the job interview bluff, the falsified ground beef, and other stories of people in holes who just kept digging by Alison Green on August 7, 2024 Last week we talked about people who found themselves in a hole and just kept digging. Here are 15 of the funniest stories you shared. 1. The lunch Early in my career I was interviewing for a position after having just left a bad company (I had to play games to get my paycheck, and then they bounced said check and got mad at me for mentioning it, and I wasn’t allowed to take lunch ever). When talking to the interviewer, she asked me something about what I was looking for in a company and I said, “At my last job, I wasn’t allowed to take lunch, so really, just lunch.” I meant it as a joke, but the interviewer didn’t get my sense of humor and just calmly assured me I’d get to take lunch. I could have just let it go, but I didn’t. I constantly kept bringing up that I wanted lunch as if all of a sudden she would understand that I was being funny – she did not. She even brought me over to the kitchen area to show me that this was where lunches happened and that there was no ban on lunching. I did not get that job. I cringe every time I think about it. I have gotten to have lunch at all my jobs since though. 2. The bluff In my very early 20s, I applied for a job which involved looking after a website, mainly front end work – creating content, uploading it, and doing some light editing, which was totally in my comfort zone. I realized I may have been out of my depth when the interview confirmation two days before reminded me to bring screenshots of my website with me (this was not mentioned before). Rather than accept that this job was possibly expecting more tech knowledge than I could provide, I panicked and flung together a WordPress in about an hour. I arrived, did a committed if weak presentation on the four blog pages I had cobbled together, and then the questions began. it swiftly became apparent they were looking for a combination web developer, filmmaker, editor, and communications officer. Rather than acknowledge this and leave gracefully, I simply lied. Professional video editing software which wasn’t mentioned in the job description? Well, I’ve seen someone using it and had a 90-minute tutorial on it one time so sure, I would say I am very confident and experienced with it please don’t ask follow-up questions (they asked follow-up questions). Have I worked with international students? Yeah, loads! (in the sense that there was an Italian person in one of my undergraduate presentation groups.) I distinctly remember getting confrontational with one of the interviewers who challenged one of my mostly fictional answers. I kept seeing outs and just refusing to take them. I don’t why; by this point I didnt even want the job, I was just gripped by a mad desire to “win.” The interview ended quickly and I didn’t get the job, but I do feel a little better that they re-advertised the post with a much amended job description. 3. The bluff, part 2 Two jobs ago, I somehow missed a very important email. I said I didn’t get it, but when I went back and double checked, I HAD gotten it, I just overlooked it. But I didn’t admit that, and kept saying I didn’t get it. So my boss said, “If you didn’t get the email, maybe you should contact IT, because we don’t want a widespread issue.” Rather than saying, “Oh look! I found it!” I went ahead and reported the issue to IT. They worked on figuring out the issue, and I said nothing. They had me send and receive emails to others and all seemed fine so they didn’t know the issue and it kept getting escalated. I said nothing. Finally one of the techs decided to check my inbox (I guess they gave me the benefit of the doubt, or else they could have done that first, I suppose) and found the email. Also they pointed out it was clearly marked that it had been read. I pled complete innocence and denied that I had ever seen it before. My boss never said anything but I’m sure she must have known I was just elaborately refusing to take responsibility. Ugh. I still cringe. 4. The novel My very first job interview was for a fast food restaurant in a mall. The manager interviewed me at a table in the food court, which, combined with my inexperience, must have made the situation feel more casual than it was, because at one point he asked what I did in my spare time and I launched into a longwinded description of a novel idea that I was brainstorming at the time. He tried to move on to other questions, but I’d assumed that the hobby question meant we’d proceeded from the interview into small talk and really wanted to talk more about my novel, so I kept going. I didn’t get the job, and only ever wrote like one scene of that novel. 5. The driver Many years ago, a coworker and I were driving to a somewhat remote construction site. We’d both been there before and he was driving. About halfway there I realized he’d just missed a turn and let him know, suggesting we turn around. “No. I don’t turn around.” “…excuse me?” “I don’t turn around! We’ll get there this way!” The big problem was the turn he missed was over a bridge, we were now on the wrong side of a river. Since we had to wait for another bridge, we got there over an hour late and he peeled into the parking lot at 30 mph, which was a big deal because it was a construction site with an incredibly strict speed limit of 15 mph. The project manager who we were meeting had been in the parking lot waiting for us and saw us arrive in a cloud of dust. He was kicked off the project. 6. The unicorn For years, I worked in a landmark building in a major American city with very strict security protocols. We all had a badge with our photo and name on it that was verified by security every time we entered the building. One Halloween, one of my colleagues came to work dressed up as a unicorn. He walked into the building with a full-on unicorn mask that completely covered not just his face, but his entire head. Security stopped him in the lobby and told him he needed to take the mask off before he went any further. My colleague refused to remove the mask, and instead showed security his badge with his name and photo. Security said, “That’s not enough. You need to remove the mask so that we can be sure that you are the same person in the photo.” My colleague continued to refuse. This went on … for a while. Eventually building security called our office to explain the situation and asked for our help in resolving it. But it was no use. My colleague refused to remove his mask and refused to leave the building. At one point, he suggested taking a new security photo with the mask on so that his physical presence would match his security badge. He never made it up to the office, not just on that day, but any day thereafter. He was fired for being a dick to the building security staff and showing terrible judgement for a simple request. He had always been a little weird, but I never expected him to die on the hill of wearing a unicorn mask into the building. 7. The oversharing In college I applied for a part-time job at a slightly higher-end retail shop. The store manager interviewed me. She asked about my goals and for some reason I was honest about not wanting to work in retail forever. (I barely avoided using the word stuck!) It was like I had lost control of my body and mouth but my brain was still in there trying and failing to slam on the brakes. She politely asked for clarification and I stomped on the accelerator and said that I had an exciting career in front of me using my degree, and that I didn’t want to “just” do retail. She was gracious about my poorly hidden (and long since corrected) judgment of retail careers. Somehow I was offered the job, but I was so embarrassed I made up a fake internship and declined the offer. I ended up getting a way worse part-time job and never shopping at that store again. 8. The “professional” I had a new hire who didn’t make it to his third week. The role was entry-level office job — we’d show you the practices of the industry, but candidates had to come in with a familiarity with the MS Office Suite. This requirement is stated in the job posting and in the interviews, but it’s an basic requirement in my industry. This is important. My new hire, let’s call him Fergus, is struggling by the end of his first week. He can’t complete the basic training tasks. Finally I assign him the most basic task I can think of — update data in a few PowerPoint slides with pre-made charts. This should have taken five minutes. After an hour, I go check on him. I am stunned — he is typing in updates into data labels, not editing the actual data, and he’s confused why the chart isn’t updating. He’s been doing this for an hour and never sought assistance. I regain my composure before he notices and calmly ask him how much experience he has with PowerPoint. He admits that he’s never used it before. I ask why it was listed on his resume if he’d never used it (yes, it had been listed on his resume), and he says, “I knew I could figure it out” (spoiler alert: he could not). I explain that this is a basic requirement for the job. I tell him that I can do an intensive remedial course for him and that he is required to be in the office on Friday for the training (it’s a hybrid role; everyone is local, but wfh is offered at manager discretion). He decides not to come into the office on Friday because he’s “too stressed out” and wants to work from home. When I call him, I get a full rant about how my expectations are “too high” and he is a “professional who knows what to do” and who am I to be “policing his work and giving him orders and assignments.” Y’all, I’m his manager and my job is to give assignments. I immediately relay this conversation to my director, who goes to HR to talk about the best way to terminate this guy. No need — within an hour, he sends a long email to the director and HR complaining about how self-righteous and bossy I am, and how he simply can’t work under these conditions. He complains that I provided inadequate training because I expected him to know common Powerpoint functions without showing him. He proposes that he no longer have a manager and that I put together a six-month training program to teach him how to use Powerpoint. My director fired him on the spot. 9. The software I used to work for a nonprofit where cutting corners was very typical. We used a terrible proprietary software that our CEO’s kid made in coding class in high school. Our tech guy, Mark, was basically responsible for keeping it functioning by running out new patches and recoding it whenever it crashed. The guy’s life was hell but he did the best he could. We got a new staff member, “John,” and he really hated the software and assumed most of the issues were Mark’s fault. Mark was in an office on the other side of campus so he never met Mark in person. We had a vendor coming in to look at our tech. John mistook Mark for the vendor and gave him a full tour of the software, calling it dog crap and saying that he spent most of his day “wanting to punch Mark in the face” and that Mark was a “F*cking idiot.” Mark just smiled the whole time, despite most of us trying to interrupt John. Just then, the vendor comes in and goes, “Hey, Mark!” I’ve never seen someone wilt the way John did. 10. The battle of wills I’ve got kind of a double-digger story, because there are two people determined to get their way at any cost: we announced a managers meeting to roll out a new program that is being implemented. Nothing super difficult, but our owner, Brenda, wanted to have all the managers together to discuss it. One manager, Steve, hated everything about the idea. He didn’t want to go to a meeting, he didn’t want to learn a new system, and he would just continue managing his area the same way he had been, thank you very much. I empathized but said it was mandatory. He said he refused, and nothing would change his mind. I went to Brenda with his concerns and she said if he did not go to the meeting and start using this method, she would consider that to be his notice that he no longer wanted to be a manager and his title and pay would reflect that choice. He begrudgingly agreed to go. The meeting was being held off-site at a very high-end restaurant with meeting space. We had been very clear about the dress code, but Steve showed up to the meeting in ratty jeans and a hoodie, with the hood up. He looked so bad that a staff member of the restaurant literally thought he was a prowler. I suggested we just send him home then, but at that point I think it became a matter of principle for Brenda, who said he was going to stay and complete the training no matter what. He did stay for the day, but was completely obnoxious. Some of his tactics: – He refused to watch videos – making a point to deliberately look away from the A/V equipment if a video was playing. When Brenda called him out on it, he faced the TV but covered his eyes. – Everyone was emailed a handout that they were supposed to complete over the course of the meeting with their division goals and other things. They were supposed to complete it and email it to Brenda, who shared it with the group via the A/V setup. She opens Steve’s handout without looking at it first, and there on the enormous screen was his form, where he filled in every single open field with “This is stupid and a waste of my valuable time.” – In a brainstorming session, he would make outlandish suggestions like “go to space and sell to aliens” or “discover a previously unknown species of underground earth dwellers and use them as cheap labor”, and when our boss called him on it he would very sanctimoniously say, “Remember, there are no bad ideas in brainstorming, Brenda.” This was hilarious, but not helpful. – He would derail discussion by belaboring every single point. Almost anything anyone said, he would pick it to pieces. I was trying to keep things moving by saying “we’ll come back to that later, Steve” or “we’re not getting quite that granular right now, Steve” or “if you have questions, write them down and we’ll come back to them,” but it was happening so much that I was exhausted and resentful. Everyone was irritable and nothing was getting accomplished and everything was taking forever. The entire meeting just turned into a strange battle of wills between Brenda and Steve. And yes, it was ridiculous, and yes, multiple people tried to speak up about it and nothing changed, and no, it was not reasonable, but that is just how some dysfunctional workplaces are, and all you can do it just deal with it. Or leave – which was what Steve chose to do. He quit the next day, and enough time has passed that the story is kind of funny now. And every now and then someone will very deliberately use “go to space and sell to aliens” or some other little bon mot from that meeting. That is Steve’s legacy. 11. The ground beef My team once found some signs that a product my company made could struggle to work well on very fatty foods. At a meeting to discuss this, the product’s lead designer (who was constantly bragging about what a perfect product he’d designed) kept denying it could be a problem with the product. Page after page of data supporting our claim and he just kept making up less and less plausible explanations: we mislabeled our samples, we didn’t do the testing correctly, we were trying to make him look bad. Finally he claimed, “Well, I can PROVE it works with high-fat foods because we tested it with 50% fat ground beef!” If you pay any attention to food regulations, in most states (including ours) that’s well above the fat percentage you can sell in ground beef. We called him out on it and he said that he had got a special deal from a small local butcher (note: still not legal) and that HE knew how to talk people into doing what he wanted, and he wouldn’t tell us where he bought it because it was a secret. That’s right, he made up an imaginary butcher who sold him imaginary beef. We eventually came up with a solution for the issue, which was obviously caused by fatty foods. He’s no longer with the company but for a long time we’d joke about, “Oh, I can get that from my butcher. You wouldn’t have met him, he goes to a different school, but he really exists.” 