let’s talk about people “misusing” their power for good

by Alison Green on March 10, 2022

Last week we talked about the smallest amount of power you’ve ever seen someone abuse. But people can also use even small amounts of power for good — like the crossing guard who wasn’t really a crossing guard, or the graphic designer who sabotaged a homophobic group’s ad in her newspaper.

This week, let’s talk about times when you’ve seen someone exploit their power for good. Specifically: times when you saw someone violate the letter or the spirit of a rule or otherwise do something that could technically be considered under-handed in order to achieve good in the world. Please share in the comments!

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    Quick clarification that we’re not looking just for times you saw someone be a good person at work, but times when you saw someone violate the letter or the spirit of a rule or otherwise do something that could technically be considered under-handed in order to achieve good in the world.

  2. Eat Dirt, Jim*

    As with so many other tales on this site, this one is about pens. Unlike so many other workplaces, mine actually had a reason to be fussy- this was a food manufacturer and if you oopsied a pen into a vat of soup, they wanted it to be a metal pen that would thusly show up in the metal detector. That part was fine and dandy. I heartily approved!

    What wasn’t fine and dandy was that while the first pen was free, all subsequent pens cost two dollars. Expecting people to pay for their pens is bad enough, but this was highway robbery. People would often point out that they could buy other metal pens cheaper elsewhere- and they were welcome to do so- but they needed to keep a supply of the ink refills for their particular pen or else they were back on my doorstep, forced to buy a pen.

    My coworker and I were the unlucky peons tasked with actually handing out the pens and making sure people signed their pen forms (I also tried to make sure people read them, which…spoiler alert, so few people bothered to read the forms.) We were also the recipients of all the tantrums from people who needed a new pen and couldn’t believe that two bucks would be coming out of their paycheck for it. (I told them to read the form!)

    However, since not all pens were completely gone, but merely lost parts while the ink was being refilled, my coworker and I started a pen graveyard in order to cannibalize parts. We could fix pens, we could build you a refurbished one… the environmentalist in me liked our solution, but it was seriously such a waste of manpower. We also had to record all the ink refills (date and name of person receiving ink) and periodically yet another employee had to reconcile the pen and ink inventory with the supplies given out.

    I bet you’re shocked, simply shocked to find out that the owner of this place is one of those people who complains that no one wants to work anymore.

    1. AnonInCanada*

      (Eyes rolling in the back of my head at the sight of someone having to keep track on pens and ink refills). Is this ink so special it requires this kind of scrutiny? Or is the boss just a cheap ass?

      I bet you’re shocked, simply shocked to find out that the owner of this place is one of those people who complains that no one wants to work anymore.

      I guess that answers that question.

    3. Amber T*

      I totally get the need for metal pens vs cheap plastic ones, but was there any sort of regulatory reason you needed to keep track of every part of the pen? Like, if someone said they lost theirs, did you have to record that they confirmed they didn’t drop it into a vat of soup or something? I work in compliance so I’m very used to rules that seem ridiculous until you find out the reason behind them (and no one outside of compliance cares about said reasons), so I’m always curious when you hear these ridiculous rules. It sounds like your company didn’t want to shell out extra money for a safer product that was necessary and pass the cost onto its employees, which is just Bad.

      1. Eat Dirt, Jim*

        Nope, no compliance issues. In fact, our inspectors were more concerned by the constant flux of people into our workspace (we worked in the lab) than anything else.

        1. Eat Dirt, Jim*

          Keeping track of the ink refills was because the people who worked with flour needed more than everybody else, because flour particles would mix with the ink and clog the pen. I briefly tried soaking the ink refills to get them unclogged, but that really was a waste of time and effort. I guess the owner thought those workers were eating the refills or something? He was impossible to explain things to.

    4. quill*

      This is great, but my mental image is of you issuing calligraphy pens to workers because I’m more familiar with those than with metal bodied, refillable, non-calligraphy pens.

      1. Hamburke*

        I bought my husband a package of metal ball-point pens. I wanted to buy him an executive pen since he’s been working at home (for 5 years now) and won’t lose a pen by setting it down on someone else’s desk but this particular brand is known for being good for lefties. I have a nice pen set – a gift from my dad – but I mostly use G2 pens b/c I actually didn’t like the cartridges, like they scratched the paper and made a distracting sound, and it’s a twist one so I can’t replace it with a different cartridge. Love the pencil though!

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          And you can buy a magnetic tray so you can set a metal pen down and not lose it (well, not as easily, anyway).

          1. Snuck*

            Sure! Just get a really nice tray of any type you like and put a magnet in it! If it’s got a little foot of some kind under it just glue a magnet to the bottom of it to draw through the tray to whatever is on top so you don’t see it (works with thin metals or plastic type materials, not good on china/glass/thick materials).

      1. Meri*

        Which leads to the mental image of working in a set from such a show – corpses of pens strung up everywhere, springs spread out across tables, ominous lighting… the terrified employee in the doorway as Eat Dirt, Jim looks up from the pen they’re in the middle of dissecting, “Ah, yessss, come in. How can I… help you today?”

    6. Usagi*

      A while ago, I worked in a retail store that sold video games. As many of you know, in general, video games are (at least in the US) $59.99. Every holiday season, we would have a promotion that was for $20 off when you spent $60 or more.

      Lots of people came to our store every year to buy games for the young children (and grown up children!) in their lives, and I for a while always gave them the $20 off, because in my mind, $59.99 and $60 were the same thing. Until one day, our new (grumpy, penny pinching, holier-than-thou) market manager saw what I was doing, and flipped his lid. How DARE I give that promo, when OBVIOUSLY the customers were not spending $60. Did I not know how to read!? The promo CLEARLY says $60, NOT $59.99.

      That left a bad taste in my mouth. So I did some thinking, and realized we also sold gift cards for virtual stores, so you could buy games, movies, DLC, etc. for your games. I decided that in my mind, the promo was no longer “get $20 off when you spend $60 or more,” it was “get a free $15 gift card and $5 off when you buy a full-priced game.” (to be clear, that was $59.99 for the game + a $15 gift card = $74.99, which qualifies for the $20 off, so the customer only ended up paying $54.99).

      I told all my coworkers to do the same.

      3. Kipianon*

        Love your solution, but I’m not sure I agree that your manager is in the wrong here. My guess would be that they wanted to encourage people to buy MORE than one game in order to get the promotion. Setting the promo at just one cent more is a bit silly, but I could imagine the intention was more of a “buy 2, get $20 off” concept.

        1. Usagi*

          Oh they definitely weren’t wrong. I wouldn’t give the promo if the game (or whatever the customer was buying) was, say $50, or even $55. We also sold all kinds of electronics, consoles, PCs, phones, so the promo wasn’t specifically targeted towards games, either. This was more along the lines of “we are a Fortune 50 company worth literally billions and billions of dollars, why are we making a fuss over one cent?”

          … I realize I’m getting close to calling out what company I used to work for.

      4. Underemployed Erin*

        I wanted this to involve the petty of you selling a bunch of 1 cent gift cards.

    7. Snuck*

      Different but similar… I had a micro controlling stationary whizz genius too… who controlled all manner of items and proudly announced the ‘savings’.

      One meeting she indicated that spiral bound note books (a ‘sign out only’ item because “last year people were taking them for school supplies) were ‘no longer disappearing and we had used half as many as the same period last year”!!!. I piped up. “How many did we use last year?” … cue great discomfort. Answer? FOUR. I then turned to the group, pointed to my “non company issue notebook” and said “I think it’s because we’re all buying our own, because we can never get one issued, and what’s the collective cost of our time to sit here and discuss this?” (We were all on six figures).

      She never gave a ‘stationary budget update’ again. And a month later the locks were taken off the cabinet.

      1. Zweisatz*

        This is golden. Truly, the item vs. salary cost needs to be raised in so many petty discussions.

    8. Gabrielle*

      What happens if you’re entirely out of writing utensils and can’t fill out the form???

  3. Seattle Frank*

    I used t0 work as a consultant. A hotel breakfast at a Marriot is ~$20 with tip. Although technically this was not following the rules for people who didn’t do “sales”, for the same price (or less) I could bring the whole IT department that I was working with donuts or pastries. As a result the IT tickets I needed done for our project were done first and we finished the project early – with a happy IT group to boot.

      1. Momma Bear*

        Double Tree used to give one of our sales reps cookies. Rep’s favorite people got their cookies first, and in return he got his requests handled extra quickly.

      2. JayemGriffin*

        I keep telling my users that I am extremely bribable. Unfortunately, the pandemic has kind of put a damper on food gifts :(

      3. Reluctant Mezzo*

        My husband consistently refilled the Twizzler jar after a certain unnamed vice principal liked to clean it out. Guess who got his requests taken care of first in the admin office.

      4. Julia*

        When I last did IT people would try to bribe me all the time because the previous person was very slow about fixing issues. Like $5 chocolate bar bribes for the most basic things. I felt bad that my coworkers were spending that kind of money out of pocket so I shifted them “if your candy bowl happens to have smarties that would be great.” I also fixed everyone’s computer stuff more quickly. The expensive candy bar bribes were reserved for times when I had to crawl under computers and get covered in dust or get incredibly out of date software to work.

    2. LPUK*

      I used to work for a well-known confectionery firm who would give you a little bag of confectionery that came off the lines that week ( street value about £2.50 at the time). It is AMAZING how much benefit you can get by giving the right people a bag of chocolate!

      2. Chinook*

        Best tips I ever made as a “coffee girl” was from the chocolate company workers who appreciated that we always had their favourite donuts freshly baked when their evening shift coffee break came in. Literally a sandwich bag of “seconds” of the chocolate of our choice (because they asked) that normally only could be found in a fancy box of chocolates (and then there was only 1 or two of a given flavour). I was in chocolate covered cherry heaven!

      3. Lissajous*

        I used to do something like this – I was the project mechanical engineer on a mine site in the middle of nowhere, as mine sites tend to be. I had to go into town every 2-3 days to fill up the fuel pod on the back of my ute, and there were very few people who could go into town at all. I’d also pick up some of the family packs of biscuits, and a couple of packs of chocolate biscuits.

        Me: Hey, the valve pits have rocked up – doesn’t need to be today, but we do need to get these two in particular installed as a priority, the rest we’ve got time.
        Supervisor: I’ll see what we can do – there’s lot on at the moment!
        Me: I know, believe me! Here, have some timtams to go with that cuppa.
        Supervisor: …so how about tomorrow for those valve pits?

        This was not underhand, alas, so doesn’t qualify for Alison’s request – my manager understood very well how far a couple of biscuits could go for good will, and cheerfully signed off the expense claims with nary a quibble.
        Those and the good coffee machine made that job a lot easier!

        1. Berkeleyfarm*

          On my sysadmin groups we often call it something like The Swedish Fish Principle – from a long-ago story where a hard working computer person always put a bag or two of a candy (Swedish Fish in his example) in the box when something had to go to the repair depot and always found that his requests were taken care of MOST expeditiously.

          I love timtams myself and am delighted that they are more findable in the US these days. (My old food blog had an illustrated guide to the Tim Tam Slam.)

      4. Scarrlet*

        We have a customer who always brings us bags of name brand chocolate. He owns a warehouse that he donated space to a food bank to use. Apparently, big organizations like Feeding America will call up food banks and go, “Okay, we have a big corporate donation for your food bank, it’s a truckload of breathmints.” If you respond with, “Our community doesn’t really need any breathmints, so we will decline. We really have a need for things like peanut butter or canned veggies,” you get categorized as “not needy enough” and get moved down the list so that you are the last to call when they have their next donation (which might be the peanut butter you need). So this food bank ended up accepting a shipment of thousands of pounds of a certain popular chocolate brand that were close dated, and ultimately had most of it left when it “expired” and couldn’t be handed out. We were happy to take as much slightly expired chocolate off his hands as he wanted to give us.

        He is a very nice man with very simple needs so we would be happy to see him even without the chocolate.

        1. JessaB*

          That is kind of odd, due to COVID issues I did a lot of shopping at food banks and many of the items are at or just past “best buy by” dates and they gave them out. Most food is good for longer than the dates on them indicate. Also at holiday times our local candy company (their main plant is like 3 miles from where I live on the same street, gives a truckload of their boxed selections to the food banks to give out brand new full on candy to their patrons. Sometimes breath mints are a thing you throw a handful in and find out that your patronage likes em.

          We have one massive food bank (Actually called the FoodBank) that distributes stuff around the city to smaller banks, so a truckload of mints would be fine.

    3. Anonymous4*

      I used to design reports for my department, and they were awful! Lots of data from all over the company, lots of requirements for variability, on and on and on. Plus, we had an overworked, cranky mainframe and my quarterly (and especially the year-end) reports tended to lock the computer up for three days.

      I would make frequent forays down into the IT department with homemade cookies, a big candy jar, a bowl of homegrown cherry tomatoes, or whatever was seasonably appropriate. Bribery helped make sure they answered my phone calls, and as long as I didn’t have to hand out $20 bills, I was fine with that!

    4. wine dude*

      In Olden Times waaay before Covid I used to travel monthly for business. I would always bring a bag of cookies with me I had baked the night before to share with airline people. Somehow I always managed to get the exit row or upgrade that made the flight a little less unbearable for my tall frame…

  4. SpiteCartridges*

    I transitioned to remote work for a company about 15 years ago due to a variety of factors, including my family’s relocation, timing of retirements/new staff in my department rendering my institutional knowledge really valuable, and while I can’t say I was the world’s best employee, I was damn good at some key tasks. A couple higher-ups were unhappy with the mere idea of my role working remotely and tried to make it as onerous as they could (jokes on them, even they eventually admitted it worked out great for everyone for over two years before I grew out of the work/moved on!). One particularly ridiculous requirement they establishes was that I had to purchase my own printer/scanner out of pocket that met very particular specs. The admin assistant who did all the supply orders was so furious on my behalf that they made me do this that she bought me twice the printer’s list price in ink cartridges for it and had it shipped directly to me. This printer still works, and, since I need it as often as you’d expect, we have a lifetime’s supply of spite cartridges.

    3. Magenta Sky*

      “twice the printer’s list price in ink cartridges”

      Depending on the brand, that could be one or two cartridges.

  5. TradeMark*

    So, back in the 90s, I worked for a rental car company – not one of the airport ones, but rather one that operated in the insurance replacement market. Sometimes we had insurance companies other than the renters’ being billed for the car, so when someone rented, we wanted to verify that they had car insurance in case something happened to our car. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule that we get that information – people who are getting a car in this circumstance typically have car insurance. But, it was best practice to confirm the information.

    Anyway, I had a couple in to get a car and I asked for verification of their insurance. The wife said that she didn’t bring it, and the husband just lit into her, “how could you be so dumb, etc.” It was super uncomfortable and totally ridiculous and in an effort to cut him off, I asked for his driver’s license to get the paperwork started for their rental. Well, it turned out he didn’t have the license with him. Now, you may not have needed to prove you have insurance to get a rental car, but you absolutely needed to show a drivers license to get one. So, I had the sweet satisfaction of telling this jackhole that I couldn’t rent him a car, but that I could get one for his wife.

    6. The Dude Abides*

      I wish a local car rental place was as diligent as yours – two years ago, my car got totaled by someone who had rented a truck for moving (they ran the red light). I’m still waiting for reimbursement on my $500 deductible, since they gave the rental agency expired insurance information.

  6. Anny Mouse*

    I used to work with this woman who was a police clerk for a small town. She also served as an unofficial dog catcher because their animal control was really overwhelmed so when the station got a call about a loose dog, she would go pick it up and either keep it in the kennel or would let it run around the station if it was friendly. I came into the office quite a few times to find a dog sitting on her lap while she was working. Anyway, there was this one couple whose dog got out every couple weeks like clock work. She had told me that they had no idea how the dog was getting out and had tried basically everything and were always really apologetic. They should have been ticketed but every time an officer would come in and ask if it was the same dog as before she would always say Nope! Never seen him before. A very small “abuse” of power but she just loved that dog.

    1. Katy*

      That’s great! My cousin used to have a dog (named Houdini, of course) who could escape from anything. The dog’s first owner, the one who named him, gave him to my cousin because he was sick of paying the fees to bail him out of the pound. He said that the people at the pound had told him when he adopted the dog that the dog was going to escape all the time, and since they recognized that this was going to happen regardless of who owned him, it was hardly fair of them to charge him for it every time.

      1. Dobby is a Free Elf!*

        But did your cousin manage to stop him from getting out? Inquiring minds need to know.

      2. Seeking Second Childhood*

        I’ve known more than one dog that learned to open latches. The Jack Russell got away with getting away for a year because the gate had a spring to swing it shut. (Happily he only wanted to follow the sun into the front yard, so no tickets from Animal Control.)

        1. KoiFeeder*

          My mother’s engagement present from my dad, besides the ring, was a livestock guardian puppy because she had to walk around in a shady part of town often. Occasionally he’d open up the front door and just go walkabout to survey his terrain and make sure no shady people were around.

          He was a good dog by all accounts, even if he did trap someone in the bathroom once because mom didn’t realize that she had to be in the house for him to be willing to allow any visitors in the house.

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      Our previous dog survived being in an under-funded kill shelter in a rural town for many months longer than he would have otherwise, simply because the woman running the shelter liked him and kept finding excuses to keep him around instead of the alternative. He was an incredibly sweet dog, and I’ve always been very grateful that the shelter director kept him long enough to let us adopt him.

      1. dawbs*

        My childhood dog came from a moment like that.
        It was “why the hell is this 6 month old possibly purebred, beautiful, loves children, friendly dog still here? it’s amazing” and the shelter bent the rules,s made some phone calls, adopted it out to a ‘friend’ and then managed to have the friend be the foster until someone (us!) matched up with her
        And she was amazing.

        (actually, our last dog came from some jerk dropping off puppies to young to be separated…and some kind soul bottle raised them until we came for them. I know it was to early for the pups to legally be separated from their mother [ my state, law is 8 weeks], but the shelter worker said they didn’t think they’d get the care they needed to survive for 4-6 more weeks from the person who had them…so they turned a blind eye to that law for the moment and took them. Worked out well for us. and the dawgus)

    4. EllieBellie*

      Ah, and I have a story that’s sort of the opposite, but still a happy ending:

      My cousin also worked at a police station. She, too, dealt with a very sweet dog that kept getting loose. The difference was, this dog’s owners were NOT doing their best to keep it in, were NOT apologetic, and sometimes took over a week to pay the minor fine to get the dog out of the pound because they’d use the $20 to buy beer instead. They didn’t actively abuse the dog, but they didn’t give a damn for its safety and frankly didn’t care one way or the other if it ever came home (and said as much on multiple occasions when my cousin called them to let them know the dog had been picked up).

      So one day when she found that same sweet dog loose on the streets AGAIN, my cousin didn’t bring it to the pound like she was supposed to, she brought it home. Its original owners never came looking for it, and it’s now the most beloved and spoiled pooch you’ve ever seen.

      3. Anny Mouse*

        My coworker almost took a dog home once! She didn’t get any response on social media and when Animal Control came and took them I know she checked on their website a bunch and said it was eventually put up for adoption. She ultimately decided against it but I had really hoped she would!

      4. Juneybug*

        Our horrible neighbor who ran an illegal dog breeding business. We will call her “Jessie, the backyard breeder”. Jessie had dogs escape all the time (I too would run far from that place). One time, her dog landed at friend of a friend’s house. Since this was a certain type of breed dog, I knew exactly where it came from. But I say something when asked if I knew the owner? (The answer was nope).
        I have heard from the grapevine that the dog stayed with the family and living her best doggie life.
        For those who will ask – the illegal dog breeder did not post looking for her dogs because then the county could deny her business license.

      5. The Rafters*

        Sounds like the dog found his furever home. It just took your cousin a little while to realize it.

    5. Delta Delta*

      I once found a pair of Airedales and called the local animal control officer. Her response, “oh, the Airedales? Yeah, we know them. They get out all the time.” And they offered to come get the dogs and deliver them home. When the officer showed up the dogs were all happy/waggy because they knew her from all their other adventures.

      1. Working Hypothesis*

        We moved from the city to a rural small town a few years ago, and one afternoon my teenager called me on their cell phone after school. “I can’t get into the house,” they explained. “There’s a cow in the front yard.”

        I went out to look, and there was indeed a cow in the front yard… who promptly treed me on a large rock when I tried to get across the yard to where my kid was. I had my phone with me and called 911, not knowing who else to dial (and not having the phone book with me on a rock in the yard). I admitted that no, it probably wasn’t *exactly* emergent, in that if I stayed on this rock I was probably safe… but I couldn’t get down and my kid couldn’t get out of the street.

        It took three hours, but the local cops did come around to look into the cow situation. By that time, she had wandered around to the side yard where the grazing was better, and my kid and I had been able to get inside, so the whole situation was by that time just funny. We watched out the window as the cops tried for a bit to round up the cow, failed, and then went with the rather more effective plan of going around the neighborhood to ask if anybody had lost a cow.

        They found the owner — there weren’t that many houses in our neighborhood. She came over with profuse apologies and collected her cow, but it was back within the week. This time I was less frightened, as she’d told me the cow was actually just overly friendly; but still, several hundred pounds of beef running eagerly in your direction is not entirely safe whether it wants to skewer you or get scritches. So I kept it at a distance and called the owner, whose number I had after the first time.

        We hosted that cow at least four times before I went around in person to let them know their cow was out again. This time, I got to know the owner better; apparently the cow was her husband’s passion project, except that he was away for work a lot of the time, and the cow was lonely. His wife, who ended up taking care of it most of the time and wasn’t happy with this, asked me if I minded her using our displeasure with the cow’s visits — which was largely fictional; by this time instead of being displeased we found it hilarious — as an excuse to give her husband for why they should re-home the cow.

