellowship with a professor at another school. Our professor emailed his colleague, cc’ing my classmate, introducing her and recommending her for the fellowship. My classmate responded (without cc’ing our professor) saying that she was excited about the opportunity and hoped they could find a time to discuss it. His response was incredibly rude- something like “who are you, how dare you email me, I’m going to end this conversation now.”

    Fast forward 8 or 9 years. As a bit of a side project to my lawyer job, I keep a database that is of niche interest and really only appeals to the rich and their lawyers (think like examples of variances granted by our State allowing rich people to build private docks). I generally freely hand this information out, after I built it it is pretty low maintenance to keep going and I get goodwill from colleagues and potential clients. Because this is unpaid, I tend to let requests pile up for a few weeks then respond to a bunch at once. I had written down a list of names I needed to respond to, and used my email search to find their addresses. Interestingly, one of them came up twice- the recent request for information to help in their personal appeal, and an 8 year old forwarded email of them being a jerk to my friend. Needless to say, I never responded to him and he did not get access to my database.

    His appeal was denied, too. People I provide access to tend to be successful. Don’t be a jerk.

    2. Aelfwynn*

      Yesss! Shows a lot about someone’s character if they’re willing to be d!cks to people with little to no power. I’m glad you didn’t help him. He certainly doesn’t seem like the type to help anyone else (and didn’t when he had the opportunity).

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        When I was a CSR, rude people did get their stuff resolved. But if paperwork was involved, it was done after the nice people’s.

  102. New Mom*

    When I was working abroad at a school we had a manager that was not a very nice person; very, very passive aggressive and would regularly reprimand us in front of the kids even though all the kids there spoke English fluently (English was not the official language of that country). She would act like English was a secret language and she could say whatever she wanted to us under the guise that the students “didn’t understand”.

    She was also very much a micromanager but also disorganized and she was just a nightmare to work with.

    We only had one computer for six teachers so I would come in 30-60 minutes early to get my printing and prep done. Teachers were excused at 5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and at 6:30 Monday, Wednesday, Fridays and they were long days. One trimester I had my last class of the day on M,W,F end at 5:45 and I was thrilled so I could leave early. Well, she forbade me from leaving early.
    She said I needed that time for prep, and I reminded her that I came in early to do that. She said I needed to be there a certain amount of hours and I reminded her that I was on site for those hours since I came in early but she wouldn’t budge but also couldn’t give me a reason for why I had to stay outside of control. When I was asking her to just talk it out with me, she let out a loud exasperated yell and just stormed away from me and this was loud enough for kids and other teachers to hear and I was stunned into silence.
    Since I had told her there was nothing for me to do, she started making up tasks for me to do that she would wait until 5:45 to assign me usually accompanied by a smirk(!!).
    One day she decided my task would be to forge the principal’s signature on these plaque diplomas they had ordered for the kids. I just wanted to go home and I was particularly annoyed that day. She did not give me a sample of what the signature should look like and I knew that was my opportunity to do something petty. I wrote the signature in a childlike scrawl on all of them and waited until I was leaving to hand them over.
    I just played dumb when she was mad, “Oh, I thought you would like them. You didn’t give me a sample signature so this is what I thought would look nice.”

  103. Corrigan*

    Oh I remembered another one. Our office manager/executive assistant (she has both roles) has been with our office forever and is kind of a petty tyrant over her domain. If you forward someone a meeting invite she gets a notification and tells you that she can do that. (It takes me two seconds and I don’t have to bother her, which I see as respectful of her time!)

    She’s especially petty about time cards. We’re salaried and exempt, but state employees so we have to do time cards. She just takes it upon herself to manage the approvals. When my new manager started he said she just did all the time cards without asking him if he wanted to do it himself (and complained if he tried to schedule his own meetings.) Long story short, what you put in the office calendar AND in your personal calendar needs to match the time you put in the time system exactly. So if you block off half day for an appointment in order to leave some buffer room, but end up needing only 2.5 hours, she’d be on you for it.

    On one of these times getting on me, she pointed out the time I have blocked off every morning. I said that this was when my daughter’s schoolbus comes and I only have it marked off so no one schedules meetings and I only end up needing about 10 of the 30 minutes I blocked off…

    And then I decided this was stupid so I just removed her access to my calendar. She can still see when I’m busy for scheduling reasons, but absolutely no details. She complained about this too, but whatever.

  104. FormerProducer*

    My horrible director Cruella was hired and immediately hated the other directors, particularly Perdida, because all of them called out her bullshit and Perdida in particular was not willing to be bullied. We had an open plan office and each division was loosely grouped together, but Cruella and Perdida sat next to each other. About 2 months in, Cruella asked the Facilities team to LITERALLY BUILD A WALL between her and Perdida’s desks, saying that our team “couldn’t concentrate with all the noise coming from Perdida’s team.” Absolute nonsense, of course, especially because we collaborated with them often and now had to walk literally 4 times the distance to get to their desks for a quick chat.

    After about 6 months, Perdida was so over Cruella’s nonstop awfulness (the number of letters I could write about her would power this site for at least a month) that she took early retirement. Literally the day after Perdida’s last day, Cruella asked Facilities to take the wall down and said she didn’t even know why there was a wall there because it just didn’t make sense and was really detrimental to our ability to collaborate across divisions. To this day I alllllmost respect the level of commitment to being petty.

  105. JustMe*

    I worked in retail at the mall one summer. My sales lead was the single pettiest person to have ever walked the earth. Once, because of some perceived slight, she made me stay late for a couple hours to clean. Cleaning up at the end of the day is standard practice at any store, but every time I went to her and said, “I’m done, can I go now?” she would giggle and say, “Oops, looks like you missed ___” and then would find new things for me to clean. I’m talking: pulling the display cases away from the walls to scrub the backs; scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees; cleaning the phone and keyboard behind the register that customers don’t see; cleaning the employee toilet not just once but twice. I ended up not being compensated for that time because the store closed at 11, hard stop, and the sales lead insisted that I was just doing what should have been completed by 11. (“They’re all the things you would do in your own home, after all.”) Quitting that job was one of the best days of my life.

    1. Turtlewings*

      “They’re all the things you would do in your own home, after all.” And that’s relevant how??? You’re paying me to do it HERE, so cough it up! Holy crud.

      1. JustMe*

        The worst part was that none of this was in the closing protocol (there was a checklist with all the stuff you had to do) and when everyone came in for work the next day the assistant manager went, “Oh my god…..the store is IMMACULATE.” Then he told me why he couldn’t pay me for making the store immaculate. I think the sales lead knew this. The worst part is that she had to stay with me in the store until 1 am while I did this, so I don’t think she was being compensated, either. She objectively just wanted to waste my time and hers.

  106. PTBNL*

    I used to make travel arrangements for out of town trial teams. The attorneys who treated me the worst always got the rooms next to the ice machine.

  107. Collarbone High*

    This wasn’t directly related to work, but I had a co-worker who always arrived with a coaxial cable in his lunch bag. I made the mistake of asking about it, he said that the VCR in his house belonged to *him* and he didn’t want his roommate using it while he was at work.

    1. I'm Just Here For The Cats!!*

      That’s like my mom. She was in a very toxic, almost abusive relationship. They guy was nuts, and locked the closets in the house so that my mom couldn’t get in saying “its my private stuff in there.” But then would get mad that his clothes weren’t put away. Anyways she got sick of his passive aggressiveness and locked the computer in the desk. When he went to use it he couldn’t. He had to wait until she got home, hours later. When he asked she said “that’s my computer. I have private stuff.

  108. The Bingoist*

    I’ve never actually told anyone this story because at the very least it’s wildly unethical. I used to work at a bingo hall as a runner – when someone called bingo, my job was to run over, verify the bingo, and then bring them their money. Also, if a customer had to stand up and go someplace (like to the bathroom, or to get food, or whatever), we would play their cards for them until they got back.

    We had this one customer who was ALWAYS trying to rip us off. She would come in every evening, pretty much, play bingo, and try to scam us. One of her favourites was to order some snacks from the cart, pay with a $10, wait a few minutes, then insist she paid with a $20, so we’d wind up giving her back the money she paid and then she’d get her food for free plus whatever her original change on the ten was. And this lady was DOGGED – she would rant and roar at the hall management until we gave her her money just to get her to go away. And my understanding is that we couldn’t tell her to get lost because there are all sorts of special rules involved in booting someone out of a gambling establishment (or else we were just gutless about it and decided the number of books she bought to play with justified losing a tenner every now and then).

    At the hall, we had this game called the Accelerator, where there was a large payout if the game was won before a certain number of balls were called, and a lesser payout thereafter. So for example, if you could get a full card in 48 balls, you’d win $12.5k, but anything after that you’d get something way smaller, like $200. But every night the size of the large payout would increase, and at certain thresholds, it would get easier to win – like at $15k, it would now be a full card in *49* numbers. So the game was a big draw, especially once the target number hit 52 or 53, which were reasonable common numbers for a full card to go in.

    So one night, just as we’re starting the Accelerator, this lady decides to run her scam (she had to run it basically shortly after whenever the snack cart went by so it at least looked plausible). The woman in charge of the snack cart also decided that that night she’d had enough and would NOT be giving this lady her $10. So it escalated, and it escalated, and finally the customer decided she wanted to talk to the hall manager in her office. She asked me to play her cards.

    She was using one of our bingo computers to track her cards – we programmed the cards into the machines and then the customers just had to punch in the numbers as they came up, then locate and mark the appropriate card with ink if/when the machine told them they had a bingo. The customers loved them because they could play a twelve strip book (each strip was 3 cards, so each twelve strip meant 36 cards per game) programmed into the machine, and also play another twelve strip manually, for a total of 72 cards per game. So I’m sitting here playing her Accelerator game, and she’s in the manager’s office screaming and shouting about her $10, and the woman who was pushing the snack cart is in there *sobbing* because she’s so upset, and I’m watching this lady inch closer and closer to a full card.

    And then she gets it – a full card in 49 numbers, fifteen and a half thousand dollars, in one of her cards programmed into the computer. And she’s in the office screaming at this poor snack cart woman, and I’m sitting there staring at her computer.

    So some fun facts about the bingo computers we were using (this is foreshadowing): unless she checked to see if there was some kind of disparity between the number of numbers entered in the card and the number of numbers the caller had called, she’d be very unlikely to notice whether the number of numbers that the caller had called and the number of numbers that had been entered matched (I appreciate that that sentence is baffling). And because we only needed the customers to ink the cards if/when they got a bingo, there was no physical evidence that she’d been anywhere near to a bingo.

    So I deleted three of the numbers out of her computer. Not only did she not win the $15.5k, she didn’t even get the $200 door prize. And then she comes swanning out of the manager’s office, comes back over to the table, and waves her ten at me, grinning, and goes “Got my ten!” And she did. And it was the most expensive ten dollar bill she ever ripped us off for: it cost her $15,490.

    She wasn’t even the worst customer we ever had.

    3. Moonstone*

      This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever read! I freaking ADORE this story! I’m so glad that nasty, thieving shrew didn’t get that money.

    4. Omskivar*

      As another former bingo employee I salute you. I wish I could have gotten away with that with some of our nastier regulars.

  109. HugeTractsofLand*

    The pettiest thing I’ve ever done was go back MONTHS in a google sheet’s history to pinpoint who had changed my data. There was a big error in the spreadsheet that others were trying to pin on me since I was the original spreadsheet creator, but it didn’t seem like an error that I would make. So I went back in time and sure enough, one of the most peeved people had made a mistake. I don’t work with the most tech-savvy folks either (part of the problem), so everyone in the room visibly stilled when I said “so there’s a way of checking who did what in any google doc…”

    I promise I was nice about it, but oh! the internal satisfaction.

    1. cncx*

      Something similar happened to me where a coworker went into a spreadsheet after i quit to sabotage one of the last things i did and cried to the boss to give me a bad reference.

      IT checked it out… a Saturday at three am she had gone in and messed with my sheet. Versioning is a thing!

  110. ConstantlyComic*

    I used to work at a state historic site that had a horribly toxic work environment, in no small part due to a long-running feud between interpreter staff and maintenance staff. During my time there, the maintenance foreman, who had worked at the site for as long as anyone could remember and was a pretty spiteful fellow who was one of the strongest forces behind the feud and generally just kind of did what he wanted, retired. He somehow got the okay to have a retirement dinner in the museum’s auditorium on a day that the site was closed to the public (the dinner was specifically for him and his friends, not staff), then left the food scraps, dirty dishes, and other mess overnight, forcing the interpreter staff to frantically clean it up the next day before opening.

    (I left the job not long after that, but it did start to get less toxic after that guy retired. The new maintenance foreman was pretty nice and actually put together a couple of all-staff cookouts on the property after hours–outdoors so the cleanup was easy)

  111. Rocket Raccoon*

    I worked in a super small bakery – just me and the owner. One day a lady ordered a box of cinnamon rolls, and when she got home and opened them she decided they were too done. She called the bakery and my boss told her that’s how they are supposed to be.

    She brought them back to the bakery, asked for a refund, and complained about the rude employee she’d spoken to earlier. He didn’t say a thing, just gave her the refund using every dime in the cash box.

  112. Vienna*

    I worked part time at Walmart for a few years while I was in college in their online grocery pickup department. I was the top performing employee in the entire department, and was trusted to spend my shifts finding substitutions for out of stock items with next to no oversight. My numbers were great, and customer surveys indicated they LOVED the alternatives I gave them, so nobody ever double checked my work.

    Every few weeks, my store’s manager would pick a new metric to harp on everyone about. Despite having no knowledge in how the job actually worked, he would create new policies to “support” us in improving whatever his metric of the week was. 99% of the time these policies only served to slow us down SIGNIFICANTLY. Tasks that used to take a minute suddenly took 15 or more. Even with ample evidence that his policies were actively harming the entire department, he’d refuse to change them for at least a week. It was infuriating.

    Every time he enacted one of these new policies, I’d go nuts with the substitutions. The great value 15 pack of diapers you ordered is out of stock? Congratulations, you’re getting the name brand 100 pack instead. The trial size lotion is nowhere to be found? Cool, have a 3 oz refillable bottle and the bulk size lotion instead. You ordered a pound of our cheapest ground beef but someone just bought the last package? 10 pounds of 85/15 seems like a reasonable substitution to me! Walmart covered the difference in price if a substitute was more expensive than what the customer originally ordered. I thoroughly enjoyed the benefit of getting great customer reviews along with the sweet satisfaction giving thousands of dollars of upgrades away on the store’s dime over the years that I worked there.

      1. New Jack Karyn*

        I dunno, it says this: “Walmart covered the difference in price if a substitute was more expensive than what the customer originally ordered.”

        I’m okay with Walmart losing a few nickels like this.

      2. Zephy*

        Walmart covered the difference in price if a substitute was more expensive than what the customer originally ordered.

        What part of that is not on the store’s dime?

        1. Ancient Llama*

          One person doing this likely no traceable impact, but overall the price Walmart charges goes up to cover similar things plus shoplifting loses etc.
          Unless you think they are taking it out of C-suite bonuses.
          So Econ 101 is right, it didn’t impact THAT order FINAL price, but it does impact why an order cost what it did in the first place. So you, me and everyone else shopping at Walmart (or any company) is absorbing/covering these costs, not the company, when the final $$$ are balanced.
          But I like Vienna’s style.

      3. Vienna*

        I suppose if you want to get really technical with it, they weren’t paying the difference in listed prices, just the difference from the wholesale cost of the expensive item I substituted and the listed price of the item the customer actually ordered. Their profit margin is only 2-3% though. Walmart was definitely losing a significant amount of money from all of my upgrading, so I think that counts as being on their dime.

  113. FaintlyMacabre*

    I’ve shared this before, and while it was karma doing all the work, I got plenty of petty enjoyment out of it nonetheless!:

    Several years ago, I had a temp job in a ridiculously dysfunctional workplace. It was a large factory and I along with two other coworkers did office work there. In my head, I dubbed them Micromanager Mindy and Do-nothing Delores. (For this story, know that while she drove me insane as a coworker, as a human being I actually liked Micromanager Mindy.)

    Do-nothing Delores did not like me or Mindy, largely because we actually knew how to do our jobs, did our jobs, and didn’t cover for her when she frequently slacked off of her job. She was a giant suck up, and would bring in treats for everyone in the factory, but always mysteriously ran out before she got to me and Mindy. I could go on, but you get the idea.

    One day, Jim, the grand boss comes in. He’s holding three strips of ten raffle tickets in his hand. The office was having a raffle for charity and there were some really nice prizes- electronics and cash and gas station gift cards. Jim addresses the three of us, saying that while he wanted to support the raffle, as the grand boss it would be inappropriate for him to win anything and therefore had bought the tickets for us.

    Even as Mindy and I are getting out our thanks, Delores has already snatched a strip of tickets from Jim’s hand and walked away without saying anything. (In my memory, she goes off into a corner and hunches over them crooning, “Preciousss, my preciousss,” but that is probably not what happened?) Jim, Mindy and I exchange a three way eye roll and then Mindy and I make an elaborate dance out of choosing the two strips of raffle tickets left. “Please, Mindy, choose which tickets you’d like.” “No, no, I insist you choose.” “I couldn’t possibly take away your choice. You simply must have your pick.” This continued until Jim more or less threw the tickets at us and walked away, no doubt regretting all the life choices he had made that had led him to that point.

    All week, Delores natters on about the prizes she wants and complains that Jim *only* bought her ten tickets. Mindy and I get in some high intensity eye rolling excercises. Finally, the raffle occurs and the prizes are distributed. Mindy and I both win gas certificates. Mindy also wins one of the higher end electronics. Delores gets diddly-squat. And every time she complained, we reminded her that she had the first pick of tickets. It was beautiful! Never have I enjoyed putting gas in my car so much as when I was using that certificate…

    1. Aquamarine*

      “In my memory, she goes off into a corner and hunches over them crooning, “Preciousss, my preciousss” – I loved this story, thank you!

  114. cncx*

    I’ve done this at several jobs. People would do this thing where they would call me or interrupt me on Teams to get a small set of numbers (like literally six digits) they were just too lazy to pull off a share drive because it was URGENT!!!1. When i would gently remind them where they could find this data, even with a live hyperlink on teams, they were always like “oh hoho but it’s easier and faster to call you.”

    So every time they called i sent them the data back as a screenshotted picture. Enjoy manually typing for wasting my time.

    2. Mr Flibble*

      I’m applauding you! I had several coworkers who would ask for my help ‘because it’s quicker’. I started spotting the signs – usually when they were at a particular point in an assessment and I would disappear for a bit. Once, on my return, one coworker truimphantly told me ‘it wasn’t that difficult’. Indeed.

  115. Amber T*

    I think I told this story once before here. My real name (not Amber) is a common name with an unusual spelling (think “Alysin” compared to “Alison”). It’s in my email, it’s in my signature, and it drives me up a wall when someone who I’ve emailed back and forth with before spells it wrong. It’s right there! Just look at who you’re emailing!!

    Once or twice is annoying, but I was going back and forth with one person on an email who also had a common but slightly unusually spelled name. Because it bugs me so much, I always make sure to spell people’s names right/used preferred names, but after the 20th email where she wrote out “Alison” instead of “Alysin,” I purposely spelled her name wrong and used the common spelling when responding.

    She never spelled my name wrong again. This was at least six or seven years ago and we have a wonderful working relationship now, but every time I get slightly annoyed, I mentally (only mentally!) spell her name wrong in my head.

  116. Sparky*

    At one of my retail jobs, I had a horrible manager. She was always snide and snotty to employees. When someone had to go to the bathroom, she’d always be angry that they couldn’t wait two hours until their next break to go. Always on a power trip with the tiny amount of power she had.

    I started noticing that when she went on one of her rants, she’d sway back and forth out of nervousness. I guess she was power hungry but also a little scared. So I started standing absolutely stick straight and looked her dead in the eye when she had a rant for me. She started swaying even more. I thought she’d fall over at one point. It was petty but it felt nice to be able to intimidate her just a little bit.

  117. I'm Just Here For The Cats!!*

    So I didn’t do this but a coworker did. I worked at a small grocery store. And for a while I helped in the Deli. It was just one person, Linda, who did all of the bakery orders and deli stuff premade sandwiches, salads, sliced deli meat and cheese. I covered her for a few months. and she came in a few times to help. Needless to say even in my small town grocery store this was a lot of work for one person.

    There was this was one customer who was so entitled and rude. She HAD TO HAVE FRESH CUT DELI MEAT. even if it was just cut she demanded it to be fresh. So one day Linda took the meat that was just cut, and repackaged it.

  118. clementine*

    Back when I did mall retail, I had a lady come in who was just straight up nasty and mean. She didn’t want to sign up for a store account which is fine, but when I asked her she yelled in my face that NO I DONT WANT AN ACCOUNT. I tried to give her a receipt afterwards and she yelled NO I DONT WANT A RECEIPT. I told her okay, you don’t need one, just be aware our return policy is- NO I DONT WANT A RECEIPT and stormed off. I was so mad I shredded the receipt and dumped it in the bathroom trash.