12. The mistake My coworker was fired from a very-hard-to-get-fired-from job because he just could not admit he was wrong. Call him Wakeen. Wakeen did a slightly dodgy thing. I’m going to have to change the situation a bit for anonymity but let’s say he submitted some work expenses that were in violation of the expense policy. Not a crime, but objectively something he shouldn’t have done or at least should have checked up on. Someone noticed and called him on it. At this point Wakeen could have said “oops, sorry, I misunderstood the policy/mixed up my receipts” and no one would have thought twice about it. Instead, he claimed that someone could have broken into his computer and submitted those expenses under his name. He attempted to get the IT department to wipe the logs so no one could check. I don’t think he went as far as blaming a specific person, but he did try to claim that it could have been any of a number of people that he worked with, and they couldn’t prove it was he himself who submitted those expenses. As is often the case, the cover-up was much worse than the crime. The fact that he was trying to get other people to alter logs, and also throwing his colleagues under the bus, meant the whole situation spiralled up the hierarchy and eventually he was fired. To reinforce the “I am never wrong” attitude, he asked at least one of his now-ex colleagues for a reference. 13. The refusal During Covid, my company cut our pay and hours to 75% across the board. My area of work wasn’t impacted by Covid, and it was during our busy season, so I ended up working up to 65 hours while only getting paid for 30 to meet client deadlines. I was pissed, and decided my act of resistance was to refuse to sign the letter acknowledging my pay was cut. The deadline passed, I ignored a few reminder emails and then HR began reaching out. Unfortunately, the way they reached out was to just slack message me “Hi MyName” and not provide any context. This is still my biggest work pet peeve, so I dug in even more and decided I wouldn’t answer until they sent me a message saying what they wanted. They never did and just messaged me “Hi MyName” every day for at least a month, and I ignored every single one. Finally, after six weeks, I got an “action required” email from HR, cc’ing my boss and our regional manager from HR, saying that I needed to sign ASAP or else. By that point, said boss and regional manager had gotten me moved back to full pay, so I didn’t even have anything to be mad about anymore. Fortunately, they were both entertained by my antics, and also told me to cut the crap and sign it, which I did finally. 14. The betrayal A while back, my husband received a message on LinkedIn from someone he went to law school with, “Draco.” The message was calling for everyone he was vaguely connected with to boycott the law firm he was currently working for because they were sneaky, underhanded, untrustworthy, and betrayed him. Naturally we went to his profile to see what was going on and he had made several long posts. To sum up, Draco had gotten engaged to a fellow law student while they were at school. After they both graduated, they got received jobs at her father’s law firm. Within the first six months, he got in trouble for trying to throw his weight around (“do you know who my father-in-law is”) and got shut down. Then Draco went to his father-in-law-to-be who, instead of protecting him, “betrayed” him and after he “stood up for himself” fired him. So he sent around the LinkedIn message telling people to boycott the place. Draco made a post a few days later claiming he went to his fiance and told her they had to make a stand. She needed to quit her job at the firm and go no-contact with her father until he apologized and gave Draco a job again. She refused, which showed she was just as untrustworthy as her father. Over the next two weeks, Draco made several long rambling posts about how you can’t trust anyone, he wasn’t going to take it or be silenced, and bashing people for not helping him review bomb his former job on Glassdoor and Yahoo despite the messages he was sending people. Again, all of this was on his professional linkedin profile. Draco’s last post was that he had flown back to his hometown and was going to live with his father since his fiance broke things off with him (also a betrayal) and the apartment was in her name. Someone, presumably his father, then deleted all the posts and closed his LinkedIn profile. 15. The cover-up I worked on a team of four, where I was the techy gal on the team, whereas others, especially Fergus … just … couldn’t. Since he was also the most senior, he was constantly frustrated and angry when the tech stuff didn’t go his way and left him looking like a moron. Anyway, one day he claimed that some information was wrong in a system. This system was cloud-based. I knew how to access the source of this information and also how to access all activity that occurred — along with usernames. I told him I would look into it for him, and found that the information was actually correct. I said, “Fergus, it looks to me like there are 10 llamas there, just like there is supposed to be. Could you have looked at the wrong column?” NO. He WAS NOT looking at the wrong column, he claimed. IT WAS WRONG! Okay, so I went in to look at the history, and in between the time when I said, “Okay, all looks good” and his claiming that he was absolutely right in the first place, he had gone in and made a change to make it look like he was right all the time! However, he didn’t realize that this history button existed and that he could be found out. So I said, “Hmm, it looks like you made this change a minute ago. It shows your change at 9:32am, with your username.” He insisted he did no such thing. I was going to shrug it off and just correct the problem, but he then started to really double down on his being right and his NOT MAKING THE CHANGE. The interaction ended with him saying that my internet was different from his internet. You may also like:did my employee quit or is she in a ditch somewhere?I'm supposed to fire my husband's ex-wifecan you ask an interviewer to stop talking so much? { 276 comments }
Jennifer Strange* August 7, 2024 at 2:16 pm The last one reminds me of a donor who emailed us to complain that he had not received an invitation to an event he should have received an invitation to. We looked and saw that his email address had been included in the sent invitation with no sign of a bounce back or anything. My co-worker emailed him back to ask if he had checked his spam folder. He responded by saying, “I don’t have a spam folder!” and continuing to insist we had left him off the list. My co-worker sent him a screenshot of his email in the invitation and he begrudging said there must be a problem with his internet.
GreenGirl* August 7, 2024 at 4:42 pm Could be true if the other person is in China or another country with let’s say restricted internet.
Former password resetter* August 7, 2024 at 5:12 pm Which would beg rhe question of how he was emailing them back.
Dex* August 8, 2024 at 11:37 am My internet is good friends with this butcher I know. Oh, you wouldn’t have ever met him. He and the internet hang out a lot together.
pagooey* August 7, 2024 at 5:47 pm As my senior-citizen mom frequently insists, as we try to coach her through an IT problem: “I don’t have that button.” Yes you do. I swear on a stack of French cookbooks, Ma, YOU DO.
Alice* August 7, 2024 at 7:03 pm My mom tells me all the time she didn’t get a text notification. The one that’s right at the top of her screen.
Panhandlerann* August 7, 2024 at 8:54 pm My hubby gets email and texts confused. He’ll say he didn’t get a message someone said they sent. Turns out he checked email for it, even though, as one learns later, the person had said they’d text him. And by golly, there it is: amongst his texts, just as the person said it would be.
Princess Sparklepony* August 10, 2024 at 7:01 am I don’t even attempt to text my mom! My sisters keep teaching her but it doesn’t take. Every now and then I get a text from her with some random letters…
Bartleby the scribbler* August 7, 2024 at 5:54 pm Something is different about this guy, but it’s not his internet.
Scarletb* August 7, 2024 at 9:53 pm There wasn’t by any chance a link in the invitation or something like that? I’ve had some emails to a couple of places getting eaten without a bounce (so likely – held in an aggressive filter limbo where the notification hasn’t gone through, a few years back I got an email from a client that had been held for a *month* without any notice to me) but only ones with an embedded link – found out about it because we called them to follow up. This is as a govt agency emailing our actual client orgs so one of the more legit senders they’d have coming through.
Persephone Mulberry* August 7, 2024 at 2:20 pm “He refused to watch videos – making a point to deliberately look away from the A/V equipment if a video was playing. When Brenda called him out on it, he faced the TV but covered his eyes.” COVERED. HIS EYES. It’s a good thing I’m alone in the office right now because the noise that came out of me when I read that was barely human.
Mad Harry Crewe* August 7, 2024 at 2:23 pm “Steve, you’re right, this is a waste of everyone’s valuable time. You can go home, we’ll ship you your stuff and your last check. I’ll take your badge right now, though. Bye!”
Expelliarmus* August 7, 2024 at 2:38 pm Really? She dug her own hole much to the detriment of everyone else in the seminar. If she had just dismissed him at the start, this wouldn’t have dragged on so badly.
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 4:03 pm Yeah, Steve was acting like a 4-year-old having a tantrum, but Brenda was acting like the parent who screams back at them. The professional way to deal with an employee refusing to take direction is to calmly send them home, not to engage in a battle of wills that completely derails the seminar.
Former password resetter* August 7, 2024 at 5:14 pm OTOH, this was a training session for managers. If you have to send those people home because they refuse to behave, you probably need to fire them outright.
General von Klinkerhoffen* August 7, 2024 at 5:41 pm “Go home, Steve. I’ll see you in my office at 9am tomorrow.”
Kevin Sours* August 7, 2024 at 7:14 pm That was my takeaway and probably what Brenda should have done but you can kind of see why she might want to salvage the situation instead of going there. Sunk costs trap.
It’s A Butternut Squash* August 7, 2024 at 6:28 pm Ya I’m very confused why refusing to go was not tolerated but going and physically covering your eyes with your hands was??
sacados* August 7, 2024 at 2:36 pm Seriously, the most AMAZINGLY petty, childish thing I have ever heard. 10/10
CB212* August 7, 2024 at 2:45 pm “Remember, there are no bad ideas in brainstorming, Brenda” is #GOALS though. Legendary show of resistance. …I will remember this next time I spend a day with giant post-it notes.
General von Klinkerhoffen* August 7, 2024 at 5:43 pm British readers may understand the reference “Yes, and ho!”
Craig* August 8, 2024 at 6:58 am I absolutely love the space aliens and underground dwellers comments. I hate when they say no bad ideas in brainstorming and just want to say the dumbest shit imaginable.
A Significant Tree* August 8, 2024 at 2:58 pm I learned my lesson after several “brainstorming” sessions where I, as the invited SME for a particular area, kept getting shut down when I pointed out that Grand Idea was not going to work and maybe we should consider some other ideas. I had reasons, I had facts, but all the moderators heard was my negativity. The other ideas weren’t as fun so when people voted on what to pursue, Grand Idea won in a landslide. So many hours wasted watching people enthuse about Grand Idea, with all the post-its you could imagine. Color coded, grouped one way and then another, every hypothetical aspect covered except, of course, the issues that I tried to bring up. You won’t be familiar with Grand Idea though because, as a surprise to everyone but me apparently, it didn’t work.
Larry from Oregon* August 10, 2024 at 2:47 am A manager I once worked for started to say the cliche “there are no stupid questions” but concluded with his own ending: “just stupid people.”
Alex* August 7, 2024 at 2:56 pm I did this when I was 5 years old and my parents took me to the circus, but I didn’t want to go. They had already bought tickets to “surprise” me and hadn’t expected the all-out tantrum that ensued when they told me that we were on our way to the circus and weren’t going to waste their money. So yeah this is LITERALLY 5yo behavior.
CowWhisperer* August 8, 2024 at 11:53 am It’s very age-appropriate for the pre-k and K crowd for sure. I worked in a Deaf/Hard of Hearing preschool and watching hearing adult realize that a Deaf four year old can unilaterally shut down all communication by shutting her eyes and putting her hands over her eyes was priceless.
allathian* August 9, 2024 at 4:55 am Oh yes. I hate surprises, even happy ones. I’d much rather participate in the planning and enjoy the anticipation. As a kid, I did enjoy not knowing what I was getting for Christmas, but any activities had to be planned at least a day in advance or I’d throw a tantrum, even when the event was a visit one of my favorite aunts or my grandparents. When we got therre I’d enjoy the visit and calm down, but my parents learned not to spring suprises on me unless it was unavoidable. This doesn’t mean that our days were monotonous or that we had a particularly strict routine, just that any exceptions to the routine were planned well in advance whenever possible. In my twenties I sometimes turned down an invitation to go out with friends even if I had no other plans because the invite was too sudden. Like if they wanted me to go out with them on Friday, they had to invite me by Wednesday. If they called me on Thursday I rarely went. A part of the reason why I want to plan my weekly activities in advance now is that I have limited social energy, so I need to be able to rest before and after an event to really enjoy it. OTOH, ironically I dislike changing plans even more, so a tight to-do list only gives me anxiety when I have to reprioritize at work.
Tom R* August 7, 2024 at 3:06 pm Reminds me of a long time ago where I was working at a place that required you provide proof you had completed an online training before being granted access to different modules of one of our systems. This basically required emailing screenshots of the completion confirmation screen of each course module. One guy was so incenssed that he had to “waste his time” doing these quick courses (like 20 mins each) that he labelled the screenshots This, is, F***ing, Stupid (he needed access to 4 modules). I found it quite amusing
New Jack Karyn* August 8, 2024 at 9:41 am I’d be annoyed if I had to take screenshots of a module to submit as proof of completion. The system should show you that I’ve done it.