        It must have worked… or at least taught him to build a stouter pen for her!! We were never visited by that cow again.

        1. allathian*

          Love the cow story! I wonder if you’ve posted it here before, because I had a strong sense of déjà vu when I read it?

          1. Working Hypothesis*

            I might have! I do post it occasionally when there’s a reasonable lead in. I don’t especially remember one from Ask a Manager but it wouldn’t surprise me if there had been. :)

                1. Working Hypothesis*

                  Sorry for the repeat! I guess the story, like the cow, just keeps coming back to its favorite places. :)

        1. Working Hypothesis*

          Of the Airedales or of my neighbor’s cow? I can’t quite tell how the threading falls into place in this section.

    6. Art3mis*

      Our dog ended up in rescue because she kept getting out of her yard and picked up by local animal control. The last time her owners just didn’t pick her up. We’ve had her almost 4 years now and she’s only got out of our yard once when a workman didn’t latch the gate right.

      1. Anny Mouse*

        To be fair the officers knew darn well what she was doing. It was a distinct looking dog. But loose dogs always seemed to find her, even when she was off work!

    8. Hannah Lee*

      Years ago, a friend’s mother ran a veterinary practice in NH. One day someone brought in a young dog that had been running loose and got hit by a car. She fixed him up and while he was healing had her office staff search around for the owners. They found who the owners were, and it turned out it was a couple who were well known in the area for letting their animals run free, weren’t great about training, routine care for their pets, so vet had had a couple of cases of them bringing in a perfectly nice animal which was suffering or having to be put down because these dopes had failed to give the dog, cat regular shots, get the obstruction treated when they first noticed the the pet had stopped eating, or had gotten into a snap trap, been hit by a car, etc because the owners allowed it to roam. It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford proper pet care, they just didn’t want to bother.

      She thought about it for a bit, and decided, hell no I am not going to give this sweet dog back to those jerks. She asked her 20 something son if he knew anyone who might be good dog parents. And that’s how we came to be gifted my favorite pet dog ever! He was a sweetheart, my confidant in my teens and 20s and aside from terror about thunder and firecrackers, just fluffy, gentle, funny and perfect. (He was also a purebred golden retriever, which we’d never have been able to afford otherwise) Mom wasn’t sure about it when vet’s son first showed up with him, but Pup ran into the house and immediately laid down quietly at her feet like he knew she was boss, and wagged his tail looking up at her, and won her over.

      We heard that eventually, like months later, the original owners came around asking if anyone had turned in a lost dog matching that description. She and the rest of her staff were all innocent “oh my, how sad your dog went missing … no, sorry, we haven’t seen him. Good luck with your search”

    9. ZebraNeighbor*

      My beloved pony came from a similar situation. He lived all by himself in a huge field – this is a bad idea for social animals such as horses. He escaped on a regular basis to cuddle with the horses at other farms. The finders would call Animal Control and eventually start charging board fees because the owners took so long to pick him up. One of the Animal Control officers paid off his most recent bill and announced that he belonged to her now. Even though he loved being around people and other horses, he was mostly wild. I adopted him shortly thereafter. The Animal Control officer did that a few more times, paying off the bills of abandoned horses and seizing them herself. Definitely an abuse of power and questionably legal, but it worked out for the horses.

      2. allathian*

        Lovely!

        I suspect that the cow that kept escaping from her pen as described by Working Hypothesis above in this thread was also lonely. Cows are also social animals.

        2. Working Hypothesis*

          Oh, absolutely she was lonely. She had no other cows living with her, and fairly little human attention, because the man who had really wanted her wasn’t home much, and his wife was forced into taking care of the cow for him. She did her best by that cow, but she was busy and not much of a cow person anyway, so she gave her good physical care but not much extra time and attention. The cow responded by breaking out of her pen frequently and going visiting, hoping to find somebody else willing to keep her company.

          I felt very sorry for her, and even stopped to pet her for a little while on a couple of her later visits to our yard. But she really needed a home where she had regular company in the place where she actually lived, without having to run around the neighborhood looking for it!! I really hope that guy found a new home for her after his wife told him that I had come around to complain. (I didn’t; I actually went around to investigate, but she asked my permission to misrepresent my attitude in order to be persuasive.) None of us ever saw her again, so maybe he did. I like to think of her living peacefully in a yard with a couple of other cows and horses, and not running away anymore because she doesn’t feel she has to.

  7. Aurora*

    My old company, significantly pre-COVID, were not fans of WFH.
    So, they enacted a corporate policy that if you needed to stay home with a sick child, you had to use a sick day and not just WFH, because if your kid was sick you needed to nurse them all day.

    Now, maybe with a small child, but I had multiple people on my team with kids who were 10+. Most sick 10+ kids, you dose ’em every few hours, try to get them to do homework, video games.

    So, I had an “off site team meeting” where we discussed how to call in with a sick kid but WFH anyway. We generated an entire list of “can’t come in, cable guy is coming!” type excuses. They’d use them on the corporate phone/email, and text my personal cell that the kid was sick.

    Our management either never figured it out, or decided to look the other way because they had no proof.

    5. Sarah*

      I love this. My current company has a rule that you cannot use sick time for anyone *except* yourself. So, not for staying home with a sick kid, not for taking your elder to a doctor’s appointment, just if *you, personally* are sick.

      I told my direct report (who has a kid) the policy, then looked her in the eye and said, “I never need to know why you’re taking a sick day, okay?”

      2. Froodle*

        My absolute poo-factory of a job has implemented this same rule… which we found out when it was retroactively applied and a co-worker suddenly found herself £300 short on her December pay cheque, with no previous discussion or notification. During the pandemic.

        Anyone with sick kids is suddenly getting a lot of norovirus, and no, sorry, they can’t work from home due to symptoms. So many symptoms. Come here, malevolent HR buffoon,and hear our symptoms.

        Company chose to play a silly game, and they’ve won themselves a monumentally stupid prize.

      3. Meow*

        I mean… what are you supposed to do if your kid is sick if you can’t take sick leave? Magically know a week in advance and take vacation?

      4. KateM*

        I live in a country where the law is that when *you* are sick, your employer has to pay you part of salary starting at 3rd day, first two days being unpaid sick leave; but when you are on sick leave because you are taking care of your sick child, government is paying 100% of your salary starting at the very first day. (It all goes with doctor’s note, of course – you need to call your GP and tell them that you / your kid is sick so they can open an official form for sick leave.)
        So, if you ever fall sick at the same time with your kid (like we had 5/6 of family down with covid last month), I think every single GP in the country puts you down as taking care of your sick kid.

    7. Work-From-Anywhere*

      I basically do the same thing! Our office is required to be in the office 2 days a week, but you are free to adjust as needed with your direct supervisor. I just told my team to just text with any ole excuse if they needed/wanted to work from home on day 2 and try to not abuse the privilege. I’m lucky I work with amazingly honest and smart people who know where the line is, and so far it’s worked just fine.

  8. Aerie*

    In one of my first professional jobs, where I was paid barely over minimum wage, any time my boss ordered in lunch for a client, he would “accidentally” over order (who knew the client wouldn’t want to eat TWO entrees? Or that three people wouldn’t eat 8 lbs of barbeque?) so I could bring home leftovers. Corporate didn’t know exactly how many people were at any of these meetings since we were a satellite office, so he was never caught and I ate much better than I got to eat from some of the best restaurants in the city that I never would have been able to afford on my own.

    This boss was also a wine aficionado so any time we went out to lunch in the office he made sure to order us a good wine.

    3. Susie Q*

      I’ve done this. My company will pay for client’s lunches but employees have to pay during a working lunch. So I always order based on the customer invited list knowing many of them won’t come and my team can have the leftover lunches.

      1. Reluctant Manager*

        That sucks on the company’s part–don’t they think it will look bad when the staff are all sitting around hungry?

        1. OhNo*

          If it’s anything like my old workplace, their logic was “We pay you enough to afford your own meal at working lunches.”

          Spoiler: they definitely didn’t. And even if they had, it was just a case of trying to offload the cost of doing business onto employees wherever possible. Unsurprisingly, the meals were not the only example of that.

    4. Rey*

      I’ll never know if my college boss did this on purpose or not, but there was always extra food from lunch meetings for us student employees, and often healthy salads and vegetables that we probably weren’t eating enough of anyway. The same boss also saved up all of the free perks from those food orders to pay for our student Christmas party at the end of the year.

      1. dawbs*

        I used to be the boss of student workers; officially, I ALWAYS ordered for the attendees only.

        Unofficially, the dean and I found ways to round up and I chased off full time instructors from the leftovers to make sure the starving college students ate.

        Somehow there was ALWAYS extra pizza for my kids. Always.

      2. Rosalind Franklin*

        I used to work out of a medical office with the associated drug rep meals. You’d be shocked how often there would be massive, untouched trays of fruit and salad left over. They just weren’t interested in fruit and salad!

        1. advertising: more 'mad thanksgiving with your family' than 'mad men'*

          On the agency side of things (pharma marketing, making stuff for the reps to use to sell you drugs), I’ve always noticed the fruit gets snapped up but the salads are left to wilt unless they’re baby spinach.

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

      I had a similar experience. When I was in college I worked for campus dining. They often had leftovers and such from catering events. These were often really good things, think baked brie cheese board, really good cakes. Fancy stuff that most college students could only dream of. Well, corporate management had said that if something couldn’t be repurposed or put in the dining hall it should be thrown away (so if there were veggies from a charcuterie board should be repurposed for the salad bar but a baked brie would be thrown.)
      Well, the Chefs and managers thought this was stupid so they would just let us eat it. Students were also not allowed to take food out of the dining room but they allowed us to take our free meals home with us or take the leftovers from the catering home.

      Also one time the chef was trying to use up some leftover alfreado sauce so she made a chicken and spinage pizza. This was not something that was “approved” to be on the list. (every college that had this dining service had the same meals each day. So like every Monday would be spaghetti night no matter if you were in my college or a college 3 states away. They did make exceptions during lent since I went to a private catholic college.) Anyways she makes the pizza and I think only us student workers ate it. It was so good we each took a piece, went to the back and ate it. Washed our hands and then went back to work.

      1. Meow*

        I worked for a place that let people rent meeting rooms and had a catering service. Since the customers technically paid for the food, no one else was allowed to eat it. But similarly, the chef at that place was appalled over all the food that went to waste that way, he told us AV people and maintenance staff to take some when we cleaned up afterwards. I was young and single and got so many free meals. (It was just sandwiches and snacks, but plenty for a work lunch)

      2. Raboot*

        I worked for university catering while im school. It was really really common that there would be leftovers from client events that were like, uneaten tiramisu, or a whole tray of fancy pasta bake that was never even opened – tons of perfectly good, non-gross food. (Catering is a very wasteful industry, turns out.) We’d put it in the staff fridge and anyone could eat it and take as much as they wanted home. Fancy free food as a college student, what more do you need.

        One day the catering director had all us students in for a meeting and basically said “y’all, I’ve been told by the University Food Service that we’re not allowed to let you take food home. So just make sure you don’t let other UFS employees see that you’re still taking food home unless you’re sure they aren’t narcs.”

        1. MAC*

          My most recent Previous Job was at a nonprofit. One of my responsibilities was event coordination. During my first event I learned that since we did a buffet line rather than seated/plated meals for lunch events honoring donors, the venue would tear it down before staff got a chance to eat. I guess because health codes? Length of time on the warming stations, or some such?

          Our team worked really hard, for nonprofit salaries, so from then on at every event I managed, I rallied a couple of volunteers and requested a dozen plates & domes and we dished up meals for all our workers who were busy making the event happen. Then when it was over, we’d eat together while the venue staff cleared the rest of the tables.

          The venue also wouldn’t let us take the leftover trays of desserts (cookies, brownies, finger food stuff — nothing that required plates or utensils) even though we’d paid for them. “No food can leave the premises!” So we started coming prepared – we’d bring several gallon-size Ziploc baggies and a few shopping totes and — again, after the event was over and everyone else had left — stealthily make the rounds to each table and smuggle the often-untouched goodies back to our table, tuck them away, and haul them back to the office … snacks all week!

        2. Azure Jane Lunatic*

          At one of my tech industry jobs, there was an email list that had been set up for the purpose of informing others of free food.

          As the administrative assistant of my team, when we were done with our catering I would personally send out the call to vultures@ (actual name of the list) so people could descend in a timely fashion.

          I also made sure that when I was ordering breakfast catering, that there was a substantial portion of much less time-sensitive food for people to snack on throughout the morning.

      3. Usagi*

        I worked for a large international catering service before, and our chefs/managers would always “mistakenly” order too much ingredients. A few days before events, one of the chefs would write a few seemingly random dishes on a white board (which mysteriously all used the same or similar ingredients to things that the customer ordered). Then, over the next few days, magnets would appear next to dishes.

        Completely unrelated, on the day of the event, the chefs would “mistakenly” cook an extra dish, which the customer did not order. Of course, it couldn’t be served to them since it wasn’t part of their order, so it would be stored in our break area fridge until someone had the time to throw it away (at the end of the day of course, since we were all so busy). Strangely, someone would also store a bunch of take-away boxes next to it too. Even more strangely, sometimes, someone would portion all that food into the take-away boxes before storing it in the fridge?

        It was 100% coincidence that the dish the chefs cooked was also the dish that had the most number of magnets next to it on the white board.

    7. Radical Edward*

      What a thoughtful boss!

      I used to work in a (non-hotel) venue that had its own restaurant in addition to rooms for hire. The restaurant catered all the meetings and events, and their food was excellent so customers usually splashed out on the buffet options. Technically nobody was allowed to eat the leftovers because of sanitation/liability concerns, but the staff hated waste (who wouldn’t?!) so someone would always stick their head in our office after the guests had left and quietly tell us where the food was and how long we had before it was cleared away. Being fresh out of college and very poor, my coworkers and I would fill tupperware containers with whatever we couldn’t eat on the spot and stash them in the fridge to take home. I saved hundreds of dollars on my food budget every year.

      1. MAC*

        LOL, I just posted a story a couple lines up of how my co-workers and I (not fresh out of college poor, but underpaid nonprofit poor) worked that type of system from the other side!

      2. I take tea*

        As a student worker I really appreciated the chance to eat fancy salads, cheese and fruit that were leftovers from whatever happening there had been catered for. The in house catering staff weren’t allowed to take any home, or let us take it home, but sometimes they were just deliberately slow in cleaning it away and waited for us locusts to eat it, rather than throwing it away. It was of course not supposed to go to us, it had been sitting out for a while, but they couldn’t keep an eye out for any random students if they were busy doing the dishes or whatever, right?

    8. KateM*

      Well, it’s always better to have leftovers than run out of food, especially for a client lunch. And it is also not a bad idea to order two different entrees so that your client can choose (just think if you ordered something they won’t eat!).

    9. Kat in VA*

      I’m an EA. We regularly and routinely over-order catering because golly gosh gee, you just *never* know how many people they’re going to add on to those meetings at the last minute, amirite, guise?

      This doesn’t benefit us specifically – it’s understood that if we order catering, we get fed too. This is for other folks who are head down and don’t have time to order out, younger folks who maybe don’t have a lot of stretch dollars for (now insanely) expensive lunches to be brought in, the building managers, whoever wants extra food. It’s not usually super fancy (boxed sandwiches and salads in this Covid era), but we always ensure that we’re at least +20% if not more.

  9. ClerkGoneCrazy*

    I work in hospitality, and a big thing with our computer system is that there aren’t prices, there are “rate IDs” that then generate prices from a database that can only be edited by top-level managers. Well, one weekend my boss yanked the Sunday rates way up – intending to reduce traffic so that he wouldn’t have to come in – and then declared me the “acting manager” for the same reason, and gives me a password to do all the managerial things.
    Fast forward to Sunday night, when a young-ish woman comes in, no luggage, no reservation, and as tense as I’ve ever seen a human being, looking over her shoulder every time the front door opens. Obviously she’s running from a stalker, abusive husband or boyfriend, something like that. She has enough cash to cover our regular rate, but not the artificially increased one. What am I going to say, “You have to use your credit card and potentially tell someone where you are”? Not happening. So instead I see if my password will let me into the rate IDs. Sure enough, it does, and I edit the price back to the original for her, then put it back when I’m done. As far as I know, no one ever noticed the change, but if they do I’ll happily defend my actions.

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

      Good for you! And that person probably didn’t even realize what you did, but if she had I’m sure she would have been so thankful.

      1. LavenderStingray*

        As someone who works as a crisis advocate, I can truly say you are a hero!! There aren’t enough people like you in the world. Shelters are so overbooked and you may have been her only hope

    8. Working Hypothesis*

      Okay, you win the hero award for this topic. As somebody who might have been that young woman once, thank you.

    10. ICodeForFood*

      You definitely win the hero award… and EPLawyer is right in that you might have saved a life!

    13. I take tea*

      Thank you. This is the cases you should bend the rules for, not the ones that are shouting the loudest.

  10. Jay*

    I walked into my office on the first day at a new job and found it fully stocked with supplies – and I do mean FULLY stocked. Two boxes of staples. A large box of paperclips. A large box of rubber bands. Three dozen pens. A whole bunch of legal pads. Post-it notes in every color of the rainbow. The office manager said “they always tell me to order whatever new people might need, so I figured I’d get as much as I could.” I left that job ten years later and had not needed to request anything except more pens.

    1. Lilly76*

      I work in government so it’s not uncommon to have someone start and be given a desk still filled with junk from the previous occupant. I think that is the worst so whenever I have transferred teams or departments I make sure to thoroughly clean out the space I’m leaving and also stock it with fresh new supplies. Full pads of paper and sticky notes new highlights etc. Small but I think it’s a better way to welcome a new person

      2. A Feast of Fools*

        One of our team members started a new job a few weeks ago and I got her old cube. It’s in a prime location, off in its own corner with a window. I was genuinely happy to see that she left a pencil cup full of straws, pens with my favorite ink colors (purple and green), a lumbar thingy for the back of the chair, a rocking foot rest, a tap-to-turn-on lamp, and a full-tube of rose-scented lotion. Oh, and cube pins, those things you use to hang up paper and signs on the cube fabric.

        In this one specific instance, I am loving all the leftovers. :-)

      3. calonkat*

        I do that too! I figure everyone deserves the chance to build up their own hoard of pens, pencils, and sticky notes.
        And no one can use the notes from past conferences!!! It doesn’t matter that law XYZ was covered at the 2018 conference, no one has time to read every conference binder/flashdrive from the past. Everyone just searches on the web for current info! If one thing is indeed the standard, scan and PDF that thing for everyone to use!

      4. advertising: more 'mad thanksgiving with your family' than 'mad men'*

        when I was still working on-site I would also do this every time they moved our desks around, with the exception that I always hid a couple of post-it origami cranes (and the occasional flamingo, if I had pink post-its) in the filing cabinet for the new tenant to find

      5. Avril Ludgateau*

        I work in government and indeed I inherited my predecessor’s desk with a whole lot of junk, including a pen drawer full of writing implements.

        And one old, rusty steak knife that I found by reaching for one of those pens.

    2. Resident Catholicville, USA*

      You would be surprised at how often no one cleans a desk and restocks it after someone leaves and a new person is expected to take that desk over. I’ve cleaned out desks that had pudding spilled all over inside (!) and encrusted with god’s knows what. I always thoroughly wipe the desk down and make sure that the next person has at the very least a stapler, Post-it’s, pens, pencils, etc. I’ve started in places where no one has done this- literally left the last person’s stuff and not cleaned it- so I know it’s important to start a new person off with a new, clean slate.

      1. Eleanorjane*

        The previous staff member to me died suddenly and tragically and I came in to the office pretty much unchanged (they did clear out old coffee cups etc.) including her name on the stapler, notebooks full of her writing etc. A bit creepy, I have to say.

        I’ve changed up the furniture a bit, changed the stuff on the pin board, put some plants in and decluttered but I’d love to waft some burning sage around the place and totally redecorate! (and I don’t even believe in smudging!).

  11. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    Junior year in college, I befriended our RA. There was a room between mine and the RA’s, and two students who liked to “study” to loud music every night (it was loud enough you could hear it at the other end of the building, even on higher and lower floors) and recycled at least a pound of aluminum in the form of empty cheap-beer cans every morning. The dorm also had balconies and a flat roof, which were attractive for socializing and relaxing; many students in the dorm chose it for that very reason.

    We had an incident on the roof of the dorm in late September or early October, where the police were called and some drunken students threw debris at them as they approached the dorm. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and no one was harmed by anyone else (one of the students did *attempt* to run through a reinforced plate glass window while trying to evade police pursuit within the building).

    As a result, the RAs were issued keys to the balconies and roof, and instructed to lock them late afternoon or early evening, to avoid more trouble. It turns out the key also worked the circuit breaker, and every night afterwards, a few minutes after dusk, the loud students mysteriously began to trip their room’s circuit and lose power for the night.

    2. cubone*

      I would die for an AAM day of only stories about and from former RAs. It is absolutely one of the weirdest worlds of work and I miss it!

      2. Momma Bear*

        I’d love this.

        I lived in a coed dorm, just divided by floor. By the end of the year, one of the students dropped out/left, leaving her roommate alone. Shortly thereafter the singleton’s boyfriend basically moved into her room. He sat in on our floor meetings and was more polite and respectful of common areas (including the bathroom) than half the women that lived there. Technically the RAs were supposed to tell him to go “home” after visiting hours but they all ignored it since he wasn’t causing any problems and the women on the floor didn’t care.