    Not twenty minutes later she comes back and wants a return and refund. She paid cash, but we can’t do cash refunds without a receipt. We can refund it to a credit card, but you need a store account for that. She starts yelling again and this time I get my manager. The customer demands that I dig through the trash for her receipt, my manager refuses, there’s some lovely back and forth during which my manager is fantastic and the lady ends up having to sign up for a store account before storming out again.

    If she hadn’t been so mean to me I would have just put the receipt in the drawer *specifically for abandoned receipts* (because this happens all the time) and she would have got her cash refund. But she was >:) that’s what you get

  119. rinathin*

    Speaking of bakeries — I worked at a supermarket bakery that offered cake decoration. I once got a call for a big sheet cake, and it was just the usual until the lady, in the exact tone you’re imaging, said “make it rainbow — but it’s not a *pride* thing.” She put *that* emphasis on pride. I was disgusted, but kept my usual cheery retail voice and said “yup, sure, of course.” When it came time to explain the order to the cake decorator, I made sure to convey how important it was that this cake not look remotely gay. Each color of the rainbow was present, but they were as out of order as possible. Think blue, red, orange, green, purple, yellow, something like that. Throw pink in there for good measure. It looked horrendous afterwards, but it certainly didn’t look like a pride cake.

    1. rinathin*

      I should note this supermarket was in a conservative town, so trying to do something about the underhanded homophobia wouldn’t have gone anywhere. My manager agreed the lady was a {bad word} but the malicious compliance was the most we could do.

      1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

        I would have been tempted to put the most bombastic rainbow on that cake I possibly could, and pipe “But not in a gay way” on the cake in the fanciest, most sparkly font I possibly could.

        2. Dark Macadamia*

          One of those beige “aesthetic” rainbows and then “it’s not a PRIDE thing” with PRIDE in rainbow letters

          1. fhqwhgads*

            Yeah this. Too bad she said it outloud and didn’t write it on the form. because most grocery cake order forms have a big “put exactly the text you want on the cake, nothing else” box and that’s where a lot of the cakewrecks about obvious text come from. It’s not the decorator screwing up; it’s the decorator doing exactly as they’re told, and the customer screwing up.
            But yeah the best way to comply, other than what they actually did, is the write “it’s not a PRIDE thing” on the cake. She said it.

  120. Salsa Your Face*

    I briefly worked as a receptionist at a small hair salon. The reservation software on the front desk computer also had a built-in time clock that all employees used to track our hours–the stylists and other staff would pop over to my desk whenever they needed to clock in or out. I quickly learned that on my profile, I had the ability to manually override people’s clock in and clock out times. I never once abused this power–I only used it if someone forgot to clock in our out for their shifts or lunch break, and would make their times appear as close as possible to what actually happened.

    After a few months the owner realized that I had this permission on my account and revoked it. He was really mad at me, but I had no idea that I *wasn’t* supposed to have that ability, and everyone I worked with swore that I had never falsified anyone’s times.

    But guess what? This computer was running, like, Windows 95, and I realized that all I had to do to continue to manipulate the time clock software was change the time on the computer. After that, I absolutely DID abuse the power. Showed up late? No you didn’t. Took a long lunch? Nope, the computer said you came back on time! I don’t have the ability to change the times anymore so it MUST be accurate!

  121. HungryLawyer*

    During law school I clerked at a very small firm. There were only 6 people total who worked at this firm, including a junior associate who really disliked me. She thought that I was gunning for her job, which I wasn’t, and was often very rude to me. She would occasionally work from home and every time she did, I would casually walk into her empty office and fart.

    4. Regular Human Accountant*

      Of all the hilarious pettiness on this thread, THIS is the one that made me laugh out loud. Love it.

  122. Thank God I Don't Work There Anymore*

    I used to work with a bunch of women in their 40s-50s who were all still emotionally in middle school. One in particular, Judy, was particularly insufferable, and no one in the office liked her. She also happened to be allergic to coconut (among other things), but the other women in the office were convinced that she was lying about allergies to get attention, because she did bring up her coconut allergy about every five minutes. (I personally have no idea if she was actually allergic to anything but I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt on this topic because, you know, death.)

    One day after Judy had been on a medical leave for about three weeks, one of the other women in the office went to the grocery store and bought about 10 different products blatantly made out of coconut and placed them all over the office–in the kitchen, in the fridge, at the reception desk. Coconut everything, everywhere.

    It was a thinly-veiled way of saying “We hate you and wanted you to die.”

  123. ragazza*

    A coworker who was pretty full of himself and not great at his job (he used to sit with his feet up watching Netflix at work) left his offer letter for the job at our company on his desk when he left for a new job. He made…quite a lot more than I did, although to be fair I had a more junior title (I shouldn’t have since I actually, you know, worked, but that’s another story). The bosses freaked out and wanted to keep it on the down low. However, I had already told everyone in the department, so I guess I’m petty too. And then when I was promoted, I pointed out how much he had made in that position, and I still didn’t get it. The sexism at that place was amazing. I should have gotten a lawyer.

  124. not cheap, just petty*

    I worked at a very famous medical center that has a great reputation but is toxic to work for. We had a break room with a water filter attached to the sink. We were expected to contribute $10/mo to the hospital if we used the special water filter tap. This unit had a total of 200 nurses, 30 ancillary staff, 6 managers, and 50 doctors/NPs, along with countless residents & fellows coming through. There was no way that we needed to contribute that much money to maintain this water filter under the sink. I never once contributed, but I made sure to drink water from it AND fill up two water bottles to take home to water my plants every time I worked. Just so petty, but felt good.

  125. Nesprin*

    I work in a lab and had a horrible soul destroying coworker who thankfully quit. Labs run on instructions left on sticky notes and lab tape- when she left I went through and removed every scrap of her name or handwriting and replaced with new notes.

    It took me several hours.

    1. Quill*

      Ooof. I completely understand the impulse. The number of times I have found a critical piece of information labeled “Jason’s results 2003” and thanked the Jason I have never met for writing things down… At last job, I think there’s an instruction sheet for fixing the UV imager that’s named after me.

      If it’s not in a lab notebook we cannot give this person any credit! Even if nobody will ever know.

  126. Michigander*

    I once worked at a very small, very dysfunctional company. The office manager would often talk to me from the other side of the office as she walked toward my desk. (Probably a good 25 feet or so.) I could hear her and knew she was talking to me, but I pretended not to hear her until she was right at my desk. “Oh, we’re you talking to me?” Then she’d have to repeat what she said. Every single time!

  127. Not Mindy*

    I think that this kind of falls into the category of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
    When PDAs first came out I was very proud of my Palm Pilot. Unfortunately, it didn’t help me get more organized, and I would leave it overnight on my desk on a regular basis.
    One morning I came in and it was gone. So that night I put the charger front and center on my desk with a post-it that said “You stole my Palm Pilot, you might as well take this, too.”
    It was gone the following morning.

    1. Mac (I Wish All The Floors Were Lava)*

      I feel about this story the way I feel whenever I see a picture of a cat dressed up as sushi: “oh no, who did that to you!” but also can’t stop laughing.

  128. Pam*

    I once work for a boss who acted as though every penny spent was her personal money. It was pretty painful to deal with, but we did have some small perks. One was a Christmas gift card; it was only $50, so it wasn’t going to change anyones holiday, but it was a nice treat we all enjoyed.

    The organization decided that they would do a statement outlining our employee benefits at the end of the year. Nice, but really as we are in the insurance industry, we were all pretty knowledgeable about our benefits.

    Boss apparently didn’t love it and decided that it should be paid by for the employees. Out of our annual Christmas gift card.

    1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      A lid for everypot. I hope she and guacamole bob live long and parsimoniously.

  129. Auld Batt*

    My brother worked for a company that provided free sodas in the break room refrigerator. His manager would take all the cans of his (the manager’s) particular favorite soda and keep them on his desk so nobody else could have them. Everybody hated this manager.

    Whenever the manager left his cubicle, my brother or one of his teammates would rush in and shake up as many soda cans as possible before the manager came back.

    The whole team would wait in delicious anticipation for the manager to come back in and to hear the “snick” of a can opening, followed by panicked yelling as the soda spilled everywhere. Apparently the manager never figured out what was happening.

  130. ragazza*

    I remembered another story from the same company. One of my bosses there was a control freak and always thought someone had been in his office because he thought items were moved, etc, and he would send out angry emails. No one had been, but people started actually moving random items when he was out just to eff with him.

  131. Not in Charge*

    I got unofficially demoted from a managing position for reasons I still have not been able to find out, and someone outside my department has been put in charge of it. I suspect this was at least somewhat that person’s idea, so while I tried to help them transition for a while, I’ve since stopped. Now I’m just redirecting all manager questions I get to him like, I know you don’t know the answer, but you wanted this so have fun! This makes no sense!

  132. RockChick*

    Many years ago, I shared an office with another girl, Brandi. Brandi had a habit of chewing gum with her mouth open and making those tiny popping sounds with her teeth at machine gun speed. I turned up my radio, but she said it was distracting her so I turned it down, noting I had turned it up because her gum chewing was distracting me.

    No change in the gum habit. SO ANNOYING.

    I bought a coffee mug that had a gimmicky thing in the bottom so when lifted it played a tinny version of “You Light Up My Life.” When the pop-pop-popping was going on, I’d hold up my mug and stare at the work on my desk, deep in thought. When she stopped popping, mug down. Start popping, mug up. She made a comment about the annoying sound in the office which I shrugged off.

    Took Brandi about three weeks to figure out the connection before she switched to mints.

    1. ConstantlyComic*

      All I can think of is the Cell Block Tango (although admittedly, Debbie Boone is a much tamer reaction than “a couple of warning shots”)

  133. TerribleAtMakingUsernames*

    My previous job involved setting up and running recurring events for the general public. I (female) was the manager for the second event of the day, with a (male) coworker (call his Bob) responsible for the first event. We had the exact same job title, responsibilities, and seniority level. The event schedule was set up in such a way that we had an EXTREMELY limited amount of time between the end of event 1 and start of event 2 (sometimes a half hour or less), to accomplish a turnaround that included cleaning, removing and putting away huge decorations and setups from event 1, and safely putting up setups for event 2 (screw guns, tying things up with cable, etc. were all involved – if something wasn’t set up correctly, someone could really get hurt!)
    Bob was supposed to help with this turnaround, and in exchange I was supposed to completely remove my stuff AND set up his at the end of my day because “Bob and his staff might not have enough time in the morning to do everything.” Bob…would not help. Bob would stand around cracking bad jokes while I was literally sprinting past him carrying a piece of plywood twice my size. Bob would only help if I physically handed something to him and told him where it went (which he should have already known), and then Bob would go back to his joke-cracking corner.
    Eventually I got fed up enough that I told my staff that we would not be setting up Bob’s event for him that night. We made sure to completely remove and store everything from ours, and left Bob an empty space so he could set up in the morning. (I did text our manager to give them a heads up and was told “I’m not going to stop you”- can you tell this was an incredibly dysfunctional environment?)
    Others who were there when Bob came in the next morning told me he was baffled and ran around like a chicken with his head cut off because, in a surprise to no one, he had zero idea how to do his own set up (even though that was part of our job), because my staff and I had been doing it for him for months. Our manager came in to show Bob what to do (mostly to make sure no one got hurt), I got a bare-bones apology, and left that job shortly after!
    (Yes, there were other many many other sexism and double-standard issues at this company!)

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      F the hell out of Bob, and good for you! I would never expect someone to do all my event setup, especially if it was that complicated.

  134. Aplatanada*

    I worked for a manager that was outrageously Type A, but only when it benfitted her. We were government adjacent and frequently had to attend events in the evening, but there was no comp time or flexibility on adjusting schedules. For example, when I was pregnant with twins, I had to frequently take my lunch hour to go to my doctor for check ups. If I took longer than my official lunch hour, I would have to adjust my schedule to cover that time. (So if my appointment took 90 minutes, I would have to stay an extra 30 minutes.) But this rule did not apply in the other direction for us saaried folks. Work a Saturday event? Be there at 8 am Monday.

    The day I gave birth to my twins I had gone to work as usual at 8 am and left at noon to go to my appointment. I unexpectedly had a serious condition and had to give birth unexpectedly. Three weeks later when I called HR to get everything in order, I was surprised to learn that I got 89 days leave (unpaid of course) not 90. The explained my manager was not counting the day I worked from 8 am to 12 pm as a work day because I hadn’t worked more than 4 hours that day. Never mind that earlier in the week that I had worked a 12 hour day because of an event- the day I gave birth I only worked 4 hours, so it didn’t count as a full work day. I complained to HR. HR said it was up to the manager, and she denied even my request to work ONE half day to compensate. So I only got 89 days leave.

    The controlling environment had been bad before, but got intolerable once I became a parent. One day I worked a 14 hr day and had not been able to pump after 6 pm because of the event. At 11 pm I told my manager I was leaving because I had not been able to pump and needed to get home, and she said, “Of course, you can skip clean up tonight. You need to rest because you have to be here at 8 am tomorrow.”

    She was shocked when I resigned 6 months later! I’ve seen her at events since then and she ignores me.

  135. Schmitt*

    I worked for an agency owned by a married couple. All of us, roughly 15 people, were not *officially* required to eat lunch in the communal dining room and partake in the communal espresso ritual, but individually it would affect how The Couple thought of you. They liked to tell prospective employees how cozy and chummy we all were, eating lunch like a big family.

    The employees had silverware from Ikea. The Couple had two sets of proper, heavy, fancy silverware. Whoever was in charge of the espresso that day was also expected to wash the bosses’ silverware by hand.

    On my last day, I shoved that stupid silverware in the very back of a random drawer.

    1. Schmitt*

      If you think I have more terrible stories about these two, you are right, but sadly there was no pettiness involved in the other stories.

  136. Good Luck*

    My friend worked for a organization in the HR dept. For some reason at this particular organization HR organized all the functions/celebrations etc for the company. My friend was usually in charge of these endeavors. One time there was a celebration that involved a taco bar. For this event HR was NOT in charge for once. The person that ordered the food, left the dirty catering trays and chaffing dishes sitting out in the company kitchen for days. Claiming she wouldn’t clean it up bc it was the catering company’s job. My friend asked her to at least rinse the chaffing dishes and trays bc the kitchen was starting to stink. The woman said again, she wouldn’t. Finally my friend picked up all the dirty dishes and placed them on the woman’s desk before she got in for the day. Somehow they magically all got rinsed and picked up that afternoon by the catering company.

    1. Peaches Peaches Peaches*

      This reminds me of that famous old Reddit story about the woman who worked in a horrible, sexist office where the few women were expected to do their male coworkers’ dishes. The women of the office finally rebelled by letting their kitchen get absolutely disgusting while they only used the executive kitchen upstairs. The men pitched a fit that their dishes weren’t being cleaned for them, and when they ran out of clean dishes, they eventually followed the women upstairs to the executive kitchen and left that one in similarly dismal shape–whereupon the executives read them the riot act and made them clean both kitchens (after previously ignoring the women’s complaints, of course).

  137. MissMaisy*

    I worked at a fast food place outside a mall during high school and college. I always worked the closing shift which meant I had a lot of jobs to get done before closing or we’d be late getting done. Since the last hour or so was pretty dead, it was easy enough to get that prep work done. There was one exception to the dead period. When the mall closed, the drive-thru would be lined up with people wanting drinks for their drive home. It was annoying enough to have to stop my work to fill a 99c orders of Biggie Pepsi but, being a petty teenager, I was especially annoyed with those ordering water. If someone came through my drive-thru ordering only water, you can bet I gave them carbonated water from the drink fountain (so it also had a trace of whatever soft drink had last been served from that nozzle). I just imagined those people would go to the McDonald’s next door next time they wanted a free drink. To this day, I never order water at fast food places.

  138. CSRoadWarrior*

    A few years ago, I had a recruiter reach out to me about a position I was interested in. Only, the recruiter botched the entire process while at the same time, I was unaware. She and her partner recruiter told me the company was interested in me. I hear back and was called in for an interview. Only, it wasn’t an interview. the hiring manager only complained to me about how both recruiters kept messing up the entire time and did not communicate properly with the company. I didn’t even get a chance to speak.

    Predictably, I didn’t get the position. Now mind you, but I was not given any details about what happened, but I was MIFFED.

    Without hesitation, I emailed the supervisor for both recruiters, and specifically told the supervisor to “Do me a favor and please fire Recruiter A and Recruiter B.” I actually used the word “fire” and that was my sentence, word for word. I hit send without hesitation. A few months later, I heard that both recruiter were no longer with the company. Admittedly, I smirked with satisfaction.

  139. Thunder Kitten*

    there was a place I worked that had you pay $4 cash for parking into a machine (no coins) If you had exact change, all was well. However if you needed to get change, it would only disburse dollar coins (which are not as commonly used currency in US as 1 euro coins are in Europe).
    However, it did not accept dollar coins as payment. Woe betide the poor souls who only had $20 bills…

    1. Gumby*

      I used to buy CalTrain tickets with $20s just so I could get the dollar coins. They made great stocking stuffers for nieces and nephews who found them cool. Sort of how we got $2 bills from our grandfather. Now it’s all card based and not nearly as fun.

  140. eristotle*

    Years ago when I waited tables, a couple that I was serving became angry and demanded to see my manager. I don’t remember what the issue was exactly, just that it was dumb and that I hadn’t done anything wrong (I couldn’t get them a beer they wanted, or something like that). So I went to my boss and explained the situation. He laughed, called over another server to watch my tables, and told me to go hang out in the kitchen for 10-15 minutes. I had no idea what he was up to, but I complied.

    15 minutes later I came back downstairs and the couple’s table is now empty. My boss then told me that they were incredibly rude to him, making demands and ridiculous complaints about me, etc. So, he looked them dead in the eye and told them that I’d caused all sorts of trouble, would be fired IMMEDIATELY, and that he was very sorry that I had ruined their night. They were horrified that they had just made someone lose their job and begged my boss not to fire me. No, he said, this is the last straw, she’s gone. Then, since I ruined their dinner, he removed their plates from their table, and told them very apologetically that he would comp their meals, since clearly I ruined the whole experience. My only regret is that I wasn’t there to watch the exchange.

  141. Tequila & Oxford Commas*

    I occasionally get racist emails from members of our client base who don’t like it when a newsletter or event panel features too many non-white people. We don’t usually respond, but sometimes one will be in the “Just asking questions” vein, i.e. semi-veiled racism masquerading as genuine curiosity.

    I love answering these in the most polite, cheery tone, taking the question at face value: “Yes, you’re right! Isn’t it wonderful that we have such a diverse community? Did you know that X% of our population identify as [underrepresented group]?”

    Or I’ll play really dumb: “I’d love to answer your question — can you clarify what you mean by “diversity”? As you know, that could refer to gender, age, race/ethnicity, belief systems, income bracket…” Surprisingly, they rarely respond with clarifications!

  142. MiddleAgeRage*

    Years ago, after dealing with toxic management trifecta: favouritism, cliqueness, no accountability – I was reaching that critical mass bullsh*t level. The tipping point was after a company wide “anonymous” survey revealed that management across the company was considered untrustworthy, unknowledgeable, and just generally terrible. The higher up muckety mucks decided in their infinite wisdom that workers needed team building exercises instead of fixing the actual problems.

    Surprise! Not…

    Anyway, during one such team building exercise meeting, the resident line manager decided to go through the room and tell us to share what vegetation we most identified with. Normally, I would quietly decline to participate with a mumbled “I don’t know” or “I got nothing” but my manager was determined to get an answer from me today.

    Coworkers said things like “Oak tree – tall and strong”, “Maple – timeless and truly Canadian”, “Strawberry – everybody likes me”, “Roses – beautiful but prickly” etc.

    After badgering from my manager, and feeling the expectant attention from my coworkers, I lost all sense of reason and blurted out “Corn – can be consumed, sh*t out, and still be productive”

    Meeting adjourned and I left the company later that year.

    2. Thunder Kitten*

      awesome answer ! better than my answer would have been : “mushroom”. though the reasons are similar. turns organic fertilizer into something productive.

      2. Nina*

        …I don’t know if it’s an industry thing or a location thing, but where I am, someone saying they felt like a mushroom would be understood very very clearly: it means “I am being kept in the dark and fed horsesh*t”.

        1. lin*

          It may be regional; I learned it in the upper midwest before I ever got into the corporate world. We tended to frame it as a complaint: “I am not a mushroom”, meaning, don’t keep me in the dark and feed me horse poo.

  143. DramaQ*

    I had a coworker who was very particular about stuff and would follow you around and complain if you didn’t do things exactly her way.

    I took great delight in using pipette tips out of order instead of by row and leaving the lid open so she’d see it.

    If you’ve ever worked in a lab you know how irritating that is.

    So worth it when I’d catch her rearranging it.

    1. Trillian*

      Totally irritating, since scanning the number of tips used or remaining in a row is a quick check on “Did I add enzyme to that tube or not?” My wandering mind would not thank you.

      1. lyonite*

        Or anyone who wanted to use a multichannel pipette and had to rearrange the tips in order to have a complete set to pick up. What’s so hard about using them in order so the box has the most utility for everyone? (If it’s your own box on your own bench then do whatever.)

    2. 30 Years in the Biz*

      I so relate to this! Why do some laboratorians always think their way is the best way? The way we perform certain tasks is subjective and doesn’t affect outcome. I’m a little picky myself, but would never get on someone’s case for pipette tip use – or putting a pipette back in the exact place in the holder, or signing and dating reagents in a certain area of the label, or putting the boxes of gloves in size order on the rack, etc, etc….