KeepWatching* August 7, 2024 at 3:37 pm I also snort-laughed, My little sister used to do this when we were watching Mr. Rogers. She didn’t want to watch any of the parts that weren’t Make Believe Land but she also didn’t want me to have more TV time than her, so she’d sit there with her eyes closed. BUT SHE WAS FOUR YEARS OLD
Vio* August 10, 2024 at 6:10 am I remember doing that once when I had to watch a video that I didn’t want to. I realised after a few seconds how stupid I was being but doubled down and even tried to turn the video off when the teacher wasn’t looking. Because of course this was when I was a *child*. And even then I knew it was stupid. Sometimes I wonder how many of the people mentioned in these letters are actually deliberately trying to get fired.
Erin* August 7, 2024 at 3:14 pm Man, if I followed that personal philosophy, I’d probably still be driving to whatever my first destination after getting my driver’s license was. Nearly 20 years later, I still have a crap sense of direction
Zombeyonce* August 7, 2024 at 3:26 pm You’d eventually get there, you’d just have to circumnavigate the globe first (and turn your car into a boat).
Peanut Hamper* August 7, 2024 at 5:13 pm This was my thought, as well. He did turn around; he just took the very long way to do it.
Paint N Drip* August 7, 2024 at 3:29 pm My father loves to share the story where he and mom were VERY concerned if they should even let me try to drive because my sense of direction is limited. I grew up in a small (in population but large in size) town where we lived on one side, and all the ‘town stuff’ was on the other side – the first day doing some test driving with my dad, he directed me to the end of our road and asked which way is school? All my schools were on the town stuff side, all the same direction, obviously I had left my road and headed to school thousands of times… but after considering it I said the opposite way :D later diagnosed with ADHD, which surprised only them
GreenGirl* August 7, 2024 at 3:57 pm I was once given directions which consisted of me being brought to the correct street, turned in the correct direction, and told to walk in a straight line as my destination was at the end of the road. I got lost.
Marz* August 7, 2024 at 6:43 pm i maintain that a good sense of direction is more about confidence than acknowledged. I second guess myself too much and that’s usually the reason I get lost
basically functional* August 8, 2024 at 9:22 am Hmm, I don’t know. As someone with a terrible sense of direction (also with ADHD – are those related?), I feel like I am missing a mental mapping ability that others seem to have. I just can’t visualize where places are in relation to other places. I can be super confident but still end up going the wrong way.
GreenGirl* August 8, 2024 at 4:54 pm https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/livingwithadultadhd/2017/10/is-your-poor-sense-of-direction-a-symptom-of-adhd
mreasy* August 7, 2024 at 7:03 pm I relate to this so hard including the parents not being sure I should drive due to sense of direction!
le sigh* August 7, 2024 at 7:21 pm *waves* oh hi. it seems i have found my no-sense-of-direction twin.
Polly* August 7, 2024 at 7:53 pm When I was learning to drive, the instructor said to turn right at the next corner. My brain heard “left” and I thought, “wow, he’s not really giving me much time to get over in the left lane, but OK.” I did make the left turn, but after we turned, the instructor told me he had said right and that he wouldn’t be asking any of us to do anything tricky, so if we thought we heard something odd , to ask first. I think it was the stress of concentrating and trying not to run into anything.
Not Joanne* August 7, 2024 at 11:13 pm When my sister and I were in our late teens, she was always the designated driver. She had no sense of left and right. After several times going the wrong way, we learned to say school ring or pearl ring so she would turn the correct direction.
Jen with one n* August 8, 2024 at 9:53 am My mom’s cousin never could distinguish left or right, so it was “your side” or “my side” of the car.
STAT!* August 8, 2024 at 9:02 pm I knew someone once who had to be given left/ right commands of “watch hand” and “other hand”.
MotherofaPickle* August 7, 2024 at 3:16 pm I have to wonder if the OP for that one is female, or possibly a much younger male, because that guy screams “Alpha Male” to me.
Bibliothecarial* August 7, 2024 at 3:25 pm It reminds me of something I read in Ulysses S Grant’s autobiography. Apparently Grant had a superstition against going over the same ground twice, so if he missed his turn he would go around the block instead of turning back. In his case, it ended up that instead of retreating with the Union Army as so many other generals had done, he pressed forward and kept on surprising the Confederate armies.
Aspirational Yogurt* August 7, 2024 at 5:16 pm Clearly #5 was riding in the car with Falco. Don’t turn around (oh uh oh) Der Kommissar’s in town (oh uh oh)
STAT!* August 7, 2024 at 11:17 pm One of the many times I wish there was a “like” button in this forum.
Vio* August 10, 2024 at 6:12 am According to Pratchett, two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do. Doesn’t make it the best system for navigation though.
Pastor Petty Labelle* August 7, 2024 at 2:24 pm #5 could be my husband. I love him but he is stubborn. Turning around is not something he does. He is convinced if he keeps going forward he will find a turn that will bring him back where he wants to go — as we drive miles and miles, getting further and further away from our destination. Whereas I am a turn around at the first safe place and back track person. Car trips are fun.
2 Cents* August 7, 2024 at 2:27 pm One of the best life lessons my mom taught me and my brother is, “It’s not a real trip until you turn around three times.” So, yeah, miss that turn? Turn around! Miss the exit? Another adventure in turning around! I’ve found so many more places by finding places to turn around LOL. Also takes a lot of anxiety out of finding my way around new areas, since I know I’ll be turning around at least 3 times haha.
Zombeyonce* August 7, 2024 at 3:29 pm I lived in Virginia Beach as a teenager and have a horrible sense of direction. My parents always told me that if I got lost (which happened frequently), to just take the next exit, pull over, and consult a map or get back on the highway in the right direction (yes, I drove before Google Maps). The problem was that a lot of highways intersect there, so I’d miss an exit, take the next exit, and end up on a completely different highway going who knows where so I could never pull over. I ended up in North Carolina once just trying to get to the mall.
Chase* August 7, 2024 at 3:38 pm As someone who also learned to drive in VA Beach, you have my sympathies. I once wound up in Deep Creek and still have no idea how. And that’s not even mentioning the neverending construction!
Joana* August 7, 2024 at 7:11 pm At least GPS works! When I was in high school and college I took a few school group trips to Boston and every single time we got lost because Boston confuses GPS.
Cardboard Marmalade* August 7, 2024 at 9:19 pm My first drive away from home with my fresh new driver’s license was to Boston, with carefully printed out MapQuest instructions. Half the directions were nonsense like “Make a left on Alley #4976”. I still have no idea how I made it back home.
Anon because I tell this story* August 8, 2024 at 9:40 am I did this with a moving truck! I have a pretty good sense of direction, and we’d done fine until we got off the highway in Boston (technically, Cambridge), and UTTERLY missed the turn we were supposed to make. Didn’t even see it. I knew I’d gone too far, but didn’t know where else to go, and 3/4ths of the roads said “no trucks.” I’d done some walking around the area when I interviewed, so I had a general sense that the road we were on was going approximately in the direction of Somerville, so we stuck with that until I started seeing signs for Alewife, which I knew was on the red line. We struck out from that and got a passing pedestrian to tell us which way Davis was (my new apartment was near Davis), and SOMEHOW my brother realized that we’d overlapped with the mapquest directions again, and we followed the directions the last ~5 blocks to my house. Years later, I found the street that I’d been supposed to turn on initially — it was literally a cobbled alley between two streets, and a) did not have a street sign, b) had not even registered to me as a road, and c) I don’t think it would have been physically possible to take even the 10-foot truck down it.
Pam Adams* August 8, 2024 at 1:49 am My sister once wound up in Mexico while trying to drive home from San Diego. Home was north of San Diego; Mexico is south.
Argiope Aurantia* August 8, 2024 at 1:49 pm You may be the answer to a question I have had for decades: Why do people cross all 4-8 lanes of a freeway at the very last second to take a specific exit? When I see someone make a dangerous move like that I want to point out to them that people coming from the opposite direction are also able to exit the freeway to get onto that particular road, so just go another 0.25 or 0.5 mile, take the next exit, turn around, and come back. But if you have a brain that isn’t spatially aware or can’t hold a mental map of the freeways you’re on, I can kind of see where someone would choose “EXIT NOW!!” instead of risking driving into the next state over.
Kit* August 7, 2024 at 6:03 pm I still remember the drive with my mom to tour colleges – and while MIT was a bust in terms of wanting to attend, at the time their website included actual directions which live on in family lore. Specifically: “If you cross the river again, you have gone too far.” Just googled it, and it still lives on in the directions for the fitness center from the Mass Pike. Huh. TMYK. I bet they don’t recite it in a melodramatic voice, though, and we sure do.
Paisley Clover* August 7, 2024 at 2:40 pm I’m convinced that if I let him, my husband would prefer to drive all the way around the planet back to where we were rather than make a u-turn. It’s like an admission of failure or something.
Makare* August 8, 2024 at 7:00 am Definitely don’t get this mindset! When I was a teen, I used to joke that the U-turn was my signature move xD
Distracted Procrastinator* August 8, 2024 at 8:36 am It took years for my husband to get over this. He still needs the “right” spot to turn around. he will drive a mile out of his way looking for something perfect and pass like eight possibilities in the meantime.
Dust Bunny* August 7, 2024 at 3:24 pm I grew up in Colorado and Texas The other way to get there might not be for several counties. Just turn around.
Paint N Drip* August 7, 2024 at 3:32 pm I live in Maine where the unofficial motto is ‘you can’t get there from here’ (you MUST pronounce there as they-uh and here as heeuh) If you’ve actually found your way, JUST TURN AROUND
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 4:09 pm Of course, on some New England interstates, it might be 20 or 30 miles before you even get the opportunity to turn around.
Joana* August 7, 2024 at 7:13 pm Fellow Mainer here and, yeah. I live in central Maine and don’t much further south than Bangor most of the time. But I don’t drive so when I do go to Bangor I’m the passenger and I have no idea how we’re getting where we’re going no matter how many times we do it.
Lava Lamp (she/her)* August 7, 2024 at 11:02 pm It took me a long time to get my boyfriend comfortable making (safe to make) U-Turns, because they’re illegal pretty much by default in Pennsylvania, but only illegal if posted here in CO.
Fiachra* August 7, 2024 at 3:28 pm I have to ask – what’s so bad in his mind about turning around? Is it the danger of holding up traffic and looking undignified?
Zombeyonce* August 7, 2024 at 3:35 pm It’s the admitting being wrong that people like this won’t accept.
coffee* August 7, 2024 at 7:47 pm Personally I can’t imagine spending an entire hour pretending that everything was going fine vs. turning around, so I find this kind of attitude bewildering but also hilarious.
learnedthehardway* August 7, 2024 at 5:50 pm Thankfully, my husband’s refusal to backtrack is limited to grocery stores. I have no idea why, but he refuses to go back if he forgot something in a previous aisle. This results in things like guacamole with no chips.
Rz* August 7, 2024 at 6:39 pm That is probably actually frustrating to live with but the oddness of that just made me laugh out loud.
Expelliarmus* August 8, 2024 at 9:36 am Unlikely; Guacamole Bob wouldn’t want to waste money on guacamole in the first place.
Decidedly Me* August 7, 2024 at 6:37 pm I was on a road trip with my sister when I was 15 and she was 25. I mentioned a turn she had missed and she told me I was wrong (despite having the map and being the navigator). She continued going in the wrong direction for 10+ miles before admitting I might be right… That was the same trip where we were on the freeway and our lane was going MUCH slower than the others. I suggested getting over and she told me that this is just how things work and the moment we get over, our new lane will be just as slow. About 20 minutes later, we finally get to the sign showing that the lane we were in was closed and we needed to get over.
Hroethvitnir* August 7, 2024 at 9:50 pm Gah. If I had a partner like this I would be the sole driver, because I am not putting up with that. Earlier this year we had a horrendous situation where we were driving 8 hours and realised 4 hours in we’d forgotten things that could not be replaced. We turned around. (We also had to pay to rebook the ferry. It was for a wedding the next day and we’d left our nice clothes behind). How to turn an 8 hour overnight drive into a 16 hour one ️. -10/10, would not recommend. An example of how a night and morning person can work well though, because I drove through the night without issue and he was actually able to sleep and swap in the morning.