            2. MBK*

              Lisa McGee and Nicola Coughlan both confirmed that season 3 finished shooting on December 21 and will be broadcast sometime this year. It will be (and was always intended to be) the final season.

        2. Working Hypothesis*

          My father lived in an all-boys dorm in the early sixties, when he was in college. The university had to have separate dorms due to the prevailing standards of the time, but they believed in treating students like adults unless and until proven otherwise, so the rules about visiting hours were rarely enforced. One guy had his girlfriend basically living with him, and nobody cared… until the two of them had a screaming argument at three in the morning.

          The Resident Master — not the upperclassmen who were RAs, not even the graduate students who served as RHs, but the full professor MASTER — lived directly below that couple, and he started up the stairs looking Very Grumpy Indeed. Being good neighbors, the other guys on the floor tried to distract him long enough to warn the couple to shut up and get the girl into a hiding spot, but he brushed them off and marched stolidly onward.

          When he knocked on the door, the girl flung it open in annoyance… and then saw who was there and froze in horror. In her skimpy nightgown.

          The Resident Master looked at her balefully — and tiredly — for a long, terrifying moment, and then just said, “For Chrissake, Sally… either shut up, or go home!”

          And he turned around and marched back down to his own apartment.

          Sally and her boyfriend must have either stopped arguing or finished their disagreement in whispers, because my dad says that not another sound came out of that room for the rest of the night. Sally was allowed to remain until the end of the school year.

        3. Underemployed Erin*

          I lived in a co-ed dorm that was divided by sides of the hall, with all the bathrooms being in the center. Girls rooms faced girls bathrooms. On the other side, boys rooms faced boys bathrooms, but there was an area by the elevators and a common area near the bathrooms that connected both sides of the hall.

          I went away to my aunt’s place for the weekend but had to return to get some medication. I found a couple that my roommate was friends with in my bed. I had just come back for some medication. The roommate washed my sheets before I got back the next day.

      6. introverted af*

        Oh man, the stories I could tell. I did it for 3 years through the end of my degree and all my current best friends 5 years on are friends I worked with in the dorms.

      7. Miss Muffet*

        i’d be so here for that! I did it for a year and so did my spouse (that’s how we met) … man, the stories of the things the residents did were bad enough. The staff stories were a masterclass in dysfunctional workplace!

      8. KoiFeeder*

        My undergrad advisor (before I was able to switch advisors the next year) was also the mother of my RA’s boyfriend. I would’ve happily believed that my rooming assignment was a coincidence if the advisor wasn’t always “checking in” with me every time the boyfriend stayed over at my RA’s dorm for the night.

        I truthfully never noticed anything- the RA was very polite and considerate. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have admitted to it. It was just so weird!

      9. Sue D. O'Nym*

        Junior year, we had an RA that was a Sophomore. On move in day, as they were coming around to introduce themselves, one of my friends had the following conversation with them:

        Friend: See these 8 rooms? (4 on each side at the end of the hallway)
        RA: Yes?
        Friend: All of us are juniors, we all lived with the same people in the same rooms last year, and half of us were here Freshman year as well. We won’t cause any issues for you, we just want to be left alone.
        RA: Ok, deal.

        Both sides stuck to the agreement. The RA would occasionally pass through and say hi, but we never gave them any reason to need to spend time dealing with us.

    3. quill*

      +1 I will admit to having been VERY tempted to trip the circuts on our unsecured breaker panel for a room with these sorts of students.

      The breaker panel was unsecured because each breaker went to two different rooms and all you had to do to trip it was have both rooms microwaving ramen at the same time while enough lamps / laptops / cell phones were plugged in: in practice unless you coordinated well with your breakermates it happened at least once a month in each room.

      When I was a senior, having lived on the same floor for three years and also having an RA who was a junior and officially “didn’t care what [I] did as long as nobody catches you with alcohol” (I was 21, but it was a dry campus) I discovered that there were a LOT of people afraid of resetting their own breaker. (You did not have to change a fuse or anything: switch fully off, switch fully on.) As a result I knew which pairs of rooms all the breakers went to.

      I did nothing myself, but I DID leave the RA a chart. Just in case.

      1. advertising is more 'mad thanksgiving with your family' than 'mad men'*

        I once had a key to my apartment breaker room because I was long-term tenant in a vintage building and the management company was sick of sending maintenance out to flip my circuit back when I’d thrown the circuit. I was VERY tempted to take away my neighbor’s electricity when they played furniture-vibratingly loud music at 3AM.

        I never actually did. But I often wish I had.

    5. Snowy*

      I had a neighbor in the dorms who obnoxiously listened to the same three songs on repeat, full blast, constantly. She happened to have nearly all her appliances on our shared wall, so I figured out that with her stereo on, I could short out the ancient 1960s wiring by turning on my microwave. Silence was worth having no power on my half of the room.

      1. Snowy*

        I should add, the only way to reset the breaker was to go down to the front desk and ask them to do it. And I was friends with a lot of the front desk people.

    2. Annie Onymous*

      Ah yes the chaotic good of buying your own vest at goodwill and then passionately defending your neighborhood crosswalks. I love that person.

      1. Working Hypothesis*

        So long as she was actually following crossing rules, at least the way they’re typically used (I don’t expect her to know every detail; most actual hired crossing guards don’t), I agree. I just hope she wasn’t simply making them up as she went along! I’ve seen people who just walked out into the street and decided to direct traffic, and they caused total havoc by inventing all their own rules so that some people were following them and others were trying to follow the law and still more were desperately attempting to figure out how to do both when they were literally contradictory, and, and, and.

        1. Lizzo*

          I believe that rogue crossing guard was in Chicago, and I can confirm that (1) the majority of our street intersections here do have marked crosswalks, and (2) you are required by law to yield to people in the crosswalk.

    3. CoveredinBees*

      We have a self-appointed crossing guard in our town and he is often a problem. He places himself at busy intersections but tries to make people go against the light that would cause accidents either with other cars or pedestrians. Other days, he stands so in the middle of things, lanes of traffic have to merge to get around him. He’s a retired police officer from the town, so they seem to just go with it.

      1. Rolly*

        That’s pretty on-brand for police (in the US at least): highly incompetent with regards to traffic safety.

  13. Power for good*

    Our organization had a lack of space so they created a committee on office space. Margaret volunteered on the committee even though she was planning to retire within a year. Her mission was to get a dedicated lactation space. Up until this point, breastfeeding mothers had to find a conference room to use if they did not have their own office. Except, it was often difficult to find an open conference room because we were so short on space. The mothers were frustrated, but they didn’t want to make waves. We are in a male-dominated field so there is a real chance of it coming back to haunt you. Margaret had nothing to lose.

    She got push back from others on the committee and leadership. They can use a conference room. They can use the bathroom. She brought up the legal requirements. She also brought up that news media ever found about an organization that claimed it supported women made it so difficult to find a spot to pump that we would look really bad. Within a month, there was a dedicated office for pumping.

    8. River Song*

      Currently in a crisis healthcare role with this hot conference room issue that makes pumping super stressful- we are always understaffed so going to pump is a guilt trip because you’re leaving one person overwhelmed, and then all the “theoretically available” conference rooms and offices never are. Margaret is a hero, and I wish I had her!

    9. Shan*

      This reminds me of the bot that is currently running on twitter. Any time a verified organization posted something about International Woman’s Day, the bot would respond with with a statement like, “Company Z pays women XX% more/less than they pay men.” Sure you support women put have a 20% pay gap. I think it’s for British companies as they have mandatory reporting of that info?

        1. Teapot Wrangler*

          I think there were two in the end and two where women were the higher earners… Most of the tweets I saw were at least 15-25% pay gap for women though

          1. MBK*

            There were quite a few toward the end, but all seemed to be women- or care-centered nonprofits

    10. FlyingAce*

      Nice! When I went back to work after having my first baby, I used the bathroom in the floor below mine – this floor was quite empty, so the bathroom was kept quite clean and it was not a big deal if I locked the door (so as to have privacy in the sink area – of course I was not using the stalls). It lasted for all of a week before HR called me and mentioned it was a liability to keep the bathroom door locked… so they decided to empty the (unused) locker room and turn it into a lactation room. :)

      Now with my second, I’m working from home so I just pump at my desk and keep going!

    11. Fortitudine*

      35 years ago I served with a new mom who used to pump in the women’s restroom, this at a time when most USMC facilities didn’t even have dedicated women’s restrooms, let alone lactation rooms. Our Colonel found out and ordered her to use his office in future (I think he liked having an excuse to escape out to the flightline).

  14. Американка (Amerikanka)*

    When preparing for my wedding, I visited a wedding dress thrift shop and made friendly small talk with the attendant. I asked her about bridzillas on the job, and she said that her manager would kick customers out of the store if they were rude to attendants. I appreciated this manager’s decision to protect their attendants.

    I wish more managers in the US would advocate for and protect those they manage. No one deserves verbal abuse. The customer is NOT always right.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I had a boss (a veterinarian) who would 100% fire people who were mean to us. He was a piece of work in a lot of ways but he did get this right.

    2. BritSouthAfricanAmericanHybrid*

      Totally agree. A friend of mine used to be a GM for a large chain of hotels. He maintained that the customer/guest is not always right and that they do not come first. He said, “If you put your employees first and make sure they are taken care of and happy, you will have happy guests.”

    3. NeutralJanet*

      When I was working at Nordstrom, a customer called one of my coworkers by an anti-Semitic slur because she refused to violate store policy by giving him a cash refund when he paid by card and my manager went BALLISTIC and screamed at him that if he didn’t leave in the next five seconds she would call security to escort him out, then let the coworker go to the back room for a while to collect herself (the manager offered to let her go home, but she said she would be fine, she just needed a few minutes). The manager then gave a description of the guy and what he was wearing to the other department managers, in case he came back that day. Easily the best retail job I ever had, the managers genuinely had our backs—it was such a contrast to the major department store I worked at next.

      1. NeutralJanet*

        Just realized that this actually did include an abuse of power—when Manager offered to let Coworker go home, she also said that Coworker didn’t have to clock out, Manager would just clock her out at the time her shift was scheduled to end, which was about two hours later. Both the fact that Manager made that offer and that Coworker decided to stick around for the rest of her shift anyway should show you how great that job was.

      4. JustaTech*

        Another reason why Nordie’s is my favorite place to shop for clothes. I always figured that they must have good management because I’ve never had a bad customer experience there, which means they must treat their employees well.

    4. Random Biter*

      Back when I was slinging hash in Bedrock the editor of the local newspaper (big fish, small pond) would come in for lunch quite often and invariably be a total jerk. One day, my best friend, who was really good at her job, waited on him. He was so nasty he reduced her to tears. One of the owners saw this happen. He pulled Mr. Editor’s chair away from the table and in the midst of a busy and crowded lunch told him that if he was enough of an asshole to make one of the owner’s best servers cry then he was too much of an asshole to eat lunch there…..ever. Mr. Editor was never, ever allowed to come back.

    5. SherSher*

      Many years ago, my friend was on the brink of 21 and in the Navy. In that time, and in the particular Navy town, the bars had a tendency to serve the Sailors regardless of age. Old enough to serve, old enough to be served, perhaps?
      Anyway, one night he had quite a few too many and got picked up outside the bar (not driving) by an eager cop. Spend the night in the drunk tank. Then had to go to the courthouse and pay a fine. It was like traffic court, kind of. Not a big deal. He got there, gave the guy his info. The guy looks at his license, and says, “Close enough to 21, case dismissed.”

  15. tessa*

    I am a librarian, and I am relocating for another job. I have a million things going on at work and at home, as you can imagine, including a ton of library materials I have yet to return, but that were due last week (though none were recalled). Someone (non-supervisory) who I work with went into our back end system and gave me a week’s extension for returning the materials – and let me know after the fact. I didn’t have to request it at all.

    If I didn’t think he was a lovely person before…

    1. Frideag Dachaigh*

      My mom is a librarian and if I didn’t know better I would think this was her post– a while back she checked out a book for me to read, on my library card (despite the fact that I was 100 miles away at the time), then proceeded to decide she wanted to read the book, and then got called out to a complex family emergency 400 miles away, and has the book with her.
      I keep getting harassments from the automated system about needing to return this book that I literally can’t return. All of a sudden, the other day, it stopped- turns out her coworker noticed this, overrode the system, cancelled the fees, and rechecked it out to my moms card.
      As a kid I used to joke that as a kid who grew up in the library, I had no understanding of late fees- not because I was so good about returning on time, but because I figured out how to be the cute 7 year old volunteering to run the desk and handle check ins and outs, and would just cancel my own late fees. Whoops!

        1. OhNo*

          So true. In my experience, that’s also why we so often “abuse” our power to extend due dates, cancel fines, and so on for patrons. And purchasing, when we can get away with it. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to tell someone, “Sorry, no, we aren’t allowed to request textbooks through interlibrary loan… but that title does sound interesting, so give me two days and it’ll magically appear in our collection, and be on hold for you.”

    2. Emi*

      My MIL is a librarian at the university my husband and I graduated from, and when we got married, one of her coworkers cleared out all his library fines as a wedding present.

    3. As per Elaine*

      My childhood librarian stopped by my house (I lived two blocks from the library) at 5:10 on the Friday night before Harry Potter #5 came out, and gave me the copy that I would legally have been able to pick up at 10AM Monday morning. I felt a little guilty (like, no one was going to check, but if they DID, she could probably have lost her job, and I didn’t NEED it before the official release date) but she’d already taken it…

      That library system barely got new releases at all, much less advance releases, so it wasn’t like she could have done the same on a lower-profile book.

      We are still friends.

      1. dawbs*

        But think, if you had to wait until it *really* came out, you’d have been one more person on the wait list and it would have delayed another reader getting their hands on it!

      2. OhNo*

        Oh, you reminded me of some great memories from middle school. The school librarian and I knew each other very well, since I was in there all the time, and she would often hand books off to me to read before they’d even been cataloged or processed. She liked to put all the new ones on display with little blurbs about them, but definitely didn’t have time to read them all, so she was more than happy to give me early access in exchange for a quick plot summary and some “Read this if you liked [title]” suggestions to increase their circulation.

      3. Calm Water*

        She did a great service to the entire wait list by letting you have it over the weekend.

      4. Lee the Ghoul*

        Omg, similar hat! The summer between senior year and college, I was a volunteer at our small-town library. Every year since I was a kid, I would go for a weekend w/ my parents to an art fair where my dad was a vendor, about an hour away, in a town which had NO BOOKSTORE. And it ended up being on the same weekend that the seventh Harry Potter book came out.

        Our library apparently had a minimum order of 10 copies. The librarian gave me one of them a day early so I could take it with me on the trip. (I cradled it in my lap the whole way there and then waited to start reading it until exactly midnight. Because I was a lil rule-following nerd who wanted to make an Event out of it, haha.)

  16. Tomato Frog*

    I don’t have a story, but when I was a circulation clerk at a public library, all the clerks were really good about abiding by the letter of the law. But sometimes if a patron complained enough, and went high enough up the hierarchy with their complaint, they would waive the rules for that patron. It was maddening to hold the line against some jerk only to have someone above your head give them exactly what they wanted. So I started breaking the rules when people were really pleasant and undemanding — extending check-out periods and waiving fines for people who would never ask me to do that.

    2. Anonymous Hippo*

      Our librarian did this for my sister and I when we were kids. We read voraciously, I mean a least a dozen books a piece per week. Our library had a 3 books per person rule, which is probably reasonable for normal humans LOL. After dragging our mom to the library every 2 days for a couple of months, the librarian decided we could have an exception and let us take as much as we could carry. Sometimes we’d even bring a wagon. She was a very nice lady I kept in touch with her all the way up through college.

      1. GoryDetails*

        Same with me! The local librarians semi-adopted me, letting me take as many books as I wanted, and eventually allowed me into the adult section as it was clear I was more than ready for it. I wound up working there summers during high school – and they forgave me (more or less) for spending as much time reading books as shelving them. They gave me a bound set of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as a high school graduation present.

        1. Anonymous Hippo*

          If I told you I don’t even know who Matilda is would that explain? LOL We grew up without tv or radio, and were homeschooled, so basically our only form of entertainment was reading and we had lots of time for it.

          1. I take tea*

            It is a book by Roald Dahl. (And film, and radio adaption, and musical, but originally a book.) Matilda teaches herself to read and devours books. It’s a good book, even though it has the usual Roald Dahl problem of dividing the women into angels or absolute harridans.

      3. Loredena*

        When I was in Junior High and HS I read so voraciously that the librarians encouraged me to join the junior friends of the library. That gave me permission to check my own books out, and removed the limit on paperbacks. TBH I’m not sure friends of was even a thing but …

      4. kicking_k*

        I went to a school with an excellent library. The librarian got to know me and my taste in books pretty well, and knew I was a re-reader. When it came to be time to take less used books out of circulation, she would call me aside and say “K, you’re the only one who’s taken these out in a year. If you want them, they’re yours.” I always appreciated this and still have some of the books.

      5. DataSci*

        3 books per person at a time might work for adults, but it’s ridiculous for kids!

        I don’t know what the actual rules are at our library – maybe 20 – but in March 2020, the day they announced schools were closing, my wife took our then-7-year-old son to the library, knowing it was going to close too, and they literally let him check out as many books as he could carry. He filled a massive tote bag.

    3. Sarah*

      I adore my small town librarians because they almost always waived fees for me. Granted, when my kids were young, we came in almost weekly, and would chat with them while my kids browsed. I have also told them when the city was looking to make changes to the facility to give me their thoughts, so I could vote appropriately. We now no longer have fees, so they don’t have to waive them, but I still visit regularly and chat while picking up my holds.

    4. Watry*

      A few years back I accidentally damaged a library book–no idea what happened but it got covered in soda–and the circulation desk person actually tried to get me out of the replacement fee. She said later that it was because I just walked up and admitted it and asked what the fee was so I could pay it.

      It’s really sad that her bar was so low for good patrons.

      1. another, another librarian*

        As a librarian, it’s true though. I will do so much for people because they’re nice and honest about situations!

    5. Owl Boat*

      Right there with you! I work in a different kind of library now, but back when I worked at a public library I did this, too. My library is in an urban area with a huge amount of economic disparity, and we’d often get patrons in whose accounts were blocked because of $20 in fines and they clearly couldn’t pay. People whose accounts were blocked could get a one-time access code to use the computer (if your account was clear you could just log in normally without a code or having to interact with staff). They also couldn’t check out books at all, which meant that people enduring financial hardship had to jump through a lot more hoops to use the library’s services (or couldn’t use them at all) even though they were the people who needed them most. A ton of people came in to use the library’s computers to check their email, hunt for jobs, apply for benefits, etc., and forcing them to wait in line for a computer access code only good once a a day, and telling them over and over again that they needed to pay their fines, just seemed so cruel and inequitable to me.

      I also found that most people who were in this position didn’t argue about it or ask for the fines to be waived–they knew there was no point, so they just accepted their fate. The rich people in the area, though, would argue to death over a 50 cent fine because of “the principle of the matter.” They expected us to cave and often the supervisors would and waived their fines because it wasted more staff time arguing (somehow this never applied to people with financial hardship and unhoused patrons, though).

      I didn’t work the circulation desk all the time, but when I did I would waive as many fines as possible from the patrons who couldn’t pay (the ones who came up to ask for a temporary computer pass, or who wanted to check out a book and then said “nevermind” when they learned they had a fine). Sometimes the joy and relief on people’s faces when their fines were waived was really incredible and made my heart hurt. For the obviously well-off patrons rudely arguing to death over tiny fines that didn’t even block their account, well, that was my hill to die on. I would happily let them rant and just kept politely citing policy at them and absolutely refused to waive those fines. A couple times someone got so mad that they said “I’m never coming back to this library!” and threw their library card at me. The prospect of losing asshole patrons like that was never the threat that they thought it was!

      I’m glad to say that this library system has since gotten rid of all fines and created better paths for unhoused patrons to get library cards with fewer restrictions, so I hope the situation is better now.

      1. dePizan*

        The movement in libraries (at least in the US) now is to just completely do away with fines, because of the inequality like this and it only hurts those that need libraries the most. Plus, it’s usually so hard to recover the fines, that money was generally only a very tiny portion of their budget anyway.

        1. Metadata minion*

          Yep. It mostly penalizes poor people and depending on exactly how you handle fines, the staff time to deal with them often ends up costing more than the fines bring in.

        2. Ann Nonymous*

          I have mixed feelings about this. If I am late returning library items, then I happily pay – even if I don’t have to – because it’s my own damn fault and I need to be taught a lesson.

          1. NerdyLibraryClerk*

            I work at a public library that got rid of fines a few years back. We saw an *increase* in the return of late items when we stopped charging fines. (Not as in more late items, but as in items that were late/lost actually returning.) With fines, people just didn’t bother bringing their items back if the fines would block them from checking out new books/movies/whatever. Now, there’s every incentive for them to bring the items back, since, even if they’ve gone to lost, the moment they’re checked back in, the patron can check out again.

            The lesson of fines just doesn’t seem to be “bring your items back on time,” at least for lower income folk; it’s “no library for you.” :(

            1. pandop*

              I work in an academic library, and we got rid of most fines a few years ago. Now you only get charged if :
              1) you completely lose a book, or
              2) someone else has requested it – you get a grace period of 5/7 days (varies depending on if the book is short/long loan), and then if you haven’t returned it, you will start accumulating fines.
              I think this is fair, as library materials are for sharing, and you only get fined when you are not sharing.