    3. Lurker Cat*

      Using pipet tips out of order is cruel and unusual. What you should have done is start taking from the opposite end of the row.

      1. Lurker Cat*

        Probably not. I unintentionally and successfully drove a lab mate crazy for years because she started a row from the left and I’d start from the right. We eventually agreed to have our own boxes.

  144. ferrina*

    There was a certain SVP who was known for being an insufferable know-it-all and using jargon and acronyms and talking quickly to make himself look smart, then sneering when his audience couldn’t understand what he was saying. I’m a woman who looks 10 years younger than I am. I usually have a quirky, casual communication style (great for translating technical stuff into everyday terms). So he assumed I was the perfect target.

    My desk was in an open office, so he stopped by for an “impromptu brainstorm” and started speaking loudly so everyone could hear him. Unfortunately for him, my linguistic capabilities are borderline savant (I was that kid in high school that translated Shakespeare on the first reading, and that kid in college that translated Kant; I maxed out scores verbal standardized tests), and when I get annoyed, I substitute colloquial terms for archaic or academic equivalents, and I’m fluent in corporate jargon (I can fully translate Weird Al’s Mission Statement).

    I not only understood him; I responded in kind (speaking at the same rapid pace he did), firing off additional acronyms and technical terms. My tone was cheerful and enthusiastic, as though I completely enjoying our brainstorming session. He blinked a couple times and said he’d get back to me. His own team was trying not to laugh at the exchange. He avoided me for a couple years after that.

    1. Middle Aged Lady*

      This! I am very Southern and have a ‘sweet’ face and some people, usually males, think they can talk down to me and that my accent means I am stupid. I love giving their superiority right back to them when I can.

  145. t-vex*

    I had a travel mug with the logo of a national organization that mildly annoyed me but the mug was nice so I used it. Then my favorite coworker resigned to go worth there, so I threw the mug in the trash. That’ll show them!

  146. PACM*

    I worked as a janitor, I was the floor guy–mopping, waxing, buffing, cleaning carpets. That was me. My domain ended at ankle height but it was pretty much absolutely from there down.

    One person asked for their (small) office’s carpet to be cleaned. So, okay, I went in, cleared furniture and stacks off documents off the floor (putting them on their desk), cleaned it, did other work for an hour while the carpet dried some with the aid of a fan in the open doorway (so it would cut down on any fumes because some people are sensitive to any scent), and came back and put everything back together using marks furniture left on the carpet and a couple of cell phone photos as guides. I can be thorough.

    They complained the next day that their office hadn’t been ‘really cleaned’ because, sure, the incidental stains were gone but ‘nothing had been moved’ and ‘it didn’t smell clean’.

    So, the next night, I took it all apart *again*, cleaned it with stronger mix, and this time I didn’t leave it to dry with an open door, and I trickled some undiluted Fabuloso (the lavender kind, the most fumey, strong-smelling stuff I could find without making a special trip) in the corner behind their door. And I left papers and chairs on the desk. The smell probably hit them in the face when they opened the door the next morning.

    I can be thorough.

    1. WLP*

      I work for a company that specializes in this kind of floor work. Can totally relate. :)

  147. Hills to Die on*

    I had a coworker who would come into work sick but also refuse to take antibiotics so she would make the whole office sick. For weeks. My health insurance was expensive then too and I was working 2 jobs so it was extra hard on me.
    She also blamed her forgetfulness on everyone else, took credit for everyone’s work, was hyper aggressive, and cheating on her husband while telling her direct reports all about her affair partner.
    Her car needed some major repairs and she somehow came to the conclusion that she had to rent a car for $400 until the repairs were complete. I decided not to tell her that I just had my car repaired there and that they will give you a loaner for free if you just ask.
    Also, when she would soak her oatmeal bowl and spoon in the sink in the break room, I would pour out the water so that the dried oatmeal would stick to the bowl and she couldn’t use it for her lunch.
    And – I kept ‘accidentally’ calling her husband by her affair partner’s name when he would show up at the office. Maybe he figured it out – I don’t know.
    I was acting like a child and I am not sorry.

    2. Peaches Peaches Peaches*

      Not to nit-pick, but because it relates to a topic in my field I’m particularly passionate about, I can’t help myself from throwing in a PSA: people with viral illnesses should NOT take antibiotics. It won’t help clear up their viral infection or prevent transmission to others, and antibiotic overuse contributes to antibiotic resistant infections, which kill more than 35,000 Americans every year. (And we’re likely going to hit a crisis point with antibiotic resistance in the next 5-10 years when some of our currently most effective antibiotics just stop working due to overuse-caused resistance.)

      But that said, people should absolutely stay home when sick!

  148. WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot*

    Two stories – same guy:

    1. I worked in a law firm. One of the attorneys went by a shortened version of his middle name. Kind of a family tradition. So he was named something like Percival Richard Warblesworth and the went by “Rich”. The office manager HATED the fact that he didn’t go by his first name. There were SEVERAL partner level attorneys who did similar things – including one who went by Trip because he was “the third of his name” or something like that. Rich was an Associate so the office manager wanted to throw his weight around. He would only address Rich as Percival and when corrected, he would say things like, “Well, for some reason, I keep calling you by your name.” When the name plate for Rich’s office arrived it said “Percival”. When it went up, most people in the office were genuinely confused, wondering who on earth Percival was and what happened to Rich? Others, in retaliatory pettiness, wandered around the office loudly looking for Rich’s “new” office, since some guy named Percival now had Rich’s “old” office.

    2. We also had a fantastic legal secretary. She worked hard and always stayed late. She had a bit of an edge (pierced nose, visible tattoos… in a conservative legal firm 20 years ago) so this same office manager had a problem with her generally, but the Partners loved her. She always had child care drop off in the morning and would usually arrive by 8:15, but it wasn’t a bit deal because she always stayed late and that was far more important in a law firm when most pleadings are going out at the end of the day. (We also had a receptionist who’s job it was to answer the phones so if the partners were ok with it, it really wasn’t a problem…) But the office manager couldn’t abide her lateness because he wanted her there at 8 am on the nose. So he started writing her up weekly for arriving late. She shifted her schedule in the mornings and started arriving in the office by 7:45, but she would sit at her desk and not begin work until 8 am.

    The office manager wrote her up anyway as it was unacceptable to be at her desk early because it created legal liability to the company if she wasn’t “working”.

    She quit. He was fired.

  149. Anon for this*

    Story #1
    Several lifetimes ago I worked for a tiny wildly corrupt non-profit. It has since gone under, which it needed to. It was a super toxic workplace with one of the few culture benefits being that you could bring your dog to the office. I had my first dog at the time, a very smart rescue dachshund. She happened to be with me at the office on the day that I was fired without warning. I did the traditional packing my things into a copy paper box move and, unbeknownst to me, my dog marched into the main room where the two VPs sat, one of whom would be fired the following week, and pooped right next to the desk of the VP responsible for firing me. This was a housetrained and very, very smart dog.

    The VP noticed the poop right as my dog and I were getting ready to walk out the door for the final time, my arms loaded with my copy paper box, my dog in her harness and on her leash. She demanded I put everything down and go clean up my dog’s poop, which until that moment I truthfully did not know existed. I knew I was never going to get a reference from this place and particularly her, so I said, “Nope” and walked out the door, never to return. It was so satisfying. My good girl got so many treats for that.

    Story #2
    Several jobs later, I was working at a store in a ritzy neighborhood. The owner’s mother, who was wildly racist, sexist, and just awful to work for, had a thing for poinsettias at the holidays. She’d load the store with them. The thing was, once the blooms die off, they’re just not that great looking and to get the blooms back they have to be shut in the dark, something she was not willing to do. They also were in the holiday foil, slid around on the counter, got in our way, and often got soil on things. A colleague and I got tired of them, but we’d been told that we HAD to keep them, despite the fact that we were in 5 days a week, and Ms. Poinsettia was in 2 days a week. Additionally, our fancy customers were complaining about the ugly plants in holiday wrapping – in April.

    So I assassinated the plants. I’ve always had a black thumb, but this time I used a chemical assist. Our store had a huge assortment of chemicals that we needed in the back because of what we sold. I experimented and it turns out that acetone works nicely as a plant killer. We got it timed out so that Ms. Poinsettia would come in and one by one, her plants would be withering and brown. We managed to convince her that there was a poinsettia blight. The following holiday season we started our campaign as soon as the blooms faded and they were gone by the end of January. The year after? She gave them away to her favorite customers.

    3. Charlotte Lucas*

      Your dog knew exactly what she was doing. She was expressing her displeasure to/about people who hurt you.

  150. persimmon*

    At my mall job we had The Coupon, which was a bar code behind the register that gave you 20% off. We were supposed to use it for display items or as an “oops, our bad” when a customer got inconvenienced or whatever.

    We also had The Pitch, which was a stupid-long spiel listing all the benefits of our terrible store credit card and all the things you could do with it and how toooootally amazing it was and not at all a scam. We were supposed to have this memorized and give the entire speech anytime anyone who was an adult didn’t sign up.

    I used The Coupon almost every day. If you were polite? You get The Coupon. If you were a cute kid? You get The Coupon. If you looked like you were having a bad day but didn’t take it out on me? Coupon. This was 100% not allowed but no one at corporate ever seemed to notice and the manager didn’t care.

    I used The Pitch if you were being obnoxious. If I saw you knocking stuff over or being rude to another employee or if you didn’t evacuate during the fire alarm? (Don’t ask) You got The Pitch. Hope you love hearing about interest rates because this thing is five minutes long! Bonus if they were complaining in line about us being slow.

    1. ferrina*

      The corporate retail equivalent of the carrot and the stick– the Coupon and the Pitch

  151. Anonymous Today*

    Through a reorganization, I ended up the assistant to a new VP of Sales who had previously been the problem child for my former boss, the now-ex-VP. Her style seemed to be manage by gaslight, and it was miserable.

    She fired me a month or so later for – I kid you not – using Excel to tally a column of numbers. (instead of an adding machine?!) She waited until about 10:30 when everyone was in the office, walked me to my desk and watched me clean it out, and walked me the longest possible route through the building so everyone could see me being fired.

    It was so ridiculously petty that all I could do was laugh.

      1. Anonymous Today*

        Pretty much. I don’t think I actually said “I am being fired” because that was obvious, but I did say a few “it was great working with you!” on my way out.

  152. AnotherLadyGrey*

    I worked in used bookstores for many years. Most customers were great but there were always some who were incredibly nasty and mean and who loved “catching us” out on tiny things and generally being horrible on purpose. They were usually repeat customers who we all came to know and loathe. One such came to the counter with two copies of the same book – copy A priced at $4.00 and copy B priced at $5.00. He wanted copy B, and first harangued me about our “error” (it was not an error) and then demanded that I sell him copy B for $4.00. We did not allow price changes and never negotiated with customers, which he absolutely knew. I looked over both books extremely carefully and deliberately, really taking my time. Then, while looking him dead in the eye like an apex predator, I said, “You’re absolutely right – I’m so sorry for the mistake. These books should be the same price! They are both $5.00.” and then gave him the most sincerely apologetic smile I could muster. He did not buy the book. It was glorious.

  153. ZK*

    When I worked for a printing company, a former colleague did a ton of FREE design work for a company (totally against policy, but she loved doing it, and at the time, she was the boss). She left, I got her job, the company asked for more design work, against my better judgement I did it to keep the customer happy. But then the customer had a crap ton of stuff printed that I absolutely warned them the image quality of the photos they submitted wasn’t sufficient, they insisted I print anyway and lo and behold, they were unhappy and refused to pay. This was a running theme for them and I finally had enough. After talking to my manager, we agreed, no payment, no more printing. Company get pissed off, demands a CD with all of their files. Me being petty, I converted everything to the absolutely lowest quality .pdfs I could and burned it to a disk. Good luck with that, and good luck getting anyone to recreate it without charging an arm and a leg. And then I deleted all the originals.

  154. Mr Flibble*

    One place I worked had a tiny kitchen with very little workspace. On a Thursday morning my manager used a big dinnerplate to slice half a lemon and then she’d leave the plate on the side with the lemon all day. It drove me nuts that she would never move the plate or the lemon inconveniencing everyone. I worked slightly later than everyone else so I would chuck the lemon and wash the plate. This went on about a year before I left. I never knew if she forgot about it or just assumed the cleaners moved it but I always felt a little better.

    1. Alisaurus*

      I’m laughing at myself now because I was imagining her pushing the dinner plate through the lemon, guillotine style, to cut it in half. I was halfway through the next comment in this before it suddenly occurred to me that she more likely just used the plate as a cutting board and actually sliced the lemon with a knife.

  155. Slurmp*

    Honestly, the Jane Vs. Grandboss showdown sounds like a win-win. Free lunch and entertainment for everyone!

      1. M*

        Right? Sure, “we take lunch when we can” but don’t you realize how much more pleasant everyone will be if they just got to eat a sandwich when they’re hungry?

      2. misspiggy*

        Mine too. It takes a steady hand to slice and serve salmon in a meeting. Jane has got some sangfroid.

        1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

          The boss watching her slice a fish with that knife during the meeting he called was cooler than the cucumbers on the dill sauce.

    2. Slurmp*

      Oh, and for my own pettiness…going through a project document behind a coworker and correcting every change he made, because he wasn’t authorized to work on the project and I was. There’s nothing like directing a seething stare of hatred at a Google Docs icon.

    3. WellRed*

      Jane! I mean, offices like this probably don’t reward people for working through lunch so eff that. She rocks.

      3. Stuckinacrazyjob*

        Nod, people’s blood sugar can get weird. mostly I’m stupid but some people are super mean. you don’t want to know what happens when I don’t eat for 5 hours

        1. JustaTech*

          My boss gets grumpy (at inanimate objects) when he is late for lunch.
          A former coworker would lose the ability to do even basic math. This is a problem when you work in a lab, so I always included lunch in my lab schedules and would nudge/shove coworker out to eat something before she made an unfixable mistake.

          1. Elitist Semicolon*

            I had an agreement with my grad school advisor that if I started getting tetchy when we met, she would be legit in telling me to go eat something and then come back. Our interactions improved vastly after that.

    4. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

      If Jane weren’t seething about it it would have been win-wins-lose (Jane-coworkers-boss) which isn’t bad! Still pretty awesome though.

    5. Iridescent Periwinkle*

      Lunch should be provided for meeting attendings if Grandboss is requiring lunch hour meetings. It’s the decent thing to do and should be a requirement.

      I hope Jane was claiming the expenses.

      1. Malarkey01*

        This was mine! I always feel the need to clarify that lunch at this place was anytime between 11-2 since we had flexible start times. So not scheduling a meeting between 3 hours of the day was never feasible.
        Jane liked to eat right at 11:30, but sometimes grandboss scheduled 11-12 meetings. Jane did NOT want to shift her lunch back 30 minutes during those days no matter what (and was really inflexible about a lot). So she wasn’t even being asked to skip lunch, just delay it 30 but either way I LOVED the showdown.

        1. Silver Robin*

          I am kind of confused about why this became a showdown.

          Jane: I need to eat at 11:30 and your meeting overlaps with that

          Boss: okay, bring your lunch to the meeting

          That seems like a fine resolution? Sometimes meetings overlap with when people are hungry / common lunch times, so…sometimes employees have a lunch meeting. As long as Jane can still take a break later (usually lunch breaks are for lunch, but if she has already eaten she should still get time to be away from her work in the middle of the day). Was she trying to stick up for the rest of you? Did you need that?

          I mean, the fact that she fed you nice lunches is great and I am glad you got food! But where is the conflict?

        2. Malarkey01*

          Sure, but that was not the issue here. Jane was intolerant to changes in pens, the paper brand we had, the placement of a bench in the courtyard.

    6. goddessoftransitory*

      Me too! I don’t blame Jane a bit–I’ve had too many 3:30 “lunch” breaks because of busy times and scheduling. It totally messes up my meal pattern for the rest of the day, and by 3:30 I am a raging hangry monster with a headache that won’t clear. So yeah, I want to eat lunch AT LUNCH TIME.

    7. Lacey*

      I know right? I’ve had tons of bosses who liked to schedule meetings over lunch, but no one ever thought of bringing in a cheese plate!

    8. Rainbow*

      I have a colleague who always turns his camera on and makes a point of eating demonstratively into the screen whenever someone schedules a 1200-1300. Honestly, he’s hilarious and I appreciate his ballsiness when we get dragged into lunchtime meetings together.

  156. Anon for This*

    Re: The toilet paper thief, I saw something far worse happen years ago. Half of our floor was the temporary workspace for a call center. I think they were minimum wage and a depressing job (foreclosures) plus their desks were literally folding tables set right next to each other in what had been a storage. Let’s just say it was a morale disaster – but that doesn’t excuse what somebody did.

    The day after they moved out of the building, we found somebody had smeared feces on all the latches inside the bathroom stalls.

    I so hope the cleaning staff got (bio)hazard pay.

      1. Anon for This*

        I thought as much. IIRC the woman who had to clean this left a few weeks later. I’m hoping she either quit or requested a site transfer that day.

  157. Vegas*

    When I was training with a new cohort, one lady brought in the big box from Dunkin Donuts, that usually has a dozen donuts. It was just an empty box, in an empty bag.

  158. Sabrina*

    I had a coworker who would take long, and I mean 20-30 minutes, personal calls gossiping with her family members all day at work. She’d try to speak quietly sometimes but mostly it was full volume chatting while the rest of us worked around her. After a few months I waited for a call to end and then poked my head over the cube wall and said “I had to go the bathroom and missed it, was your cousin able to make bail?!?”

    He had! And for some reason she then started taking the calls outside.

  159. NotAHat*

    I used to run a store for a big company that hired inexperienced people for their North American, Direct to Consumer HQ team. My store was located in the same city as HQ. The head of marketing constantly made poor decisions that directly and negatively impacted my store, such as hiring people to put up wheat paste posters over bodega’s windows with my store’s phone number on them. Their budget also came out of my store budget as opposed to a corporate budget, so these were doubly failed attempts.
    For some event we had two large boxes of glass candy containers delivered by the corporate facilities team to the store. When the event was over, I asked how they wanted the items returned. I was told to just ship them back via UPS. While I, and our UPS driver knew this would end in boxes of broken glass, I wrapped them up in bubblewrap and shipped away. I would have loved to see her face when the boxes full of shards were delivered.

  160. Danikm151*

    Hooray for Jane.

    She wanted a work life balance and wanted to make sure everybody else got a lunch too :)

    1. PNWorker*

      Yeah I am kinda on team Jane here – people need to eat lunch! If you don’t have any other time to schedule meetings during your day except lunch, maybe you need to re-think how many meetings you are having.

      1. Keeley Jones, The Independent Woman*

        Yeah the “that’s not our office culture” isn’t a good excuse. Make it a culture that lunch hours are off limits unless absolutely necessary, as in it’s a business critical, needs to happen and there’s literally no other time. Even then ask the meeting attendees if there is a non-lunch time they can open up. Nine times out of ten I have a standing meeting I can reschedule.

        1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

          Hi. Welcome to our company.
          We do something detrimental to our physical health and our mental productivity.
          How about we don’t?
          But we do.
          But we could just not.
          But we do.
          But…

        3. hereforthecomments*

          Exactly this! I used to schedule a lot of meetings and a sure way to get everyone from “no one is free at the same time” to suddenly able to clear a calendar spot is to suggest using everyone’s lunch hour or the last half hour (so it could over) of a Friday.

        4. I'm Just Here For The Cats!!*

          I’m wondering though if Jane was super strict about the TIME. Like she had to have lunch at 12 and the meeting would be at 12 but everyone could take their lunch break before or after and so Jane wouldn’t budge on lunch is at 12.

          1. Rebekah*

            OP actually clarified that this is the case. Jane was welcome to take her full lunch and the meeting would only delay her 30 minutes, but she insisted that lunch be at 11:30 on the dot no exceptions. Eating at noon was unacceptable.

          2. Yorick*

            This is what I thought too, and it’s not necessarily a healthier work-life balance than being flexible about what time you can take your break.

        5. Emily*

          Yeah, I think the person who wrote in about Jane and justified the “we take lunch when we can” (which too often translates to, “we don’t take lunch”) attitude, is a good example of how toxic workplaces can warp your ideas about what is normal. The boss constantly scheduling meetings during lunch time is a jerk move. Good for Jane for setting boundaries!

          1. Lenora Rose*

            Except they noted above, staff lunches are within a 3 HOUR window, which can’t always be meeting free. Jane was being asked to hold off eating by half an hour at her favoured time.

            1. Lenora Rose*

              (I mean I have more sympathy for Jane than for the boss, but it’s not quite as wild as it sounds.)

              1. Emily*

                Yeah, and that’s different than what their original posted comment said, so it’s not at all surprising that people were confused. Also, it would stink to be one of the people who started early and not be able to take your lunch until 1pm or 2pm, and it’s not like Jane refused to go to the meeting, she just provided food, all be it in a bit of an over the top way .