EvilQueenRegina* August 8, 2024 at 7:19 am Could also be my uncle. Years ago he and my aunt were visiting and we were going for a day to “Smallville” – he was convinced he knew the way because we’d passed a sign for it while on the way somewhere else the day before, but while that route was technically possible, it was longer with lots of winding roads and there’s a much better route to get there. Mum was trying to tell him the other way was better, but uncle was adamant he was right. Both ended up getting angrier than it warranted. The trip was not a success.
2 Cents* August 7, 2024 at 2:27 pm #14 sounds like Elle Woods dodged Warner the Fiance there. Guess he learned blood is thicker than water.
Pastor Petty Labelle* August 7, 2024 at 2:29 pm Yeah I’m surprised the fiancee took so long to dump him.
Expelliarmus* August 7, 2024 at 2:43 pm She probably was waiting to see how he handled being fired, maybe hoping that it would humble him.
Ama* August 7, 2024 at 6:52 pm Honestly given how obtuse that guy seemed she might have been trying to break up with him for a while and he refused to accept it until she got to a “here’s all your stuff, never contact me again” level of breakup.
Cats Ate My Croissant* August 8, 2024 at 3:47 am “Babe, are you spring-cleaning? Because all of my stuff is on the porch. And one of my evil coworkers must have swapped my key because I can’t get in. Babe?”
mcm* August 7, 2024 at 2:31 pm In #13, it seems like HR also decided to die on the hill of never sending a message until their “hello” had been acknowledged?? After A MONTH of that, why would you not just go ahead and send the message?? That seems so bananapants to me, more than the original poster’s refusal! How was that not enough time to get the message that the “hello [name]” messages weren’t going to work!!
hugseverycat* August 7, 2024 at 2:55 pm I love this one. I also make it a point to never respond to “hello” messages. Luckily for me, the people I work who are “hello”ers tend to just go straight into their question afterwards. I have a coworker who used to have the “no hello” website (https://nohello.net/en/) in their status message on Teams. I loved it
This One Here* August 7, 2024 at 3:48 pm Yes! I have part-time job as a concierge at a senior living facility. One day, I got a text from the senior concierge, who trained me (but is not my supervisor, nor does she make the schedule): “Hello, This One, it’s [Sr. Concierge].” I replied “What’s going on?” It turns out she just wanted to know how I was managing., but it took about five texts. If she’d started with “Hello, This One, it’s [Sr. Concierge]. I’m wondering how you’re doing in the job,” I could have answered her and be done with it.
nekosan* August 7, 2024 at 3:55 pm Oh that’s awesome. Yeah, I usually just ignore the “Hi!” messages. Just effing SAY what you WANT. Sometimes I respond when I’m bored. Sometimes when I’m feeling really snarky I say “oh hi” back right before logging off and shutting down my computer.
Jeanine* August 7, 2024 at 8:25 pm There is a guy in my work that will message me on teams and just say hello. And that’s it. Drives me crazy. State what you want!! When I message people I come straight out with what I am talking to them about. I don’t just say hi and then sit there like a bump on a log.
Tammy 2* August 7, 2024 at 3:20 pm I respond to “hello” messages with “What can I do for you?” but it’s pronounced, “Oh god, what do you want?”
Paint N Drip* August 7, 2024 at 3:33 pm That second one seems more like it, Tammy 2. The library deserves better!!
mayflower* August 7, 2024 at 4:53 pm I’m so glad I’m not the only one like this! I cannot stand “hi mayflower” messages. Just! Tell! Me! What! You! Want! Especially because I try to insist that Teams is only for urgent requests and email/our support ticket system is for everything else. “Hi” is not urgent!
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 5:08 pm There are 2 types of people in the world: 1) people who think it’s rude to just say “Hi” because not including the request is a waste of time; and 2) people who think it’s rude to launch right into a request without even exchanging greetings first. There can be no compromise or middle ground, and there will never be peace on IM until one type has eliminated the other from the universe.
General von Klinkerhoffen* August 7, 2024 at 5:47 pm The middle ground is to send BOTH the hi and the content in a single message. Hi MM – do you know when the TPS reports are due to issue? Why people are incapable of sending both together is beyond me.
M2RB* August 7, 2024 at 5:52 pm Exactly! I will even set up my messages like this: Hi (recipient), good morning/afternoon/other appropriate warm greeting! I am preparing Document A and noticed that the invoice from Vendor 9 seems to be missing. Do you have any info on when they might be sending it? This way they get the warm hello greeting on one line and the work request on the next line.
Polly* August 7, 2024 at 9:14 pm Or “hi” in one message and then the actual question immediately following in a second message. A lot of my colleagues do that, and I’m ok with it, even though I can’t stand “hi” by itself with nothing following.
hello* August 7, 2024 at 9:03 pm no no no, the true middle ground is to send “hi” and then HALF the question, so that they know what you’re asking about but still have to acknowledge you to find out what you’re really after! (just joking, if anyone actually was wondering)
Archi-detect* August 7, 2024 at 5:51 pm I think the second group can’t get over thinking of it like a phone call where the answer is instantaneous- in that case waiting for an answer/ doing the 20 seconds of small talk is fine because the phone call is rapid and both people are connected at the same time
Hastily Blessed Fritos* August 7, 2024 at 6:25 pm There is a pretty obvious middle ground. “Hi Fritos, I had a question about….” rather than “Hi Fritos” (time passes) “Hi” (time passes) “I had a question about…” That’s not “launching right into a request without including greetings”, it’s “not waiting for your greeting to be reciprocated before getting to the point”.
BrandNewBandName* August 7, 2024 at 8:00 pm LOL There is a third type: the ones who start with hi and were going to tell you what they wanted, but someone or something interrupted their train of thought, so they forgot they even started a Teams conversation. Also me. It’s definitely annoying.
Jessica* August 8, 2024 at 12:39 am I have had a very illuminating time lately discovering how the commentariat feels about these practices. I’m a third type of person, or maybe just a subtype of (2). I have been known to do the “contentless hello” opener that many seem to loathe with the fire of 1000 suns, because (a) I think of chat as a live, real-time thing, similar to talking on the phone, while (as I have learned) others consider it an asynchronous form of communication, like email. (b) Often I want to know if the other party is there/available, because the way I’m going to phrase what I want to say is different if they are vs. not, or because if they’re not, I might have to ask someone else or take some other kind of action about it. It’s really parallel to a phone call: first you see if the person picks up; if not, sometimes you leave a message and sometimes you don’t (like if you need to move on with it in some other direction and the message would be moot by the time they get it); and what you’d say in the voicemail if you left one is not identical words to what you’d say in your side of the conversation if the person answers.
Distracted Procrastinator* August 8, 2024 at 8:48 am you can always say “hi, Wakeen! Do you have time for a quick chat about [subject you need to discuss]?” that way the other person at least has an idea of what the conversation will be about before they respond.
hugseverycat* August 8, 2024 at 12:45 pm This is a good strategy. Chat is weird because it can be both synchronous and asynchronous. So it takes some finessing. Today I messaged a colleague because I needed synchronous help with something. My opener was something like, “Hey colleague, do you have a couple minutes to help me with something? I’m trying to replicate an error message that happens when two people try to do [this specific task] at the same time.” It’s not the full request, but it gives enough context for my colleague to know what amount of work I’m asking them to do, and it won’t be confusing and strange if they happened to be on a break and come back 20 minutes later. I also think it’s worth pointing out that a random “hello” can feel like a miniature version of when your boss puts a contextless meeting on your calendar with no description and no agenda. It definitely triggers the “oh god what’s about to happen” feeling in the stomach.
allathian* August 9, 2024 at 7:00 am For me, chat is either synchronous or asynchronous depending on a variety of factors. But I always start with the assumption that it’s asynchronous. So I do the “Hi! I am preparing Document A and noticed that the invoice from Vendor 9 seems to be missing. Do you have any info on when they might be sending it?” This makes it clear that I don’t need an immediate answer, although if they have the time and know the answer without needing to do much research, they can answer directly so the question isn’t left on their to-do list and it becomes a synchronous conversation. If it’s urgent, I’ll say something like “Hi! Do you have time for a quick chat about X? They need an answer by COB and I’m a bit stuck on C.” But another point is that if you already have a clear plan B that doesn’t require anyone else’s effort, do that first before wasting other people’s time, even if it takes a bit longer for you to do it. Sometimes not answering the Hi is an intentional way to avoid dealing with time wasters who ask simple questions that they could look up themselves. The only way to deal with those is to be less responsive until you know what the other person wants. I’m not accusing you, Jessica, of doing anything like what I described in the previous paragraph, but it’s one reason why a simple hi that gives the other person no hint of what you want is often so poorly received. That said, I also hate cold phone calls, so I tend to answer the IMs I get almost immediately unless I’m in a meeting, because I don’t want people to call me because they can’t reach me any other way. But at least with Teams calls I always know who’s calling, even if I don’t always know the reason.
teapot analytics* August 8, 2024 at 9:14 am I hate when people do that and someone finally articulated one of the big reasons I find it galling. When someone just says ‘hello’, they are trying to force synchronous communication in an asynchronous environment. It’s asserting control over the conversation because once you reply, they know you are there as a captive audience. It’s coersion. That might sound hyperbolic but it’s how it feels from a power perspective.
tangerineRose* August 8, 2024 at 3:33 pm I find it frustrating because I think it wastes time. I see someone said “Hi”. OK, that interrupted whatever I was working on, and I don’t know hat this is about yet. I say “Hi”. Then I can either wait or go back to working on whatever I was doing while being distracted because I know I’m going to get another message.
Pastor Petty Labelle* August 7, 2024 at 2:31 pm #8 – The Professional How dare his boss tell him what to do. But also said boss needs to re-arrange her whole schedule to teach him power point over 6 months. the online courses are like 2 hours, tops. This is someone who better have a trust fund because he is not ready for the working world.
Miette* August 7, 2024 at 2:57 pm I worked at a software company where they hired a sales guy who, it was discovered after two days, had never used a computer! The hiring manager was flummoxed–who would try to work at a tech company w/o basic skills? The HR manager was like, “Well, I guess we have to put basic competency with computers into all our job descriptions at this COMPUTER SOFTWARE COMPANY.” The developers were highly amused.
PhyllisB* August 7, 2024 at 4:09 pm Sounds like he and the woman from yesterday are a match made in heaven.
Khatul Madame* August 7, 2024 at 4:55 pm Just imagine the conversations these two could have about domestic chores, in-laws, anything really…
Kevin Sours* August 7, 2024 at 7:07 pm This is why skills tests in interviews are necessary despite the fact that everybody hates them.
Meri* August 7, 2024 at 7:43 pm And it’s not really that hard to learn the basics. A few years ago, my supervisor wanted me to update our training PowerPoint. I had never ever ever done anything PowerPoint before. I don’t recall quite how long it took me to teach myself how to make the necessary edits, and it was probably longer than 2 hours, but I got it done, and it came out pretty good.
NotJane* August 8, 2024 at 3:22 pm Exactly! A couple of months ago my bosses needed me to make some basic edits to our website. Had I ever done this before? Nope! But I watched a few YouTube videos and figured it out.
Another Kristin* August 7, 2024 at 2:37 pm LOL at the “Your internet is different from my internet” guy. Just amazing logic.
PhyllisB* August 7, 2024 at 4:06 pm I dated his twin in college. This was before the days of computers but he would spout some ridiculous idea and I would tell him that was incorrect. The more you tried to tell him differently the more he would dig in. I would go get a source, encyclopedia, text book, whatever and SHOW HIM. His response? “The book is wrong.” ARRRGH!! Yes, this contributed to our breakup.
Londo Calling* August 8, 2024 at 4:17 am Every conversation with my mother, ever. Becausse whatever the topic and whatever she didn’t know about it (and that was a lot of ignorance on pretty much everything) she was always, always right. Resulting years later in -‘why don’t my kids talk to me about stuff?’
N C Kiddle* August 8, 2024 at 9:21 am I had an argument with my daughter’s other dad where he insisted he knew more about a football match ten years earlier that I had watched and he had not. When I finally lost patience and pulled out old match programmes, he said, “You know your trouble? You’re an elephant.”
Lady Kelvin* August 7, 2024 at 2:43 pm #6 – I work in a federal building on a military base (not military related though) and one year on Halloween two of my colleagues decided to dress up at ninjas, complete with fully covered face masks. Initially there was no problem as they had removed their masks to enter the building, but after multiple reports of them jumping out at people with the masks on, they were gently reminded by security that wearing a mask scaring people inside a federal building was not a good idea. Despite their initial lapse in judgement, they did remove their masks and the story became office lore and a reminder that wearing halloween masks inside of our building was not allowed.