          2. ThreeDogsInATrenchcoat*

            I’m a librarian; it’s definitely not the public library’s job to teach anyone “a lesson” and that is a hill I will die on.

            Most people return library books if we tell them they can’t take more out until they bring the old ones back. That’s all it takes to be good stewards of our physical materials, no lesson required.

          3. C Baker*

            But what if it’s not your fault?

            I know you’re not suggesting that the librarian should be in charge of determining who does and does not have a valid excuse.

            Perhaps, if you feel this way, you can *voluntarily* make a donation to the library when you bring a book in late and it’s your fault.

          4. Longtime listener, first time groomer*

            There are still consequences for not returning books, it’s just that they’re actually aligned to the infraction.

            At my library you can have X books out at a time. Don’t return your books? No new books for you.

            But no more racking up $3.00 in fines because one book got missed out of the round up last week or because three weeks ago you went to the library on Saturday and checked out a dozen books but this week you can only make it on Sunday so they are all one day late.

          5. Owl Boat*

            I understand the impulse to want to be “taught a lesson,” but there are definitely differences in people’s ability to absorb the impact of that lesson, and people experiencing economic hardship aren’t going to be taught a lesson, they’re just going to lose the ability to access a service.

            Ideally, libraries aren’t in the business of teaching lessons, we’re here to provide services, support, and information to our communities. We’re about eliminating barriers to access, not reinforcing them (or at least ideally that is what libraries do).

            There are also a couple points that I think get lost in translation about eliminating fines: fines are one thing, lost fees are another (and lost fees haven’t gone away). Fines accrue daily and if you have a lot of books checked out it can block your account really quickly, and that’s where the hardship comes in. Fines also don’t go away when you return the book. Lost book fees, however, are still very much in place even in libraries that have eliminated daily fines: if you keep a book 4 or 6 weeks beyond the due date you’ll be charged for losing the book, and your account is blocked. With lost fees, though, they go away when you return the book. All the library wants is to be able to keep its books and have people use them! Fines are a barrier to that; lost book fees, when waived on return, do roughly the same job but less punitively.

            Also, I think a lot of people also think that paying fines supports the library. I’m not sure if this is the case everywhere, but for public libraries in my state any “income” in fines is deducted from the funding the state provides. It’s not income, it’s just a wash. The library doesn’t see any extra money from taking fines, it really is just an antiquated way of trying to get books back, one that has been disproven. We have better, more inclusive priorities now!

            1. I take tea*

              In the library where I work the fines are actually part of our budget, and not even an insignificant one. There are people who can waive them, but not for the person who in the same transaction moans that they have to pay fines because they just kept a book that was requested long past the due date, “because I needed it”, and then turn around and ask why the book they were waiting for hasn’t come yet, even though the due date was yesterday… It took a lot of effort not to say “do you actually have no concept of irony?”

          6. MigraineMonth*

            There have been a number of studies that indicate that charging nominal fines actually increases bad behavior. For example, when a daycare started fining people who didn’t pick up their child on time, more parents didn’t pick up their child on time because they were willing to pay for the extra half-hour. Charging a fine actually normalized picking up kids late and made late parents feel less guilty about the behavior.

            As a result, overdue fines end up blocking poor people from using the library and encourages people with more resources to ignore the due date because they think it’s worth the dollar or two to be able to keep the item longer.

          7. Can’tAdultToday*

            I’m always happy to pay my fines because I know the library needs all the money they can get. I’m admittedly much happier now than when I lived paycheck to paycheck, or was a broke college kid. I never asked for a waiver, though.

      2. Chauncy Gardener*

        Back when there were still fines at the inner small city library near me, I would go in around the holidays and pay as many fines as I could afford. I thought the librarians were close to crying when I did that. I never had any money growing up and would have died if I got shut off from my life’s blood, the library!
        I’m so glad most libraries have eliminated the fines

      3. EmmaPoet*

        A lot of systems ditched fines during lockdown/curbside only, because it was just one more thing to deal with for an already overburdened staff. When people called us to ask about fines, you could hear the glee in staff member’s voices when we told them fines were gone and you only got charged for lost or destroyed items. It was a huge relief for us as well as for the public.

    6. A nice fish*

      During my first term at university I accidentally checked out one of the “master” copies of a duplicate set of books. (The spine is specially marked but I’d forgotten what that meant.) The day after, I got an automated email reminding me that this type of book was a 24hr loan only, and now it was already due, only I didn’t see that email until the evening. I returned the book after my lunchtime lecture the next day… to learn that late fees for this were £1 PER HOUR.

      I think the horrified expression on my face was enough entertainment value to be equal to the cost of my fine – the librarian voided it and said she was pretty sure I wasn’t going to do it again. And I didn’t!!

      1. Nina*

        Back in the days when college in my country was heavily, heavily government-subsidized, my mother managed to rack up library fines equal to her total tuition for the year.
        My brother has, at least once, skipped the country on double-digit library fines.
        My father spent my entire childhood glowering darkly at the library book box (me, mother, and two siblings = 80 books at a time, living walking distance from the library) and refusing to get a library card.

    7. Libarry*

      This reminds me of being about 11 or 12 years old and bringing my whole jar of collected change to the library to try to pay off my $50 fine (I read a lot and my parents tried to teach responsibility by making me keep track of my own due dates). The librarian accepted the one $20 bill I had and then when I started to count out the change, she waived the rest of the fee. As an adult I believe it was about half kindness, half “omg I’m not counting and rolling $30 in change at the end of my shift.” :)

    8. Cold Fish*

      That was my first job at the Target Customer Service Counter. There was only a few things that would require an actual supervisor approval to do. It wasn’t long before I would just overturn the system since I knew the manager would anyway. I think I lasted 5 weeks before getting a new job but it definitely formed what I need in my workplace throughout my life.

    9. BadLibrarian*

      When I worked at a college library and we shared a system with the local public library I always cancelled fines for students that were at the public library. I will never be sorry. The library didn’t even get to keep the money, it went to the city.

    10. PhyllisB*

      Yes!! Cherish and appreciate your local librarians!! I am quite well known at my local library, and they occasionally bend the rules for me in regard to things such as late fees. I never ask, and of course I try not to be late with my returns, but we all know life happens sometimes.
      The last head librarian would flag me down a lot of times and ask me if I wanted a book that was not put in circulation yet.
      I think what really shocked me though, was one day I was checking out while they were training a new employee. The head librarian walked over and introduced the young lady to me, and told her, “This is one of our best patrons. Take good care of her!!”
      Courteousy pays!!

    11. CoveredinBees*

      The librarian at my local library asked me if I was interested in a book based on the ones I was checking out. This was remarkable because the book hadn’t been entered into the library’s catalogue yet. I could have absolutely just walked off with the book and there would have been no record. As it turns out, no one else will get to take the book home because it is marked as a REFERENCE book. Of course, I brought it back at the same time as the other books, but it was thrilling to get to take it home semi-illicitly.

    12. HBJ*

      When I was a teen, I started borrowing a book series that had an insane number of books in it. Somewhere around 50. My library didn’t have any of the series, so I got the first couple on interlibrary loan. Then I returned them and ordered the next 2 or 3 and so on. Once this had happened three or four times, I showed up at the library to return my three and order the next few only to find the next three books waiting for me. They saw I was working my way through the series and requested them for me. I finished the series never again having to order the next few books or wait for them to arrive.

  17. PolarVortex*

    A manager in my former team knew a few things:
    1) everyone who got hired into the dept got hired on at the lowest level they could possibly pay
    2) men definitely got paid a huge chunk more than women (I was hired at 5k less than a male new college grad, and I had years of experience) and of course were promoted faster
    3) she valued the heck out of the leads who made the department functional on a day to day basis and implemented processes that actually improved things
    4) she knew she had the power to make some changes that the director wouldn’t argue with but would hurt her long term with the company
    5) she wasn’t going to be with the company long term

    So she organized a 23% increase in pay for my coworker who had a lead position and was just promoted into a senior lead position and was clearly underpaid for the same above reasons that had affected her from her hiring date. This meant when I was promoted to that same role, I benefited from being able to get a 17% increase (since I had less experience than my coworker).

    I could write a long series of the things she did to work around dumb or ridiculous decisions. Honestly I appreciate her commitment to caring for people more than policy, and miss her greatly.

  18. Lizzie*

    Not really sure if this counts, but MANY years ago, I was let go from my first job. It really had turned into a total shit show so I wasn’t too upset about it, more relieved. I was given the choice of packing up my stuff then, or coming back the next week. I chose then as I commuted by bus into NYC. My friends, who were very upset this happened were helping me pack up my boxes (publishing so a LOT of books, etc.). I was very careful to only pack what was mine and not company property. My friends, however, were not, and as we routinely sent out huge, heavy boxes with no questions asked, when I got my stuff later the following week, there was ALL kinds of stuff in there. Including my heavy duty tape gun which I still have to this day!

    1. hamsterpants*

      Was the “all kinds of stuff” yours, or did your friends… rob your former employer?

  19. Just Me*

    I used to be an administrator in a beauty school. One of our students had a stalker–a very creepy guy who would invent new names/phone numbers/emails and try to make “appointments” to see her, but as is often the case with stalkers, not everything they do necessarily can be reported to the police and I think the restraining order was pending. Our front desk knew his voice and general demeanor, and so whenever he called they would go, “Great! We’ll call you back to schedule the appointment!” and then would never call. When he would call again to complain, he would get a response along the lines of, “Oh, what’s that? I’m sorry, it sounds like the call–crrrrr crrrr–is breaking–crrr crrr–up!” *click*

    2. Sauron*

      Ah, this one warms my heart. I’m sure that student was so, so grateful for their protection.

    3. Working Hypothesis*

      I’m a licensed massage therapist and we ran into this kind of thing once in a while. But my boss was good enough that the admins never had to make excuses about it.

      “I’m sorry, sir, but we cannot make an appointment for you,” was the first response when guys like this called us. If they pressed for a reason why, they were told, “Your behavior has made you unwelcome here.”

      Usually they didn’t take it further than that. The one time somebody threatened, the admin hung up on him… then told the boss in some trepidation, as that had NOT been, unlike the other responses, explicitly authorized.

      The boss responded by telling the admin, “I’m sorry. I should have told you that it’s all right to hang up on callers who try to threaten you.” Then she called a meeting for all of the admins and explained to them not only that they could *and should* hang up on callers who attempted to threaten them, but that they should write down their names and send to the boss, who would put them on the “not welcome here anymore” list also.

  20. Foofoo*

    I don’t know if this was “good” but it felt good at the time.

    I was 18, working in a kitchen at the local pizza place that was mostly staffed by highschool and early college students. Management wasn’t very good but we did our best.

    One night a lady walked in to order for delivery but she was awful. Screamed and ranted at the two of us working behind the counter because she “didn’t have enough hot peppers” on her last order and we DAMN WELL BETTER GET ENOUGH HOT PEPPERS. We had a default measurement we did for every ingredient, and even had measurements for requests for double or triple. We had no idea if she’d asked for double or what, or even who had done her pizza or when…. there were 15 of us that worked there, it could have been anyone (but she was definitely screaming at us).

    When she left, we made her pizza as per her order and added at least triple the amount of hot peppers. Then we added extra juice from the hot pepper container all over the pizza. It wound up a soggy mess. Vindictive? Childish? Sure, but we were 18 and she spent 10 minutes screaming and demanding that we better put enough HOT PEPPERS on her pizza.

    She called in after she received her order and was mad as heck that her pizza was gross and soggy. My coworker responded “well we have a set amount we’re supposed to put on a pizza because otherwise it ruins it, you wanted that much, so we fulfilled your request” and then hung up on her. We didn’t get in trouble and no one ever mentioned it again. I like to think that awful woman thought twice in the future about ordering highschool kids how to make her pizza.

    1. Just Your Everyday Crone*

      I do not understand people like that at all. Is there something that prevents them from saying, “hey, I like a lot of hot peppers on my pizza, can you put extra on?” or the like? So many ways to do that politely.

      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        She wanted double peppers. She doesn’t want to pay for double peppers. Therefore, she screams “More peppers” and gets free peppers.

    2. DataSci*

      I still remember when on a high school debate trip we tried ordering a pizza with triple cheese. “Pizza with that much cheese won’t cook” was the response, and that was the end of it. Even as immature high schoolers none of us would have ever imagined yelling at the guy, undoubtedly a high schooler himself, who took our order.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I worked at a pizza place with a convection oven that blows hot air, so we were trained to always put some cheese on top of the pepperonis so they wouldn’t fly off. There was one guy who always ordered pepperoni pizza no cheese, but when I took it out of the oven, more than half of the pepperoni was gone. I could have added uncooked pepperoni, but who wants cold pepperoni on a pizza?

        There are sometimes weird reasons that perfectly normal requests can’t be honored. The next time he called, I just put the crust with sauce in the oven, then cooked the pepperoni on the grill.

  21. Ginger Baker*

    I once lost my ID, on my 21st birthday. As it happens, a policewoman found it/my wallet and called my mom (I think I had some emergency contact info? and this was before cell phones were ubiquitous). I called my mom later, frantic, and she had already heard from this woman. My mom being my mom, she sweet-talked the officer into not “officially” logging it in and instead holding it for me so I could run over and pick it up that day (as technically, the police officer was supposed to log it in which would have led to an apparently mandatory 24-hour delay before it could be returned to me! which obviously would have ruined my birthday plans…). Her tiny abuse of authority (not a thing I am normally in favor of in cops, to be sure) saved my day for sure.

        1. Watry*

          It’s likely the logging/entry process would take that long. I work in a PD, and the officers at our front counter will keep a turned-in license or wallet for a few days before logging it in as lost property so it’s easier for the person to pick it up.

          1. doreen*

            Exactly – it’s most likely the bureaucratic process involved, not a deliberate policy to withhold the wallet for 24 hours. Somebody has to log it in and complete a report and once that’s completed supervisors have to sign it and so on. And everything has to match up, so once it’s logged in there has to be a report with all the appropriate signatures and maybe it gets sent to the property clerk at a different location where it will have to be logged in again so they can find it – and therefore if the owner shows up after it’s initially been logged in there will be a delay in returning it.

            1. Ginger Baker*

              ^Yep, this was my understanding, it was something to do with the red tape of logging etc. etc. The woman stayed a little late past her shift just to be able to get it back to me that night, I was very grateful!

            2. 1LFTW*

              Yup, this. A long time ago, a very kind bus driver broke this exact rule for me once for this reason. He found my wallet on his bus at the end of his shift. The rules required him to it into the transit agency’s lost and found, but that would take at least 48 hours to process, and on top of that, he couldn’t vouch for the honesty of every single person involved the processing. Instead, he found me in the phone book and called me before I even realized it was missing. He arranged to meet me at a safe, clean, public McDonald’s to return it to me that day. I offered to buy him coffee but he refused; he said he had granddaughters my age and wanted to look out for me the way he hoped someone would look our for them in the same situation.

  22. Kind Manager*

    I had an amazing admin assistant reporting to me who was underpaid for her position. I managed our department budget and could approve most expenses including overtime, but for some reason could not approve wage increases. My boss wouldn’t approve a raise for her even with my support, and even though we had enough money in the budget to cover it.
    Guess who mysteriously started having extra hours added to her time sheet each week in just the right amount for her total paycheck to equal what she should have been making for her regular 35 hours at the higher wage I requested for her? That scheme lasted nearly two years until she got married and ended up moving across the country. She knew it was happening, but I was the one who altered the time sheet so she could have plausible deniability in case anyone cared to look that closely – which of course they didn’t!

    1. Anon for this*

      Still going Anon for this.
      I did the same thing for my IT guy a million years ago. He worked his butt off and the CEO REFUSED to approve a raise for him, even though the sales guys were charging through their wives holiday gifts to the company, in addition to truly amazing levels of client entertainment expenses with no receipts. Grrr.
      Since the CEO never looked at the detail level financials, I just paid him an extra $5k per month until I left
      I also used to take my team out for really expensive lunches (we were ALL working like dogs) and then charge them to the Sales department.

        1. Anon for this*

          He was SO underpaid to begin with it wasn’t even funny. With the $5k he was at a competitive salary

    2. HE Admin*

      My first out of college job was as an admin assistant. Whenever I would take a one-off vacation day for various reasons, my boss would alter my timesheet to say I was there, and said she couldn’t give me a raise (all raises being severely limited by an awful review system, and capping out at like 2% at the most) but she could give me more vacation. That let me actually take time off to visit family in a bigger chunk! My second boss at the same institution knew I spent all my vacation visiting family and that I didn’t LOVE that but didn’t have a lot of options because I was student loan broke and hey, staying with family is free, so she wrote me a $500 check from her personal account so I could afford to take a vacation for myself for once.

  24. Mostly managed*

    my team was ludicrously burnt out (the executive suite literally called one of my devs at 1AM to get data from him.) We’d all been working upwards of ten hour days, occasionally on weekends, and none of us had a good amount of vacation time. Our manager was advocating for us as best he could but it was pretty relentless and he didn’t have much power. Eventually, he said our department was doing a three day business retreat and couldn’t be disturbed and then told us to go home and rest. It was a pretty dysfunctional workplace but I appreciate my manager doing all he could.

    3. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

      Well, it was a business retreat and they retreated from business. Does what it says on the label. ;-)

    4. Catwhisperer*

      I did something similar last year. My former employer gave each team money to do a team building exercise and we were all completely burnt out after a year and a half of wfh, the pandemic, and being expected to work extra late (past 10 p.m.) to accommodate coworkers in other timezones. I was asked to plan my team’s exercise, so I decided we were all getting a day off and could expense whatever food delivery we wanted that day. The team lead approved and as far as I know no one else knew or said anything about it.

  25. Save the Hellbender*

    I interned at a fundraising firm that had a database of thousands of people across the country that it would sell to organizations to add to their email lists. Found my parents in the database and subtly deleted out their emails – I thought less spam was a nice little gift!

    1. Американка (Amerikanka)*

      That is a nice gift! There was one charity my husband and I stopped supporting because when we donated to them, many other charities would magically mail me spam and “free gifts” to solicit donations as well. Once my husband gave them a stern call about selling our names an told them that we were no longer supporting them, the spam mail stopped.

      All this mess makes it hard for me to want to give to future charities…

      1. Working Hypothesis*

        I have had to drop a few charities for that reason. I made sure they knew why, too. One actually had a human being call me back more than a year later. She said, “I’m sorry if I’m intruding. I know you haven’t been a donor for a while, and I know you had good reasons for that. But your reason is in your file, and I wanted you to know that we’ve changed that policy. We can promise you now that if you choose to restart your membership with us, your name will never be given to any other organization through us. Whatever you decide to do, I thought you might want to know that we took your complaint seriously, and that it and others led to the change.”

        I thanked her for the information, and I did restart my membership. Partly in order to test whether or not they were telling the truth (they were), and partly because I felt that if they were, they should be encouraged in this. Besides, I had liked the organization otherwise enough to have been a member in the first place, so why not? But I was very pleased to hear they’d seen sense on the subject.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        I still remember getting a very thick envelope from one charity I had never donated to. I expect a few freebies (such as address labels or a calendar) as part of new donor recruitment, but this was way over the top. It contained stickers, address labels, postcards, cards with envelopes, a calendar, a daily planner, a small notepad, a large notepad and a dreamcatcher (made in china). It wasn’t even the type of charity I would consider donating to, but I definitely made a mental note that they didn’t seem to be using their funding well.

        1. Paris*

          I got this one recently, too! And I had the same thought, how much does all this junk cost to send?!

    2. t-vex*

      I did something similar at a cold-calling sales job. Recognized my boyfriend’s mentor’s name on the auto-dialer and punched him in as a “never call me again”

  26. Lizzie*

    When I worked PT in retail; customers would frequently get coupons or promos, always after they had just purchased something. Company policy was; you couldn’t return and repurchase using that discount, but there were a few very nice, very polite customers, who would come in, ask nicely, and I’d just do it. Because they treated us well.

    1. Yellow*

      In my retail days we had a 10% off code for Credit Card holders to use during their birthday month. I routinely gave that to extra nice people and/or regulars.

    2. Not a mouse*

      If I tell a customer no in that circumstance, they’ll just do the return and then go re-buy it anyway. With up to 5 regular registers and 18 self checkout lanes, no one’s going to notice. My philosophy is, I might as well make it easy for them and take care of the entire transaction for them. Same with the customer who brings in coupons she “forgot to use last week” but I’m sure she actually got in the mail days after she already bought the stuff. I can ring up the “forgotten” coupons, which takes a minute or two, or she can go home, get the stuff, return it, and then re-buy it to use them, which is way more trouble for everyone concerned. Or I can call a manager, who will tell me to do it, and probably be annoyed that I called them over $2.75. So I just ring them up.

      I suspect my immediate boss would find my approach overly pragmatic if she knew the details, which is why I don’t tell her the details if I don’t have to.

  27. irene adler*

    An error occurred with a customer’s order (we make diagnostic test kits). Two negative controls were provided instead of one positive and one negative control.

    The remedy was to provide the positive control to this customer. This meant looking up the kit documentation, ordering the positive control from our inventory and shipping it out.

    The manager of manufacturing was… is… a very vindictive man. He’s extremely hard on his reports when they make a mistake. In fact, I would label it abuse.

    When the replacement order was given to the manager of manufacturing, he asked why this was needed. He was informed about the mistake. That made him angry. He asked who committed the error. Respondent (me) said “don’t know.” So he went in search of the kit documentation to find out for himself which of his reports had made the error.

    I knew he’d be merciless to whomever made the mistake.