          2. Anecdata*

            There’s also clarification above by OP that people work different schedules and have different “typical” lunchtime so avoiding scheduling during /anyone’s/ lunch would block out all of 11am-2pm

      2. DataSci*

        Sometimes it’s truly unavoidable. Lots of my meetings involve people from US Pacific Time, US Eastern Time, and London. There’s only a narrow window that works – especially in a field where people generally start at 9 am – and it’s East Coast lunchtime. No thoughtlessness or overstuffed calendars, just the reality of living on a sphere.

      3. Jaydee*

        I can see the need for flexibility around lunch times if the employer offers flexible schedules or if there are meetings involving people in different time zones.

        That said, other than the multi-timezone meetings, I’m envisioning a morning meeting that runs long and might push an early bird’s lunch a little later or a 1:00 meeting that might push a later eater’s lunch a little early. Not meetings that completely consume (pun intended) people’s usual lunch breaks.

    2. Veryanon*

      I’m on Team Jane too. I have one standing meeting every Tuesday at noon my time, so scheduled because “we have to accommodate the West Coasters.” It irritates me so much.

        1. Chris*

          As a west coaster, I don’t appreciate my standing 8:30AM Wednesday meeting. But I DO take a great deal of glee in rejecting meetings from other people where my attendance is marked as mandatory, and EXTRA glee when I know I’m actually a key attendee legitimately required for the meeting, if they ignore my working hours in outlook and try to schedule a meeting that starts before I start. My company is spread across the 4 time zones of the contiguous 48 states and the other 3 just seem to forget we exist.

          That being said, since I lose my noon to meetings SO often (see above about forgetting I exist), unless Veryanon is losing noon EVERY day I’m not so sure that losing noon on Tuesday is a big deal? If you know it’s a standing meeting, it’s not hard (barring medical reasons), to just shift your lunch hour up or down an hour once a week. You aren’t losing lunch. It just moves. Block out the hour before or after on your calendar so no one else can scoop it up.

          1. Pies*

            Good thing you don’t work where I do, where the 8:30am meetings are daily and also Central time. Why yes, we do have employees in every contiguous US time zone including Pacific!

            1. Chris*

              Yeah that’s a job I would be hard pressed to consider accepting at my current salary. 6:30 AM meeting start, daily? Not at this salary. There cannot be anything that important needed to be discussed daily that can’t be covered in an email that can’t wait a couple hours.

  161. Cat Lady*

    I work for an admin department at a local university. We recently had a terrible manager who was let go after 6 months. He had a lot of issues, but by far the most serious one (likely the one that got him dismissed) was that he made homophobic comments to one of my gay coworkers. A full quarter of the office, myself included, are LGBTQ+, and most other people were staunch allies. Needless to say, we all thought less of him after that.

    Here’s where the petty part comes in:

    Our university has a Pride Week in March, since most students are not here in June. I came into the office on the first day of that week, and there were two full-sized pride flags hanging in our office. The story my coworker M (who just so happens to be close friends with the gay coworker who my boss made the comments to) told me is that he tried ordering desk-sized flags online, but “accidentally” ordered a much larger size.

    Though the flags were ostensibly for Pride Week, they stayed up until the manager left. Because of the location the flags, the flags were immediately visible anytime the manager entered our office, and anytime he looked out his office window. After this, a bunch of us also added smaller flags to our desks. None of us ever confronted him about his comment directly, but I think we got our point across.

    1. Casey*

      This one isn’t particularly professional but we have a specific customer group who consistently talks down to all the women in the room and makes zero effort to get their names right, especially if they are not traditionally European names (ugh). Think Ling->Lynn, Sruti->Ruthie, etc. Anyway after a month of polite corrections we gave up and just started screwing up THEIR names too. Oh sorry Robert you hate going by Bob and you told us that last week too? My mistake. Wait it’s Tim? I could have sworn it was Tom.

  162. NoOneWillSeeThisComment*

    I used to work for a security contractor. I had a coworker who had changed to a new job site and required a completely different uniform.
    These companies are notorious for requiring uniforms but not providing everything (i.e. we’ll give you only two shirts for a full time job, you have to buy your own pants, belt, boots etc). As a woman, I especially had difficulties because most often clothing was “unisex” (read: men’s cut) and would look sloppy and unprofessional.
    Anyway, my coworker was not provided a new uniform before his start date, and was told to wear his wife’s uniform (!) because she had recently quit and not yet turned her items in. He proceeded to do so, finding the smallest and most ill-fitting items he could. He even made sure to wear her name tag.

    Within 48 hours, someone drove from the office to deliver him uniforms on site. I bought him lunch, brimming with pride.

  163. Anna Badger*

    I didn’t see this one but I heard about it from my staffroom mole.

    Context: the UK is split into counties where most kids leave school at sixteen to attend a sixth form college and counties where schools include sixth form so most kids stay where they are.

    I lived in the second kind of county, but I was deeply unhappy and decided to switch schools for sixth form. my form tutor (Mrs A) was furious about this for reasons I never understood. Mrs A was an English teacher but she wasn’t *my* English teacher, and she hated my English teacher (Ms B), also for reasons I never understood, because Ms B was a gem.

    I thought I had told Ms B that I was leaving, but I must have missed her off the list, because the way she found out was she wandered up to Mrs A while Mrs A was doing the scheduling and asked whether I was going to be in her class next year. according to my staffroom mole, Mrs A looked up with venom in her eyes and hissed “anna is leaving for [other school], and she ISN’T EVEN STUDYING ENGLISH”, the last bit loud enough that everyone looked up from their marking to see what was going on.

    just, the idea that she was trying her best to be hurtful to this warm and gentle person, and she really thought the fact that I wasn’t carrying on with English was a zinger of a mic drop. a very strange woman all round, Mrs A.

  164. D-not-so-nice*

    Years ago I worked as a cashier at a grocery store. Two guys that used to bully me and make fun of the way I looked when I was a kid came into the store and were saying disparaging things about my looks in front of the cashier that was checking them out. The cashier later told me what they were saying about me. A few weeks later one of them came through my line with a huge order. I scanned some of his items several times (expensive packages of meat included) and was nice as can be to him. Very petty on my part, but satisfying at the time. Not sure if he ever realized he was double charged for some things.

  165. Petty is as Petty Does*

    I would make up technologies to mess with my know-it-all co-worker. “Oh have you heard about the new Flarbelstein video card? It’s got 15 numptytons of RAM…” and they would nod along, “Oh, yes, the Flarbelstein, great stuff.” I never let on.

    1. Ricama*

      while working fast food grill, the other guy working grill just left to start chatting between rushes, leaving me to restock levels for the entire 6 hours our shifts overlapped.

      So I left him nothing,like 2 pieces of regular meat, 3 nuggets and not much else. And as I left for the day he called out “waiting on … everything.”

      everything took max 5 minutes to cook, and most quicker so it didn’t force people to wait too long,he just suddenly had to hussle.

  166. Anonymosity*

    Very petty, and no one knew, but I purchased some pretty notes for my desk at a job so toxic it put me in therapy (blue and purple instead of boring yellow; not the name brand as that was not allowed, so they were also cheap). When I was unceremoniously laid off, they went home with me.

  167. Dark Macadamia*

    One time I had a student defacing my bulletin board while another teacher used my room. I spent several days trying to rig my document camera to record that part of the room during her classes so I could catch the kid in the act. Like, strategically putting it inside a box on a shelf with a small hole cut in the side levels of “spy” work. Totally ridiculous and it didn’t even work! This was NOT a problem worth so much energy but it was one of many irritating things involving this coworker so I think I snapped lol.

    1. St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research*

      I feel this one in my bones! My bulletin boards are my pride and joy. I only wish you could have caught the vandal!

      1. Dark Macadamia*

        I actually did! The document camera never worked out but I realized it was happening during lunch, not class, and the assistant principal saw who it was on the hallway security camera. The best part is that the camera showed the annoying coworker walking past and seeing the kid entering an empty classroom and she just… let him?

        The kid felt bad afterwards because he hadn’t realized he was messing with MY stuff rather than hers lol

  168. Third or Nothing!*

    I was with my old company for 10 years. I had a couple of different positions over the years and ended up as an account manager in their utility management department. We started out with a crew of 5, but by the time I hit my 10 year mark I was the only person running the entire department. The workload had diminished somewhat but was still more than 1 person should have been asked to handle. Nevertheless, they were still paying me well below market rate and refused to give me a raise big enough to compensate for the work I was doing. I started job hunting and landed a similar position at a 40% raise and even better benefits (one of the reasons I stayed so long at the previous company was their fantastic benefits).

    They had a volunteer day scheduled for the day after the last day of my notice period. I asked if they’d still like me to go so I could say goodbye to everyone, and they thought it was a grand idea. Except, when I went to the event it was clear no one had been informed that I had moved on to greener pastures. I was remote, so it’s not like they would have figured it out without someone telling them. I was in the awkward position of saying things like “Here’s my personal email so we can keep on touch now that I’m gone.” [Insert shocked face from coworker and incredulous question of why I was leaving.] “Well I got a new job that pays 40% more and couldn’t pass it up.” The higher ups were clearly very displeased that suddenly so many people knew just how incredibly underpaid I was.

    May not have been the most professional but I don’t regret it.

  169. Stella70*

    I once worked with two people who had food allergies. Sweet Megan was severely allergic to gluten – so much so, in her spare time, she volunteered to train kitchen staff of local restaurants regarding cross-contamination. The other one – Thank God She Didn’t Live Next Door, from now on referred to as TGSDLND – had what I call “transitory allergies”, meaning she was a complete drama mama about the things she could not eat……except if those exact items were provided during vendor lunches or in holiday gifts. Then, TGSDLND was first in line (to such an extent, I will go to my grave insisting she once stabbed me with a plastic fork, when I got to a buffet before she did).

    Sweet Megan often wound up in the hospital due to her allergies, the news of which would cause TGSDLND to remember something else she was allergic to, and we were stuck listening to her drone on for days.

    Finally, TGSDLND decided to retire, and I offered to throw her a little party, piggybacked onto a quarterly meeting (we were government, this was the best I could do). As per routine, I offered to provide allergen-free treats for both TGSDLND and Sweet Megan. TGSDLND declined. I then suggested that everyone could eat the allergen-free treats, thinking it probably would be best if TGSDLND didn’t feel singled out at her “Hurray, You’re Leaving!” party. TGSDLND declined again, stating she would borrow the department credit card and pick up all the treats herself.

    The next day, she shows up with two baggies of plain cake donuts from a local gas station; there wasn’t even enough for everyone. Sweet Megan was screwed – nothing was provided for her. TGSDLND seated herself at the head of the conference table, and pulled an ENTIRE TURTLE CHEESECAKE from a cooler she had hidden underneath. It was covered in chocolate (she was allergic), cashews and pecans (ditto, ditto), caramel (can you guess?), and made with a graham cracker crust that in the past said would “put her in the ground”. Over the course of the next 90 minutes of the meeting, she slowly and methodically ate the cheesecake. Bite by dramatic bite, licking her fork in a manner that was uncomfortably close to an opening scene of a porn movie. TGSDLND ate nearly all of the cheesecake, save for one small piece, which she placed in front of Sweet Megan before walking out of the room.

    Through an informal and off-the-record vote, we decided TGSDLND was a complete loon, probably was never allergic to anything, and her grand finale binge was to…..

    Who knows? The only thing I am certain of, is that cheesecake makes me think of porn now, and I will never forgive TGSDLND for that.

    2. HigherEdEscapee*

      I worked with someone just like TGSDLND! I am aghast that there is more than one of her in the world!

  170. St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research*

    This one just happened to me 2 days ago.
    I work in education and after several increasingly frustrating incidents, decided that I’m not returning next school year. I have told the principal (who is single-handedly the reason I’m quitting) but haven’t submitted my formal resignation yet.
    Earlier this week – five days before school ends – she removed me from the school wide “all staff” email group. I haven’t been getting announcements all week.
    I’m still in “who DOES that?!?” mode. Joke’s on her, though, because I fully plan on leaving Friday without doing any of the end-of-year checklist items (cleaning and housekeeping stuff, nothing to do with students). “Oh, did you want me to box up those books? Sorry, guess I didn’t get that email!”

    1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

      YES. More power to you! I hope it was as satisfying in practice as it is to contemplate (checking the open thread in case there’s an update….)

  171. Interview Wars*

    I wanted out of a department rife with nepotism. My coworker “Mike” was the COO’s son and not expected to do much. Our bosses laughed when he came to work stoned and hungover, defended him when he caused huge problems by saying “that’s just who he is”. They looked the other way when he called out sick and then posted pictures of himself partying. An opening came up in another department and I really wanted it because I wouldn’t have to put up with Mike anymore and it lined up directly with my education. Once Mike knew about the job he applied for it too. I wouldn’t have done this to anyone but Mike. He was the total worst and working with him was a nightmare.

    He applied on an open use work computer that wasn’t password protected. He also applied using an outside job board account and not our internal application system. He walked away leaving the computer open to spend 45 minutes at the coffee shop on site watching videos on his phone. I saw he left the screen up and logged in so I canceled his application, deleted his job board account and blocked the website. For extra measure I blocked any of the hiring staff in his email and sent anything from them to his spam folder, which he never cleared anyway and was full of questionable NSFW stuff.

    I got an interview and he didn’t, he got super mad and called his mom who demanded he interview. That started him off on a terrible note with them, especially since the department was one of the few that didn’t 100% answer to his mother. He showed up late, asked when he was starting, talked about how stupid the job was and how dumb they all were for not seeing his application (which they never got). I interviewed later that afternoon and almost got hired on the spot. That was 7 years ago and Mike’s mom is retiring soon. Good luck to him.

  172. Isben Takes Tea*

    I had been working all summer at a residential summer camp as part of a select group of staff who had walkie-talkies on 24/7 for emergencies. The last week the directors became more and more loose with their use of the walkie-talkies for jokes and chatter, which I normally wouldn’t have minded, but by the last night of camp I was too stressed and sleep-deprived to have any sense of humor. As the evening wore on and the joking and staticky cackling grew to almost nonstop levels, I had had enough, and I walked the entire length of the camp with my finger on the talk button, completely silent, so that nobody else could talk. It couldn’t have been more than 5 minutes, but the radios went silent for the rest of the night. I don’t know if they ever knew what had happened, or that it was me who did it, but it was a thrilling moment of miniscule power I will forever relish.

  173. Jennifer Strange*

    So a little while back the arts organization I work for did a Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library as part of a community outreach effort in conjunction with a show we were producing. As you can imagine, we got some nasty responses to it (99% from folks who had never even been to our organization – I know this because I manage the database). Most of them I shrugged off, but one guy had clearly gone through our website and tracked down ever email on there and kept. sending. emails. Even after the event was over, we would get an email from him about how disgusting we were.

    Finally, I copied his email address and signed it up for every LGBTQ+ and/or drag queen-focused online newsletter I could find. The emails stopped after that.

  174. Anon for this*

    I worked in an open office at a small company where maybe 10-15 of us were in a large room at any one time. Every 1-2 desks had a small waste basket where people would toss wrappers/lunch detritus/etc. Of note, there was no recycling available in the space when I started.

    I was out for a week and when I came back “Joe” was talking to me about something and saw a soda can in my waste basket. Apparently we had gotten a recycling bin while I was out, but it was sort of behind the door in a place you wouldn’t see unless you looked. Instead of telling me “We got recycling last week, it’s over there,” Joe proceeded to mansplain to me how to put something in a recycle bin. He literally demonstrated by taking the can out of my trash and moving it over while explaining how to put a can in a box as if I were a particularly slow 2 year old.

    Joe thinks he is a feminist, but in case you missed it, he is actually a misogynist and did this with the room about half full. I, along with others, seemed to find ways for all our empty bottles and cans to end up in his personal waste basket for at least the 6 months until I left. In fact, his trash was basically never empty during that time.

    (note: Joe would meticulously put recyclables in the recycling bin, so no harm done other than to Joe)

  175. Library Lady*

    At a previous job when I was in charge of organizing the library’s adult summer reading program, we had a patron who won a small prize – a randomly selected prepublication book and a small gift card. Well, the next day he sneeringly returned the book to us, saying we gave away too many “chick” books and he wasn’t going to read any of them. (He didn’t return the gift card though…) I decided right then that for as long as I ran the summer reading program, he would never win another prize. And for at least 3 years, I kept that promise. He was an avid participant, and I was happy to include his entries to boost our statistics, but when I inevitably drew his name for a prize behind-the-scenes, I went right back and drew someone else. Was I making too big a deal out of this? I don’t think so, because he commented disdainfully on our selection of “chick” books EVERY YEAR. FOR MULTIPLE YEARS. I wanted to tell him, “You’ve made this point for several years now, and I’m a little concerned at how deeply this seems to have scarred you…”

    1. ferrina*

      I’m so torn about this.
      As a person who has been responsible for running contests, this is so unprofessional and not good practice and hurts everyone who has to run contests!
      On the other hand, as a dyed-in-wool bibliophile, why would you complain about a free book? If it’s not your style, give it to someone who will appreciate it or bring it to a used bookstore! Especially pre-publication–those are a lovely treat!

  176. Hills to Die on*

    I worked for a really dysfunctional company where I was being physically threatened and undermined / harassed constantly. It was just insane.
    I worked on a big project that required a very technical process map with literally tens of thousands of steps.
    I have neve done anything like this in my life, but I deleted the process map. We were mostly done with it anyway and nobody was using it for anything now that the project was complete. I got laid off shortly thereafter but nobody knew I had deleted it yet.
    Well, the company was acquired by another huge company and this document was the lynchpin of engineering integrations….except it didn’t exist anymore.
    People called me for over a year afterward trying to find that document. Sorry – no idea what you all did with it. Bummer.

  177. AnonaTiger*

    I semi-regularly sign up a vile former coworker for newsletters, blogs and mailing lists. Political action committees, dog medications, obscure religious organizations and (my favorite) personal injury lawyers. Part of me is dying to know if they suspect it’s me. If you’re reading this, CCH, HI! Can you guess who I am?

  178. Quill*

    This is a thing that I knew because I was in a very, very small department at my undergrad. Small enough that our department proper was two professors, with about six others that were technically part of other departments pitching in. (Cross-disciplinary science degree, small school, etc.)

    My senior symposium was a hydrology and river ecology seminar taught by a biology and geology professor who were best friends. It was also held the year before a huge remodel of the science building on campus, so the professors were mildly obsessed with the whole process, as the building had been built in the sixties. Professors Fish and Rock were especially enthusiastic, and recruited the seniors in my department to help pack things (mostly rock samples, also a tank of invasive round gobies that Prof. Fish had removed from the environment but was too softhearted to kill) that had to be moved out over the summer. This is where my entire graduating cohort (all ten of us) learned some of the best gossip on campus.

    Offices in the New Science Building were being assigned by professor seniority. If you were hired in X year, you could go down to the building office on Y day and write down your name on the office you claimed. First come, first served, with minor exceptions for people who had to be within shouting distance of their labs – mostly chem and biology. Unfortunately for Professors Rock and Fish, Professor Unpleasant, who was not at all popular with students or faculty, had more seniority than them, and took the last spot near the wet lab where Professor Fish had to be stationed to care for his fish.

    Professor Unpleasant made the mistake of writing his request down in pencil, so Professor Rock Simply erased his claim, wrote himself into the office next to his bestie, and banished Professor Unpleasant to a basement storage area. Allegedly there were at least a decade of grievances involved in this decision, but academia is like that and if I’d stayed to listen to them all someone would have talked me into trying for a PhD.

    Professor Unpleasant didn’t discover his relocation until the final building plan with office assignments was announced, the day of my senior banquet. My whole department got to witness Prof. Unpleasant tearing through campus looking for Professors Fish and Rock to yell at them, and didn’t tell him they were hiding under the library steps with a cheese tray, giggling.

    1. Dr. Rebecca*

      My goal as a prof is now to have a nickname like Rock or Fish. Thank you for this story, it’s amazing!

      1. Llama Identity Thief*

        Professors Fish & Rock are DEFINITELY ending up in a tabletop campaign I run at some point in my career.

    2. Caledonian Crow*

      I want to be friends with Professors Fish and Rock and share in their cheese and giggles. They sound fantastic!

    3. ferrina*

      Lol! This is an amazing read and feels like part of a small novel. I would totally read about the Adventures of Professor Fish and Rock!

    5. Sharpie*

      Professors Fish and Rock under the library steps with a cheese tray is career goals right there!!

  179. Plug In No More*

    My old boss was a really big air freshener person. She had tart warmers, plug ins, lit candles, electric oil diffusers, salt lamps, going all the time in her tiny office.

    All of us complained at some point, but our other colleague “Ted” got migraines and would beg her to get rid of all the scented stuff. She put up a fight and refused to stop and told us all to get over it. Later on she even gave Ted a warning about his attendance, despite being the one who caused his migraines.

    Ted called our risk management officer who came in to inspect our building. The RMO flipped out about the sheer number of lit candles and plugged in electrical scent lamps, all of which were major fire hazards. She made our boss box them all up and put them in her car, and came in weekly to check for more scent diffusers. I left the company but people told me for years afterwards until old boss quit that RMO inspected her office weekly for years.