Keep it Simple* August 7, 2024 at 8:35 pm And these are the people we have defending our country? (headdesk)
Bananapants* August 7, 2024 at 2:48 pm When I was a teen, I worked at a local tourist attraction, let’s say a llama farm, that was connected to another affiliated business, let’s say a petting zoo. To get into the petting zoo, you had to buy a ticket at the main llama farm entrance, scan the ticket at the llama farm gate, and then go to the petting zoo entrance inside and scan the ticket again. Many, many people absentmindedly threw out or otherwise lost their petting zoo tickets by the time they got to the second gate. This meant all of us at the ticketing windows had to remind guests to HOLD ONTO THEIR TICKETS all the way to the second gate. One day, we were running a promo on petting zoo tickets that required a manager to enter the discount code, but with one group of guests I decided not to wait and entered it myself. I also forgot to warn these guests to keep their tickets after the first gate. They came back angry because they threw out the tickets and their receipt and couldn’t into the petting zoo. I was terrified of getting in trouble and swore up and down that I’d never seen them in my LIFE whilst turning beet red and probably looking guilty as all hell. Somehow, my manager never caught on or if she did, she let it slide, thank god.
Ticket Office Manager* August 7, 2024 at 5:09 pm If I had a nickel for every time someone has needed a ticket reprinted I would be so rich… We all thought the lost ticket thing would get better after moving primarily to mobile tickets. It really, really, really, and I cannot emphasize this enough, REALLY did not.
StephChi* August 7, 2024 at 8:05 pm Exactly, because then you get the problem of people having to log into an app or website to retrieve their ticket, then they can’t remember either their username or their password. They then need to get the system to give them their username, or have to reset their password. In the meantime, the people behind them are getting more and more pissed, because the line is being held up. I have been that person, and it’s horribly embarrassing, not to mention incredibly annoying.
Craig* August 8, 2024 at 7:15 am all the ones I’ve had let you save as a pdf. so easy just bring up the most recent downloads you can do it while in line.
Rara Avis* August 7, 2024 at 9:01 pm I was waiting in line for a car wash and the guy in front of me lost his receipt with the code he needed to enter into the machine in his car in the 5minutes he was waiting for his turn.
Cardboard Marmalade* August 7, 2024 at 9:26 pm This would totally be me. Small pieces of paper just dissolve into my skin or something on contact.
Green great dragon* August 8, 2024 at 5:40 am Me, getting ticket: I will put this somewhere safe so I do not lose it. Entire family in unison: Mom, no!!! It will be six weeks before you see it again.
CSRoadWarrior* August 7, 2024 at 2:53 pm #5 – Talk about stubborn! All that time (and gas) wasted for something that could have been resolved with a U-turn. I would have been very annoyed at that driver.
Orv* August 7, 2024 at 2:55 pm #3 is a kind of thing I’ve dealt with from the other side, from time to time. In IT support, after a while you learn to recognize when someone is just trying to save face and let it go with, “well, it looks like it’s working now, if you have any more trouble let me know!”
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 4:21 pm Maybe they’re bluffing, maybe they overlooked it even when they’re sure they didn’t, maybe they’re not familiar with how it works and looked in the wrong place, maybe there was a slow connection or cosmic rays caused something to go wrong. As long as they’re not a jerk about it or demand we digging after we say “looks like it’s working now”, tech people don’t usually care why precisely the email wasn’t seen.
kanada* August 7, 2024 at 5:08 pm #3 is the most “benign” version of this (though OP was still willing to throw someone else under the bus for their mistake); #15 is the other end of that spectrum.
Random Bystander* August 7, 2024 at 7:50 pm And sometimes, the user in need of support thinks that IT fixed an issue and it really wasn’t IT that did it. (This happened to me when two of my desktop shortcuts broke on the work computer–for whatever reason, I can’t fix it myself and have to do a ticket. It was a few days before the Crowdstrike fiasco and got fixed after the fiasco was resolved. I thought IT had done it, but they said they hadn’t done anything. Spontaneous repair?
Green great dragon* August 8, 2024 at 5:44 am Sounds like the deluxe version of switching it off and switching it on again. Sometimes things sort themselves out. My computer was (in)famous at one firm. IT was clear that it shouldn’t be working, but it was working, and they touched it with extreme reluctance in case they were the ones that broke the magic.
HSE Compliance* August 7, 2024 at 2:59 pm I had an employee in a compliance role that had 20+ years of experience (they said) in the compliance field. I want to point out that I inherited this mess. This person: 1. was consistently late submitting federal level compliance reports because 2. they would start the data gathering for the report the *afternoon* it was due, when these reports generally took 3-5 days to gather, collate, and get the designated official to sign in wet ink or log in and sign 3. would complain that they didn’t know where to get the data…. because they refused to go through the documented (with screenshots and LINKS TO THE DATA) process document, and wanted me to sit down with them every single time to complete it (I did the first time for each different report when the person was hired, but I cannot keep doing this 8+ months afterwards) 4. was incredibly difficult to find… in which we then discovered he was out on a smoke break of some variant at least 3 hrs of every day, and likely to be not at the desk/plant/site he was supposed to be at 5. when given a list of expectations (i.e. “reports must be completed prior to their due date for signature, and submitted in full before their due date”), immediately got *very* offended and stormed out, and then decided to put me on literally every email/comm with snarky questions/comments on what they were “even allowed to do” (because they had instructed someone to do something that would have been illegal regarding waste management, and I had instructed them that if they didn’t know the answer, they needed to ask questions, and not assume things, which is what they had given me as a reason for their instruction; and also, I had told them point blank that they are NOT allowed to keep compliance documentation in their car and were to store it correctly in the files, which apparently was Just Too Much Work) 6. when then in weekly 1:1s (prior to this, it was biweekly), consistently insisted everything was good, fine, all on time, looking good, doesn’t need any help or resources…. but then, when questioned where the reports were and why I got a notification from the agency that we were missing reports, again got *very* offended and then…. 7. went to HR and told them I was refusing to give them resources…. when HR was at that point in all communications between the employee and I, which showed the exact opposite 8. when placed on a PIP, refused to sign and then was confused when it didn’t just go away (???) 9. Quit at 1AM midweek by coming in after hours, sitting at their desk for I believe 45 minutes, and leaving literally everything – including all personal effects and a *giant* stack of unpaid health & tollway bills (obvious from the envelopes)…. and then 10. Refused to forward their personal mail that for some reason they had set up to go to the plant and finally, 11. in their exit interview, told HR, and I quote: “HSE C was riding up my ass too much for compliance and being late”. The position was for a senior level compliance position that was expected to work relatively autonomously and perform as the SME for that topic. It was also the role I had started out in for that company, and was being filled because I was promoted out of it. I knew the role very, very well, and I’m not sure that this person ever really clicked to that even though I told them. Several times. Oh! They also refused to give me an estimated breakdown of time spent on varying tasks, because they complained at one point that there was too much work to do and they were swamped, so I asked them to get me more detail on what was swamping them so I could better get resources for them. This was apparently also offensive of me to ask.
HSE Compliance* August 7, 2024 at 4:31 pm I just remembered another hilarious detail – when IT sent over the person’s files etc. to me, I found a file just titled “F*#k”, which was filled with variants of f*ck spelled with symbols. An entire page. I could only assume that it was intended to be some sort of cathartic release of emotion. I couldn’t decide if it was missed in their wiping of their desktop or if it was “missed” on purpose, knowing that all files & emails were forwarded to the manager. They also had a file full of screenshots when they messaged me and I didn’t respond in <5 minutes, with notes on how awful I was that I didn't respond right away. You can clearly see in these screenshots that I was….in a meeting. Or presenting. My personal favorite was a screenshot before and after I went DnD in Teams over a span of 3 minutes – it was a meeting in which I was presenting… that this employee was supposed to be in and showed up late to by at least 10-15 minutes. How dare I, I suppose.
Non non non all the way home* August 9, 2024 at 11:37 pm How do people like this get hired in the first place? It sounds like someone with a personality disorder.
Ami* August 7, 2024 at 3:02 pm #14 honestly makes me feel kind of bad. Sounds more like a guy going through a mental health crisis than garden variety arrogance. People don’t generally torpedo their entire life so doggedly unless there’s something else going on.
LCH* August 7, 2024 at 4:41 pm i thought this too after everything was deleted. like, he received some sort of care/therapy and either he or someone else took down all the posts from his breakdown. because that was a lot of paranoia.
Moira's Rose's Garden* August 7, 2024 at 5:52 pm To me it sounds a little more like a sub-type of the kind of man Lundy Bancroft describes in “Why Does He Do That?”. This guy is entitled like woah and while that’s troubling and problematic, it’s not in the DSM-5. But I’m hella glad his ex chose well, I’ll say that.
WS* August 8, 2024 at 12:57 am I suspect that this was the first time anyone had told him, “No.” Also, there’s a certain type of male law student who thinks they are entitled to the world, and only some of them lose this certainty when they actually start working.
Sloanicota* August 7, 2024 at 3:04 pm It’s nice to see the thought process behind the other side of awkward interactions because often – there just isn’t one. The person has glitched, knows they’ve glitched, and just can’t stop / move on / fix it. This is helpful because sometimes I’m the person on the other side and I can’t figure out what I should have done or said differently to prevent this situation from occurring (like the lunch interviewer – I’m sure she was trying to figure out what she needed to do or say to move them past this issue), and the truth is it’s not you and there’s nothing you could or should do differently!
learnedthehardway* August 7, 2024 at 5:56 pm And then there’s the times when the glitch occurred because of something or someone else. Spent a day last week insisting that I had updated a report and someone else was insisting I had not. Turned out that (for some unknown reason), the prior year’s report happened to be coming up when I was asking for the report in the system. I’m still not sure the other person believed me that I had updated the report on time.
Goldenrod* August 7, 2024 at 3:07 pm “Imaginary beef.” OMG. These are all so amazing, I love this. I’m also reminded of the “I Think You Should Leave” episode, where a guy in a restaurant finishes interviewing for a job, politely says goodbye, and tries to exit through a door that swings in by insisting on pushing the door out. And refuses to admit his error….for an uncomfortably long time, while the interviewer looks on. ;D
Polite Pothead* August 7, 2024 at 10:14 pm One of my high school friends was accepted to Harvard, and as a going away present we printed that cartoon and made it say Harvard School for the Gifted. We were pretty proud of that one!
ImSorryIDontRememberAllTheNamesIveUsed* August 7, 2024 at 3:10 pm Re. #13, I hope being “moved back to full pay” included *retroactive* full pay for the period when they were working 65 hours but being paid for 30. I don’t think COVID was an excuse to break the law–I mean, that was illegal, right? Like, refusing to (literally) sign on to being abused was kind of … absolutely the right hill to die on?
Pastor Petty Labelle* August 7, 2024 at 3:28 pm Yes. I would not have signed the letter either. Because I did not in fact cut my hours. Either pay me or make sure my hours are really what the letter says. Because labor laws didn’t disappear during Covid as you noted.
Hlao-roo* August 7, 2024 at 3:38 pm I mean, that was illegal, right? It depends on whether the employees were classified as exempt or non-exempt. Broadly, it is legal to reduce people’s pay in the future and illegal to reduce their pay retroactively. My employer can say that starting tomorrow, I’ll only be paid $X-10 per hour instead of my current rate of $X per hour. But my employer cannot say that starting Monday, August 5, 2024 I’ll only be paid $X-10 per hour. If the employees in question were non-exempt, they have to be paid their hourly rate for hours worked, and only paying someone for 30 hours in a week when they worked 60 is illegal. But if the employees are exempt, then I think it’s shitty but legal.
Mad Harry Crewe* August 7, 2024 at 5:18 pm The person still has to be paid above minimum wage, accounting for real hours worked and real pay. This part might be by state, but I think there’s also a wage minimum where below that, they also have to be paid overtime for hours worked above 40/week.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain* August 7, 2024 at 7:56 pm Yeah, but it was also double weird that HR NEEDED the OP to sign the letter and kept at it… usually that’s just a formality not a contract — you acknowledge that you received the information that your salary is being cut — they typically can just do it on the next paycheck without you needing to sign anything. I’m guessing the OP on that one made well over both minimum wage and the federal/state minimum to be eligible for exempt, so that it wasn’t illegal.