    Sure, the report needed to know about her mistake. But she did not need to be subjected to an angry tirade. As QC supervisor, I pulled her aside and explained what happened and suggested that, going forward, she pay closer attention to what she was doing. She thanked me and promised to do so. She then commented that she was very afraid of what her boss’s reaction would be to her mistake. Talking tears here.

    So, that documentation pertaining to the kit? Manufacturing manager never found it. Looked everywhere too. For days.

    It went home with me.

    It got returned to the files a year later. Never missed.

    He never learned the identity of the report who made the mistake.

  28. machinedreams*

    Very small one, retail so not all that interesting, but.

    I worked in the dairy department and, well, at one point we completely ran out of milk. (Not quite as disastrous as it sounds, our delivery was the next morning so mostly it just sucked for those couple hours after we ran out.) Well, we still had… like… I want to say it was a name-brand of Vitamin D milk (as opposed to store brand). We were told we couldn’t price match it for some reason, I don’t even remember now. I think because we didn’t have all that much of it left and management didn’t want to burn through it. Well, it was just me and one other guy, the department manager. We had a lady come in, ask us if we had any of the store brand milk left — out of sheer “i need to feed my child” desperation, which we know because A: she told us it was for her child and B: it was glaringly obvious that there was no milk to be had in back, because of the way our coolers were set up.

    So what does department manager do? Tells her to take two gallons to the register, tell them that he said to change the price. As he put it to me later, “if management doesn’t like it, they can take it up with me”.

  29. kiri*

    I work in the patron services dept of an academic library. We serve mainly commuter and nontraditional students, and a fine of even a couple dollars can be really prohibitive for a lot of students we work with (not to mention causing a ton of anxiety around future library use). If you check out an item that has a limit of two hours (course reserve textbooks, calculators, etc.), it can be really easy to go overdue without even realizing it, and incur fines.

    My boss is many, many not-so-great things (chief among them completely ready for retirement, and therefore WILDLY checked out, no pun intended, of his job), but one thing I’ll say for him – he has no qualms whatsoever about just erasing someone’s fines, no questions asked. He actively encourages all the other staff to do it, too – no need to check with him or anything. I love being able to lift that burden for students, and make a regular habit of it too!

    1. kiri*

      ALSO imo library fines should just not exist at all (I could rant for ages about this haha) so that’s hopefully a logical next step for our library. But in the meantime there’s this!

      1. Dust Bunny*

        Mine regularly forgives fines but we’ve also had to declare a lot of material to be non-circulating because it’s stuff we can’t replace if somebody doesn’t return it. We lost a bunch of dissertations and obscure reference books to people who just didn’t bring them back, so now they have to be used on-site. (We’re a specific discipline, too, which means most of our stuff wasn’t widely published in the first place.)

      2. Anonymous in the Nutmeg State*

        Growing up my mom used find overdue books that I would put down wherever I finished them…shed shrug and say at least the fine pays to replace lost books.
        Fast-forward to my anger learning that in my new home state of Connecticut, library fines do not stay at the library but instead go to the state’s general fund.
        I haven’t figured out how to get that changed yet.

      3. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

        Yup! All three of our local library systems have completely eliminated late fees
        (and not to derail too far, every patron gets 70 pages a week to either print or photocopy)

      4. dorothy zbornak*

        our county library did get rid of fees but if the book is not returned 30 days after the due date, they will bill for a lost item. not sure if that is common or not.

        1. Miss Muffet*

          ours is pretty similar – you won’t get late fees but you may have to pay for replacement after a certain point, and checking out new items gets restricted if you have stuff out past the due date or a pending replacement fine. Still, makes it nicer when you just need a couple more days with it.

    2. Американка (Amerikanka)*

      I work at academic library too. Course reserve fines are the worst! In my library, they can even go up to the triple digits. Thankfully, my boss is also willing to clear or reduce fines . I really detest how high these fines go, but the decision makers for this fine structure are much higher on the totem pole than us).

      1. kiri*

        YES! Academic libraries get so complicated, since (for us at least) so many non-library departments like Registration/Scheduling and Finance/Billing get involved at various points, so a LOT of people have a say in whether we’re issuing fines. I know if a student has too many fines on their record they’ll be blocked from being able to register for classes.

        I’m so glad your boss is also on board with rogue fine-clearing! I’m sure there are lots out there :)

  30. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Putting in a load of filters that stop antivaxx/conspiracy theory/qanon stuff from being accessed at work or being shared by company email.

    On much smaller scale, blocking internet access entirely for the people who try to circumvent those rules. Oh you rang us in IT to ask why you can’t get to a website? Haven’t a clue mate.

    3. Glomarization, Esq.*

      > blocking internet access entirely for the people who try to circumvent those rules

      Wait, so someone who reads or tries to share objectionable material now can’t even go to Wikipedia or some other website appropriate to their job to look something up?

      1. NerdyKris*

        I think it can be assumed that those aren’t positions where internet access is required to do their job, since anyone who did need network access would have their boss demand it be turned back on.

        1. Glomarization, Esq.*

          If it’s not required for their job, then why are they calling IT to ask about their connectivity problem?

          1. Respectfully, Pumat Sol*

            Because they’re trying to surf in between things that are pertinent to their jobs?

            1. Glomarization, Esq.*

              I mean, it just makes no sense to me, if they have internet at their desks they must need it, or in any event the workplace is one where using the internet for non-work stuff is not disallowed as a general thing. So cutting them off entirely because they sent along some objectionable e-mail seems to me to make more work for the OP, not some kind of “misusing their power for good.”

          2. Magenta Sky*

            You’d be amazed, or perhaps appalled, at who clueless some people are. Of *course* they can’t do their job without being able to check their Facebook and shop on Amazon. How could you not know that?

            1. Esmeralda*

              Or watch porn. People violate work internet rules aplenty, despite sometimes dire consequences. Keymaster blocked those whose violations were ethically bad.
              Rock on, Keymaster.

              1. Magenta Sky*

                I once spent a couple of hours being paid to visit porn sites, as part of documenting what a manager had been up to (not all the URLs were *obviously* porn sites just from the domain name, and I was told to be thorough). 45 pages of small print, with duplicates removed, later, he was unemployed. (And he’d print out his favorite screen caps – in black & white, mind you – and kept them in the bottom draw of the file cabinet, which was referred to as “the porn drawer for a long time after.)

                This took place less than two weeks after I had a casual conversation with him (not suspecting anything at that point) about the fact that if you did something on my network, I had a log of it. I only went back a week on the proxy logs.

          3. Pikachu*

            One of my friends runs an IT help desk. He once got a call from one of the company’s retail locations in another state asking for help getting a bird out of the store.

            People will call a help desk for literally any minor problem that you can think of, including being upset that they cannot access inappropriate content at work.

          5. Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain*

            Our IT blocked Facebook to the medical clinic on campus — not only should the employees not be surfing FB while they are supposed to be working, but it had the potential for patient privacy violations (that’s what I heard anyway — and apparently there were patient complaints about bad service). They put up a hell of a tantrum to IT to get it restored — IDK if they succeeded.

            1. Loulou*

              So people who were on break couldn’t even access Facebook on their phone if they were connected to WiFi? I’m not on FB but I’d be unhappy about that too.

              2. Observer*

                That’s a very reasonable precaution. In our office the wifi is blocked the same way the rest of the network is blocked because it’s part of the network. Remember, IT needs to protect the entire network, not just the individual workstations.

            2. raktajino*

              The facebook privacy violations is super real–or at least it used to be, idk if they fixed it. Basically, FB used to suggest “friends” if you’ve both been to the same location. That can reveal that you’re all clients of the same therapist, or something like that.

              Of course, when I googled for updates (“facebook privacy violation friend suggestion”), Facebook claims it doesn’t do that and has never done that, but that’s also a reverse of what their initial statement was. So who knows. Not allowing facebook on medical system wifi seems prudent either way.

        2. Liane*

          At which point IT could inquire of the internet-less employee’s boss, “So what is the Work Reason your report needs access to the Stupidity R Us and No Masks Evah websites?”

        3. Loulou*

          Is that a safe assumption? Virtually every job I can think of in my own workplace requires at least some amount of internet access, even ones you don’t think of as a desk job.

      2. Anon for this*

        Yeah, sorry, I (a progressive) find the above to be an example of petty tyranny for bad reasons. Do I wish people would be able to make value judgments about the information they are consuming? Yes. Do I think qanon is poison? Also yes. Do I think a single IT employee gets to decide what (otherwise safe-for-work) sites people get to visit, and *unilaterally decide to cut their internet access*? Absolutely not!

        1. DarthVelma*

          Same here. I’m not feeling this entire post/thread. Sometimes there’s a really fine line between “using your powers for good” and being a petty tyrant making like difficult for people you don’t like/disagree with. And sometimes that difference is just about whether your audience happens to share your political views.

          Also, as many threads as we’ve seen on this site about accommodating dietary restrictions and food allergies, to have a link to the “onion sandwich” example as “misusing your power for good” really concerned me.

          I think I’m going to just close AAM for the day and come back tomorrow.

          1. justabot*

            Agreed. The examples in the subject and some of these posts sound more like petty revenge than actually using small power to help or do good for people.

            The fast food example disturbed me. I think that provoking drunk people or charging them for things they didn’t order or gaslighting them by telling them they ordered something they didn’t is actually extremely dangerous and could have escalated an already volatile situation. The obnoxious group wasn’t right, but they should have been asked to leave or even call for help to escort them out if they were vandalizing the property, but not messed with. The employee should not have engaged with those drunk customers at all, let alone purposely messed with their order and added on charges. Similar situations have even resulted in someone pulling a gun or escalating into violence or worse. I really don’t see that as a prime example of someone using their power for good.

        2. HelloHello*

          But they’re blocking people who are trying to get around firewalls, not just people who try to navigate to the websites in the first place. Someone trying to get around work firewalls is opening their entire system up to viruses and other security issues, and probably should have their internet shut off until they can be reminded not to try to access blocked websites. (Especially since, frankly, q-anon, antivax, etc. websites are probably rife with viruses and other security risks.)

          1. londonedit*

            Exactly – Keymaster is blocking access to websites promoting vile/inflammatory/fake news content, which is fair enough because no one needs to be looking at those at work (or anywhere else, but hey ho). The only people who have their entire internet access revoked are the people who see that these websites are blocked and who try to get around the block so they can still visit QAnon etc during work hours. They want their internet access back? They should explain to their boss exactly what sort of websites they’ve been trying to circumvent company firewalls in order to access.

          2. Calliope*

            Oh come on, these non-IT people are “trying to get around firewalls”? What does that even mean? They’re clearly not trying to break into admin permissions or that would warrant a real company response and not a petty unofficial one. Either people are getting blocked for googling stuff the OP doesn’t approve of (as if nobody ever looks up stuff they don’t agree with to understand a news article or something) or none of this actually happened, which is probably more likely. Either way we shouldn’t be acting like it’d be ok if it did.

        3. Pikachu*

          I think if you repeatedly violate an authorized use policy by trying to access prohibited content at work on work devices, you should lose your tech privileges. It becomes a management issue. IT is well within its rights to cut off your access until you and your boss can figure out why you can’t stop Qing all over company time.

        4. Hepzibutt Smith*

          Yeah I had one particular IT dude who blocked out all Black Lives Matter content. I guess, like Keymaster, he was correct that I did not need to access that information for work. But overall people like this are a real bummer, even when we vote the same way.

      3. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        Most of the positions that I keep the IT services running for can be done perfectly well with no external internet access. As long as they have access to our intranet they can do their jobs.

        1. Glomarization, Esq.*

          So “they don’t need it anyway” — do you really know that, though? Isn’t it up to the employee and/or their supervisor to decide whether or not their job can be done perfectly well with no external internet access?

    4. Momma Bear*

      It is very common for companies to block sites that are a distraction or simply not allowed. I’m all for this, frankly.

      1. Glomarization, Esq.*

        Blocking sites is fine by me. I’ve had more than one gig where IT blocked Facebook, for example, because it can be such a time-sink and because there were business confidentiality issues. But OP is talking about blocking an employee’s access completely — and apparently not giving them any warning and not assisting them at all to get it back, either.

        1. Dutchie*

          I assume that by circumventing a block we are talking about something like installing a VPN. I don’t think it’s that weird to say that if you are trying to access the company network to use a VPN, you are no longer allowed to use it, since you have demonstrated to not respect restrictions put in place by higher ups.

          I would also think it fair for a company to revoke someone’s keycard if they had been trying to destroy windows to enter rooms their card did not get them access to. At that point you have demonstrated you don’t possess the judgement necessary to handle this responsibility and from now you can ask colleagues for help if you do need to enter a locked room (or use the internet).

        2. Shiara*

          The typical ways to circumvent filters aren’t things people will accidentally try and are things that will throw up plenty of “this is a security risk are you sure?” warnings. This isn’t just hitting refresh or trying a different browser or turning private browsing on. It’s completely valid for IT to kick you for trying to bypass security.

      2. Anonymous Hippo*

        I don’t like it because I’m an adult and can manage my own time.

        What goofy is when the blocking hits in a nonsensical way. Our I.T. has managed to block all our benefit and 401K sites, but Reddit & FB work great.

        1. KRM*

          But what’s happening is this: employee visits qAnon site. Site blocked. Employee tries to get around blocking. IT notices and pulls their internet (because they don’t NEED the internet for their job and they’re trying to get around security procedures). Now employee has to 1-stop trying to access an already blocked site AT WORK, and 2-possibly has to explain why they’re trying to work around the blockage, so they can get internet back.
          Keymaster is clearing treating people like adults when they prove they’re adults. You try to circumvent the security policy at work to visit a blocked site? You’re not an adult and don’t deserve internet. This is clearly different than being at work and reading AAM or doing some banking in your down time.

    6. I-Away 8*

      It goes without saying you’re the hero we all aspire to be. But I’m surprised you still have a job. In my industry, sabotaging part of a company’s IT would get you fired on the spot, and probably end your career.

      I wouldn’t want to work with Q-anon conspirists. But I also wouldn’t want to work for a company that allows individual IT employees to unilaterally decide who deserves or needs internet access.

      (Though perhaps I’m biased because at my workplace, all employees need internet to communicate with off-site colleagues, submit PTO requests, access help systems for desktop apps, and other essential tasks.)

  31. Similarly Situated*

    I work for a government office where we need people to fill out a printed form before we can help them. My old boss would slip a stamped envelope in with the form whenever she knew the recipient was struggling. She bought the stamps herself, but it was technically an ethics violation.

    1. Momma Bear*

      This is an absolute kindness for people who not only can’t afford stamps but maybe can’t get to the right store or post office to buy them.

      1. Similarly Situated*

        Something about not giving gifts. Government ethics rules are weird. I doubt she’d have gotten in trouble if someone reported it though.

      2. rubble*

        probably something about showing favouritism to certain people/groups and introducing bias

  32. Anon Admin*

    On my last day at work at a public library years ago, someone who I guess had something against me went into my library account and deleted it. Not just changed it from a staff account to a regular account, but deleted it completely. I found out when I went home and tried to download an ebook I’d finally gotten off the hold list after months of waiting and the account was gone. A friend who still worked there went in and created a new account for me under a fake name (Gee Buttersnaps) and put me at the top of the hold list. I continued to use that account for YEARS with no issues when I got a message on FB from another previous coworker who asked “Are you Gee Buttersnaps?” And when I asked how she knew, thinking she was some sort of Sherlock Holmes, she said “Uh, the email associated with the account is your first and last name.” Whoops. She still let me use the account, though.

  33. Have you tried sparkling at it?*

    When I was in college, the trans community was really struggling- multiple suicides, widespread hostility on campus and some much worse stuff that I’m gonna leave out to keep this anonymous. And to make things worse, the school system reacted by creating a gag order- nobody, including the LGBT coordinator, was allowed to talk about it (or the gag order) for risk of their job. Even openly supporting the trans community was “political”.

    So the LGBT coordinator reached out to some trans students that he trusted and started sending messages through them. I’d hear them through group chats and in person. Stuff like “avoid the Quad today- the transphobes are doing a demonstration. I didn’t hear this from John”. Or “John *doesn’t* say that hosting a trans pride march is a good idea. He can’t be there, but the office will be unlocked from 1 to 2 so we can use the flags. Don’t tell anyone where we got them”.

    1. quill*

      I love the “I’m sorry, I can’t help you (do this very specific set of instructions)” routine

      1. Zephy*

        Like how during Prohibition bottles of grape juice would come with “warning” labels advising people NOT to add a bit of yeast and keep the bottle in a cool, dark place for a while, lest it ferment into wine, heaven forfend?

        Or like tweets warning people NEVER to add just a pound or two of sugar to concrete mix, because then it won’t set right, which would definitely disrupt whatever construction project might be underway?

      2. Amy Farrah Fowler*

        This reminds me of the Incredibles… “I’m sorry ma’am. I know you’re upset… I would NOT recommend that you file a form blah blah blah”

      3. Sharpie*

        I just wanted to mention that absolutely nothing happened today in Sector eighty-three by nine by twelve. I repeat, nothing happened. Please remain calm. Thank you.

    2. Calamity Janine*

      an absolutely stunning example of doing good, and also praeteritio so fine that it would make Cicero weep at its glory!

  34. The New Wanderer*

    I worked for a shady ‘charity’ telemarketing office almost 30 years ago as office support. One of those places that buys the rights to use phrases that sound legit around police and firefighter orgs, but the supposed recipients only get about 10-15% of the donations. Shady to the point that the FBI came by a few times and the whole place shut down a few years later.

    The phone bank solicited donations from something like 15 different orgs. The policy was that anyone who asked to be removed from the calling list was removed for that one ‘charity’ they were solicited from but were on the other 14 lists, because “they might still want to donate to those.” Well, most of the donations appeared to come from residents of nursing homes, based on the notes included with the checks (most of which read something like “I’m on a fixed income, please stop calling”). Since I was in charge of data entry and had access to the master phone lists, I took ALL of the donor names off every list along with everyone else whose number I knew.

    1. singularity*

      You are a SAINT! These places who prey off of vulnerable senior citizens are the worst of the worst.

    2. Chauncy Gardener*

      You absolutely ROCK! Thank you so much on behalf of senior citizens everywhere!

  35. Bookworm*

    Years ago I waited a really long time to ship something out at Fed-Ex. I got to the front, was annoyed by this time and the Fed-Ex employee said I was suddenly an certain type of worker (educator? I can’t remember anymore) eligible for a 15% discount. I absolutely wasn’t but he said “today you are.” Customer service can suck so bad but I did appreciate that. I haven’t used that location since (moved away) but I do hope he’s doing well.

    1. machinedreams*

      That reminds me of the time I went to the Field Museum in Chicago. I’m standing in line patiently, while the poor employee is dealing with this guy and his family. Guy is being an absolute douchecanoe about a bunch of stuff (price in general, price for what he wanted versus what he thought he should pay, what he thought should be included for the ticket level he wanted).

      So finally that guy and his family shuffle off. Lady looks at me and goes “Are you an in-state student?” I tell her no. (I mean, I did live in-state but I wasn’t a student.) She was just like “You are today!” and charged me like two bucks less than she should’ve, something like that. Not much, true, but my wallet appreciated it that day.

    2. Insert Clever Name Here*

      I was at a Sherwin Williams several months ago getting paint for a project. There was a lady in there apparently doing a little bit of research before doing her own project, and she got all huffy about a sign stating that a $.25 supply chain surcharge was going to be added to each item (not sure of the price exactly). She was absolutely berating the poor guy who had been answering all her questions, “well Sherwin Williams needs to rethink that because it is absolutely ridiculous.” So I spoke up: “I work in supply chain management [it’s true!] and it is not ridiculous. There are constraints on almost every single part of the supply chain and honestly, you should be happy that it’s only $.25. From what I heard on a call with a supplier before coming here, Sherwin Williams would be completely justified in a higher surcharge.”

      She GLARED at me, spun on her heels, and flounced out. When my paint was finished being mixed, the guy behind the counter asked me if I was doing all the painting myself, and I told him no, I had some friends who were going to help. “Ok, I’m going to give you the contractor discount then.” It was 25% off each can of paint I bought! It literally saved me over $100.

      2. Radical Edward*

        Retail employees giving the customer *behind* the awful ones a discount or freebie is one of my favorite little subterfuges. (I worked in hobby-focused retail for over a decade. It was just so satisfying to burn that rage by making another person’s day.)

        My other favorite thing was the ‘a-hole tax’, but that was the opposite of doing a nice thing under the table… :)

        1. Chirpy*

          This. I have no idea why so many customers think they need to be jerks when so many retail/food service/etc workers are FAR more willing to go out of the way to help a nice person. The a-hole tax is real.

          1. PhyllisB*

            Yes, about going out of the way for a nice person, I have been the recipient of that. I was at our mall one day and had shopping to do at several stores that were all running specials/had discount coupons, ect. Anyway, I was behind a lady that was a nickel short of her total. I gave her a nickel. The next store I had an extra coupon and offered it to the person behind me. The third store I went to I had a coupon good for 20% off one item. (I bought a lot of items at that store that day.) When I got the register, the cashier called over to her manager, “I’ve heard about this lady, she’s nice. Can I give her 20% off her total order?” Manager okayed it. I don’t remember total saved now, but I think it was over $100.00!!
            I know all this sounds like I’m bragging on myself, and I don’t mean it to sound like that; just that when you’re nice to others, it comes back to you.