  180. Our lights*

    Our owner and GM hate each other. The GM hung some lights in a very public space of the office, and the owner hated them and made him remove (owner offices at a different location). Except GM never removed them. He just turned them off. Now, whenever people come in, our GM turns on the lights, tells them the story and asks them to email the owner about the “really cool lights that are gone.” Owner remains unmoved. I’m one step under the GM and the showdown is a bright spot in my work life.

  181. Anonymous for this*

    My current company went through a devastating hack recently. We were all told that we will work evenings, weekends, all day, whatever it takes. Fine. They promise they will make us whole later and reward us for being there for the company. We got mugs, 3 k-cups, and 3 mini pieces of chocolate.
    This company is led by a person who is always among the top 3 worst bosses in America.

    Raises are meager, and I have lost count of how many people have been promised promotions and raises, only to get nothing. I was one of them.

    I use the company time to job hunt even though I could do it on my personal time.
    I am very generous with how much time I give myself to job hunt.

  182. nora*

    I was leaving a job I hated, but I was very close to most of the staff. There was a staff meeting on my second to last day. I wrote thank-you cards to everyone but the three or four people I hated the most. Big. Bright red. Glittery. Cards. I left them in everyone’s mailboxes (right outside the conference room) so people would pick them up and open them during the meeting. Which they did. Inside? Heartfelt, witty, deeply kind notes (I spent a LOT of work time on these). People cried. And it was very obvious who didn’t get one. I’ve never been that petty before or since. I regret nothing.

    1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

      I love this. Taking notes for when I leave my mostly lovely workplace (apart from the four people in the secret Facebook group that they use to coordinate drama)

  184. Rainbow Bridge Troll*

    This is one of my proudest, pettiest moments, and one of my best stories from my infamous library career (book in the works). I worked in a community college library for 10 years with a woman (“Mickie”) who shared my job title (library technical assistant–the people who catalog, process, and circulate all the books) but who had been with the district herself for over 30 years. In her time, she had carved an extremely limited and literal niche for herself in the cataloging room upstairs where no one else was allowed to step foot. She kept the cataloging office locked, and only she had the key. If we went up there searching for a book for a patron, we had to knock, then she’d open the door about 4 inches, put her face in the crack and say, “What do you want?” Then she’d CLOSE THE DOOR IN YOUR FACE while she looked for whatever it was you wanted. Despite being extremely behind on cataloging and having an office literally overflowing with towers of unprocessed books and media for the collection, the other LTA (“Bowie”) and I were expressly forbidden from learning cataloging or anything else because that was Mickie’s Domain, period.

    Until we got a new Dean. He saw the backlog of unprocessed materials, looked at our skills and the level of work we were doing and forced Mickie to start training Bowie (who was in a library master’s program) and I on cataloging. Bowie really took off with it and discovered that the situation was pretty bad: decades of unprocessed items that were now outdated; thousands of items that hadn’t been catalogued properly, meaning that patrons searching for materials weren’t getting the results they needed and thought our collection sucked (which, it did – but that’s another story). So we began to make pretty quick work of paring down the backlog and improving our general catalog. Mickie HATED us for this.

    Then Mickie went on her annual month-long vacation. Bowie went up to the cataloging office to carry on with the work we’d been doing. A minute later, I got a call at the Circ desk, “Um . . . you need to come up here and see this.” Her voice was quaking.

    I ran upstairs, opened the office door, and it was like a signage bomb had gone off. Before she went on vacation, Mickie had printed out DOZENS of full-page signs saying “DO NOT TOUCH!” and taped them to every single shelf of every single book truck and bookstack, front and back, in the cataloging office. So, 30 book trucks that have three shelves on each side had SIX “do not touch!” signs on them; booktacks wall-papered floor to ceiling with DO NOT TOUCH. Bowie and I stood there, alternately shocked into silence and bursting out laughing. There were so many signs! It was a ticker tape parade of DO NOT TOUCH.

    Then I gave in to my pettiest intrusive thought: I marched over to Mickie’s desk, opened her stamp pad, inked up my fingers, and I “touched” every single one of those mother-effing signs. Every. Single. One. Bowie and I laughed the whole time, knowing I’d probably get in trouble, but I didn’t care. THIS AGGRESSION WILL NOT STAND, MAN.

    Mickie pitched a fit when she came back, and I had to apologize to her–which I did, with a big smile on my face, while she scowled at me. I still think it’s hilarious, and I’m not one bit sorry.

    2. anver*

      oh my goddddd… i think i’ve worked at this library, except with no mickie. the last cataloger before they hired me had quit 7 years before, but they hadn’t stopped buying books and the backlog was INCREDIBLE. the other librarians tried their best but i spent the first month and a half re-cataloging things because they’d stamped the wrong pages or just didn’t. enter. info. so the entire record for an item was “title” “call number” “barcode”

      good times

  185. pally*

    I got “pettyed”:

    At my prior lab job, paychecks were handed out at the start of the shift on payday.

    If an employee gave notice, an extra check was issued to pay the departing employee through the end of the shift. And, since this was their last day, many took advantage and never returned after lunch. Thus, ripping off the company for 4 hours wages.

    That also meant sticking someone else with finishing up the abandoned lab work (the work was time sensitive, meaning someone had to stay late to complete the work). That really struck me as a mean thing to do to another employee.

    So when my last day came, the manager handed out everyone’s paycheck. Then she came to me with a big grin on her face. And nothing in her hands. Because of prior ex-employee bad acts, management decided on a new policy. The last check is to be withheld until AFTER the shift ends. That way they’d be sure the soon-to-be-ex employee stuck around for the entire shift.

    Fine by me. I wasn’t planning to ditch work at lunch. And, I’d given them no indication I was the sort of person who would do such a thing. In fact, I corrected them on the PTO amount-they forgot that I’d taken 2 days off mid-year. I could have kept quiet and taken the two extra PTO hours. But that wouldn’t be fair.

    During my last day, many urged me to ‘exact revenge’ and leave at lunch. I had to explain the management’s new policy. Oh well.

    The very next person who gave notice received his check at the start of the shift. And he subsequently never returned after lunch.

  186. AnonOutOfPettiness*

    I think I posted about this before in a comments thread, but there was a junior-ish sales coworker I had who was incredibly overbearing (in that sales-y/pushy way). I got so annoyed with her endless requests for changes to established processes, materials, etc. over which she had no say that I stopped responding to any emails she sent me – about anything. Even completely legitimate ones I would have responded to from anyone else. The way I saw it was that she had used up my allotment of “colleague goodwill” towards her on so many ridiculous things, that she would have to go somewhere else for answers. Luckily I was senior (and respected) enough to get away with it, and she never had the guts to call me out on it. Petty (and not the smartest move)? Yes. Satisfying? Oh hell yeah.

  187. Strong Stomach*

    Barmaid Pettiness: I think I’ve told this story before, but I used to work in a real shithole of a bar – we made 30% of our revenue on jaegerbombs alone, and I saw more blood in a single night there than I’ve ever seen since. We were, officially, a ‘craft beer pub.’
    Anyway, one night there’s a problem with the drains. The bar starts flooding with human waste. I, being a good and responsible 18 year old employee, toddle upstairs to my manager to inform him of the problem. My manager, fresh off a line of coke that could have killed an elephant, told me to stop bringing him every little problem and to just offer a free pint to anyone who complained about the smell.
    “What about the poop spill?” Says I.
    “Just mop it up,” says he.
    (It’s worth noting that, as a broke uni student, my ‘work shoes’ were six quid Primark ballet flats. That’s not a lot of protection)
    So, as the most senior member of staff (turnover was insane), I went downstairs to organise a rota for mopping up waste. I naively assumed that people would not want to drink in a fecal pub. Wrong! Word got around town that the pub was offering free drinks if you complained about the smell. The bar was rammed.
    Staff are close to tears, until my dear friend K says, “You know, I think technically, I have a complaint about the smell.”
    Reader, we feasted. We hit up the top shelf. We took a bottle of jaegar and put it in the icebox. I tasted whiskeys of three continents. It helped to alleviate the mop duty considerably.
    Oh, and we ‘forgot’ to take out the bins, so the manager could deal with them in the morning. I left my poop-smeared ballet flats on top and stumbled unshod into my Uber like a wasted Cinderella. It was almost, almost, worth all the shit.

    1. Mac (I Wish All The Floors Were Lava)*

      My mouth and eyes are so big right now. This is truly epic.

  188. Jellyman Kelly*

    I’m dating myself and also this is probably too aggressive to be considered petty, but I was mad and was treated poorly.

    We had a new department head who was cleaning house. There were 4 of us out of 8 who they were actively trying to get rid of. I was the only one who was able to quit, the others were fired. The stress of the past few months before I left was harsh. I was repeatedly told I was terrible at every aspect of my job and then given the assignments no one wanted. (Jelly, you can do the 6 AM wake up call every week for the next 4 months, even though you really suck at wake up calls.)

    By the time I left, I wasn’t feeling charitable and also knew that my boss had put a notice in to HR that I was not eligible for rehire. So the bridge was burned before I set fire to it. Back in the day, archived emails lived on a different server, so you had to click a specific function to access them. They were 100% accessible to anyone who had access to my email, you just had to remember the archive existed and think to look there.

    I knew they wouldn’t look in the archive. So when I left, I archived my inbox. Any email that I responded to and completed was archived. I achieved inbox 0 (before it was a thing) by my last day. I later learned that they believed I deleted all my emails, which is an understandable reaction and perhaps would have been an issue if I was concerned about burning the bridge. But, the bridge was already burned when I got there, so I felt justified in lighting a fire to keep myself warm.

  189. KatieP*

    Back in the mid-90s, before cell phones were a thing and when you were The Bomb if you had 28.8Kb dialup internet, I had the worst boss I’ve ever had in my career. He would accidentally repeat lines from the Frank Hart character from, “9 to 5,” unironically. I know he didn’t realize what he’d done because there’s no way that man ever saw a movie starring Jane Fonda.
    He would offer relationship advice that included, “all relationships go through a phase where the man beats the woman up. My wife and I went through that phase, and look where we are now?!” He was a lying, sexist, egotistical, hypocritical bigot. And he was the ED of the community non-profit that we worked for.
    I quite on the day of their big city-wide conference that the organization had been building up to for a couple of years. I had planned it, and had key information that he didn’t have. When he was at the conference center, I left my letter of resignation on his desk. When I got home, he’d already filled-up my answering machine, so I took the phone off the hook and enjoyed some time off before I started my new job.

  190. Firecat*

    I was handed a report to complete by the next day and then monthly thereafter from the director of our department.

    My coworker, “Dan”, was upset about this and confronted me that he should do the report. I let Dan know I wasn’t comfortable just handing over directors report to him, but that I understand his concerns (1/3 of the report was in his purview) so I’d set up a meeting next week to discuss possibly transitioning part or all of the report to him.

    I sent out the report to the director, then copied all our managers and Dan. Dan then replied to that email copying only our managers with a bunch of screenshots attached of “mistakes” I made. He reattached the report as well and stated that this is precisely why he had concerns with me completing his portion of the report in the first place.

    But the thing is I knew those mistakes weren’t there before. I checked the server version and noticed the modified date was 30 minutes after I had sent out the report. I took a screenshot of that, opened up the server report (which had the errors) and the report that was saved in my sent folder attached to the original email (which didn’t).

    I replied to his email that strangely, these errors seem to have been introduced after I sent out the report to everyone. I provided the screenshots and I gave the managers directions on how they can check the email from me and see that the errors aren’t there.

    I wish I could say Dan was fired, but aftter a chat his manager actually said starting next month Dan is doing his part of the report. Still it was the most petty thing I’ve ever seen at work, even a decade later. I was literally going to hand over that portion anyway, adding the errors achieved nothing but attempting to make me look incompetent.

  191. Corporate Goth*

    Oooh, just remembered the time I got covid and my boss brought me two separate boxes of licorice flavored tea and some other items. Sounds nice, but it wasn’t. It’s a long story, but she knew very well that I hated licorice, didn’t want gifts (I was senior to most of our organization and no one else got special, public get-well gifts), and definitely didn’t want anyone stopping by for their own safety. A petty text fight with her insisting she had to bring me items she knew I didn’t want was definitely what I wanted to deal with while I had covid. I still have those stupid boxes of tea.

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      Too bad that we aren’t friends. I’d be glad to take the tea off your hands.

      I also appreciate your concern about the appropriateness of gifts.

  192. Sopranohannah*

    I had a coworker who worked a different shift. One of the duties on this shift was to sweep one of the storage rooms nightly as this particular storage room had a higher than usual amount of detritus due to what was stored there. This shift always had 2 workers. I think this coworker had been put upon by others at a previous job. So, she drew a line in the dust and never swept more than half the floor.

  193. English Rose*

    I worked at the London office of a global law firm. One of the senior associates put in an expenses claim which was recalculated inaccurately by the finance clerk so he was reimbursed less than he claimed. It was an honest mistake.
    The associate was incandescent with rage, waged a six-week (unsuccessful) campaign to get the clerk fired which went all the way to the senior partner.
    The discrepancy was £0.48p. He was earning £120,000 a year.

    1. Fish*

      He would’ve been equally horrified at my taking a $3 charge off a travel expense report.

      I told my associate about it. To get the total just under the limit that would’ve required another accounting approval.

  194. Joseph*

    It had been a pretty stressful year and the new department head was doing a lot of things that were very much against the organisational culture. As well as some against-the-company-culture recruitment shenanigans, like appointing friends to jobs that no one knew existed, there were some very petty office things like banning headphones at your desk, introducing a dress code and writing passive aggressive notes in the kitchen.

    It came to a head when we were all banned from eating at our desks and had to use the only conference room in the building. It was sold to us as a good thing as this meant that there would be no lunch time meetings. There was a senior management meeting in the calendar at 2pm in the run up to the holidays, so a group of us decided that we would go to a local take away and pick up the smelliest and greasiest food we could find and we did as we were told and used the conference room. Apparently that meeting was mostly spent trying to get rid of the smell

  195. Two 'n' Glenn*

    In college I had a temp-to-hire job as a store greeter at a cell phone retailer; I’d find out what brings each customer in to the store that day, direct them to the appropriate department, and if they were there to see a salesperson I’d take their name down on a list so each customer could be seen by a salesperson in turn, and keep track of who was who (sometimes a customer would say they didn’t want to wait and wanted to come back to the store later, and I’d try to accommodate their place in line accordingly).

    Since I was the first person everyone coming into the store would interact with, sometimes I’d have a morning full of rough customers taking out their frustrations on me. When I’d have a really frustrating morning I’d go to the bagel store in our shopping center and get myself an everything bagel for lunch (onions and garlic!), and would greet customers in the afternoon with a “HHHHHI! HHHHHHOW can I HHHHHHELP youHHHHH??” Not sure if they could smell my breath but it made me feel a little bit better.

    (I liked to tell people that since I was supposed to make the temp agency look good, and since I was supposed to keep track of who’s who on my list, my job was to kick ass and take names!)

    Not as petty but still kind of satisfying: years later, after I was hired full-time as a customer service rep in that same store, I once had a customer try to return an obviously-used item well past the return period and he was rude and on his phone with his mom the entire time during the transaction. When I apologized that I couldn’t take his return he started to create a scene in the store and says to his mom on the phone “This cat Glenn won’t take my return, let’s curse him with voodoo!” so I started telling him and showing my nametag “…and don’t forget it’s ‘Glenn’ with two-‘n’s so be sure to get that second ‘n’ in there or else the voodoo might not work!” (I also made sure to tell my manager if I wasn’t in the next day, it was because I had been cursed with voodoo.)

      1. Quill*

        If I had a nickel for every time this was topical, I wouldn’t have a lot of money, but it’s still weird that it happened at least twice.

  196. Festively Dressed Earl*

    Relevant to this story: I’m a biracial Black/White woman, easily mistaken for being Latinx or Middle Eastern. When I was working retail, we had one particularly nightmarish customer who constantly tried to return heavily soiled or even lice-ridden merchandise while being as nasty as possible to whoever dealt with her. She was also unbelievably racist. One day she came in while I was straightening clothes near the register, glared at me, and snapped “Do you speak English?” Petty challenge accepted. I replied “Oui, je parle français, puis-je aider?” Bounced up to the register and tried my cheerful best to help her within the constraints of a few years of high school French. Apparently going on a rant about “You’re in America, speak English” didn’t count unless the person was speaking Spanish, snarky comments were just going to bounce, she couldn’t demand to speak to a manager about me refusing to help her, and the few other people working that side had mysteriously disappeared. She left with her nasty return in hand, and I never saw her again in the 5 years I worked there.

  197. Margaret Schlegel*

    I mess with especially aggressive or rude telemarketers. Sometimes I stop speaking mid-sentence so it seems like the phone is cutting out, or I see how many times I can repeat their own words back to them before they notice. Once I had a telemarketer so shockingly hostile and sexist that I googled his number and realized he’d been doing this to businesses for a while. I called him back from my cell, on mute and blocking my number with *67, several times a day for the next few days. Each time he picked up, said hello twice, and then cursed out the empty line. But he never stopped answering!

    (I don’t do this unless people are truly egregious – I know telemarketing is a rough job)

    1. Fish*

      I used to get timeshare telemarketing calls where the caller’s script assumed (1) women were married, and (2) they’d attended a recent presentation on the company’s product.

      So I get yet another call from someone who refers to their recent presentation “that Mr. Fish and I attended.” I politely replied, that’s quite an accomplishment since there is no Mr. Fish.

      1. Quill*

        My mom used to pretend to timeshare people that they had the wrong number. Or call up my brother, who played trumpet grades 4-12, to give them a concert.

        1. EvilQueenRegina*

          My grandad told one once to hang on a minute because he was watching the cricket. I think the caller hung on for about ten minutes.

  198. Saddy Hour*

    My first “real job” was as a part-time office admin. The position had just been created to support the full-time admin, and there was a…difficult adjustment period which spanned my entire 3 years of employment there. We simply never got along, in part because she had been the only admin for like 15 years prior to me coming onboard. She was quite set in her ways and didn’t appreciate my presence there, at all.

    I adjusted to a lot of her quirks and carved out a space for myself, mostly picking up her slack because she was very, very bad at organization. In hindsight I can appreciate the strengths she did have, but at the time I deeply resented that our charts were misfiled and that she never left notes for me about ad-hoc updates during her shift and that our patients were entered in the system incorrectly and incompletely. But most of all, I hated that our countertop reference divider was left in a constant state of absolute disarray. Like, things shoved back in sideways, irrelevant and outdated papers stuffed in each divider, follow-up items tucked waaaaay in the back where I’d never find them. It made my job difficult. I complained to our boss, and Boss sympathized and allowed me to transition to primarily back-office work so I could have my own space, my own desk, my own organization and resources. I covered the front when Coworker was out for lunch or gone for the day, but I had my little corner and my own projects for the rest of my time.

    Well, one day I came in and Coworker had destroyed my system. She wanted to find a file (which could have waited for me to come in that same day, which I ended up completing anyway) and in the process left a total nightmare on my desk — all my carefully-filed work was strewn about, all my lovingly-tended office and personal supplies were misplaced or missing completely, and, to me, the disrespect was clear in every little detail I set up for myself having been undone. I asked why she hadn’t waited for me or put my stuff back where she found it, and she scoffed at the idea that any of it was “my” stuff. We share that space, she said.

    So when I covered her lunch that day, I organized the messy, crappy reference divider. I had wanted to do that for a while, and it was helpful for both of us, right? That wasn’t so petty! But as I sorted through info that was wrong or irrelevant or handwritten on papers so tattered that it was unusable, I just felt this rage bubbling up inside. So I moved on. I organized “her” drawer. I threw old Post-Its out. I got rid of candy that had been sitting in there for years. I didn’t discard anything that looked like it might be important or sentimental, but I organized the shit out of all of it and left anything non-work-related helpfully in the corner of the desk where she kept her purse. I put some of my own stuff into the drawer. After all, we share this space, right?

    Anyway, she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the week, and when I was on vacation the following week she put all “my” stuff back on my desk and re-populated “her” drawer. She didn’t touch my stuff ever again, though.

  200. Peanut Hamper*

    I once worked as a teacher for the most awful, passive-aggressive principal in the world. She had been a teacher in this building years before and still had a lot of friends in this building who could get away with anything. The rest of us could do nothing wrong.

    I finally quit, but I still had our employee directory. I went to the library, pulled out every subscription card for every magazine I could get my hands, filled in her name and address, and dropped a few in the mail every week for a year until I finally ran out.

  201. I'm Done*

    I’m the Queen of petty revenge. Used to be an admin assistent and one of the supervisors in our department was always condescending towards me. So when I was tasked to order new printers for everyone, I conveniently forgot to order one for her. She got one eventually, but she was the last one. Don’t mess with the Admins.
    Later on, when I was a bit higher up in the foodchain, working a very specific federal program as team lead, I ended up working for an incredibly toxic boss. One time, when I had a meeting in a city that was about a two and a half hour drive away, my immediate supervisor and her ended up riding in my car. My manager made me pay for the gas and when we went to lunch proceeded to tell me that she was paying for my supervisor’s lunch but not for mine. Both of them made tens of thousands of dollars more than I did. Several times she told me that she didn’t know if she was more jealous of my age or my beauty!! This was just a small sample of the toxic things she she did and said. I also never received the promotion I was promised when I took over the team lead position which had formerly been held by someone who was three grades above me. I got my revenge by initiating the transfer of the program I was leading to another federal organization (due to my work I had a lot of very high placed contacts in the Senior Executive Service, who could make it happen and did) and then quitting and moving to France. I heard afterwards that my manager was forced to retire almost immediately after I left. I guess they had had an eye on her already for quite a while and all her misdeeds finally came to light.