SheriffFatman* August 8, 2024 at 4:37 am Isn’t there a minimum annual salary for exempt employees, though (i.e., if you earn less than $x a year, you’re automatically classed as non-exempt)? Cutting pay by 25% across the board seems like it would push at least some employees from exempt to non-exempt status. Of course, OP#13 may well have been earning enough to still be classifiable as exempt at 75% of their original salary.
Great Frogs of Literature* August 8, 2024 at 11:14 am I REALLY HOPE that if OP worked 65 hour weeks in busy season, they were making enough that salary-25% was not below the non-exempt threshold.
Roland* August 7, 2024 at 3:49 pm I’m assuming they were not actually hourly and just use it to refer to the % pay cut.
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 4:33 pm That was my assumption, as well. Some exempt jobs (like mine) will list the hourly pay rate based on a 40-hour work week even though the pay isn’t actually hourly.
FricketyFrack* August 7, 2024 at 3:14 pm I’m the kind of person who has very little patience with passive aggressive nonsense and I have more than once called people out for behaving like children (this is not a positive quality, to be clear, it’s something I’ve worked really hard to *not* do) and I feel like Brenda and Steve would’ve given me a full on aneurysm. I’m slightly more on her side than his, but jesus, if you resort to petty power games instead of just telling Steve he’s fired for insubordination, that’s also a huge problem. My eye is twitching thinking about being stuck with those two all day.
Paint N Drip* August 7, 2024 at 3:37 pm Depending on my mood this is aneurism territory OR can’t-keep-myself-together laughing at the absurdity that I would get MYSELF kicked out instead of Steve
Missa Brevis* August 7, 2024 at 6:52 pm Reading about it had me howling with laughter. Dealing with it at my actual job would have had me howling with rage! I don’t know how anyone in that room managed to keep it together.
hohohome* August 8, 2024 at 12:52 pm It’s been a hot minute, but I remember it being excruciating but also a little exhilarating? The rest of us in the meeting seemed to go back and forth between being angry and bored, and then fascinated and impressed, because Steve was speaking some truth in places. There were a couple of times that we got the giggles – for example, a couple of bold instigators threw a question to Steve once or twice. A wide-eyed and innocent, “what’s your take on this, Steve?” or “I’d love to hear what Steve has to say about this.” And Brenda would sit there and grimace as he ranted in response. It was some top-notch shenanigans.
Tiggy Skibbles* August 7, 2024 at 3:16 pm Ha, all of these reminded me of the most spectacular self-inflicted termination I’ve ever seen. I worked on a small web development team in a small finance company. We were largely independent from the rest of IT and reported to the director. Unfortunately, there was a Software Development Manager who was weirdly (and comically) convinced that we reported to him (he would ask us for updates on our projects, try to assign us tasks, etc.) We repeatedly had to have the director tell him that we did not work for him, and it became a bit of a running joke. Anyway, our team lead discovered one day that he had added himself to our internal mail group. They removed him. The next day…they discovered he added himself again. The team lead removed him again, and sent a strongly worded email to him (with a CC to the director) telling him not to re-add himself. The next day…he’d re-added himself. At this point, we had the director talk to him directly, and tell him to not do it again. The next day…you guessed it, he’d re-added himself. My team lead was so apoplectic, our director finally gave the manager an ultimatum…if you add yourself again, you’re terminated. We removed him. The next day…yep, he re-added himself, and was walked out of the building that afternoon. I will never, NEVER understand why he we was so obsessed with this. I can’t imagine what would cause a grown man with a family to throw away a job like that, for such a ridiculous reason. Part of me feels bad, thinking there must have been something else going on in his life at that point. Part of me just marvels at the sheer weirdness of it.
CommanderBanana* August 7, 2024 at 3:21 pm I always wonder when I see people behave this way – it’s like it’s a compulsion they can’t stop.
Unkempt Flatware* August 7, 2024 at 4:22 pm Some of my favorite comeuppance stories involve people who somehow think they are in charge and get rebuffed.
Craig* August 8, 2024 at 7:25 am I can see asking related teams for updates but the rest is just bananapants.
Zombeyonce* August 7, 2024 at 3:22 pm I love that all of these are either extreme naivete or extreme audacity.
GreenGirl* August 7, 2024 at 3:55 pm On the original thread LabManagerPerson said: “I feel like there’s two kinds of these hole-digging stories: One kind is where the person in question just keeps digging despite knowing better on some level and is horrified after the fact. (I’ve been this person, though not in a way that makes for a good story.) The other kind is where the person in question appears to be utterly convinced of their rightness and probably will go to their grave certain that they are right merely on the basis of the clear fact that they, by definition, cannot be wrong.”
Zombeyonce* August 7, 2024 at 3:24 pm My headcanon for the unicorn mask one is that the guy either got the worst haircut of his life or a drunken face tattoo and couldn’t imagine anyone ever seeing what he looked like now.
Cardboard Marmalade* August 7, 2024 at 9:31 pm I’m convinced it wasn’t the LW’s coworker at all! What if he’d lost his id at some crazy Halloween party the night before and so some opportunist decided to try to sneak into a government building using his id? Perfect crime, if only the security guard hadn’t been such a stickler.
amoeba* August 8, 2024 at 5:04 am I like this theory – although in practice, I’m pretty sure I could still recognise my coworkers by their voices, built, etc.!
Mookie* August 7, 2024 at 3:28 pm I’m reminded of the time that I went to the storage locker I was renting, and upon leaving, realized my code did not work – leaving me stuck behind a large gate. I used the intercom to call the manager who came out to my car and proceeded to berate me and lecture me about the proper input of the numbers and that I “just didn’t know what I was doing”. So he tried to input my code, and nothing happened. He then doubled down on his story, which was that I must’ve broken something. I very calmly told him to let me out of the gate or else I would call the police. He absolutely refused and kept Mansplaining. So I roll up my windows and started honking the horn repetitively, figuring this would finally annoy him enough to let me out. I think that’s what finally did it, and he let me out. I’m pretty sure this was illegal on his part, so I reported it to his district manager, and he didn’t last very long at that role…shocker!
L* August 7, 2024 at 9:46 pm Ooh, this stirred an angry memory for me: I’m a graduate student; my department has a fabrication shop space that is technically open to the whole department and is definitely open to my lab (we do a lot of fabrication and are one of the labs that specifically pays for its upkeep). However, it is physically located closest to our most tech-supremacist, bro-y lab (in their defense, that lab has gotten chiller since when this story happened), and they tended to treat it as just theirs. The shop had a part-time shop manager who has always been a bit of a jerk, says sexist-but-plausibly-deniably-not things, clearly believes he knows how to use the tools better than anyone else, etc. I went in to use a particular piece of equipment which is slightly, but only slightly, complicated to use, and which I had used many, many times before. It wasn’t working; I called over a friend/labmate, and he was also baffled. We were going through some reasonable troubleshooting steps when the shop manager noticed. Without even asking, the shop manager started yelling at *me* (not even at *us*, despite the fact that my friend was there too), telling me that I had broken the equipment, that “important people” (by which he meant the professor of the bro lab) needed to use it, and that if I didn’t fix it there would be trouble. I tried to show him what we had tried, and he flipped out that I had set something “wrong” because I wasn’t using his favorite settings apparently. Mine were also fully reasonable (imagine the equivalent of using tray 1 vs tray 2 on a printer; it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s set to be consistent with where you actually loaded the paper), but, fine, I switched over to his settings. When this predictably didn’t change anything, he stormed off and said that he would be telling my advisor about this situation, which is honestly funny in retrospect because 1. my advisor is a reasonable person who trusts me, and 2. we’re a research lab; breaking things sometimes is how research happens; if I actually *had* broken the thing it would be annoying but not the end of the world. At this point I was on the verge of tears from the shouting, though, and my friend suggested we take a snack break. We came back, picked up the troubleshooting, and eventually found a single stupid tickybox deep in the “advanced” settings that had gotten mis-ticked, definitely not by me because I’d never even seen that submenu before. It would have had to have been done by the previous user… who was of course someone in the bro lab. I finished my task, then went back to my computer and sent an email to my advisor, conspicuously cc-ing the shop manager, saying something like “[Shop manager] said he’d be emailing to let you know about this, and he seemed quite upset, so just to update you so you’re not worried: after spending [x time] troubleshooting, [labmate] and I got [equipment] back up and running. It looks like someone from [other lab] changed [setting] so we might want to add a note to the documentation about that.” That was years ago and I still avoid the shop during the hours he is “working” (which is easy because he also no-shows half the time…). The last time I had to interact with him, he asked me if I knew how to carry out a particular maintenance repair, in a tone of voice that made it very clear he wanted me to do that work (despite it being literally his job! and not a machine I use); I said “not off the top of my head, but surely that’s what the repair manual is for?”; he said that oh, of course he shouldn’t have expected me to know how to do this “technical” thing, and promptly turned to my male labmate standing next to me and asked him the same question. Ugh.
Not The Earliest Bird* August 7, 2024 at 3:40 pm I have a cousin who is just like Draco. Hasn’t met a bridge that he didn’t burn to the ground in the most public and spectacular manner.
1 Non Blonde* August 7, 2024 at 3:45 pm “You must have different internet” I’m going to use this. *snort*
Jay* August 7, 2024 at 5:52 pm Well, I get MY internet custom made at the Secret Canadian Butcher. Like a GENTLEMAN.
Tammy 2* August 7, 2024 at 3:55 pm I am choosing to believe that the unicorn costume was part of an elaborate heist.
Cats Ate My Croissant* August 8, 2024 at 4:06 am Security guard arguing with DecoyUnicornSteve while ActualSteve is rappelling from a ceiling vent, Mission Impossible style, in the background. 100% funnier if ActualSteve is a balding, middle-aged dude whose idea of exercise is walking to the printer. The plan is almost foiled when a leaky biro slides slowwwwly out of his shirt pocket but luckily he catches it in his “you don’t have to be mad to work here…” coffee mug.
Bast* August 7, 2024 at 3:56 pm One of my jobs had a similar sort of software, where managers could access any changes made by anyone at any time, as well as screenshots of who was doing what, when. We had one woman who would deny, deny, deny doing things, or state she didn’t know about it — “Jane, you were the last one to edit this note at 9:32 am on Monday, 8/5.” Nope, couldn’t have been her, maybe it was a computer error. “Jane, the screenshots show that you were on that specific screen EXACTLY at the time the software says you were.” Nope, maybe someone else hopped up from their desk, sat at hers, and inputted all of that just to get her in trouble. It wasn’t exactly a secret that managers could access this information, and instead of just making a mistake, she’d double down on the “computer issue” excuse. The whole time I worked with her, she never, EVER admitted to being wrong.
GreenGirl* August 7, 2024 at 4:03 pm I had a coworker who messaged me asking what happened to a slide in a presentation we were using. I restored it and told her she deleted it at 1:14. She was self-admittedly terrible with technology and jokingly said she should have remembered her tech oath to never touch anything of great importance without supervision. She followed up hoping it was 1 in the afternoon not 1 in the morning as she didn’t want to be sleep deleting.
NotARealManager* August 7, 2024 at 3:58 pm LW #7, you might have come off a little rude, but I think a retail manager would understand that a part-time college student applying for a retail position (even in a nice shop) probably isn’t in it for the long haul regardless of their feelings about retail in general. And clearly the manager was thinking along those lines because they still made the job offer.
NotARealManager* August 7, 2024 at 3:59 pm That was meant to be phrased as a college student applying to a part-time job.
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 4:51 pm Yeah, especially since most people don’t try to launch their careers in their chosen field with a part-time job while in school for something else. I don’t understand some people’s attitude towards retail as a career. I get that it’s challenging, often low-paid, and customers can be a nightmare, but that seems to be true of a lot of jobs that don’t get the same level of distain. One of my friends got a retail job after college, and she was embarrassed to be working at a clothing shop at the mall. (Meanwhile, I was in the prestigious career of sandwich-making.) She was excited to tell me about a much better job opportunity that she’d found… in a call center.
LW #7* August 7, 2024 at 6:21 pm Agreed. I think that was the moment when I realized that I held some judgement about retail careers, and that was what made it truly embarrassing. Not just “oops, I said something awkward,” but also an icky side of “oh, I am not as progressive and non-judgemental as I think I am.” Which is uncomfortable, especially at 19-20. I do wish I had taken the job. As retail goes (in terms of quality of work environment) I think it actually would have been pretty good. And I would have loved to have an employee discount there. It was a specialty bra store that carried a wider size range, and that shit is expensive.