        2. Insert Clever Name Here*

          In college I worked at a coffee shop and as a shift leader was given a number of “free drink” coupons to give out at my discretion. The main purpose was for us to give them out if we messed up someone’s order, but I definitely enjoyed giving them occasionally to folks who were extra kind to us *after* someone had been a massive jerk :)

      3. Emi*

        My friends and I once got rain check tickets to the splash park even though they weren’t technically doing rain checks for that storm (it was complicated) because the man ahead of us was hassling the admissions clerk about it and someone in our group lost her temper and low-key yelled at him to leave the poor staff alone.

    3. Alfalfa Alfredo*

      That reminds me of this one St. Pat’s Day (huge, huge parade in my city, drunkenness galore by 10A) and I was downtown with my — at the time — 5YO kid. We had a great time at the parade and went to Starbucks for hot cocoa. There was the drunkest lady there complaining that the employees won’t let her use the public restroom (one guess why) and that it was closed for the day.

      I hope into the conversation explaining to her where all of the open potties were that day because 5YO needed to go all day. The grocery store here, the restaurant there, etc.

      Next thing I know, more free cocoa for my kid and at least three cake pops from the Starbucks employees just because we diffused her anger with complete kindness.

    5. feath*

      Once when I had to get legal representation (car accident in a state that required a court appearance), the rep working with me basically ran through my entire family history trying to find me all the discounts. My grandfather was in the navy? Sure that counts for the military discount. And so on. Saved me a bunch during a stressful time!

    6. Gumby*

      Heh, I have been given the senior discount at Ross on whatever day that is. The first time it happened? I think I was 40 or 41.

      Cashier: Are you a senior?
      Me (confused): … I’m 40?
      Cashier: Well, right now you are 55. (I think she had rung me up and didn’t want to fix it.)

  36. A Library Person*

    A place I worked had a fragment of a Gutenberg Bible (yes, a real piece of paper that was really printed by Gutenberg’s shop). I wasn’t technically forbidden from handling it, but I didn’t have access to the place it was stored. One day, a group of very VIPs was visiting our space and we pulled out all the stops for them, including the Gutenberg. I snuck into the room where it was being displayed and touched it, just lightly put a (recently washed!) finger on it, to say that I had touched a Gutenberg Bible. No consequences for me, no regrets, and I came out of it with a cool “I did this” story.

    I’ve handled a lot of other cool stuff but I never had to be sneaky about it, and you’d be amazed what you have access to in archives even as a random person on the street (truly, please come visit!). But that Gutenberg moment was special.

    1. Dragon_Dreamer*

      Very cool, but the reason for the gloves isn’t exactly because of dirt. Even clean, your fingers have oil on them, which can help break down and discolor the paper over time.

      1. 867-5309*

        Agree with this. It is not even really about the dirt, it is about the oils on your skin that breaks down the paper. This is not using power for good but could permanently damage a historical artifact.

      2. Loulou*

        Yes, the reason you wash your hands is to remove this oil. Since OP worked in a rare books library, I think we can assume they were trained on materials handling! I don’t remember the last time I used gloves at work but I think it was pre-pandemic.

        1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

          I remember a BBC History presenter recently got told off on Twitter for not using gloves, and went on saying “You don’t have to wear gloves, they can sometimes cause more damage, and this is why.”

          1. Loulou*

            I always appreciate when people with big platforms explain this! Though I must say I don’t understand why randos with no rare books training assume they would know better than professionals in the field to begin with.

            1. xl*

              Because people like to think that they’re smarter than others.

              I work in a niche occupation and over the years I’ve been on a few message boards to discuss things with others in the field. I’ve given up on that because invariably people who don’t know what they’re talking about will show up and argue because they once saw something in a movie.

      3. A Library Person*

        Oh my goodness, yes I EXTREMELY know this, my point was that I came into contact with it, not that I did so without gloves.

    2. disneychannelthis*

      “times when you saw someone violate the letter or the spirit of a rule or otherwise do something that could technically be considered under-handed in order to achieve good in the world. ”

      I don’t see it

      1. Coconutty*

        Yeah, this is just breaking the rules for one’s own benefit. And potentially damaging something priceless in the process.

        1. A Library Person*

          On reflection, you’re right. I got caught up in the “using power” part and not in the “greater good” part. But I did get roasted for poor phrasing, so I suppose I got a little of the karma I deserved for the misplaced post. :)

    3. Former librarian*

      As a former archivist/rare books librarian, just have to always note: you do not need gloves to handle rare books. The amount of oils on a clean hand is negligible and will not harm the paper. If you’re handling a bound volume, is actually better to NOT wear gloves. I only require gloves for photographs and other shiny things. And for something that could be damaged by touching (like an piece of art or any gold leaf), you shouldn’t touch it even if you’re wearing gloves. For the most part, TOUCH AWAY, my friends!

      2. A Library Person*

        Yes! I phrased it badly above, but don’t worry, I’m an archivist myself and I only use gloves with photographs.

      3. Insert Clever Name Here*

        When I lived in DC, I once got to tag along with a friend on a Super Special Access trip to the Library of Congress and one of the librarians pulled several rare books to show us. We were all shocked when he didn’t put on gloves and he went on to explain that gloves are just one tool archivists use, but not the only one and certainly not the right one as often as the public thinks it’s the right one — it was fascinating!

      4. Elizabeth West*

        The first Van Gogh I saw was at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. It’s called “Rain—Auvers.” There is no rail in front of the paintings like there is in the National Gallery in London, so I was able to get up VERY close to it and study the impasto. I was so excited to see it; I went there specifically for the Impressionist collection (although it’s a cool museum overall), and did not know they had it. So I was moving along the wall looking at each piece, and there it was.

        Seeing it so close felt like looking at Vincent through two-way glass and I could see him, but he couldn’t see me. A docent was stationed at the door nearby. I wanted to touch the painting SO SO BADLY. I didn’t, but I wanted to. If the museum had been empty, as in after-hours or something…I might have.

        1. Insert Clever Name Here*

          Oh my gosh, you put words to the feeling I get when standing that close to a painting — it IS like looking at the artist through two-way glass and seeing them, but them unable to see you. Chills. Love it.

      5. Magnus Archivist*

        this ^^

        If your hands were clean and you weren’t, like, manipulating the paper, this is absolutely fine.

    4. Snowy*

      Ugh, this was the bane of my existence as a museum curator, telling adults who think they can touch things because they’re “careful” or “my hands are clean” that they really, really shouldn’t do that as it can damage the artifacts. Even if one touch won’t damage it, the cumulative touch of many people thinking “but once won’t hurt it” will over time.

      I do get it’s fun to touch all the stuff nobody else can, but please don’t. Even though I was fully allowed to handle everything (I was the curator, after all), there were some things even I didn’t touch more than necessary because they were just too fragile.

  37. Let me clear my schedule for you*

    My grandboss asked my manager if I could do Unpleasant Task, but he didn’t know since I recently moved departments. Manager contacted my old supervisor who said no, even though that is what I was originally hired for. My old sup and I wondered why they want an analyst doing entry-level work …

  38. Milk Maid*

    My breasts got three women offices.

    I had just returned from maternity leave, and while I was out we had gotten a new facility director. I had never met the director until the day of our all hands meeting. I was trying to quickly finish pumping before the meeting started in 3 minutes, when there was a knock on my office door. I yelled, “Don’t come in!”, but the door opened anyway — the new facility director, in his rounds to ensure everyone was going to attend the all hands, had walked in on me pumping!

    I used his embarrassment about the whole situation to have a sit-down meeting about the office situation at the facility. Every single man, including those who worked off site full time, had an office. However, three women: two admin professionals and our only IT person, were still in cubicles. There were 11 unoccupied offices — and literal garbage being stored in some of these offices (old personal belongings from terminated employees). One of the admins had already been turned down to move into an empty office (she didn’t “meet the criteria” for an office – mind you, neither did I, nor at least two of my other colleagues). Within a week of him walking in on me, all three women had offices.

    Because they were no longer using a whole block of cubicles, the company removed them and gained a larger meeting space/ rec room that they ended up using to accept an award about a year later.

    1. Jennifer Strange*

      Your first sentence threw me for a loop. I legit thought you meant that your breasts were given three offices that had previously belonged to women and I was so confused about how that worked (in my defense I’m 10 weeks into my own maternity leave and sleep deprivation is setting in a bit).

      1. Lady_Lessa*

        I was wondering the same thing, except I don’t have any excuses.

        May you and your little one have good, long lives.

    4. Momma Bear*

      Sorry it took that big of an embarrassment to get it sorted, but glad that you were able to get the office space fixed.

    5. Daisy Gamgee*

      That is a glorious opening sentence to a splendid tale. Thank you for doing this, especially in leveraging his well-deserved embarassment for good.

  39. Amber Rose*

    Oh, and a very silly example of my own abuse of power. We’re supposed to have all of our service staff log in to this portal once a year and do a customer-specific Bear Awareness course. I just log in as them and do it for them. They take a general Bear Aware course through official training companies, and it’s way better.

    I don’t know who made this thing, but I feel like I know less about safety around bears every time I take it. It’s awful.

    1. 867-5309*

      What… actual training on Bear awareness and safety… not B-E-A-R that means something else?

      1. TK*

        I assume they’re.. park rangers, or something? It’s pretty amusing to just tell the story as though “bear awareness” is a typical training in most workplaces. :)

        1. Valancy Snaith*

          Bear awareness training can be a major compliance requirement for anyone whose job requires them to be outdoors–waste management, facilities workers, utilities workers, road workers, delivery drivers/long-haul transport drivers in some communities (including postal employees)–or anyone who works in an environment where bears are around, such as employees of resorts or tourist spots in more distant locales. A lot of it does boil down to “don’t litter, don’t approach bears, and be sensible,” though.

        2. Amber Rose*

          The training video is done Smoky the Bear style with this horrible cartoon bear. So it really makes me feel like a park ranger. But no. We do associate work on pipelines. I’m so used to weird training requirements that I don’t even think about it anymore.

          I wish they’d make it like that one jokey bee video where it was like “Remember kids, bee safe! And don’t f**k with bees or we’ll f**king sting you to death.”

          2. Hazel*

            I just thought Amber Rose was making up a “chocolate teapots” type of example! Live and learn. Actually, “read AAM comments & learn”!

            1. Pug Lover*

              Same! I thought “Bear Awareness” had to be analogous to Llama Grooming or Teapot Inspection. I also learned something new.

          3. Worldwalker*

            I know of a site (government-adjacent) where their in-house safety training videos feature an error-prone worker in a dinosaur costume. I don’t know if they did this because they were worried that someone would complain that their particular demographic was (or wasn’t) represented by hapless star of the videos, or just because that guy wanted to get away with wearing a dinosaur suit on company time.

            1. Anonymous4*

              I would love to wear a dinosaur suit on company time! I have a mid-year review coming up; I think I’ll add it to my list of Things To Do.

        4. Kate Kate*

          A very small one, but I had a work study job in college and I worked admin in a department office for one of the nicest people on the planet. Due to the nature of my major, if I didn’t have enough office work to do, I couldn’t really work on homework at the job, so she’d often be like “oh put down 2 hours for today then and go do your homework” knowing the department had the budget for it. She also knew getting the mail was my favorite and saved it for me every time I worked :) 20+ years later and we still keep in touch-they even named their dog after me!!

      2. Carlon*

        It’s not weird in e.g. environmental consulting where you do a lot of site work in remote mines! The more you know

        1. londonedit*

          There are no bears in the country I live in (well, apart from at the zoo), and it never would have crossed my mind that bear awareness training would be a thing! I mean it makes sense when you think about it, but it’s not something anyone here (with the exception of zookeepers) would ever need to know about!

          1. allathian*

            I learned bear awareness at my grandma’s knee, or nearly, when I went berry picking with her as a kid. I never saw any bears, although I did see the paw prints of what could only have been a bear once when I was 11.

      3. GoryDetails*

        I was assuming they’re the staff of a dude ranch or something similar, located near bear country. I had a summer job at one, and we often heard accounts of the lucky folks who got to roust the bears out of the dumpsters in the mornings….

      4. Amber Rose*

        A very large cause of death amongst pipeline workers in Canada (and maybe/probably the US) is bears, because pipelines tend to cross bear home territory. On the one hand it sounds silly but on the other hand, bear attacks are scary af.

        1. 867-5309*

          I definitely wasn’t intending to imply it wasn’t critical for some roles. More that as an office employee in a state without bears, I read it as B-E-A-R until the second sentence and realize OP meant actual, the animal bears. I had to read it twice.

          1. Amber Rose*

            No, I know. I never thought about it either until I started working here. I’m a city girl, I mostly see bears in zoos. But I’ve read some of the incident reports and… :O

        2. Chinook*

          I agree. In pipeline work, it is legit to say you can’t work today because they spotted a bear (bonus points if you have a photo). And it is more common because the pipes can be warmer than the ground when uncovered, so the bears will walk on them (they leave footprints). The downside to that is they then have to inspect the pipes to make sure the bear didn’t cause any damage from their weight, but they have procedures in place for that too.

          On the flip side, I do have a photo of DH doing northern policing where he yelled at a young bear (not a cub) to get out of a tree in someone’s backyard. He talked to it sternly and gave it commands like a dog (his partner had a rifle covering him just in case). All it did was cause the bear to run down that tree, up the next one and then start crying. It eventually got tired and ran back into the woods, but he had a rep in that remote community as “the cop who made a bear cry.”

          1. Anonymous4*

            I feel sorry for the poor little bear! Got its feelings hurt! It wasn’t doing anything — it was just sitting in a tree when this guy came along and YELLED at it!

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

        I just figured OP just used Bear Awarness course as a stand in for the actual name of the course for anonmosity. Just like we often see Teapot painter or Llama Groomer as a stand in for an actual title.

        1. Amber Rose*

          Bear Aware is my single favorite real course to sign people up for because it’s fun to say. :D

          1. Formerly Ella Vader*

            I sign people up for assorted safety courses from a place that offers Bear Aware (Western Canada oil industry, but mostly not remote), and I’ve always thought it sounded more interesting than Confined Space or H2SAlive.

      6. Old Mountain Lady*

        I live near Asheville, NC. We have community based BearWise training here because anyone who lives here needs to know how to behave around bears and how to avoid attracting them. When we moved here, I often didn’t lock my car at night because we’re out in the country. Now I always lock it after hearing about friends of friends whose car was totaled after a bear got inside and couldn’t get out. I love the bears, but I’m careful.

    2. Zombeyonce*

      I love this mainly because I initially read “Bear Awareness” as a silly fill-in name for a training, the way Alison uses ‘llama groomer” instead of generic job titles in her answers. I didn’t even consider that it was a real thing until the end of the comment! I’m definitely using bear awareness training as my go-to generic training from now on.

      2. Twenty Points for the Copier*

        Me, too! I assumed it was a fill-in for a some sort of corporate or technical training and not Actual Bears.

        1. The Rafters*

          This thread is amusing. I’m rural enough that I immediately read it as actual Bear Awareness. I read a few comments, then went back to the post to see if I misread it.

    3. Chinook*

      As someone who once had to sit through corporate online training about safely using stairs while sitting in our one floor building (not even a basement), thank you for taking one for the team.

      Our teams response was to see how wrong you could answer the question and still pass. I am pretty sure that the head office thought we were all idiots after it took us 10 times to pass a test with questions about whether or not to use handrails on stairs.

      1. Morrigan Crow*

        I remember safety training about using handrails on stairs (3 story office) – and then my manager telling me it’s better NOT to use the handrails because you’ll pick up germs! (And this was pre-Covid advice)

    2. fposte*

      I think that’s the opposite of this post, though–it’s for deliberately causing harm with compliance. This post is about creating good with noncompliance.

      1. Nesprin*

        Indeed- This seems like a celebration of chaotic good, instead of lawful evil (how i would describe malicious compliance)

  41. Anon for this*

    A million years ago I was the newly hired controller at a software company with an open office plan in an old mill building. Think super high ceilings and exactly zero sound insulation/proofing. I had accounting, HR and IT reporting to me. The payroll/AP person was a lunatic. She spent most of the day on LOUD personal phone calls (we all had landlines, see a million years ago) while typing away as loudly as she could (to pretend she was working, I guess?). It was SO disruptive and everyone was really upset about it. I spoke to her about the calls several times to no avail. While she was typing noisily, she was also overwriting all the deductions on everyone’s paycheck under the pretext of being “busy.” So that wasn’t ideal either.
    So on my 6th or 7th day, I quietly called the IT guy over and said “break her phone.” He was incredulous and asked me what I meant, and do know I was his brand new boss so he hadn’t figured me out yet. I just said, “I don’t care what you have to do, just make sure her phone doesn’t work ever again” He got the biggest smile on his face and in a few minutes it was done. She kept coming over to me and asking why her phone wasn’t working. I innocently said I would talk to the IT guy, but in the meantime, if she needed to make a call, she could certainly use my phone. Peace reigned and payroll was more accurate.

  42. Jennifer Strange*

    I worked in the box office for an opera company one summer and everyone involved with the productions got a certain number of comps for the season. You would submit a form to us for the performance(s) you wanted your comp tickets to be for and the day of the performance we would fill those comp requests based on the order they had come in and what seats were still available. A few of the performers were jerks (mostly the men’s chorus and parents of the children’s chorus) but there was one chorus member who was the worst.

    First, he showed up four minutes before we closed one day to fill his comps, but when I asked him which performance he wanted the tickets to be for he seemed perplexed by the question and it took 20 minutes for him to figure it out. Then he showed up the day that he had guests coming to a performance to ask where they were seated. I don’t remember where they had been put (somewhere in the orchestra, but likely nearer the back) but he decided that the ticket location was not good enough. Again, he was a chorus member (not that it would have been okay had it been a lead*, but maybe a bit more understandable) and these were FREE TICKETS. He berated the BO associate he was talking to and made her give his guests better seats, then said self-importantly, “Good thing I came by to check. That would have been embarrassing.”

    A week or so later I was wiling comp requests for the day I came across a form for him. Looking at the seating chart I saw that there were two seats available in the middle of Row M…or two seats available on the side of Row U. Guess where I seated his guests? I was working will call that evening as well and saw his guests pick up their tickets. They gave me a sour look when they saw where they were seated for the evening.

    *Just as an aside, every lead I interacted with – as well as the wife of the company’s artistic director – were absolute gems!

    1. Il Divo*

      Why punish his guests when he was the jerk?

      Why demean chorus members? They’re as important as the leads. Leads aren’t allowed to act like glassbowls either.

      1. Insert Clever Name Here*

        Because giving his guests the best possible seats after he berated someone for giving his *other* guests seats he deemed subpar just teaches him that berating people gets him what he wants. That’s not what we should teach anyone, whether they are a jerk chorus member or a lead ;)

      2. Anyfizz*

        I’m confused by this question. It’s not as if the guests treated the OP that well either. Who gives someone a sour look over the seat placement for free tickets?
        Also, the OP went out of their way to say that it wouldn’t have been appropriate for a lead to act that way either… that it was just strange to such antics (likely fueled by a great sense of self-importance) from a non-lead.

        1. Gumby*

          Who gives someone a sour look over the seat placement for free tickets?

          Jerks. That is who. When I was a volunteer usher I saw a father (assuming, he was there with a kid about 12 years old) berate another usher to the point that we got the house manager involved because his free tickets were not good enough seats. Sadly, he was actually given slightly better seats. The whole performance was free but it was still assigned seating, mostly determined by when you requested your tickets.

  43. Anon for this post*

    When I was in the National Guard, my unit was activated for Desert Storm. Our top sergeant decided that anyone old enough to go to war was old enough to get a drink, so he issued all of us under 21 ID cards that made us at least 21. It didn’t do me a lot of good there, but when I returned home it definitely was put to use.

    I know for a fact he risked a lot to do that, but I think he was right.

        1. Database Developer Dude*

          Indeed he was right. If you can fight and die for your country, you should be able to have a beer.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            I agree with this, but I wish the age to go to war was at least 21. Or better yet, no wars.

    2. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

      Fascinating. Around the same time, I was on a military base and an active duty card was always good enough to get a drink at the e-club, and for the same reason.

  44. Buttercup*

    This is really small, and the amount of good limited to just me, but it made my day at the time.

    I worked at a smoothie stand on my college campus for a few years, and occasionally, we’d get in these locally-grown apples to sell as well. I was restocking the apples for the display, and found a ridiculously tiny one in the barrel – it couldn’t have been more than two inches tall, an inch and a half across, and I thought it was the cutest thing. I told my boss about it when I got back, and sighed that it would have cost about a third of my lunch benefit for the day to get it. (They were really expensive apples, and we got about $7 each shift to get a sandwich or something on our break.) She went to the back and found it in the barrel, snuck it into my apron pocket, and told me to have it on my break for “quality control”. It was absolutely delicious.

  45. Dragon_Dreamer*

    I have 2 stories.

    The first time, I had a customer with a broken ethernet port on his laptop. This would not have been a problem, except that he plugged his power cord into the port, touching the exposed contacts. Fired the motherboard. So I called the warranty company with him, intending to tell them it had “just died.” He had the full accident, and I knew there was no way to tell.

    Bless his soul if he didn’t try to blurt out the WHOLE story to the warranty rep. REPEATEDLY. He really wanted me to tell them exactly what he’d done, which would have voided the warranty and gotten him nothing. Through creative use of the mute button and more than a few “I promise I’m telling them everything” I did get his motherboard replaced.

    Story the Second: We had a gentleman buy a laptop for his daughter, who was going to study in Central America. What is relevant is that where she was going, there were no computer repair shops. We warned him repeatedly to get the full accident warranty ($199), but he said, “oh, she’ll never break it” and bought the basic one. ($99) This was in July.