  202. NYWeasel*

    Back when I was a teen working for the clown, we were told that if we were working the registers, we had to do “suggestive sell”. You buy a soda, we’re supposed to ask you if you’d also like fries with it. It was something I dreaded doing because pretty much the customers already knew what they wanted so for every one extra bag of fries we sold, we had to deal with hundreds of “NO, I would’ve asked for that if I wanted it!” types of snippy responses.

    My solution was that I chose the cheapest thing on the menu—at the time it was a box of cookies for $.35–to use as my suggestive sell. I’d smile sweetly as the customer finished listing their order and reply “Would you like Clownland cookies with that?” Most people only knew that we had little bags of 3 cookies in the kids meal, so being asked if they wanted to buy 15x as many cookies for just a few cents more was ridiculous enough that the vast majority of customers were either laughing their asses off with me or at least awkwardly bewildered. A solid percentage of the time the customer would actually buy the cookies because it amuses them so much.

    Occasionally my boss would tell me I needed to suggest pricier items, so I’d go up to the $.50 ice cream cone until he left the register area, but the rest of the time I was Queen of the Clownland Cookies.

  203. Perihelion*

    I once went into the office late to get something I had forgotten. A coworker leaving seemed very dismayed to see me for some reason. Then I went inside and saw she had stopped up the sink and left it on, flooding the office. I turned it off, apologetically told cleaning staff and emailed HR. HR, of course, defended her and assured me it must have been someone else. I still have no idea what that was about, other than making the cleaning staffs’ day worse.

  204. Mitford*

    I worked as a bank teller for a year while in college. The other teller I worked nights with was gigantic pill, and I was stuck with her in the drive-in window bay with her for five hours every night after the lobby had closed and everyone else had gone home.

    She was inordinately proud of her 100-day streak of balancing her drawer exactly every night. One day, when she was being especially obnoxious, she left her teller drawer open (a big no-no) and I took a penny out of my purse and tossed it in, which made her drawer one cent over. She spent an hour trying to figure out what had happened, while I just smiled and nodded.

  205. White Dragon*

    Not sure if this was petty so much as the jerkiest work move I ever saw…

    Jane was a department manager and she was…difficult. Tears on her team were not unheard of. Jane was responsible for approving time off for her tram.

    Jane also had a ca in on the lake, and every summer, she would leave early on most Fridays to go to the lake.

    Susan worked for Jane and her child was graduating high school. Around January or so, Susan asked for a Friday in June off to attend the various grad events. Jane signed off on the time.

    (I know y’all can see where this is going, right?)

    Yep.
    The week before the grad, Jane revoked the approved day off for Susan. The reason she gave is that too many people would be off (not true, there were no issues with the workload) and Jane wanted to go to the lake.

    Jane sucked.

      1. White Dragon*

        If memory serves, Susan got at least half the day off but she didn’t get as much time with visiting family as she would have liked.

        Jane remains, to this day, one of the two worst people I’ve ever worked with.

  206. Ariana Grande's Ponytail*

    At one of my first jobs, there was a lot of drama due to mismanagement (academia!!) but one of the biggest red flags that I needed to find a new job was when one of my bosses decided to take parts of my (the only data person in the office) workload and give it to a favored colleague because “she wants to learn how to handle the data”. It was roughly half my workload.

    I’m not proud of this, but I had a heads up that this was going to happen so in the meeting, I went in with a list of all my work buckets on a notepad/clipboard situation. Boss gave me a vague description that she wanted to give my work to coworker, and then I spent the rest of the meeting going item by item asking specifically which things I was handing off. Every time Boss said I was handing an item off, I took my pen and dramatically, loudly struck the item off the list. I think I might have even shaken my head a few times?! When we were done going through that, I asked if we were done and then stormed off.

    I left the job a few months later and have been happily employed elsewhere ever since.

  207. Lou's Girl*

    Coworker A accused coworker B of stealing her lunches. (B went to lunch at 11:30, A at 1:00- A’s lunch would disappear from community fridge every day). This was a big deal because 1) it’s her lunch, 2) we were usually swamped and couldn’t leave for lunch, and 3) we didn’t get paid much, and 4) it’s her freakin’ lunch!
    Boss pulled B into his office and told her that he knew she was the one stealing A’s lunch. B broke down crying “but…she STOLE my man!” Apparently, somewhat recently, A started dating B’s ex. B’s ex that she hadn’t dated in 2 years (not married, only briefly dated, no longer involved). One day they were talking about SOs and A mentioned her fairly new beau. B decided if she couldn’t have him, then A shouldn’t have lunch? B was terminated.

    2. I Wish My Job Was Tables*

      That’s a stunning level of petty. I wonder what on earth goes through peoples’s minds when they cling to exes for years like that.

  208. Former Retail Lifer*

    My boss had it out for me when HR disclosed everything I told them about him when they came in to investigate complaints against him. He started writing me up for everything (including something that happened in my department ON MY DAY OFF) and eventually succeeded in getting me fired. I was the operations manager in a big box store and I handled everything that wasn’t sales: daily inventory, scheduling for the entire store, putting shipments away, organizing and labeling the stock room, audits, and tons of other stuff. We were weeks away from our annual inventory, which took at least four hours overnight IF we were 100% prepared, when I got fired. Because this was my department and I never got any help (one of the complaints made by others against my boss), I was the only person who was preparing for it. I had a chart on the dry erase board which showed which departments had been pre-counted and organized and a notebook with details about which of the other many, many tasks we needed to complete for it to go smoothly. I left in tears after being fired and didn’t take anything but my purse, but my team lead called me to check on me later that day and I asked her for a favor. She happily agreed to erase the chart and take my notebook, which was the only documentation as to where we were in the preparation progress. A perfectly prepared inventory takes about four hours, an average inventory takes five to six hours, and this one took the entire overnight shift (eight hours). The best part was that my ex-boss had to open the store the next morning and work a double shift due to lack of coverage because I was no longer there. He had three hours between the inventory ending and when he had to be back at work.

    1. Former Retail Lifer*

      I should add that everyone else there was scheduled for the night shift the next day (with plenty of time to go home and sleep) or they were off.

  209. Petty is as Petty Does*

    A long time ago, in a bookstore far away, in a time when cell phones were fairly new, a customer talking on her cell walked up to me and asked me a question. She never moved the phone, never thank you or anything else, just looked annoyed and walked away after I told her where the book was located. Later she was still on her phone as I was ringing her out, so I just asked, “Will there be anything else?” …to which she held up her hand in front of my face and gave me a stern look, like ‘how dare you speak to me while I am on the phone’.

    Okay. Fine.

    I proceeded to ring her out in silence but as I was bagging her book I heard her say to her phone, “Oh, let me ask them”. She started to ask me her second question, but I held the bag out in front of her face, looked behind her and said, “I’ll take the next person in line.”

    She left without another word or hand in my face. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  210. Boom chicka pop*

    I worked for a rather subversive group in a larger corporation. When corporate started hanging inspirational posters on the wall, our graphic designer stayed late one night and added a trail of dead bodies and skulls to the poster of the Great Wall of China that told us to work as a team to achieve great things. Nobody ever figured it out.

  211. leeapeea*

    My partner’s job has organizational control over their email signatures, which includes everyone’s title. Well, whatever list the org was using to for the signatures had his title incorrect – Senior Llama Herding Technician vs. Senior Llama Draftsman. When he tried to get it corrected, each person/department passed the buck, so eventually he got fed up. He found he could make changes, they would just be reverted whenever the signatures were refreshed about once a quarter. He started putting silly additions in his signature (like changing Senior to Señor, adding ASCII text art, etc.) hoping someone with more pull would notice and get it fixed. Eventually he got another promotion and when his title changed again it was finally fixed.

  212. MJ*

    I used to do consulting work that involved me doing research. One of the managers for a group I consulted for was a micromanager and didn’t have any subject expertise, which is not a great combo. They would routinely comment on tiny things in Word documents that were either not useful or not accurate

    Then came the day where they saw something in one of my documents and they commented “Isn’t [item] a [thing 1] and not a [thing 2]?” They were not fully wrong as [item] is a [thing 1], but [thing 1] is a type of [thing 2] and using the more general [thing 2] was more appropriate in that case. I was fed up at that point, so I responded to their Word comment in another Word comment where I wrote for four paragraph with in line citations why what I wrote was accurate. They just responded with “oh, okay” and I had no problems like that again going forward.

  213. Hedwig*

    My sexist bully of a line manager has the unfortunate initials ‘BS’. He is very sensitive about this. Once, when he was asked to contribute to a shared document where all the people mentioned were referenced by their initials, his only contribution was to insert his middle initial into every instance of his initials. He has asked me to always use his middle initial but I haven’t bothered to pass this message on to anyone else.

  214. CDM*

    I once worked an admin assistant job supporting a group of construction engineers, next door to another group of construction engineers supported by another admin assistant.

    After I got on her bad side, she started hiding office supplies that I ordered at the request of my engineers. These came from a central supply office, no budget, no charges, she wasn’t saving her team any money or costing my team anything but aggravation.

    I found the hot work permits and confined space permits I ordered hidden between file folders in her desk drawers. Her team didn’t need them.

    She locked eight extra copies of the annual corporate phone book up so I didn’t have a copy. (This was the 90’s) That was resolved within a couple of hours, one of my engineers lied to her that he lost his copy, got another and promptly handed it to me.

    The offense that made me dead to her?

    One afternoon when everyone else was off site and I had nothing to do, I installed a copy of her calendar creator software on my PC and played around with it to see what the current version could do. I uninstalled it before I left for the day.

    She was utterly convinced that the FBI was going to arrest us all for software piracy, and was barely civil unless the big boss was watching until I left.

  215. Vio*

    This happened back when I used to work in retail. We were having an unexpectedly busy period while the manager was out for lunch and she had forgotten to leave her keys with one of us (not the end of the world, the only keys on her ring that weren’t on ours were for the alarms, shutters and the safe in the office). During the rush both tills ran out of one pence coins and, without the keys to the safe, we had to make do until the manager returned. So a few customers would be given a two pence coin instead of one pence. Small profit for them. Nothing to complain about, you would think…
    But one customer demanded that she HAD to have the CORRECT change. She kicked up a fuss about wanting a penny instead of two pence. My co-worker tried to explain that it was to her profit, that we simply had no one pence coins available right now and that being given more money than was owed was actually a valid and legal solution. She was still complaining when the manager returned and when the situation was explained our manager decided, instead of opening up the safe, she wrote the customer a cheque for one penny. I’ve no idea what the bank thought of the cheque or if she even tried to cash it, but she stormed out of the shop with it.

  216. IDIC believer*

    My first job was at an auto tag agency. Each summer, 12 temps were hired to handle the tag renewal rush. We all sat around one central table with manual typewriters (yes, these were the dark ages). We were all 18-21 yo and there were 5 year-round late middle-aged women also in the office that handled titles, etc. Anyway, boredom was rampant so I got permission to play a radio quietly at our table. One older lady, Mrs. P, hated we had the radio even though she couldn’t hear it at her desk, so she fussed til it was taken away. SO, I started a group sing-along of Row Row Row Your Boat. We 12 only did it when Mrs. P was within ear shot but not right at our table. She couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, we denied hearing anything, and none of the other older ladies ever heard it. We did this for over 4 wks and it really cheered us up. It drove her nuts!

  217. Kayem*

    I’m 99.999% remote, so there’s not a lot of pettiness to be had. Though there is one current situation a group of us are being petty about and I have no problem with it.

    One day, Boss had all us directors in a meeting to go over some new deadlines for the week and to give us ghost logins to access a software tool we could use if we wanted. I was in another meeting and missed the first part where my boss explained what said tool was. After she left the meeting, I asked what the software acronym was for and my coworker, Mark, jumped in to take over and show us step-by-step how to use said tool. Turns out the tool is just the sandbox version of the same software we use every day, our testing ground for mucking around without ruining live data.

    I thought he had been instructed by Boss to show us how to use it, so I went along with it for a while before realizing it was a waste of time. Then Mark stated he would “let” us play around with it for a while and we’ll just all stay in the meeting together so he can answer questions anyone might have (as if we can’t do that in group text chat?). All of us bailed on the meeting and he was grumpy the rest of the day. I mentioned it to another coworker on another project and she laughed and said “I see you’ve met Mark the Mansplainer.”

    Mark the Mansplainer loooooves to tell others how to do their job, especially women. Only the women. Including our boss. I know he’s been with our employer longer, but we’re equals and I know how to do my job just as well as he does.

    One of his favorite things to do is create unnecessary meetings so he can show us how to do things. Whether it’s showing us how to do essential functions of our job that we already know perfectly well how to do, or as a response to someone asking a question that requires a simple yes or no answer in text chat, he’s always poised to initiate a meeting. Someone could ask “Did Boss say three teapots or two teaspoons?” and seconds later, Mark’s incoming call appears on all our screens.

    It’s entirely unnecessary, wastes everyone’s time, and he just. won’t. stop. So I began ignoring the incoming meeting requests. Pointedly. My other women coworkers have taken note and are now ignoring his meeting requests as well. It’s driving him up the wall and I enjoy every little instance of it happening.

    (We just now had a minor tech issue, which the fix was “Tell Boss and wait until she can re-enable the correct permissions.” Coworker asked Mark if his permissions had been fixed yet. Suddenly, we all get notifications of an incoming group call. All but one of us ignored it. According to the coworker who answered, she didn’t realize who initiated the meeting until after she clicked to join, so she told Mark she had to take another call, then went on break. He sat alone in his meeting for 17 minutes and 32 seconds before finally hanging up in frustration. My day is now complete!)

  218. Sauce Thief*

    During my brief flirtation with food service, I worked at a very dysfunctional restaurant as a busser— or at least nominally so. In reality, they were always so understaffed that I did a little bit of everything. I had two bosses (the two owners) with wildly different standards, one who very strict and the other totally lenient. My strict boss was very exacting about staff meals and their exact portions and contents, which were the same every shift. I wasn’t going hungry or anything, but it was boring, and there were many other more egregious issues which I don’t need to detail here.

    The restaurant served a particular sauce (with things to dip) for free to every table, and had eight or so other sauces which were generally served in a sauce sampler. One of my jobs was assembling those appetizers and samplers. I could have the basic sauce with my staff meals, but the other sauces were completely off-limits. So naturally, I made it my mission to eat every single one of those sauces. I planned everything very exactingly, waiting for the perfect night when my strict boss wasn’t in and my lenient boss wasn’t looking to sneak into the walk-in, fill up a ramekin, slip it onto my plate, eat frantically in the corner behind the ice machine, and conceal the evidence with the rest of the dirty dishes. Slowly, over the course of that summer, I tried every single sauce— and it turned out that the one I was already allowed to eat was the best by far. I’m normally a rule-follower, but it was so satisfying to do something off-limits in that particular moment. I never got caught, even though I was always getting in trouble with strict boss for one thing or another. The restaurant has since closed and I live in another city now, so I think it can be said that I pulled off the perfect sauce crime.

  219. Aphrodite*

    Hahahahaha! I thought the title of this post was “what’s the PRETTIEST thing you’ve done at work (or seen done)?

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      I should have changed my username to Pettiest Curse for the duration of this thread, but the idea it only just occurred to me, and it’s too late now, darn!

    2. I Wish My Job Was Tables*

      Hah, now THAT would be a fun post! I’d love to hear stories of office decorations (pranks or intentional) going right!

  220. MissBaudelaire*

    I wish I had a cool story. All I got right now is the lady I used to work with in a laundry who hated folding the big curtains. Would pick through the curtain bin when he all had to fold to only grab small ones. So one day, all of us tired of her refusing to fold big ones, kept throwing big ones into her pile and snatching the small ones for ourselves. Our supervisor knew about her shenanigans and left her to fold the pile of big ones.

    At my current job, I was passed over for a promotion. I was told this is because I ‘lack initiative’. What my boss meant to say is I don’t do a bunch of extra work for no extra pay in the hopes of impressing her.

    Okay, word. I quit doing anything not specifically listed in my job description. She is now scrambling because I won’t schedule meetings the day before when I have the day off, I won’t answer her emails on weekends, and I won’t do extra stuff for the person she promoted above me. That’s all.

  221. MissBaudelaire*

    Oh wait, one more.

    I used to work at a fast food joint. Every two weeks someone would come in and order coleslaw. He would always always ALWAYS complain it was ‘too dry’ and he wanted it ‘juicy’. Why keep ordering it, then? One day we gave him his order, and without opening it, he handed back the coleslaw and said he wanted one that was juicy.

    So I took it and went and stood in the back for a minute or too, staring at the wall, and gave him the same coleslaw. He was extremely satisfied with that one.

  222. fionafancypants*

    I like to think I am petty with a purpose. I have a new project leader who likes to “assign” actions by saying “WE should do X” while looking at me and expecting me to volunteer. It annoys me to no end and so I like to look him in the eyes, smile, and say “Great idea, are you going to take care of that?”.

  223. Folding Sweaters*

    Years ago my (now) husband and I worked at a mom and pop retail store. I had applied and interviewed for an assistant manager position. I worked really well with the manager and he all but told me I was going to get the job. But during the interview I honestly said “I might leave the area in a year”. He said something diplomatic and then hired someone else. The person hired was, nice, fun, and a good dude… he also was a big airhead. Show up a little late, maybe a little hungover, forget to lock this, or unlock that. He was always leaving his water bottle, clipboard, keys, coffee cup around the store. This irritated my husband to no end that this guy was promoted over his amazing, highly qualified lady. One shift the new assistant manager stopped by my husband’s area and left the store keys on a messy workshop counter. My husband looked left and right, and slid the keys under a stack of paper and behind some items. He then watched with a straight face and feigned concern as the guy ran around the store pulling his hair out for the remaining 3 hours the store was open. He even watched as he debated which other manager or owner he should call to come close the store and if they were going to need to rekey the entire store and warehouse. The dude was even asking others what consequences he might face over this incident. Magically another employee found the keys just before the store closed. I had been working that day and when we got in the car my husband blurted it all out and relished every moment of watching him squirm and panic.
    The guy ended up stepping down a few weeks later and when the manager came to me to ask if I wanted to apply to the newly opened position, I said “no”. In hindsight, not getting that job got me so angry I went and got a Master’s degree and blasted myself into a high demand field with fantastic pay and plenty of opportunities.

  224. Grumpy_old_it_guy*

    Way back in the dawn of time, I was doing Application Development, and when I got really bored, I would start putting innocuous, silly comments in the code just because I could. Some of the better ones were….

    I Want A Cookie!
    A Miracle just occurred.
    If you are reading this, we are all in big trouble.

    Sadly, only 1 person noticed.

  225. I Wish My Job Was Tables*

    I’m a trans man, I use he/him pronouns and have used them for over ten years. I have been rocking a beard for quite a while, I have short hair, a flat chest, a very masculine first name and a low voice. Despite this, I once worked with a woman (I’ll call her Chair) who kept calling me “her” and “she” and “Mrs. Tables” because “you look so womanly, I can’t remember that you’re a man!” I transitioned well before being hired and she didn’t even know I was trans until I’d been there a while, so I don’t know what made her think “woman.”

    I reported her to HR, but I’m not sure what actions they took. To my coworkers credit, they did a good job trying to get her to stop:

    – Any time Chair said “she”, a different female coworker (Dresser) would respond as if Chair was speaking to her, even if Chair was looking right at me. If Chair said she wasn’t talking about Dresser, Dresser would say “but you said ‘she’, so you’re talking about a woman, right?”

    – alternatively, staff would ask who Chairs was talking about, because no one named Mrs. Tables worked there. Sometimes she’d double down and people would act confused, because “we’re helping you remember his name/that he’s a man, you know your coworkers right?”

    Didn’t matter when this happened. If she got my gender/name wrong, everything ground to a halt so staff could “clarify who Chair is talking about” and “make sure they understand what she’s saying.” Meetings could drag on if she kept doing it enough, since no one let her get away with it. Even some people higher up would “help clarify” what she was saying.

    Thankfully, she eventually stopped misgendering me, even if it took a while. I do genuinely wonder if she was being intentionally offensive, since she never had any problems remembering non-binary or trans women’s pronouns and names (even if they transitioned on the job). I guess I have a particularly womanly beard!

  226. Tiny clay insects*

    Occasionally people in my department would need to borrow the master key for our floor from our program manager (if we accidentally locked ourselves out of our office, for example). Previously, we’d just ask her for it, use it, and bring it back.

    Then another small department was moved into some empty space on our floor. Immediately the most unpleasant member of that small department created a complicated system for borrowing the master key: each of us had a poker chip that we had to write our names on, and they were kept in a special bin, and if we wanted to borrow the master key, we’d need to fish through the bin of full poker chips, find ours, and move it to the spot where the master key was kept. It took longer to find my poker chip in the bin than it took to borrow the key, open my office, and return it.