LW #7* August 7, 2024 at 6:26 pm And in the following almost decade, it turns out I actually really enjoy a lot of aspects of retail, especially in a specialty environment. Personal interaction, helping people find solutions to problems, understanding their needs when they may not be articulating them exactly as they mean them, even diffusing frustration. It’s a shame that retail is so exploitative and underpaid, because I think more people would enjoy the actual “work” of it but are not willing to subject themselves to the conditions that exist in a lot of retail settings for pennies.
Hroethvitnir* August 7, 2024 at 10:00 pm 1000%. I have worked with a couple of people who really stand out as just being very talented at, and enjoying, retail. A large percentage of people in retail are just bad at it (and/or burnt out) and it absolutely costs businesses in time and money as well as customers in mediocre service, but we have decided retail doesn’t deserve a living wage so that’s what we get.
Oregonbird* August 7, 2024 at 10:59 pm Dressing windows and building displays, sneaking stolen merch back out of the baby stroller, turning down badly printed $100 bills, calling in the manager to deal with the sudden prayer circle – and when retail doesn’t involve water balloons and open coffee mugs, it’s calm enough to read Jane Eyre online. Love retail!
Chirpy* August 8, 2024 at 1:36 am This, I’ve worked with some really fantastic people who are great at retail and love it. They absolutely should be paid fairly to do it. It takes a surprising amount of knowledge and skills to do well, and it’s horrible that a lot of people think retail workers deserve the crap they get. I on the other hand, hate retail, but if customers and management treated us with respect and we got paid living wages, it honestly wouldn’t be a terrible job.
Dawn* August 7, 2024 at 4:00 pm I had a friend who used to do the “I don’t turn around” thing, drove me absolutely up the wall. My guy, that just doesn’t work when we’re heading to an extremely rural address and you get one (1) shot at the turn-off.
Unkempt Flatware* August 7, 2024 at 4:03 pm He would have gotten a, “pull over now. I DO turnaround and now I’m driving”.
Dawn* August 7, 2024 at 7:52 pm Unfortunately, I was not at that point in my life at that time. He was the one with the car, his girlfriend and I were the ones who didn’t drive. We all survived. We were just a bit late because he was rather silly about it.
Moira's Rose's Garden* August 7, 2024 at 4:01 pm Mark’s giving Big Chaotic Neutral Energy. It’s not how I roll, but I dig it. (#9)
reggie* August 7, 2024 at 4:27 pm same! i had an employer who cut lunch in half and converted it to unpaid time, so we then had to come in 30 minutes early or stay 30 minutes late for the privilege of half a lunch. this was 15 years ago and i still seethe when i think about it.
LCH* August 7, 2024 at 4:44 pm i worked someplace where we had to take an hour and it had to be unpaid. so i was at work a minimum of 9 hrs per day. i hated that rule. i like my current place where it can be as long as i want, i just have to work 7.5 paid hrs and not miss meetings.
Peanut Hamper* August 7, 2024 at 5:16 pm One of the things I’m grateful for about WFH is that I can just work through lunch. An 8-hour day is literally an 8-hour day.
SMH* August 7, 2024 at 4:17 pm Going to add in one since I missed the original thread: About ten years ago, I had a very, uh, sensitive grandboss–let’s call him Michael. Michael could not take any criticism AT ALL. One summer he took a long vacation (2 1/2 weeks). While technically allowable, it was rare for anyone to take off this long in one shot, and he apparently wiped out his PTO for the year. We had a big meeting room with a whiteboard outside people used to schedule the space. About a week after the vacation, someone scheduled a meeting with the title, “How to Accrue and Retain PTO (this is for you, Michael!).” Michael saw this and flipped his lid. He immediately started running around the office, interrogating staff, yelling at supervisors, demanding to know who did this. He talked to building security and tried to get security camera footage (they didn’t think this justified giving him access). He even got out forms employees had signed and tried to compare handwriting. This went all day. Finally, at four o’clock, we heard an announcement over the intercom saying the meeting had started and asking Michael to report to the meeting room. The voice was…Michael’s grandboss, essentially the CEO. Michael very sheepishly reported to the meeting. A lot of us stood in the hall while Michael tried to pretend to his grandboss that it was a great joke. Haha. Super-funny. I’m such a good sport. Michael said he knew it was grandboss and had been laughing about it all day. Except…grandboss had received multiple complaints about Michael earlier in the day. Michael then tried to claim it had all been a big joke and he was just playing along. Grandboss was not having any of it. They left and moved the conversation upstairs. Michael did not last much longer after this incident.
MigraineMonth* August 7, 2024 at 4:59 pm So, Michael acted very inappropriately, but does anyone else think Grandboss was a bit of a dick? He singled out a much lower-level employee who is not known for his sense of humor for a “joke”, and the joke is that he used his earned PTO benefits? I would not want to work there, with or without Michael.
FricketyFrack* August 7, 2024 at 5:48 pm That’s what I thought reading it. So…the issue is that he used vacation time? I’m taking a 2 week vacation in September that will pretty much wipe me out because I had surgery a couple of months ago (scheduled after the vacation was), and no one is worried about it. Worst case scenario, if I have an emergency before I save more up, I might have to take some time off unpaid, but no one would ever make a big deal of an employee using the time they earned. Grandboss sucks too.
Pixx* August 8, 2024 at 10:47 am I was thinking this, too. I’m American but have lived in the UK for ten years, and honestly, this kind of thing is just one of the many reasons I have no plans to move back to the US. Firstly, I get twice as much vacation allowance as that by law. Secondly, while I haven’t taken any leave at my new company, my old company did have a general “two weeks at a time” rule. BUT, you could ask for an exemption, which I did once every couple of years, so that I could go visit my family for 3-3.5 weeks at a time, rather than limiting it to 2 weeks. These requests were not only never denied, but nobody gawked or grumbled or objected, either, at least not to my knowledge. My team/managers were always so happy when I got a chance to go home, as they knew how much I missed my family, and would basically shove me out the door with instructions to not even think about work until I came back a few weeks later. I do not miss the days of American employment life, where you get meagre vacation days and then people get prissy about you having the audacity to actually use them on top of it!
PotatoRock* August 7, 2024 at 5:51 pm yeah, and it sounds very much like a “* rolls down hill” culture. Manage that way, and you’re going to get mid-level managers who manage that way, blame their reports, create a culture of paranoia, etc
amoeba* August 8, 2024 at 5:12 am Yeah, no, I’d be *extremely* annoyed at that “joke” as well. And from grandboss? I’d be updating my CV. WTH.
reggie* August 7, 2024 at 4:19 pm steve’s behavior at the training reminds me of a participant at a training i went to years ago. i’d requested to attend because it was very relevant to my work and the trainer was both knowledgeable and entertaining. yet mostly all i remember is this woman using her phone in such a way that her fingernails made a loud and unnecessary tapping, then having full voiced conversations with the guy next to her. A couple hours in, the trainer finally said something, and the conversation partner never returned after lunch. I think the tap-tap-tapping continued after that, though.
Don’t make me come over there* August 7, 2024 at 5:34 pm Oh my goodness, I work with a guy who never figured out how (or maybe why) to turn off the little clicky noises when he types. Thankfully he’s only in one day a week.
GreenGirl* August 7, 2024 at 8:32 pm I was in a training over zoom back in 2020. One woman answered her phone during the training and managed to turn off her mute at the same time. Her conversation was about how she could talk now as she wasn’t doing anything, just another stupid training. She continued to go on about how useless and boring trainings were and how company got the worst trainers and chose the worst trainers etc. Meanwhile everyone is typing /unmuting and yelling, “you’re not on mute/you’re not muted/we can hear you.” A few people tried to call her but she was already on the phone. Unfortunately we were all working from home so no one could go over to her physically. Someone got through to her and she muted herself again. The whole thing lasted less than a minute, but in that mortifying type of situation it felt a lot longer and everyone was apologizing to the poor trainer.
I'm great at doing stuff* August 7, 2024 at 4:37 pm “I don’t turn around.” Just…what? Does he belong to a cult where it is bad juju to turn around? Regarding unicorn guy, I think was that Unicourse from Bluey come to life.
kanada* August 7, 2024 at 4:48 pm re: #5; Before I was dating a construction manager, I wouldn’t have thought dust was a big deal. Now I know it’s actually a /huge/ deal.
Stuart Foote* August 7, 2024 at 5:08 pm Construction sites have strict rules for controlling dust…just imagine how tough it would be for both workers and neighbors if construction sites could kick up as much dust as they wanted.
kanada* August 7, 2024 at 5:10 pm Well, it does depend on the job site, but apparently in dry/arid areas, there are major conservation/environmental concerns around the amount of dust construction can kick up, to the point where an off-road site might have a truck that drives back and forth wetting the ground to stop vehicles from kicking up dust. Too much dust can get the job fined or even shut down.
Moira's Rose's Garden* August 7, 2024 at 6:43 pm Lots of construction sites have the topsoil contaminated with stuff like asbestos and metals that are health hazards. Basically it can wind up contaminating other sites (say wind carries stuff to a playground) as well as creating a preventable health hazard to your workers. Never mind that it can gunk up the equipment. (Had an ex who was an environmental safety officer).
metadata minion* August 8, 2024 at 12:56 pm Cosigned. There can be a lot of stuff in soil that’s hazardous to your health, but unless you have your hands in the dirt all day or are two years old and think dirt is delicious, you’re not actually going to be exposed enough for it to be a problem. UNLESS something starts kicking up dust such that people are then breathing it (not to mention the fact that breathing any sort of particulates isn’t great for your lungs). I actually just read an article about how the water level in the Great Salt Lake is dangerously low due to water policy, climate change, etc., and apparently the lakebed soil has all sorts of impressively toxic stuff that we really, really don’t want to get dried out and blown by the wind.
I'm great at doing stuff* August 7, 2024 at 4:53 pm Oh man, I wish I had remembered this story in time for this post. I worked at a high quality preschool that charged very high tuition. We did lots of extra workshops and events for the parents, kind of like back to school events, but they were often interactive, invited parents in on the discussion, etc. We’ll call the teachers Leslie and Donna and the director Anne. During one of these back to school nights, Leslie and her teammate were in theory talking about a project that they did with their five year olds, taking care of snails. Leslie could be a bit brash at times, but was an intelligent person. Well, I don’t know what happened to her that night, but she suddenly started babbling about how the snails started reproducing. Donna and Anne looked confused, but whatever, the snails did do that and the children had to learn to care for the baby snails. It took a concerning turn when Leslie started saying “snail porn” over and over. She must have said it 10 times. At this point Donna is just barely holding it together and Anne looked about to die of heart failure. The parents tried to be polite by smiling and nodding, though a couple couldn’t hide their horror. Anne started requiring the teachers to submit their talking points after that.
Shieldmaiden* August 7, 2024 at 7:05 pm I’m honestly concerned about Leslie. Was she okay? Or just glitching?
Need to reboot but can't, uh-oh* August 7, 2024 at 7:23 pm I’m imagining her growing more and more horrified as she hears the words come out of her own mouth, but unable, for some reason, to divert course or think of LITERALLY any other words to say!
I'm great at doing stuff* August 8, 2024 at 11:11 am Leslie was not the most self-aware, so it was more like an unstoppable freight train at that point.
roisin54* August 7, 2024 at 4:55 pm I’ve had several interactions like #15 with customers. This is just the top 3: Someone called My Library when they meant to call Other Library, and refused to believe they’d called My Library by mistake and insisted I was lying to them. Someone insisted they’d seen a particular special collection here before and refused to believe that it was actually at a nearby institution, and I must’ve not wanted them to see it again. Someone insisted that the building had to have been a church before because there was religious iconography in some of the artwork, and refused to believe that we’ve always been the sole occupants and the building was built for us in the 19th century when religious art was more common in non-religious buildings. In all three cases I had to hang up/walk away without managing to convince them of the truth.