    In September, he called us and said that her roommate had sat on the laptop, shattering the screen. Technically, there was nothing we could do. My manager (the good one who later got transferred) and I hatched a plan. We told him to tell his daughter to hook the laptop to an external monitor for a few weeks. Meanwhile, we refunded his old warranty and sold him the full accident. After the waiting period, the claim was put in, and she got her machine fixed.

    Both customers were extremely nice and apologetic, and were willing to own their stupidity. (In the first guy’s place, too much so.) That was why we bent over backwards for them.

  46. Limepiranha*

    Worked as an Assistant Manager at a learning center with rigorous requirements for teachers to devote time to lesson plans, but very few actual laptops were provided for them to work on.
    When I was hired I was never actually given a new laptop as was approved but used an old one from a previous manager. As the teacher laptops grew old the company refused to provide new ones so we were down to just a couple of functioning machines.
    On my way out of that job I called IT support, claimed a blue screen of death on ‘my laptop’ which prompted them to order a new one for the next incoming assistant.
    I then gifted my laptop (wiped of anything administration-wise) to the teachers and didn’t feel bad about my subterfuge since the company technically would have provided an assistant manager a laptop regardless.

  47. fax lady*

    I worked at the circulation desk of an academic library for 6 years before transferring elsewhere in the library. That circulation desk had the only publicly available fax machine on campus. You would be surprised at how many people still need to send and receive faxes these days. We were also the cheapest place to send a fax for miles around and were open later than the public library. So we would often get community members as well as students. Even with our low prices, it could be multiple dollars to fax verification paperwork to the welfare office. I just never charged for those and instructed my student workers to do the same. Why make applying for SNAP any harder than it already is?

    1. Just Me*

      Oh my god, yes. The social security offices are closed where I live and the phone lines are perpetually tied up, so you can only get an appointment by faxing or mailing a request to your closest social security office. Doctor’s offices will also only take a lot of documents by fax or mail. It sucks because fax is the fastest way to get your documents sent out and is also so ancient that no one knows how to do it anymore. I want to start a petition to get the dinosaur, late-adopter industries onboard with secure email so we can just kill the fax machine already.

      1. quill*

        Snail mail government offices were the bane of my existence when I worked regulatory affairs. Even faxing would have been an improvement over “sorry, the post office is imploding during a pandemic where god only knows when the addressee will be on site to pick up the mail,” but we REALLY should just skip to email. I guarantee it’s more secure to email “hey, I want to buy a copy of public record certification paperwork X with the official seal for business reasons” than it is to hope that it made it through pandemic, postal service, and in-office mail pick up schedules.

      2. Christmas Cactus*

        Medical offices are not allowed to use e-mail to transmit documents that contain health information. Under HIPAA, e-mail is not a secure method of transmitting personal health information. Fax and snail mail are still necessary.

        1. Emi*

          In a lot of cases, they can send HIPAA-protected information through less secure means if the person whose information it is requests that they do so, and anyway that’s no reason why they should only *accept* files by fax.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            Yes, both my doctor’s office in OldCity and here in Hellhole have secure messaging platforms but not all patients have or know how to use the internet. Before they got it, they just mailed stuff.

        2. Chili pepper Attitude*

          At my local govt job, we paid for hotels on the bosses p-card but could not bring the card on the trip. So hotels required us to fax them a form, it could only be faxed. Our city used an app that faxed things so we were actually just emailing the docs.

        3. MAC*

          That’s so weird to me. At one of my previous jobs, the very publicly located fax machine was 5 hallways away, in a building with ~100 people (and accessible to ~4000 campus wide) so anyone passing by could have seen/taken my private medical records while I was making the trek. But I was the only one with access to my computer & email. Of course, we were a government contractor that did a lot of national security work, so our network was among the best-protected in the country, I realize not all systems are as well shielded. It still always struck me as odd that my eye dr. wouldn’t send my contacts prescription to my email even when I expressly gave consent.

        4. Squidlet*

          That’s weird because more people have a private email account than a private fax machine, surely? I’ve never owned a fax machine.

          In my country, confidential info is often sent by email as a password-protected PDF attachment.

        5. Captain Sweatpants*

          Like Emi said, they can actually do it in a number of common circumstances. HIPAA does not say that email is verboten, but a lot of medical networks like to pretend that it does. They choose to do this because 1) the policies are written by legal teams that want to stay as far away from potential liability as possible, and 2) creating better IT infrastructure for the hospital/clinic costs money, and their big wigs want to stay as far away from spending money as possible. As with most things, we would rather help patients less than scale back hospital nonsense.

          A lot of people have discovered that most folks don’t know what’s in HIPAA, and they can therefore use it as a blanket excuse for not doing things they don’t want to do. For example, the woman I talked to earlier today who said it was literally illegal for her to transfer my call to the pharmacy’s line because of “HIPAA rules.” When I told her I work in compliance and knew good and g-d well that was not true, she got pretty mad. Which is how they always react when someone tries to give me that excuse and I tell them they’re wrong, which happens a hell of a lot. I’m always like, sorry you tried to BS me and it didn’t work? But I digress.

      3. Elizabeth West*

        OldExJob had customers who were adamant about using fax for quotes because email was “dangerous.” We wasted so much paper printing and faxing them. Then they were stored in drawers, which were emptied into storage, and then all this was thrown away. I shudder to think how many trees we killed. I figured out we probably spent around $4000 a year just on paper and the bosses wouldn’t pay for recycling.

        The fax machine would print out a report after you faxed, which was even worse; it went straight from the fax machine into the garbage. It was much less irritating once I figured out how to turn that off.

    2. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

      That always kills me. Fax machine? What, is your carrier pigeon out sick today?

      1. Observer*

        You are spoiled! you should be grateful for having the LUXURY of faxes! In *my* day, we either hand delivered it or used the Pony Express if we needed really fast turn around!
        /sarc

        I do recall having to fight to get fax – being told by funders and BOD of various organizations that fax is a “luxury” and the “no one needed them when I worked in an office”.

        1. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

          Ayup. One slip of the chisel and the whole stone tablet had to be thrown out.

    3. AdequateArchaeologist*

      I worked in a copy shop with one of the few fax machines in town. There was a girl who was attacked and the police made her fax crap back and forth, another woman who was fight for disability accommodations for her kid with the state Department of Education, and older people filing for social security. I almost never charged them for things like that. Whatever bureaucracy they were tied up in, there was no need to pay $1 per page on top of it!

    4. GammaGirl1908*

      Just this week I had a laughing conversation with my mom about the two of us going in on an all-in-one wireless printer / copier / scanner /fax to keep at one of our houses (we live within a few miles of one another, so this would be practical). This is because it’s expensive and painful to find a scanner or fax machine, but the once in a while you need one, you DESPERATELY need one and there is no substitute.

      I used to use the ones at my office, and did not realize how often I did until I went remote. I think the last time I needed a fax was when I was buying my condo. I was on a hard deadline to get the mortgage paperwork in, and I COULD NOT get the thing to work, because it’s not like I ever use it. A very nice admin found me sobbing over the fax machine and gently led me away, and sent off my paperwork for me, on time. That lovely woman has my eternal gratitude.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        You’re so right. I bought an all-in-one for the same reason. Just try to find a scanner if you don’t have it!
        And bless that admin.

        1. GammaGirl1908*

          We’re looking very seriously at the Brother MFC-L2690DW, which they have at Sam’s Club for a decent price.

  48. Don't Park Here*

    I worked at my university parking services department. I took night classes often and noticed this one SUV would constantly park in the load zone or worse the handicap spot in front of one of the buildings. I watched the pattern for three weeks and finally had enough and mentioned it to the ticket takers the morning of one of my classes. That night when I left the class their car had big stack of tickets because in a load zone you could get a ticket every 21 minutes. The ticket taker had keep looping back to their car after hitting the other nearby lots.

    Best part is when they tried parking in a handicap spot the next week and they got hit again. After $300 they finally bought a parking pass to park legally in a normal spot. It was so satisfying to take their money while they complained. I told them don’t park in handicap parking unless your handicap! LOL.

    1. Wendy City*

      Bless you for this. I’m not too high-and-mighty to judge a one-time misuse of a parking place, but the pattern of behavior there is upsetting. We live in a society!

    2. Chauncy Gardener*

      Thank you!! Love when entitled folks who park in handicapped spots get their comeuppance royally.

    3. Jackalope*

      I knew a woman with a son who was always in a wheelchair, and they would often spend their afternoons at the train station because he loved trains. It happened with disturbing frequency that someone would come park right next to her in the hashmarked area right next to the disabled parking spot. This put her in a bad situation because she couldn’t get her son in the car if that area had another car – it was the wheelchair access area. Thankfully she was friends with some of the police or security officers that patrolled the station and they would cheerfully come give tickets whenever this happened. Lots of people learned a painful and expensive lesson.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        That’s more upsetting than parking in the handicap spot; it’s actually preventing a person who uses a wheelchair from accessing their vehicle!

  49. Anon for this*

    My workplace has offers alternative schedules like 9/8/80s (every two weeks, work 8 nine hour days, 1 eight hour day, and get one weekday off) and 10/4s (every week, work 4 ten hour days and get one weekday off).

    When my workplace rolled out the alternative schedule options, I had not understood that the somewhat murkily written policy was that if you regular non-weekend day off fell on a paid workplace holiday… that was too bad, no make up day for the day off. I discovered my misunderstanding when I looked at my leave balance and asked HR about it since I figured I’d have some “floating holiday” hours because of the overlap between a regular day off and a holiday that month.

    I alerted my supervisor to suggest it be noted at our team’s next staff meeting since I had missed it and didn’t want it to happen to any of my colleagues. I was not asking my supervisor to do anything about the policy, just to loop others in since the alternative schedule program was so new. But you could practically hear the record scratch sound effect as I explained what happened. “Oh no, you’re getting that day off. Even if I can’t get it approved officially, you can take one.”

    So I did.

    Did the policy change? Nope.

  50. urguncle*

    My first job out of college was at a B2B call center. Technicians who called us were not being paid their book rates for fixing cars to be on the line with us. I was aware of that and I had a very quick and efficient call time. Our call times were published every week and shared too the entire group. James, another person on my team, was a retired sales guy who wanted some part time work. His call times were about 4x as long because he stopped to tell stories about his time as a salesman. Very charming, sweet man, but slow when it came to this.
    I got a call from a technician who immediately complained to me about my opening lines, then tells me he has a “really complicated” case and he needs a man for this one. I call down to James.
    “You busy, man?”
    “No, do you need something?”
    “Do you want to take a call?”
    Transferred him over and they spent a good half hour together.

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      I love this one. I’ve known a few James in my time, and I’ve dealt with those people before; never concurrently but I can imagine the fun if I had.

    2. PhyllisB*

      This makes me think of the dealer where I get my car serviced. The technician who usually writes up my order is female, and she really knows her stuff.
      She shared a story with me about a customer who told her he needed “a man who would understand his problem.” She handed him off to a male technician who told the customer, I don’t know about that, “Mary” is the one who has the expertise on that issue.”
      We both had a good laugh that day. (I realize that’s not the same as your story, but it just amazes me how many men don’t think women know how to do their jobs.)

      1. urguncle*

        The auto industry is so far behind everywhere else in terms of gender equity, it’s honestly intolerable.

  51. Hotdog not dog*

    My mom volunteers at her local animal shelter. One day they were doing intake for over 100 dogs from a hoarding situation. Most of the dogs were young and would be easy to adopt out, but there were a couple older dogs that were slated for transfer to another shelter (where they would most likely be euthanized).
    Somehow, one of them mysteriously found herself in the back seat of Mom’s car, and her intake paperwork went missing.
    The supervisor failed to notice any barking in the parking lot, and sent Mom on some silly errand. By the time Mom returned to help finish the intake, my dad was already at the pet store buying stuff for his new dog.
    (She was a sweet old lady dog, probably the mama to a lot of the young ones. She lived about another 3 years in the lap of luxury with my parents.)

    2. irene adler*

      Yes!!!!!! My fantasy come true! I always wanted to swoop in, take home the older pooches and cuddle/play with them all day long!

    6. Observer*

      Your parents are great. I wonder if the supervisor didn’t hear or “didn’t hear”.

      1. Sorrischian*

        Considering that they then sent OP’s mom on a “silly errand”, I’d put my money on the supervisor being fully aware.

        2. Hotdog not dog*

          Yup, she knew. Technically the dog should have gone to the other shelter, but Mom and her supervisor couldn’t stand to see such a sweet dog suffer, so Mom put the dog in the car, the supervisor “lost” the intake form and gave Mom an excuse to drop the dog at home. They guessed (correctly) that because of the large number of dogs it would be easy to say someone miscounted and no one would be the wiser.
          My mom has always been an agent for Chaotic Good, and I hope I grow up to be just like her! (Which is an inside joke, since I’m in my 50s)

          1. VegetarianRaccoon*

            I used to work at an overcrowded public shelter that sometimes got big hoarding cases. Bless your mother for coming in to help. And I always loved when a trusted volunteer took home an animal that was good, but was a ‘hard sell’ adoption-wise (like the older ones, or that had medical issues.). When a member of the public took one home, of course I was happy, but always with a little nagging worry that they would change their minds at the first little problem and bring it back. It happens. The kind of volunteer who shows up to help with big intakes is made of stronger stuff imho.

  52. CreepyPaper*

    Whoever wrote the script on one of our systems that autofills vessel sailing schedules (a task we were told we had to do manually – as in our former manager sat us down, and said this had to be done by us individually because we couldn’t trust the machines) gets my vote. Anyone who works in logistics or international shipping will know what a pain scheduling can be, but some anonymous genius has saved us all at least an hour a day by… doing something that makes our system talk to the schedule software. Yes, we do double check them but the fact we don’t have to sit there and type them in manually makes my soul happy.

    So if I ever find out who it is, they’re getting a hug. So I suppose this is kind of underhanded, in a ‘it was done manually for twenty years why should we change?’ way. I don’t mind, makes my life easier!

    1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      Similar story: I worked with a programmer who eliminated two FTE’s by automating running client samples. It was a task he was forbidden to do (we need the schleps and plebs reviewing these every single time!!!) and he only could do because he’d been around long enough to figure out where all the information was buried and in which database tables.

      He also knew with the then-current staffing levels that the forbidding had no teeth.

      It turns out Production errors went down by roughly 40% during the 3 months after people started using his code–you can run things right manually that are wrong in automation and vice versa, but the scripted code only knew how to do things the way that automation did things.

  53. Ace in the Hole*

    I used to work in a recycling center. Official policy was no salvage allowed – for both customers and staff. Once it was in the bin it was supposed to be gone for good. Partly for safety, partly because recycling centers make money by selling the recyclable materials so salvage reduces revenue. In practice, management turned a blind eye to staff taking things every so often as long as it didn’t get out of hand… but for liability/safety reasons, they were very strict on the policy with customers.

    A lot of people toss perfectly good stuff. And a lot of our regular customers were low-income or homeless.

    I had a coworker who would set aside every useable bicycle that came in and hand them out to customers who needed them. I helped expand the service by repairing some of the bikes that weren’t rideable when we found them during slow periods (I had the tools/skills from fixing my own bikes). I don’t know how many he gave away over the 15 years he worked there, but it must have been hundreds. Maybe thousands.

    5. Susan Ivanova*

      Wow!
      From my town’s recycling website: “Furniture and other items in good condition rescued from the garbage and recycling areas of the SMaRT Station are placed in the re-use trailer for customers to take home at no charge.”

      1. Ace in the Hole*

        Many places have programs like this! They’re really great. My hometown has one where people can donate stuff to a thrift store on their way into the dump… that way there’s an extra incentive because if you donate it you don’t have to pay landfill fees.

        I was trying to set up a similar program for my org, but then Covid happened and I had to focus on other things :(

  54. Zephy*

    In my first job out of college, I worked in a high school to mentor at-risk students – there were a group of us, we were an outside nonprofit organization that worked on the campus, and there were a lot of rules about what we could and couldn’t do while “representing the organization” (read: wearing the branded clothing that was our uniform). You know, we were behavioral mentors, we couldn’t tell kids to stay in school and not do drugs and then be seen jaywalking and buying alcohol (even if that second thing was technically legal, as most of us were 21+).

    One morning, two little kittens, about 10-12 weeks old, ran into the school while we were greeting the students walking into the building. I’m very much a Cat Person, and so were two of my coworkers. We coaxed the kittens out from under a cart where they were hiding, and then, not knowing what else to do with them now that we had them, hacked together an ersatz container from a milk crate and some jackets and put them in the classroom that was our base of operations within the school. Another coworker was deathly afraid of cats, so our boss said we couldn’t just keep the kittens there all day as it wouldn’t be fair to her, but just letting them go again didn’t sit right with any of us, either. Coworker 1 had a friend who worked in cat rescue, and I happened to have kitten food and litter at home for my own cat, so Bossman made an executive decision: Coworker and I would take the kittens to his place and set them up in his bathroom for the day, and then he would coordinate with his friend to get them fixed and placed for adoption.

    Normally, we wouldn’t be allowed to leave campus in the middle of the day; we weren’t technically even supposed to drive while on the clock, and while I don’t believe the handbook said anything specifically about transporting animals, moving two fully-mobile kittens in a regular-degular cardboard box in the back seat ain’t it, fam. There was basically nothing about this situation that Bossman should have allowed to happen, he would have been fully within the letter of the law to tell us to just put the cats outside and get back to work. I don’t quite remember but I believe stories and photos of the Kitten Caper made it into our end-of-year retrospective that we put together and shared with the entire chapter of the org, so the story did eventually get out, but no one was ever reprimanded about it as far as I’m aware. Bossman was fully prepared to defend our actions if anyone ever did say anything to him about it – you know, community engagement, being kind to animals, the right thing to do from both a moral and ecological perspective, etc.

  55. Jaxgma*

    Many years ago I worked in the office of the food service director for a public school system. One of my jobs was to review the applications that came in for the free/reduced lunch program. One time I had one that exceeded the max allowable income by $10/week. I gave it to my boss, who called the principal at the school and asked if she knew the family. Principal told us this was a middle class family with 2 working parents who decided to have one more kid – except the one more kid turned out to be twins with medical problems. One parent had to quit working to care for the twins, take them to doctors, etc, Then the other parent’s company reduced their hours (unavoidable, there was a recession at the time). My boss said, “I think they made a math mistake. Can you see if they can submit a new form?” Few days later we had a new form showing $20 less income per week, which got them reduced price lunches and lower bus fees. I shredded the original application and we pretended it had never existed. My boss could have been jailed for up to a year and fined $10k for that. She was actually pretty terrible at her job but this time she did the right thing.

    1. ferrina*

      This is definitely the right thing. It’s so horrible when $20 isn’t nearly enough to make up for the benefits, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

    2. Chriama*

      Honestly that benefits cliff is so frustrating. It’s what people who don’t understand marginal tax rates think is happening with their taxes, but applied to the most vulnerable people in society. I’m glad your boss did the right thing,

  56. LovelyTresses*

    I worked in a big city for a big box chain store for about 5 years — it was soul crushing, to say the least. Our store was #1 in grocery sales in the entire nation, but many who lived in the area where this store is located are housing and food unstable, and/or living in poverty. As a manager, I had precious little power (and spent most of my time trying to figure out how to cut cashier hours to maximize profits for a huge corporation), but one thing I COULD do was requisition products from the sales floor for business use, like pens for the office or cupcakes for the team etc.

    There was an unhoused woman who would stand outside the store and ask people for money, and then come in to buy a pint of whole milk. Every day. She was a lovely senior citizen with a quirky personality and we all took a shine to her — she would sit on the bench inside the door, drink her milk, and chat with whoever would listen. Let me tell you, I requisitioned A LOT of pints of whole milk for her. Also, the way the labels are on shelves (and the inconsistent stocking) meant that often times the WIC items were mis-labeled or out-of-stock on the floor. Much to the chagrin of the crunchy granola moms in my line, I never hesitated to shut down my entire lane to walk with a guest with a WIC check to each aisle to find the right items. And I would spend as much time as needed in the backroom digging out the “right” boxes of cereal, correct cheeses etc. In theory the WIC program is great, but in practice we make it SO HARD (and stigmatizing) for parents and their kids to buy the “right” foods (the right amounts, the right brands etc.) I loved using my time and modicum of power to make their experience in the store as great as possible.

    1. Observer*

      Thank you so much!

      In theory, the WIC program is great. The execution leaves a LOT to be desired. Things are a bit better than they were, but still. So anything that anyone does to make it easier is much appreciated.

    3. Daisy Gamgee*

      I think someone took a sliced onion from your store and put it somewhere on my desk… seriously, though, you did so much good for people who needed it. Thank you on behalf of many people including myself who’ve needed such help.

    4. pugsnbourbon*

      Thank you, thank you for doing this. It was ages ago, but I’ll never forget telling a mom she could only get plain rice cereal, not flavored, when she came through my checkout line. Another cashier had been threatened with termination for doing that. I felt awful. In hindsight I should have rung her out, but I was young and stupid.

  57. Dezzi*

    I managed a pool of PRN staff, and technically there were all kinds of rules about them not being allowed to decline more than a certain number of shifts (iirc, they could be fired for declining more than eight shifts in a three-month period). If a called them at least 24 hours ahead of time for a shift that was in their listed availability, they were “required” to take it. If their ability was changing, they were “required” to notify me in advance. They didn’t get benefits or paid time off, because they were part time, but they were still expected to give at least three weeks’ notice via a special form if they were going to be unavailable for more than five days straight.

    I thought this was all completely ridiculous. We weren’t paying these poor people enough to make those kind of demands on them, and most of them were in school, had kids, had other jobs, or all three. So I told them that as long as they made a reasonable effort to keep me in the loop, we’d work around anything they had going on.