    The same man instituted a bunch of other ostensibly efficient new methods and expected everyone to obey them. He had no official authority, he just decided these things and assumed we’d listen (and scolded those who didn’t). He was a deeply unpleasant man in general, and I resented his arrival on my floor.

    So I stole his poker chip. My petty heart loved imagining him searching fruitlessly through his stupid bin, looking for the one with his name. Long after he retired, I’ve still got it in a little box on my dresser.

      1. Tiny clay insects*

        So glad at least a few people got to read and appreciate this! I was late to the thread, but when I saw the topic of pettiness, I knew I had to share.

  227. Dawn*

    So, probably surprising nobody, this happened at a call centre; it was a government contract, it was in part an emergency service, and so we were required to operate 24/7.

    I had been there…. about three years. I was on the overnight team, always had been, and typically the way that works is that we had a supervisor but they’d log out around 10 and go home and leave us to our own devices. Not once in those three years did my team ever have a complaint about coverage.

    Until we got a new supervisor.

    She’d worked with the company on the midnight team before my time, and after a few weeks decided she was going to stay overnight.

    So it must have been about, I don’t know, 2am. One of my coworkers dropped by and collected me for a break; we did this all the time, especially the smokers because it’s pretty boring and a little unnerving standing by yourself out front of the office in a poorly-lit industrial area.

    Folks, the new supervisor LOST IT. I won’t get into everything that was said, but the practical upshot was that we were expected to always maintain coverage at a certain level (this was pointless, it was 2am, and we were the kind of “emergency service” which has a two hour window because it’s not life and death like fire or ambulance) and could not go on breaks together. Absolutely, angrily, dressed me down in front of the team and made some pretty nasty implications.

    Ok, we’ll play it your way.

    For the next….. week or so, I made sure to check in with my manager before going on break.

    Or going to the bathroom.

    Or grabbing a coffee.

    Or basically anything that would require me moving away from my desk.

    If I was not ready to take a call, I had her explicit permission for it. Over a ten hour shift.

    She stopped doing midnights shortly thereafter.

  228. Chipmunk*

    This was petty on both ends… I used to work as a graphic designer at a firm that had a lot of small business clients, each with their own quirks. This client in particular was known for being particularly high maintenance.

    She needed new business cards and we were 10 rounds of revisions deep (all via fax, sob) and I’ve done everything she’s asked, thinking she can’t have anything left to change at this point and she calls up and says she’s been inspecting her faxed proof (more sobs) and everything is 1/32” off center.

    I open her file, save it as the next version number but don’t change anything and fax it back (ugly cry) with a cheerful, here you go! She call right back and is so happy now the information is perfectly centered and approves the card to print.

  229. Canuck Gal*

    I worked at a marketing agency and some longstanding clients of ours hired us for a specific project. We had worked with them for years and they loved what we did. For whatever reason, their partner just hated us. Let’s call her Lucinda.

    Lucinda had no say in what our rates or payment plans were, but was essentially against the idea that we DARE charge money to work on this project. Lucinda didn’t like the type of marketing we did. Lucinda didn’t like that we were experts in marketing, but not in her field of expertise.

    Her expectations continued to be unrealistic throughout, and she would often drop into meetings we were in with our day-to-day contacts (our clients, who were in charge of the marketing side of this project) to deliver scathing lectures that weren’t based in anyone’s reality. They intervened where possible but would end up on the receiving end of the abuse as well.

    We did our best to soldier through it, but this happened over many months and eventually created a high level of anxiety for both myself and my direct report. Think “I feel nauseous every time we see Lucinda’s name in our inbox” or “maybe I will break my legs so I don’t have to go into this meeting with Lucinda” level of anxiety.

    At the end of the project, we delivered a presentation that outlined the (great!) results we delivered – standard stuff. We always sent this as a power point as our clients would often take certain sections to share with others / generally make it their own.

    After my direct report shared the report, and weeks had passed, he told me that he put a text box on the title slide that read “F*** You Lucinda”. Made it impossibly small, and the same colour as the title slide. And. He. Sent. It.

    I was equal parts horrified and thrilled. Nothing ever came of it. Years have passed. Lucinda has moved on, as have I and my direct report. But I’ll never forget that somewhere saved on a share drive is that slide. Bless.

  230. Lou's Girl*

    I forgot about this one: As HR, I was mediating between 2 feuding employees- both good workers, the 2 of them just couldn’t work together. Fortunately, they were in different departments.
    One day, one of them was listed for some sort of achievement on the bulletin board, B**ch was written next to her name. That’s when I got involved. No proof- no cameras, but plenty of finger pointing. When interviewing both, it came to light that the crux of the issue was a man, both were apparently interested in. (Giant eyeroll)
    While speaking with them, they both told me about all the ridiculous and incredibly petty things the 2 of them had been doing to each other- porn mailouts, late night calls and hangups, etc. While being interviewed, one of them says “and then she just layed some cats at my door.”
    Me: “Cats? Like dead cats? Stuffed cats?”
    Her: “Nah, live ones, tons of them. She collected them and dropped them off at my house in the middle of the night.”
    Apparently, one of them went around her neighborhood ‘collecting’ cats and dumped about 10 of them at the other one’s front door. When I interviewed the other one, I had to ask about the cats. She just grinned.
    I informed them both that I didn’t care what they did outside work, cats and all, it just couldn’t spill over at the office. It was the last time I had to meet with them at least.

    1. SB*

      No man is worth risking your job over. No man is worth wandering around the neighbourhood looking for cats for that matter. Not even Jason Mamoa could inspire me to do this kind of weird BS.

  231. RadicalTherapist*

    to be fair RE lunch boundary, I have a hard limit there. no matter the work culture, to expect working lunches is internalized capitalism.

    that amount of petty was absolutely called for.

    I’d go further, but I’m out of gas for free emotional and professional labor today. :)

  232. MyDogIsCalledBradleyPooper*

    I had one coworker “Mandy” who was very needy and demanding. She really just rubbed me the wrong way in every interaction. She called me once asking who to contact in our department to get something done. It was clearly something that anyone of our staff on the Service Desk could do but since she asked for a name I told her to talk to “Lynn”. Lynn was the worst on the Service Desk. She would not listen to you. You would get a couple of words out and then she would say she knows what you want and then start doing what she thought you wanted. She would not let you finish saying what you wanted to say and would not accept that she what she did was wrong. I hung of the phone and that call thinking that will tie Mandy up for an hour and cause all kinds of frustration. Mandy mentioned it when we met for our update the next month. I acted surprised when she said that she had problems with Lynn and had to call the Service Desk to get her request satisfied.

  233. Stay Petty*

    I have moved to procurement & one of the first things I did was standardise the PPE & uniforms we supply to the workforce. The uniforms were not an issue, but oh my goodness did we get some pushback about the boots. Everyone wanted to order a different style/colour/etc. boot & expected the company to special order them. The women wanted special colours & patterns (animal print for example). The men wanted fancy ones that were not necessary for their work (think high leg boots for underground work when they work on the surface only).

    Because I am such a petty cow, I changed the boots from the middle of the road boots ($165) to the cheapest, ugliest boot I could find that still met the relevant industry standards & sent staff an email stating that they can either have these boots for free or they can buy whatever boots they want with their own money & the company will reimburse them for the cost of the boots we stock for them ($98). They lost their collective poop. Actual adults having a tantrum about their employer not spending $400 on a pair of work boots for them was astounding. Some threatened to walk (no one actually did), some claimed we were in breach of the law (we are not) & one even threatened to sue me personally for not making reasonable accommodations for her disability (she claimed that she requires special boots for some foot condition but was unable to produce any documentation to support the claim).

    In the end, about 98% of the staff accepted the boots. The rest bought their own & submitted a reimbursement for the $98 we are willing to spend on super ugly boots.

  234. Ms Pettypants*

    My very first grown-up job I worked in a small hospital finance department with a woman who admittedly was very good at her actual job but was SO obnoxious about making sure everyone knew it. She would stop down the hallway in her clubbing heels talking loudly to no-one about how late she was at the office the night before, all the work she still had to do, how she took work home with her all the time (this was a huge no-no for legal reasons), all the praise the drs/clinig managers gave her, and would frequently send long detailed emails (I’m pretty sure she scheduled them to do this, but can’t be proven) in the middle of the night.

    She also took every single phone call on speakerphone at top volume with her office door open. There were 6 of us in a corner space – 4 offices and 2 cubicles right outside the offices. All that was teeny and you could easily hear everyone’s full quiet conversation from anyone else’s desk. I was mature enough to ask her a couple of times to shut the door or speak a little quieter. After the 5th or 6th time of doing this, I took it upon myself to walk to her door, make eye contact, and slam her door shut – every single time. Certainly not the most mature way to handle things, but wow it was satisfying to see the rage in her eyes when people couldn’t hear her doing her job. The rest of my coworkers would giggle hysterically. Totally worth it.

    I quit that job after she was promoted and the 2nd week she was my boss she screamed at me in a department meeting “That’s not the way we will do things, I am your superior, you HAVE to respect me” after I explained how to do one of our processes that she knew nothing about.

  235. Autumn leaves*

    fashion industry designer showroom. Newly promoted young woman was in charge of scheduling the models. She didn’t realize that the week had a holiday Monday in it and scheduled the model to come in. Model came but no one was there. it was a waste of her time and a lost business opportunity.

    she charged the designer for that day and they were so unhappy. this place was completely dysfunctional to begin with. There was so much drama surrounding the employee that made the mistake. They finally settled on her paying the models wages out of her own salary.

    The next time she came in, model tried speaking with the employee because in the past she had always gushed over model . model was an extremely sweet person but Employee was not. employee would backstab you in a heartbeat. most people didn’t know that because she was only charming with the important people.

    the next time model came in, employee refused to speak to her. later, model was chatting with us saying how surprised she was by her reaction. We told her it was completely normal for that woman.

    not a super exciting story I suppose but I’ve always been envious of the model for sticking up for herself and demanding payment. Good for her

  236. TANSTAAFL*

    Back in the mid 90’s my my very small (VP and myself – executive assistant) department at a very large, international corporation was being eliminated. Between the VP and I we managed to remove every single bit of expensive office supplies, high end papers for presentation handouts, computer equipment, etc. I had previously been in the computer industry and as such was pretty much self supporting when it came to our PC’s, with occasional requests from the PC support team. The senior guys on the team loved me since I rarely needed help and always invited them to partake of our many catered events when they ended, and a few while they were going on.

    So on the last day, after I had downloaded whatever files the VP and I wanted, I performed a low level format on my PC. The senior IT guys knew I was doing this and thought it was hysterical. I got rehired a month later at a more senior position and they equipped my brand new PC with all the most recent software I needed, including Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. My old pc was moved over to some other department.

  237. Onion Rings*

    This was a story told to me, so I may not have all the details exactly right. The teller of the story was once a manager at a store that shipped packages. A customer came in with a box he wanted to return, but the only label on it was the one from the original shipment to him. An employee at the store told him he needed a new label to send it back, and he became irate. The manager stepped in to defend his employee and the customer acted even worse. Finally, customer snatched up the package and headed towards the door as if he were leaving, only to turn and hurl the box back into the store from the parking lot, run to his truck, and drive away. The manager paused a moment, looked at the box…and scanned it, ensuring that it would go right back to the man’s house.

  238. AnonEMoose*

    All hail Tiffany, Paragon of Petty!!

    Seriously, this is epic and very nearly made me spit water all over my desk. Eventually I will learn not to drink or eat while reading these posts – today was not that day.

  239. There You Are*

    One of my first professional jobs was as an office admin / receptionist / AP clerk / junior IT support. It was a tiny company and I did all the things that the specialized people didn’t (we had the two owners, a half-dozen sales people, and a part-time bookkeeper).

    One of the owners suddenly decided that I needed to clean his personal coffee maker every night and put freshly-ground coffee in the filter area and fresh bottled water in the water compartment every morning before he came in to the office, so that all he had to do was press the Start button. We had no sink in the office, so I’d have to take the coffee pot into the restroom to clean it.

    I dutifully washed the coffee pot that first day. I filled the water compartment with water from the building’s water fountain (not his expensive bottled water), and I set the coffee grinder to “chunky” when his preference was “fine”.

    I also hand-made a strip of paper that wrapped around the glass coffee carafe, covering the opening on top that said, “SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION” just like the wraps that used to be put on toilets in hotel rooms.

    He washed the pot and made his own [bleeping] coffee after that.

  240. Charlotte Lucas*

    Another food service one. Back in the 90s, I worked in an ice cream shop with a drive thru open for an hour after the in-store dining was closed. One evening, right before closing, a car full of the most obnoxious drunks comes through. We were all teenagers who just wanted to clean up & go home, so we helped the kid who was serving rush the order out. Once he closed the window, he told us to lock up, shut everything down, & turn out the lights. He has given the car their order but no napkins, spoons, or straws. We rushed to get out of there before they came back.

    (Not sure if the driver was sober or not, but he was loud & rude. And that was back when it was not as likely for the police to pay attention to a report of drunk driving from kids. On the other hand, our store was right where 3 municipalities met, & that road was very well monitored by all 3 police forces.)

  241. DCLimey*

    In retaliation for being demoted (to make me quit), I unionized the workplace. Then quit and left my old manager to deal with the fallout. Mwahahahaha.

  242. Free Meerkats*

    I had a coworker whom we shall call Bubba who was 6’4″ of unmitigated ego and all-knowing (hint: he wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable or intelligent as he thought.) Our microwave display went blank just before it beeped when done; so if you opened the door at that point, you needed to hit reset to put in a new time. I personally don’t like the beep, so I would do that regularly and hit the reset; one day I forgot. Bubba complained that he “Had to crawl under the table to unplug it and plug it back in to make it work.” From that day forward, I never hit the reset button if he was in the office.

    1. SusanGB*

      YEARS ago, I had a boss (department head) who was all-over-the-place. So scattered, actually ended up taking a mental health leave. Some time before that, came a day we just couldn’t take her any more. Every day she would leave at 2:10 to pick up her daughter from school. On That Day, I went into her empty office and set her clock ahead an hour. Upon her return, we hear her say oh my gosh, grab her keys and rush out. I set the clock back. Great hilarity, but even more when she never mentioned anything ever about arriving an hour early at her daughters school. Pretty sure this don’t cause the health leave though.

  243. Boschy*

    I once worked an absolutely miserable office job where the primary purpose of the role appeared be getting yelled at by senior staff. One day I changed my display picture on the messaging system to a face from a piece of classical art. Nobody ever asked where it was from and I pettily and secretly relished the fact that it was from the part of Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights that represented Hell. I managed to get out shortly afterwards, with the other staff none the wiser.

  244. Allison*

    When I quit a job that I had been at for 7 years and did not make a living wage, I set my autoreply link to MIT’s living wage calculator. I knew with the company-wide email culture and how coworkers rarely updated their email address books, my reply would be bouncing around for a while. I hope it still is!

    https://livingwage.mit.edu/

  245. Not my usual self*

    It’s not the worst, but this happened today. A coworker in my dept (“Sara”) asked someone in another dept (“Kristin”) for access to an application we use. Kristin’s team is supposedly in charge of the application but anytime they are asked questions or to help someone they immediately try to find a way to say it’s not their job and or to do the absolute minimum. it’s actually comical at this point to see how fast she will reply “not it!”

    instead of just giving Sara access, which is super easy and absolutely is her job, she told Sara to go ask me to help but did not loop me in directly because that would have been more than the bare minimum. Sara asks me and my boss about it. I loop everyone back in, including Kristin and HER boss who were on the original chain, explaining I can’t share my credentials, that logins are individual and that sara will need her own.

    Kristin fires back that she meant a login using a particular generic email address, and said that she definitely gave the info to “my team” at some point in the past. What she did not do though, was actually put the password that goes with that email in the message (nor did she refer to privately sending it to Sara). she was so petty that, multiple messages into this, she still wouldn’t just give Sara the info she needed to log in and get these reports from the application she is in charge of. I truthfully said I did not have that password. Kristin still didn’t respond. Sara had to ask again. Kristin finally gave it to her.

    But the really petty thing is that I do have broad access on my own login. I could have set Sara up myself in less time than it took to respond to all this. But it’s not my job to manage the users of this application for relevant business reasons. So I’m not gonna step into the void that Kristin wants to create.

  246. Mousemouse*

    I have an East Asian name, and my surname is shorter than my given name. Our company lists our names in the Surname, Given Name order, and sometimes folks don’t bother using their brains to actually figure out what my given name is, so they’ll address me by my surname. I then immediately start using theirs as well:
    – “Hello Mouse!”
    – “Hi Babbington, how can I help you?”
    Once they ask about it, I go all “oh, I thought we were calling each other by our last names like a sports team, ya know! ^^”

  247. Susan Bowers*

    YEARS ago, I had a boss (department head) who was all-over-the-place. So scattered, actually ended up taking a mental health leave. Some time before that, came a day we just couldn’t take her any more. Every day she would leave at 2:10 to pick up her daughter from school. On That Day, I went into her empty office and set her clock ahead an hour. Upon her return, we hear her say oh my gosh, grab her keys and rush out. I set the clock back. Great hilarity, but even more when she never mentioned anything ever about arriving an hour early at her daughters school. Pretty sure this don’t cause the health leave though.

  248. Chaordic One*

    Years ago I worked as sales clerk/cashier/barista at an independent bookstore/coffee shop. The owners were notoriously cheap and the equipment was quite old, in particular the equipment we used to make espressos. There was this one little metal pitcher that we used to steam the milk for the expressos. All of the staff referred to it as the “dribble pitcher” and everyone hated to get stuck with having to use it. Until… one day… it just disappeared. (It must have “accidentally” fallen into the trash.)

  249. Orwell, Actually*

    This was eons ago, because I am old – late 1980s, in the US Midwest.

    I worked at an accounting firm, and the managing partner was a genuinely unpleasant person. He treated the clerical stuff horribly and was lowkey sleazy with all the female employees. He definitely hired for looks; the whole office was full of pretty young female accountants.

    He was also about 5’5″ tall and had a bad case of Short Man Syndrome. I used to have to have lunch with him once a month, because we worked together for a large local non-profit. We would meet up at some nice restaurant with a bunch of other local business leaders.

    I am about 5’7″ so I just made sure I wore 3″ heels every time we went to one of those lunches. I never said a thing and acted totally professional. I did gloat internally, though.

  250. Dwight Schrute*

    At my previous job I was interesting with someone from an outside IT company who repeatedly called me the wrong name in emails. I tried making my signature bigger etc and in a moment of pettiness I replied to him and called him the wrong name. He didn’t pick up on it so I eventually just had to correct him

  251. Raine*

    I’d been at a firm for several years, long enough to figure out that my boss, R., who was over all the technical aides/editors, had a grudge against women. I was “acceptable” because of my veteran status and because I’d previously worked in the same industry. Time goes by, and one of the firm’s principals, K, decided he’d get his daughter (recently graduated with dual degrees) hired at the firm. K was hoping I’d train and mentor his daughter, but he doesn’t tell anyone this was his intent. R creates a brand-new position for K’s daughter. I see it and realize R’s probably going to replace me with whoever’s in this new position, but I say nothing.
    K’s daughter gets hired. Less than a week later, R pulls me into his office on a Monday and tells me that my job has been “restructured” and I “no longer qualify” and that my last day of employment is Friday. I look at everything I have been assigned and realize:
    – nobody will be able to pick up my projects because nobody knows what I’ve been working on
    – the other technical aide doesn’t do two-thirds of the same work
    – the technical writer/editor quit months ago and I’ve been picking up her work
    – R will blame me for any mess I leave behind, citing my “poor work ethic” and whatever b.s. he can imagine.
    Tuesday morning, I start planning my exit, telling all my project managers what’s going on, so sorry, been a pleasure working with you, etc. I document everything I’ve done, how to do it, what’s left open and undone, what I anticipate happening with the projects I’ve been assigned, etc. I pull K’s daughter over to my cubicle and teach her everything she needs to know to handle the mountain of dirt that is coming her way, including showing her all the documentation I’ve written.
    By Thursday, word has gotten around to R. what I’ve done, including some very angry project managers who wrote proposals that specifically included my resume and credentials – one worth almost $2 million. R refuses to back down on his decision.
    K pulls me into his office, horrified, and tells me what he had intended. I was like, “Well, you could’ve told R. that, but it’s too late now.”
    Late Thursday afternoon, R comes by my cubicle and stiffly compliments me on my “dedication to professionalism.”
    In my head, I was like, “Yeah, and that statement proves exactly why I did it.”
    My last laugh: several years later, he and his wife were taking the same flight as me. They call for first class passengers to board. R looks shocked, shocked I tell you, when I stand up and wind up in the row ahead of him and his wife, like he was convinced I wouldn’t ever be able to afford such a ticket.

  252. MagicEyes*

    I’m a little late to the party, but I have one petty story. When I was out of the office, a my horrible co-worker needed some folders. She helped herself to the folders in my office, and my boss decided she didn’t like them being in my office, so she took them away and put them in a supply cabinet, instead of thanking me and offering to replace them, like a civilized person would do. (And also told me not to keep office supplies in my office, which of course I completely ignored.) As my petty revenge, I ordered more folders every time I got office supplies. I had piles of folders stashed away in my office, in the supply cabinet, and in a storage closet. We don’t use those folders any more, and there are still some of these folders lurking around the office.