Lurkers R Us* August 8, 2024 at 12:26 pm I worked the circulation desk at my local public library when I was an undergrad. When we answered the phone, we always said, “Local Public Library, how may I help you?” One particular morning, I answered the phone and the caller asked for an individual who didn’t work at the library. I repeated that this was Local Public Library. The caller insisted that it was individual’s number, then snapped, “You have the wrong number” and hung up. Ok ma’am but you called me.
essie* August 7, 2024 at 5:00 pm Aw! I missed the original post. Quick version of my ridiculous hole-digging: At a job in my twenties, I was charged with recording an important meeting. The meeting planner was easily the most awful woman I’d ever met. She was the type that sincerely believed that every other human on Earth was completely stupid, and that no one ever did a decent job *except* for her. I’d already had several major issues with her, and my patience was thin. The day before the meeting, she came and inspected my setup. Despite knowing NOTHING about A/V, she immediately emailed my boss that “Something looks odd” and that he should “re-check my qualifications to make sure I actually know what I’m doing.” I was absolutely livid. I had seven years of A/V experience at that point. My boss just rolled his eyes and ignored her, but I was pissed. After the meeting, I quickly did some light editing on the (perfectly recorded) footage. And then I thought, what if…. what if I *don’t* know what I’m doing, at all? And in my “ignorance,” what if I “lost” the footage for a few weeks? I realize this was insanely stupid, but I was really at my breaking point with this woman. And I knew that she didn’t actually need the footage for two months. When she emailed asking for an update, I responded that I had completed the editing work. I said nothing else. When she emailed again, asking for the footage, I ignored it. And when she emailed a third time, copying my boss, I vaguely said I was having “issues” with it, implied I couldn’t find it, and said I would need a bit of time. She went ballistic. It was kind of epic. My boss was very familiar with her ridiculousness, so he mostly said nothing and focused on his actually important work. But then, she contacted IT. And here’s where I dug a hole: I kept insisting to IT that I just needed to figure out where I’d saved it, and I didn’t need their help. For a whole week, they would check in almost daily, and I would insist that I was still looking. Finally, one of them saw it saved right on my desktop, went to my boss and told him I was hiding the file. My boss figured out my game, came over to my office, and made me send the recording right in front of him. Still, I produced two weeks of the meeting planner freaking out over the “lost” footage. Honestly, I stand by it. She was awful.
Audrey* August 7, 2024 at 5:50 pm UGH — I hate it when my internet is different from someone else’s. So inconvenient.
Braindead AOLer* August 7, 2024 at 7:27 pm Isn’t that the problem you can fix by tapping your internet against the other person’s, so they sync up? I feel sure I’ve seen people do that.
Kevin Sours* August 7, 2024 at 8:50 pm A legit problem I have had to deal with. It’s a pain. (Sometimes one server in a pool of nominally identical load balanced webservers gets out of sync and those problems can be annoying to troubleshoot)
metadata minion* August 8, 2024 at 12:58 pm Huh…now that I think about it, of course that happens, but I’ve never had reason to think about it before. That sounds so weird to try to troubleshoot. Thank you for today’s random learning moment! :-)
Dhaskoi* August 8, 2024 at 12:16 am Especially when it lives in another country and is really shy so you can never introduce it to your friends.
That Didn't Age Well* August 7, 2024 at 5:50 pm I worked at a particular US company for a bit. A few years ago, in a consumer-facing department, a white senior employee showed their colleagues a picture of themselves from a couple decades earlier…in blackface. When others pointed out that this probably wasn’t something they should be going out of their way to show people at work, the senior employee doubled down and said that it wasn’t a problem because they, themself, were not racist, and they hadn’t worn blackface back then to be racist, and therefore, there was nothing racist or harmful about this. Rightfully so, people complained. After hearing directly from the chief of their division, the equity & inclusion office, their manager, and their own black colleagues they worked with every day about how this was hurtful, how it could lead to the perception of them not treating consumers equitably, and why it was just plain offensive, the senior employee…continued to insist that they had done nothing wrong. They weren’t racist! How could you say the picture was offensive when they! were! not! racist! They were ultimately fired not for sharing the photo initially, but their continued adamancy that there was nothing wrong with blackface. And, you know what? I’m starting to suspect the person who was willing to lose their job in defense of blackface might be a little racist.
Jessica* August 8, 2024 at 12:50 am Don’t you realize that’s impossible, because they’re NotRacist? It’s kinda like how someone who is NotAMurderer could theoretically stab you until there were many holes, you were prostrate on the ground, and all the blood that formerly occupied your body was now somewhere else, but you definitely wouldn’t be dead, because they’re NotAMurderer! Your problem is that you’re doing that old-fashioned backwards logic of judging people’s character by their actions. If you just assess their character first, then you’ll know how to understand all their actions! If SeniorGuy didn’t have a racist bone in his body, then nothing he did could possibly have been racist no matter what it was. It’s so easy to figure this stuff out when you just do it in the right order.
N C Kiddle* August 8, 2024 at 9:40 am Everyone insists they don’t have a racist bone in their body so I assume the racism resides exclusively in the soft tissue.
Addicted to Sims* August 8, 2024 at 11:29 am It’s fat soluble, like vitamin A. That’s why it’s so hard to get out of the system.
Librarian Beyond the Shelves We Know* August 7, 2024 at 5:51 pm “My butcher’s from Canada. His name is George…uh, Beef. George Beef.”
Lab Boss* August 8, 2024 at 7:47 am That one is mine- the weird coda is that years later, I really did have to reach out to a Canadian butcher to arrange for some meat that it wasn’t legal to sell locally (horse). I love it when life has little callbacks and resolves old abandoned plot threads.
Stuck Sometimes Myself* August 7, 2024 at 6:28 pm Am I the only one to find that some of these tales make me feel sad, rather than entertained? Maybe it’s because I was an educator who’s had students with rigid thinking, and when I read these stories, it’s like seeing that we teachers failed to give them the generalizable skills they need in life. Maybe it’s because I see some of myself in these people who are fearful that they can’t make mistakes AND be respected, and who get stuck on Plan A or fixed on one thought, and can’t accept a lifeline. Maybe it’s disappointment in the “innocents” of the stories, because in some cases things could have ended better (or at least the holes wouldn’t have been dug so deep) if the people around the hole-digger had known de-escalation and redirection techniques, to give these stuck people a dignified way out. (BTW, reason #1,001 to hire a former teacher is that we have learned how to avoid power struggles and when our people are stuck, we are compassionate and curious and we get creative! Oh man, just writing this, I think I might want to go back to teaching…) I guess this is a fun blog and maybe I missed the spirit and I’m being too serious—sorry if so. I usually enjoy the stories, especially the first-person ones.
Lana Kane* August 7, 2024 at 10:19 pm I feel the same. Some were entertaining, but others were kind of alarming.
STAT!* August 8, 2024 at 7:00 pm I am a kind of horrible person, so I am definitely entertained by these stories. But I love your thoughts on learning de-escalation and redirection techniques.
Summer* August 7, 2024 at 8:04 pm Draco’s ex-fiancé really dodged a bullet there! Thank goodness she dumped him before they got married; I can only imagine what married life would have been like with that guy. Yikes
aunttora* August 7, 2024 at 9:38 pm Long ago I worked for a small law firm. They weren’t EXACTLY ambulance chasers, they were – let’s say – emergency response vehicle enthusiasts. They had a client that was importing some kind of battery-operated toy from China and selling it to a large retailer. The retailer was experiencing unhappy customers because these toys would mysteriously catch on fire. The retailer cancelled the contract and the importer sued, which let to my firm’s representation. This was so long ago I have no memory of the legal details, just (1) this firm would represent ANYONE who paid their bill, and (2) at least one of these toys exhibited the “mysterious” behavior IN THE OFFICE. Very much, very good advice was offered, however client insisted on going to trial and their checks cleared – so off to trial went the team. I don’t remember how many days into it it happened, but yes – one of these stupid toys caught on fire (or at least sparked heavily) during the trial in the view of the jury.
My oh my* August 7, 2024 at 11:57 pm I loved the lunch one. I could just picture it so clearly – the humorless interviewer showing her the break room and kitchen, completely missing that it was sarcasm. Thinking it was a serious concern.
2cents* August 8, 2024 at 8:12 am “He proposes that he no longer have a manager and that I put together a six-month training program to teach him how to use Powerpoint.” My gast is flabbered.
Alton Brown's Evil Twin* August 8, 2024 at 8:27 am “Falsified Ground Beef” is the name of my Meatloaf cover band…
STAT!* August 8, 2024 at 9:24 pm How do you falsify the songs? Suggestions: Hell by the Dashboard Light. You Put the Words Right Back in My Mouth. Zero Out of Three is Bad. I Won’t Do Anything For Love.
Bill and Heather's Excellent Adventure* August 8, 2024 at 8:36 am #2 Am I the only one who thinks the company made a rod for their own back? Yes, OP should have said “this isn’t right for me” but the company put out a job advert about maintaining/updating their website but then expected the candidate to be able to build one and do PR as well?
Coffee Break* August 8, 2024 at 8:59 am Absolutely agree. I worked in that area for a few years and I had to constantly explain that our website was built and managed by IT professionals whereas I, as a comms professional, controlled the content that we decided to post on the site. It was a very common misunderstanding.
Frog&Toad* August 8, 2024 at 9:27 am #10 is definitely an energy vampire – and this all went exactly as he had planned.
PivotTime* August 8, 2024 at 4:22 pm #14 made me giggle. I spent several years at an access service desk at a law library helping law school students. I’ve definitely met flavors of OP’s “Draco”. They make for good stories later on.
NotJane* August 8, 2024 at 4:22 pm I came into work one Monday morning and noticed that the office hadn’t been cleaned. It had been a holiday weekend so I thought maybe the schedule was off and I texted the owner of the cleaning company. He said that his guy came in Saturday and cleaned but asked if he missed something. I told him nothing was cleaned, the trash wasn’t taken out, etc. I even checked the security camera footage and no one had been here. He checked with his guy who said he couldn’t remember, but he was here either around noon or late evening. When I re-checked the footage at those times and told him again – nope, nobody was here, his guy said it was definitely around 9-10 pm. I checked again – nope. He then said it was for sure around 9pm. Nope. Then he said he was here for a few minutes but had a family emergency and had to leave. At this point I realize that I can check the alarm system to see if anyone disarmed the system and big surprise – the alarm has not been disarmed the entire weekend. Like, why would you lie about being here when you know we have an alarm system and security cameras? And what’s the point of saying you were here when you most definitely didn’t do your job?
Hamster Manager* August 8, 2024 at 5:14 pm It’s pretty minor, but I’d play a secret game with my Worst Colleague Ever to see how many reasons he could come up with for why he couldn’t, shouldn’t, or didn’t need to do his job. Hierarchy was hazy at that job, but I had seniority in both title and tenure over him, and was the director of the team. Literally EVERY request was met with “oh that doesn’t need to be done/someone else can do it/I already did (he obviously had not)” ESPECIALLY if it was an edit to his work. I’d just calmly stick to my guns and tell him yes, it needed to be done, please do it, and watch him twist himself into knots trying to figure out what he could say to get out of it. He lasted about 4 months at the job.
Elio* August 8, 2024 at 9:52 pm I guess #14 Draco didn’t have any actual character growth like Draco in the books or movie. Anyway, picturing the guy going, “my father in law will hear about this,” made me lol. My friend’s boyfriend is a lawyer but since he’s normal and has no nepotism at all, he can’t throw his weight around like that.
Snowy* August 8, 2024 at 11:34 pm I work for a store that has a similar competitor in the next city over. People who live between the two get both our fliers. A customer came in and asked for an item that I didn’t think we carried, but was in a different department than mine, so I took him over to a coworker to check. Coworker also said we didn’t carry that item, though we had something similar. Guy got angry. “It’s in your flyer! It’s on sale!” Another coworker comes over and confirms we do not carry that item. Eventually, the guy pulls out the flyer to show us, and it’s for the competitor. The three of us point out tactfully that it’s clearly labeled for the other store, which has a similar name but different colors. Most customers will just apologize or be mildly annoyed that they went to the wrong store, as it happens occasionally. We can price match with the competitor, but this is an item we just didn’t carry. This guy, however, keeps getting angrier and argues that he is, in fact, in the correct store and we’re all stupid, despite the fact that the name of our store is literally everywhere. Eventually he shouts “I know where I am!” I point to my shirt, which clearly has the store name on both it and on my name tag and calmly tell him, “I know where I work.” He finally stomped out the door after that.
Pam Poovey* August 9, 2024 at 6:22 pm In an interview when I was like 23. I made what I meant as a one-off quip that what I wanted in a new position was a reasonable starting time, because the job I was leaving started at like 7:30. The interviewer was the one who could not let it go. They kept bringing it up and I wanted to scream IT WAS JUST A JOKE. But I was trying to be profesh. I ended up not getting that job for other reasons anyway