  253. Ginger Peachy*

    One of our consultants was salty over having to change desks and move into a shared area. She complained to management multiple times about the janitor leaving his cart in the area, and eventually he was told he couldn’t leave it there anymore. The following week, the consultant complained that there were dead bugs in the fluorescent lights and asked management to have them taken care of. They assigned the job to the janitor, who tipped out all the fluorescent light covers over her desk. When she came in the next morning, the lights were clean, as she’d asked, but her desk, keyboard, chair, etc, were covered in dead flies and stink bugs.

  254. Lady Knittington*

    I used to work for the NHS, prior to Covid. We had one deeply, deeply unpleasant colleague, B. He was lovely if you didn’t challenge him, but would start slamming phones and chairs if you did; lied; disappear for hours on end then accuse people of getting confused if they called him out on it. Every time management spoke to him about it, his response was ‘As you know, I’ve got a difficult home life and work is my refuge’. And they’d let him get away with it. Every time.

    He had a smart card, which allowed him to log on to the computer more easily and gave him access to a centralised patient database. He also had an incredibly messy desk.

    One night, I took his smart card out of his PC and dropped it into a standing box file which was next to his keyboard. Apparently when he found out, he absolutely exploded rather than bothering to look for it.
    Petty? Oh yes. Worth it? Decidedly. I’m just sorry I missed his reaction.

  255. Dawn*

    Another one, just a quickie this time, I currently work in a role that includes doing some customer support on occasion; whenever I get someone repeatedly demanding, “Where’s my order? Where is my product?” after I’ve explained to them I flip into Extremely Literal Mode and repeat, as many times as necessary, that the order tracking – which they can view here – currently shows their order is in transit somewhere between Toronto and Vancouver.

    I’ve had at least one person get huffy that I “don’t know where my order is” and the response to that is basically, ma’am, I don’t work for FedEx, I have access to the same tracking information as you do.

    One made such a big stink about it I literally explained how far apart the warehouse and the destination were, and how long it takes to drive that distance (this was in the middle of a bad winter storm season and her order wasn’t even late.)

    Customers who think their goods travel by magic will be the death of me.

  256. Numbat*

    There was a statue I hated, as it represented some stuff about the workplace I hated. So I threw it out the second storey window.

  257. Nemi*

    Worked in a bar to supplement my student finance for postgraduate teacher training in London – it was in the Square Mile so the clientele was great wunches of bankers. One of the nearby Big Firms hired our upstairs room for their Xmas Quiz and I was serving up there, the Quizmaster decreed no trips to the bar during the questions. Cue a plummy chorus of “m’haw haw! might as well let the barmaid join in!” “oh years, let the girl try, haw haw!”
    Winning the final tiebreaker against a team of four by yelling out the original name of the band Motorhead was deeply satisfying.

  258. not a mayo fan*

    Many years ago, I worked on a team with about 40 employees. There would be a meeting that provided lunch every month or so. It was widely known that A. and I both hated mayonnaise. A. had worked there for years while I was new — and apparently this was an ongoing battle for A.

    At a lunch meeting where the two of us were eating sad salad and bagged potato chips, A.’s supervisor asked, “Why do you dislike mayo so much?”

    A. responded without skipping a beat, in a voice that carried: “It looks like someone splooged all over my damn sandwich.”

    I’ve never heard anyone use the word “splooge ” seriously before or since. But there were a LOT more untouched sandwiches than usual that day, and the next month all the mayo was on the side.

  259. Ellen D*

    Many years ago, I was a member of a small team of six people, headed by the boss from hell, with the secretary from hell. Both of them would generate stories for this site for their behaviour. It was rumoured that HR had a couple of filing cabinets of complaints about boss and the secretary on two separate occasions shouted at me because I dared to check with her that she’d been doing her job – as requested by boss – because she didn’t. As well as a group Christmas lunch, it was normal to have a team one as well, but the rest of the team didn’t want to spend 2 plus hours socializing with boss and sec, so we told them, we didn’t want one and in any case as boss was out travelling 2 or 3 days a week, it was difficult to find a date that suited everyone. Then on one of the days when the secretary was on leave, and the boss was travelling, the other four of us held our team Christmas lunch and enjoyed it. It seemed mean, but they were only tolerable in social situations, when diluted by a lot of people.

  260. BabaYaga*

    I had this manager who was just absolutely awful. They treated me like their personal assistant despite the fact that wasn’t my role ( my actual role was to support their WORK not their personal lives or matters, etc.) They were a terrible communicator, which made my job nigh impossible to do. I’d send an e-mail asking if they wanted me to tell the client A or B and they’d respond with yes or no instead of an answer. They’d double book themselves and then throw me under the bus despite the fact that, again, I was not their PA. I tried to solve these problems or make work flows to work around it but there was just no escaping and upper management did nothing because Manager was a nepo baby.

    One day Manager kept me for an hour and a half after hours to gaslight me about how all our communication issues (of which I kept record and futilely tried to solve with things like logic and conversation) were my fault and how this is just how the industry is and blah blah bullcrap. I sat there and blithely took all their bullcrap, calmly deflected any accusations of blame and then went home to evaluate my expenses and see if I could afford to quit without having another job lined up.

    The next day, I walked into the CEO’s office and quit. Not only did I quit, I revealed every single piece of dirty laundry I knew (which was a lot because when you treat someone as a PA, my gosh, we tend to have access to a lot of information) and told him I was quitting explicitly because of Manager and that I did not want my name associated with their unprofessional behavior.

    CEO called in one of the big wigs and asked me to repeat the story, which I did. For the entire duration of my two weeks notice there, Manager avoided me like the plague and I answered any questions my very curious colleagues asked about why I was leaving with total honesty. Manger had quite the reputation so this mostly consisted of folks asking me if I was leaving because of Manager and I said yes and they were unsurprised.

    I guess word got around or maybe Manager felt guilty, because they had another colleague give me a few hundred dollars in cash in a tin. I told colleague to return it because I found the gesture gross but colleague told me there was no point returning it because Manager wouldn’t learn anything anyway.

    Manager tried to evade me but on the tail end of my notice, I saw them in the lobby and made a point of thanking them for the parting gift because I knew they had wanted the parting money to be a secret. They were flustered and told me to buy myself something nice and I calmly replied “Since I don’t have another job lined up, I’m going to err on the side of caution and save this for groceries.” because not only was it true, I knew it would embarrass them.

    I never regretted quitting and ended up working a contract job for a charity within two weeks of quitting before being hired in the field I actually wanted to be in. No regrets.

    Sometimes the pettiest revenge is honesty.

  261. rodan*

    LONG time ago I worked for a cable company in the Northeast. They got bought out by another cable company, so I think it’s safe for me to say it was MediaOne. Guy calls in because his internet is out and he wants a truck out thing first thing tomorrow, at the latest, to fix things. His problem didn’t qualify him for a next day service call, and the next available appointment was 4 or 5 days later. We went back and forth for a bit, with him acting like a bigger and bigger jerk each go around.

    Finally he says “Can you see where I live?”

    “You live in (village),” I say, (village) being the name of one of the higher income, tonier suburbs of our nearby city.

    “That’s right. I am exactly the kind of customer you want. Are you telling me you can’t cancel an appointment in (town #1) or (town #2) and send the truck to me?” (town #1) and (town #2) were very low incomes towns which had a poor reputation in our state. Undeserved reputations, in my opinion, but still …

    This dude’s classism and audacity knocked my barely extant sense of professionalism offline, so I just said, “Oh I’m sorry sir, it’s Bizzaro Month at MediaOne. We’re doing all the poor towns first.”

    The guy lost his mind, which made me very happy. Then he hung up on me, which made me even happier. So I was feeling pretty good the next day when I rolled in for my shift, until my boss met me at the front door and hustled me into his office.

    Know how at the beginning of service phone calls it says you may be recorded for training purposes? Turns out that’s true. The customer called back in, got my boss and gave him an ear full. My boss checked and, yup, they had the whole thing on tape. My boss didn’t say a word. Just sat me down and played the tape.

    That done, and stifling a laugh, he said, “I assume we’re not going to have a problem like this ever again?”

    I assured him we would not, and that was that. He was a great boss.

  262. Flingetsseagxo*

    Coworker was moving to another (promotion) job within the company. Drafted an email to be sent out to the new team highlighting 15years of accomplishments in current dept. the current manager who had been hired 3 years previously edited the email to remove anything prior to CM’s hire. Because if CM didn’t see it – it didn’t happen

  263. alldogsarepuppies*

    The person i replaced as a paralegal in a 2 lawyer Personal Injury firm apparently was the master of being petty. At one point he made his computer password “LawyersSuck” and got in trouble because “it would be unprofessional if a client knew”. He wrote a long email (bcc’ing the coparalegal) explaining that his new password was the name on the picture hanging above his desk and asking permission to use it, and would the clients have a problem with adding a number to make it less predictable.

  264. RandomNameAllocated*

    (raises hand) I admit I was that petty : in the before times when we all had individual landline phones at work, I got a cold call about claiming for accidental injury. I replied (enthusiastically) that YES! I had been in an accident. It had been very serious. I had died. And you know what? They hung up. Rude (!)

  265. not a good morning for you, sir*

    I usually arrive in the office each morning with a reasonably cheerful “Good morning”, even though I’m not a morning person. It tends to start my day off better than if I didn’t, so, why not.

    At my previous job, which had gone from pretty damned good to increasingly bananapants septic, one of my appalling co-bosses held an all-staff meeting at which he harangued us all about how lousy our attitudes were and how we needed to do LOTS of vague things so that the universe would be improved. The things he and the other co-boss needed to do — pay decent salaries, stop playing mind games, communicate, actually do some work, appreciate their undeservedly excellent staff — were not mentioned, of course.

    But one of the things that WAS mentioned was how I was the only person who actually said “Good morning” when I arrived, and why didn’t everyone do that? It would improve the universe so very much!

    I did not say “Good morning” again for my entire remaining time there (about five months; I had already picked my departure date by then, although I had not given notice yet). I arrived in silence every morning and went to my awful cubicle to quietly spend one more day (and no more) on my excessive workload.

  266. Mac (I Wish All The Floors Were Lava)*

    I’m so disappointed in myself for not being a pettiness mastermind like some other folks here. The only instance I can think of to contribute involves this one coworker who drove me ROUND THE BEND. We had a very small shared open office that consisted of mostly women/AFAB folks, at least half of whom were POC. This one older, White guy very much liked to think of himself as just a sweet old man, even though he had a snappish, passive aggressive temper with folks, especially with the mostly POC/immigrant population our non-profit was meant to serve. He also was not good at technology, and had absolutely no coping strategies for this beyond a highly weaponized incompetence. By the end of my first week there, I had already had 2 massive tension headaches from grinding my teeth every time he opened his mouth. Multiple times a day, he would encounter some problem and begin emitting these abrupt huffs of frustration over something his computer was doing. This was pre-covid, and we were really packed in like sardines into this fairly cramped space, many of us using laptops on top of bookcase and file cabinets because there wasn’t room for more than 4 full-size desks. If a few minutes of loudly sighing didn’t get him any attention, he would level up to little sentence fragments, peevishly muttering, “Now why–? I don’t– Ugh!” Sometimes he would glance around helplessly, hoping someone would come rescue him. For the most part, we all kept our heads down and studiously avoided him, because we knew better than to try and show him AGAIN how to connect to the printer or whatever. Occasionally the IT guy or another male coworker would walk into the office for something else, and end up taking pity on him while he was still in huffing-and-moaning mode and hadn’t yet started bugging one of the admins to help him. Whenever this happened, the collective feeling of relief/guilt in the room was palpable, because you were glad it wasn’t you, but also then you had to listen to him then buttonhole this new victim and unload all his complaints while the poor person was squirming, wanting to get back to whatever errand they’d originally been on.
    Anyway, my hate for this guy grew exponentially, he had zero redeeming qualities such as being good at his job or having interesting things to talk about.

    So one day, he comes in and stands next to me by the lockers where we put our bags, and I notice a distinctive fragrance wafting off him. Anyone who has ever lived in a city with a lot of ginko trees knows the perils of traveling by foot in ginko berry season. You stop paying attention for just a few minutes, and bam, you realize halfway through a 6′ patch of the nastiest jam that now you’re gonna hafta wash your shoes. Except obviously this guy hadn’t realized what he’d stepped it– he wasn’t leaving track marks, so I’m assuming he just got a little bit and couldn’t smell it himself. Any other human being on this planet, I would’ve done the right thing and said, “Whoops, looks like you got caught by the ginko tree!” but instead I just let him go on his stinky way with murder in my heart.

  267. Anon for this*

    I am currently being petty. I have a fairly new manager (we’re about 9 months in), & it’s not going well. Terrible communication, won’t admit when he’s wrong or needs help, doesn’t support the team, new to our area but disdainful of learning about our programs. Women have noticed a low-key sexism, too. (Trying to tease out where incompetence ends & sexism begins. It’s hard!) We work a hybrid schedule & can choose our own 2 days in the office. One day is particularly desirable, so I usually work that day (as does he), but I specifically have my other day be different from his.

    I love to bake & bring in treats for my coworkers. And I very specifically bring in treats on the day he is not in the office. He’s on vacation next week. I might bring in treats on both my in-office days.

  268. Pumpkin215*

    I crossed paths with a well known jerk (totally different letter there) and he yelled at me in front of a group of people. I was humiliated and embarrassed.

    …and angry….

    He had a parking spot that was unmarked, but clearly HIS. I got up early every day, drove to work and parked in “his” spot. It. Made. Him. Nuts. He would walk around the building, trying to find out whose car it was. My sports car looked more like something a guy would drive, vs a woman her 40s, so he assumed it was a dude.

    No one ratted me out. Word had gotten around about our interaction at work, he was disliked by many, so my secret stayed safe. On a day he stayed late to keep an eye out, my boss drove me home.

    I think the more angry he became, the more amused everyone was by it. I managed to keep it up until I left the company a few months later.

  269. NeutralJanet*

    An old job had a “relaxation station” that featured, among other little activities, adult coloring books with large, complex designs. People would sit there for a few minutes and work on the top page, so each picture was colored by multiple people. One coworker took the coloring extremely seriously, telling people what colors to use, which parts to work on, etc. He even called people out by name for coloring badly or using clashing colors. When he was out for two days, a few of us colored three pages in the most garish, awful color scheme, making sure to go over the lines of just about every section.

  270. 37 Pieces of Flair*

    One guy in our office was very…particular. One night the cleaning people must have moved the trash can that was in his office so instead of it being right by his desk it was now against the wall. Instead of simply moving the trash can back, he began piling up trash in the exact place his trash can USED to be. The front receptionist was a sweetheart, she finally moved it back for him. The rest of us were betting on how big trash mountain would get before the manager said something.

  271. 37 Pieces of Flair*

    The HR lady at my old job, Sharon, was very used to getting her own way. She didn’t have a birthday, she had a whole birthday ‘month’ (and was irritated she had to share it with Jesus), her bff in the office would ask everyone to contribute to a bday present for Sharon (this happened for absolutely no one else), when she got married she made her fiance re-do the entire proposal bc the first one wasn’t ‘good enough,’ and then her mom’s boss bought her every single gift from her wedding registry. Everything had to be pink and absolutely NEVER orange – she graduated from Texas A&M and acted like even seeing the color orange offended her very soul. One year for Christmas our boss gave us these blown glass flowers he got on vacation or something. They were kind of pretty, but otherwise pointless. I received a pink one. Sharon – horror of horrors – received an orangish/coral colored one. Shockwaves of offense begin radiating throughout the office. She walks into my office and spots my pink flower on the corner of my desk. Starts begging me to trade with her. Trying to convince me how she just absolutely cannot have anything orange around her and she must have pink. I couldn’t have cared less about the stupid flowers but I just shrug and say, I think I’ll keep it but thanks for the offer.’ I then placed it on the most prominent place possible on my desk and left it there for as long as I worked there, 3 years. It was just my little flag of victory, my nod to all us nobodies in the office, to that ONE time Sharon didn’t get what she wanted.

  272. kikidelivers*

    I found a coworker leaving a note on another coworker’s desk in red ink, ALL CAPS, underlined three times (!!!) accusing her of leaving the office door open. I removed the note, planning on just telling the desk coworker later in a normal conversation, and the note-writer was enraged it was taken. I told her that’s not how we communicate with peers. Thankfully, no more notes have been left since.

  273. Cheshire Cat*

    In college, I worked at the circulation desk of the main library on campus. Sophomore year, my boyfriend broke up with me and I was really mad.

    Shortly after the breakup, someone returned a book that looked really interesting. It was also one that cost a lot to replace. I checked it out…to my ex, and took the book home with me. And laughed because I knew he wouldn’t be able to dispute the replacement charge.

    think I kept it 10 years before I returned it.

  274. The Evil Admin*

    Many years ago I was a callow admin for a very competent and successful insurance broker. She sold business and professional liability policies, mostly small businesses, but some were quite large. Anyway, being kind of lazy when sending mail to the clients I would address it with only the client’s first initial and then their last name. (This was only on the envelopes, and not any letters that were sent to them.) And my boss got blowback about it!

    Not only were the clients mad that I did not spell out their full first names, some were upset that I did not use their title, “Dr.” in front of their name. Others were upset that I did not include, “Esquire” after their name.

    I kept on addressing their envelopes with just their first initial and last name during the rest of the time I worked there.

  275. ConfirmPlusChop*

    I work in advertising and we once hired a designer we’ll call Princess. Princess complained about everything under the sun, and on their first company trip this included
    – the intensity of the morning sun
    – the inability to order a breakfast set with two different kinds of sausage
    – the price difference between two sizes of a specific food item

    After that last one the big boss finally had it and said something like “can you please not, you are harshing the mood for everyone else”. Princess shut up, we all went on Christmas break, and the first day back at work in the new year, Princess walked into boss’ office and gave 24 hours notice.

    Turns out they had never received their confirmation letter, so used that loophole to bail.

  276. CakeWasLie*

    Only partially work-related, but it makes me smile so I hope it does the same for you. :)

    My employer sent out birthday treats to staff over lockdown. I told them, twice, I was moving house during my birthday and didn’t have a fridge. They sent something that would melt/spoil without refrigeration…and we all live in the tropics.

    I ordered the same thing from the same place for my housewarming-slash-quit-that-job party. It was delicious.

  277. Ellen D*

    I mention working with secretary from hell (SfH) in another post. Before she joined our small team, I was already aware that she had issues and that no-one wanted her working for them. She was bitter that she didn’t get the recognition and promotion she thought she deserved. However, despite her much boosted qualifications her typing had mistakes as she never proofread it and she never thought things through and would book optional meeting, whenever requested, even if this was first day back after leave. Since our boss travelled 2-3 days a week, he needed clear time to catch up with things, write papers for meetings. One of her previous bosses had banned SfH from accepting meetings on her behalf.

    As she twice shouted at me – once in an open plan office calling me’ a jumped up busy body’, I would not go out of my way to help her. On occasion, she’d stand in as grand boss’s secretary (much to her delight, but not grand boss). One time, I saw grand boss emerge from her office and obviously look for SfH, but boss didn’t ask me where she was or to pass a message to SfH, so when SfH returned 10 minutes later, I said nothing. If you tell me off for interfering, I won’t interfere. SfH then headed to an empty office to make a phone call, and 20 minutes later grand boss emerged and spotted her and I think assumed SfH had been there all the time. On another occasion, I found empty folders with the names of people who applied for a post on top of a cabinet, SfH in trying to save money was planning to re-use them, but hadn’t blanked the names, as I knew had been requested by grand boss. I moved them to the top to act as a reminder, but instead grand boss found and removed them.

    A few years later, I bumped into SfH, after I’d been in other buildings and she asked what I was doing. I replied that I’d just joined a new team as it’s leader – significant promotion. Instead of congratulations, she said ‘you’re lucky’. I replied ‘luck had nothing to do with it. I’d worked hard to get there.’ Unsurprisingly, when there was a mass redundancy scheme a few years later, SfH was unable to find a post and so was made redundant. As it was a Government scheme, the terms were pretty generous and HR had got rid of one of its problem people.

  278. Waiting on the bus*

    One of my colleagues always schedules meetings over lunch because, and I quote, “everyone is free at the time”. Yes, because WE’RE EATING LUNCH, JANE!

    I kind of get it when it’s a big meeting with many people, but she’ll do it with 1:1 when both of us have the whole morning/afternoon free as well. She just doesn’t want to look at our shared calendars to schedule the meeting.

    Because I hate meetings over lunch and because I’m petty af, I put blockers on my calendar whenever I hear or suspect that Jane will invite me to a meeting. For at least two weeks, everyday, I’ll have a blocker from 11:30am to 2pm and I’ll decline all meeting invites from her that I get during the blocked time (a technique I got from colleagues at a previous job were it was HR confused about people being upset with constant meetings at lunchtime despite being “free” according to everyone’s calendar).

    She once danced around the subject by joking about how busy I must be, no one rejects as many meeting invites as I do. I made sympathetic noises and told her that my calendar is always up to date so she can just pick any free slot – but if she doesn’t want to do that, my first two hours on the clock are basically guaranteed to be meeting-free.

    I start at 7am. She starts between 9-10:30am.

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