    Well, the policy said they had to submit these forms to me, and I had to sign them & forward to HR…..but TECHNICALLY there was nothing in the policy saying the employee actually had to sign the form. Nor were there any rules about how soon I needed to get the form to HR (since I was completely responsible for the scheduling).

    I’m sure you can see where this is going. My staff would text me that they needed a schedule change/some time off/whatever, and wouldn’t you know, if anyone asked, it would magically turn out that the completed form (with a date showing they’d given me the required notice, of course) had just been sitting on my desk and I’d forgotten to tell HR about it!

    1. Dezzi*

      Funnily enough, my group of PRNs had the lowest turnover rate of any of our clusters, and my sites consistently had the highest rates of PRN usage. Turns out, if you make it clear to your employees that you’ll bend over backwards to accommodate their needs, they’ll work really hard to meet yours! Who’d have thought???

      2. Water Everywhere*

        It’s such a no-brainer that treating your employees well earns their loyalty, how do so many employers not get this? Good on you for cutting through the bullshirt.

        1. Dezzi*

          Right??? I was in a newly-created position with essentially no oversight, so I pretty much threw the rulebook out the window. There were a few times I did have to write people up for declining shifts, when they refused to work with me and tell me what they needed. Which sucked. But I never had that problem with a staff more than once, because I’d use that conversation to drill into them “seriously, I don’t care if it’s 2am, just f***ing text me what you need and we’ll make it happen.”

        2. Merrie*

          You’d think it’s a no-brainer, but a lot of managers don’t seem to have a clue about this. As a manager myself, I try to do this for my staff. I desperately want to quit my job because of the way my managers manage ME.

          1. Dezzi*

            I think it helped that I’d just spent five years doing the same job as the people I was now managing, so I knew what they were going through & how much their job sucked.

        3. JelloStapler*

          The rypical- we’ll make you jump through hoops but not raise a finger to help you in return. :(

  58. Balto*

    I just came to say, about the trip to Alaska in the onion sandwich link, go get your dog sled!

  59. Rhymes with Face*

    I was a bank teller in 2008, during the last financial crisis. If a non-account holder came to cash a check, we were supposed to charge them $5. (And of course we were supposed to try to get them to open an account so they wouldn’t be charged.) One day a man came to cash a check and I explained about the fee and he was just so crestfallen. He wasn’t arguing with me but he was traveling and it was clear that this was a problem for him. I was about to say what I usually said in those situations which is “I’m so sorry but there’s nothing I can do to keep it from charging you” when I suddenly realized that wasn’t true. I had the option to waive the fee. You may think I’m a bit dim for not realizing this sooner but I was 22 and not yet accustomed to questioning anything higher ups told me. So you better believe for the rest of the time I worked there I was waiving fees left and right (when my supervisor wasn’t around).

  60. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    One of my team members, after an HR crackdown, came to me and quietly confessed they’d been doing some work off the clock the previous month. When I audited that month between timecard data and timestamps on their work, I was like “Jiminy Christmas, what the heck,” it had this person working an extra hour and 15 to hour and 45 minutes literally every single day after they clocked off. Then something occurred to me, and I emailed our HR folks to ask them, “This person is in the next time zone over, are their time cards based on THEIR time or the SERVER time?” HR assured me, 100%, time cards were server time. Reiterated it three times. So I shrugged and put in my team member’s 40-odd hours of OT for payment. They were somewhat baffled, didn’t realize it had been anywhere near that much, but hey, at least fat paycheck, and since they were the one who came forward and identified the issue, HR gave them a bye on the formal corrective action, so literally no harm, no foul.

    …. three weeks later, I found out that no, time cards are totally on employee’s local time, and the 40-odd hours of OT should’ve been about a quarter of that. But because I had confirmed with HR THREE TIMES and they kept assuring me otherwise, and our HR is otherwise as dull as a sack of hammers, I never went back and corrected it, my team member got to keep their extra OT.

  61. Sara*

    My job allows me to print things without paying, but most people here have to pay (a small amount, under a dollar per page). If it isn’t work related, I need to pay, too. Some of my work friends signed up to get their COVID vaccines at a pharmacy where they were required to print off and present at the pharmacy something that proved they’d signed up to get a vaccine at that particular time (why it wasn’t in the pharmacy’s system, I’ll never know). I had them email the forms to me, and printed them so they wouldn’t have to pay. Non-work related things usually get flagged if I try to print them (I printed an insurance form once before I knew the rule), but this never came up on our IT system.

    1. Squidlet*

      Mine story is also printing-related. I was in my early 20s and at my first job. I had a personal project that I worked on in my free time (my friends and I were organising a games convention), and I naively asked our Managing Director if I could use the office printer after hours, if I brought my own paper (it was a lot of printing). He smiled and said “no problem”. Afterwards I found out that the cost of the paper was pretty insignificant – it was the toner that was expensive! But he never said anything. It was really kind in so many ways.

  62. Big Sigh*

    When I was in college, I was employed in the tutoring center. We helped people brainstorm assignments and checked over their papers to see if they were on the right track.

    A lot of students came in person, but we also had an email for students to submit a paper or question and ask for feedback. This was long enough ago that few students used it.

    One day, I checked the email and found a student submission. It was a 10 page paper where the student needed to expression an opinion and outline their defense of this opinion. The student decided to write about why they felt gay marriage was against God’s plan and homosexuality was a sin. As a gay myself, I wrestled briefly with what I thought the proper response should be and then I just … deleted the submission from the queue.

    I don’t feel bad about it to this day, though a friend of my at the time thought it was low and petty of me.

    1. Not Australian*

      In a similar vein, I arranged a ‘mysterious accident’ to the only copy of an appallingly out of date book in our library that described homosexuality as a mental illness and prescribed treatment for it. (School of Nursing library.) What do you know, the book was too badly damaged to be retained in the collection – and being out of print it could never be replaced.

      Small victories…

    2. Jillian*

      I might have deleted it too but I do this it’s low and petty. People are allowed opinions, even bad ones.

    3. Anne Wentworth*

      Nah, this wasn’t low and petty.
      The author of that paper chose to send hate speech to random strangers, without concern for whether the recipients might be members of the group they were targeting. The faculty or staff running the tutoring center should have had policies in place for how to handle submissions containing hate speech or harassing content.

  63. AnonBecauseOfReasons*

    I had put in my notice at a place which had a small staff because my husband (military) was changing duty stations. Right before we left (but a week after I stopped working) I got severely ill with sepsis and had to be hospitalized. My boss came to visit and said he had “forgot” to put the correct end date in the system so I was on the sick leave that the company didn’t pay you for when you left the company. He said once my sick leave was up he would update my end date.

    We needed the money so it was really unexpected!

  64. Former teacher*

    My first professional job was as a high school teacher, for a Llama Grooming pilot program that was the first of its kind in my state. I needed an emergency teaching license because I hadn’t been through a traditional teacher preparation program. The licensing agency had a 6-month backlog, but I was hired only two weeks before the school year started. An HR employee in the district central office called the licensing agency and told them that if I didn’t get my license before the school year started, it would whip up a lot of anger within the Llama Grooming community of the state. It was a complete lie because most people were not even aware of the program, but they got my my license within a week.

  65. The Talented Dr. Ripley*

    When I was finishing my PhD I had a silly formatting issue that meant that the graduate school office required me to reprint my title page. Which wasn’t a big deal– except that’s also the page that committee members had signed to indicate that I’d passed my defense the previous week. I was able to get 4 of the 5 members to resign easily, but one of them had left the country for the summer the day after I defended. I went to our department’s grad program admin assistant in a panic and told her what had happened, and she said “Leave the form with me and come back tomorrow, and I’m sure I can get it worked out.”
    “No, you don’t understand, X is out of the country…” I began.
    “DON’T WORRY.” She repeated. “I can get it WORKED OUT.”

    So technically, the documentation for my PhD was ever so slightly forged.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I worked at a job where we wrote software to replace people’s paper systems. We would carefully collect all the information about regulations and which supervisor needed to sign off on which procedures in the system and build the software to require approval by those individuals.

        The minute we turned the system on, no one could get any work done. It turns out that the person who required to sign off on certain processes had never actually been signing off; they had given someone else a signature stamp.

  66. Allornone*

    I think I’ve told this here story before- Our office shared a restroom with other offices on that floor. Said bathroom required a key. There was one key that we had to sign out for. For various reasons, this quickly became a pain. Not to mention, the key kept getting misplaced. I found an app that lets you take a picture of a key and have a copy sent to you. I did that, told a handful of people, including my boss (I wanted to be on the up and up; she thought it was hilarious). Word got around and the next thing I know, I’m enormously popular, with people paying me to make keys for them. Heck, I even gave one (kind of jokingly) as a birthday gift!

    I was the keymaster.

    1. Imapirate15*

      I just looked up this app and while how you used it is amusing, I’m horrified this exists. It would be so easy for someone to use this to duplicate house and car keys.

      1. Anonymous Hippo*

        You don’t even need an app. It is extremely easy to cut a house key from a picture of it. Locks are an illusion and a slight deterrent at best. Car keys have chips so don’t work the same.

      2. Allornone*

        Yeah, there are definitely some inherent concerns with it. I work elsewhere now so I’ve long deleted the app. Now you know, though, don’t ever let your keys out of your care.

      3. Zephy*

        Yeah. This is why you shouldn’t upload pictures of keys that you have to social media. Or, if you’re going to, make sure the teeth aren’t visible, at least.

      4. Sharpie*

        You should look up the Lock Picking Lawyer on YouTube. (OTOH, maybe you shouldn’t. Locks are basically designed to keep honest people out…)

      5. Elizabeth West*

        Pre-apps, I researched bump keys for something I was writing. I wished I hadn’t. Now I carry a doorstop with me when I travel.

        1. Imapirate15*

          I always put a bottle of vitamins on the door handle so if someone tries the door they fall and make a large noise. But I also typically block the door with a chair or provided ironing board. I’ll be screwed if there is a fire and I need to get out quick but I never feel comfortable otherwise knowing housekeeping and the front desk could just give out an additional card.

  67. a tester, not a developer*

    My team considered this as something that was done for the greater good, but my (former) boss probably would not agree…

    This was about 20 years ago. I had a boss that insisted on being up in everyone’s business about everything – she had admin access to everyone’s emails (“in case you and your 2 delegates are all off at the same time”) and she made it clear she was reading everyone’s personal emails if they were in the office or not. And she had master keys to all our desks – we had a system for storing work in progress in a common location, but she would go through locked drawers and comment on what you had bought at lunch time. I started work about 2 hours after my boss, so she had plenty of time to snoop.

    One day, I had finally had enough. I grabbed a company branded envelope (the kind HR put documents in), and rigged up a little thing with paper clips and rubber bands that would make a noise like a rattlesnake when you opened the envelope. I clearly labelled the envelope with “(my name) – Personal and Confidential” set the rattler, and stuck the envelope in a locked drawer.

    I was told that the next morning, she opened my desk, opened the envelope, and dropped to the floor when it went off. I honestly didn’t know she was afraid of snakes.

    When she returned to work after her stress leave, she gave all the desk keys to the admin assistant, and to the best of my knowledge never went through anyone’s desk by herself again.

  68. The Bill Murray Disagreement*

    When my mother died, I asked my boss how much time I got for bereavement and he said, “Don’t worry about it. Take what you need. I’ll work it out later.”

    The next time was when my husband (who worked at the same company I do) was dying of cancer and I had to step away from work to take care of him. My boss called me to tell me if I ran out of paid time off to let him know and I could charge to whatever code made it so I could stay paid & take care of my husband.

    These were bosses at two different companies so I feel exceptionally fortunate to have had such kind bosses who were willing to flout guidelines to help me out.

    1. Zombeyonce*

      I’m so sorry for your losses, but happy that you had great bosses that supported you so well. May we all receive such grace during hard times.

    2. anonymouse*

      I am sorry about your mom and your husband. I want to share that when my dad passed away in 2020, I called my boss that day (Sunday) and was told she’d take care of filling out my time sheet stuff for the week, so would not have to come back into the office on the following Monday and have to input all the funeral dates. Managers are not supposed to do this (in fact, they will send it back if a staffer needs to edit an error) definitely not required to do it, so this was really sweet and thoughtful. I was very grateful.
      (Especially because I hadn’t thought of it. I would have come back a week later and been told hey, put “funeral day” in all the entries on this screen.)

      1. Whynot*

        I’m so glad you had supportive bosses. My best friend has been caring for his terminally ill husband for more than two years, and the struggle to be able to keep working from home and all of the administrative hurdles he had to jump through made a terrible time even harder. His husband died last week, and the number of clueless/pestering emails from his boss (who will surely be pressing him to be back in the office full-time almost immediately) are absolutely infuriating. Fortunately his organization has solid leave policies and my friend has the resources to walk if necessary, but it is maddening.

        Good managers and good people can make such a difference for people in these kinds of circumstances, but in the US we truly need to do better for everyone. Our healthcare system is brutalizing for both patients and staff, caregivers needs are practically ignored, and no one should be at the mercy of their employers to the degree that so many Americans are.

  69. ghostlight*

    My own personal triumph: I interned at an opera company right out of college in the middle-of-nowhere in this tiny mountain town. One of my daily tasks was creating the Intern Schedule; basically assigning a bunch of menial daily activities (like watering plants, cleaning the opera house, working the receptionist desk, etc) to the group of 10 interns (including myself) and also including their work shifts in the costume shop or rehearsal hall or wherever they worked.

    For whatever reason (I think she blamed the poor connection/Wi-Fi in our mountainous area? even though it wasn’t a big issue), the head of the company HATED digital copies of the schedule going out. Every day this schedule had to be printed out and put in the mail boxes of all of the supervisors, as well as posted at several locations around the opera’s campus like outside the rehearsal hall, on the bulletin board in the office, etc. All of the interns were forced to hike around the campus looking for an updated schedule after work hours, and it drove us nuts, but I was told, “this is just how it’s done; you have to post the schedule physically in these locations everyday.”

    A couple weeks into our season, multiple supervisors also asked me to start emailing them the daily schedule, since they never checked their mail boxes, and frankly, the all-paper route was archaic and wasteful. The production manager compromised, and I started sending the schedule to supervisors via email every day… with all of Interns blind-copied on it.

    I still posted a physical copy in all the required locations, but all of us Interns swore to secrecy and got around her crazy rules and power trip.

  70. extra-anon (and slightly paranoid)*

    Pre-COVID times I worked as a contractor at a Fortune 50 company. FTEs got Summer Fridays; contractors, being paid for the hours we worked, either didn’t or were told we could come in early/stay late to make up the time if we wanted to leave early. One year my boss told me, “Summer Fridays start on [date] and they’re only for employees…. but I’m planning on taking them… and if I’m not in the office, I don’t know whether or not you’re here (shrug) (wink) so as long as your work’s getting done…”
    Needless to say, every Friday I left right after he did but still billed (and got paid for) my usual 40-hour weeks.

    1. RabidChild*

      One place I worked would be cleared out by noon on Fridays, since most of the higher-ups had vacation homes and barely showed up at all. But for some reason, junior members of staff weren’t afforded the same flexibility. So I’d tell my team that I was leaving at noon, and if they all forgot to come back after lunch I wouldn’t be there to see.

  71. Have you tried sparkling at it?*

    There’s so many regulations about being trans, it’s not even funny. In my state, in order to change the gender on your driver’s license, you have to have a doctor’s note saying that you’ve had “gender-reassignment surgery”. Which as you can imagine is terrible for people who:
    * can’t afford surgery
    * can’t get surgery for medical reasons
    * don’t want surgery for gender-related reasons
    * don’t want surgery for any other reason

    I knew my primary care doctor was a good one when she told me that anytime I wanted to try, she’d write me a letter with lots of technical-sounding language to say that I’ve “fully completed my transition”. Or if I wanted a different kind of surgery, and could relate it somehow to gender, she’d write me a letter that says I’ve had gender reassignment surgery (since there’s no legalese that specifies exactly what gender reassignment surgery means). Then I could take that note to a DMV and try my luck.

    1. Zombeyonce*

      I’m so people willing to bend the rules like this exist, but I wish these terrible rules making it necessary didn’t exist.

  72. The Prettiest Curse*

    Back when my husband and I first got married, we didn’t have a whole lot of money and he also had lousy dental insurance because he worked for a penny-pinching law firm. My husband needed some expensive dental procedure (I can’t remember what) and he was expecting to have to max out his credit card to pay for it. (It was a couple of thousand dollars.)

    When he went to pay, the front desk guy must have realised that he was really stressed, because he just looked at my husband and told him not to worry about it. I don’t know how he was able to get away with doing that and I hope he didn’t get into trouble for it, but we were both incredibly grateful and used that same dental practice for many years until we moved.

    1. jane's nemesis*

      A neurologist did this for me once. Long story short, an eye doctor misinterpreted some test results and sent me to a neurologist who took their word for it that I was in the onset of *scary neurological disease*. He sent me for very expensive testing (run by his practice, not offsite) to confirm it. I had very bad insurance and a very low salary, so on top of being terrified that I’ve got this scary disease, I’m also freaking out about how I’m going to pay for the very expensive testing.

      Well, once he looked at the results of expensive testing showing I absolutely did not have the disease, he realized optometrist must have overreacted to the tests in their office, and (i suspect) realized he should have done more preliminary testing himself before sending me for expensive test. Not only did it turn out I did not have the scary disease, he wiped the expensive test off my bill and I never had to pay the huge deductible copay because he didn’t bill insurance.

      For a little while, I was worried I had misunderstood when I asked what the copay for the test was going to be and the receptionist smiled and said not to worry about it – but I never got a bill and it never showed up in my insurance!
      (The results of the test are still in my record, or at least were a few years later.)

      1. MansplainerHater*

        I was having a miscarriage, but didn’t know it. Went to the ER and they confirmed it. The doctor gave my husband and I some time to process and cry. I saw him waive off the person who gets insurance info. And we packed up and left. Horrible news, but we didn’t have to pay a cent.

    2. Margaretmary*

      My mum had a situation a LITTLE like that. To begin, I have to explain that Ireland has a two-tier medical system, a private system and a public system. My mum is entitled to free medical care on the public system as a pensioner but the particular procedure she was awaiting (cateract surgery) has a ridiculously long waiting list (I’m talking a couple of politicians started bussing people North to get it done on the NHS in Northern Ireland because the wait down here is so long) that she eventually, after about two years of waiting, decided to go private. The doctor closed the door and asked her if she had health insurance. She said no, so the doctor put part of the treatment through under the public system so my mum wouldn’t have to pay as much. She COULD have afforded it (and we would have helped out if she couldn’t), but she IS living on a pension, so it was nice to get it a bit cheaper.

      1. allathian*

        I’m in Finland, and we have a similar system. In addition, sometimes you can get vouchers from the NHS to get service on the private side when the waiting lists are too long. This happened when my dad needed cataract surgery [sic!]. He got tired of waiting for the vouchers, and because they had the means, he decided to pay for the surgery himself (my mom doesn’t drive, and his license was temporarily suspended because he really couldn’t see well enough to drive safely). As he was recovering, the vouchers arrived in the mail. My dad contacted the private healthcare provider that had performed the surgery, and they accepted the vouchers and he got a refund. I’m not sure if he got extra good service, or if this sort of thing is built into the system, but I’m glad it worked out for him in the end.

    3. Hen in a Windstorm*

      I had a similar situation about 15 years ago. Just started a job, hadn’t gotten health insurance yet, got diagnosed with a rare illness. I was at a university hospital, and when I went to the bursar or whoever to pay and found out how much the $$$ medication cost (probably looking upset), she looked at me, then said, “What was your last name again? Oh, your cousin works in X department. Let me link up your account so you can get the employee family discount.” I was slightly confused, but extremely grateful to that woman.

  73. RCB*

    I was at NY Penn Station waiting on my Amtrak train once, and when they announce the track number everyone lines up at the track entrance waiting for it to open. There was a long line and this entitled man just walked up to the front of the line and put himself in line there. A few seconds later an Amtrak workers walks up and says “sir, you’ve been randomly selected for a security search, please come with me” so he has to leave the line and do all of that instead of cutting to the front. The Amtrak worker did it so subtly that it would have been easy to miss, but those of us who were rightfully at the front of the line sure noticed and appreciated it.

    1. it happened*

      Lol last time I was in an airport this young woman tried to cut to the front of the security line. TSA stopped her and said, “You can’t cut everyone in line.” The woman said she was in a hurry (who isn’t?) and needed to go to the front, and the TSA woman said, “Did you ask *everyone* in line if you could cut in front of them?” She then pointed to the first guy in line and said, “Excuse me, sir, did this woman ask if she could cut in front of you?” Woman had to go to the back of the security line.

      1. anonymouse*

        I swear it did! I fly like twice a decade, so my sister dropped me off for my 8:20 am flight at 5:00 am. I stood in the TSA for three hours. At the 8:00 hour, I was finally only two loops of people back from one of the metal detector arches and half way through a 200 page pocket book, when a young woman bounds down to the attendant and says, “I have a flight at 9; I need to get through.”
        Now, I’m a woman of a certain age, and I’ve never been the one to get special treatment anyway, but I’ve seen it happen to many people for many reasons. So I sigh, as do many people around me. The attendant…he does not. He laughed. My man busted out, and said, “yeah, so does everyone is this line.”
        And she stared, quite shocked that this man who is assigned to do one task today, is not going to NOT do that.
        (And no, I 100% do not think this was anything but run of the mill entitlement, but yeah, maybe don’t try batting your eyes at a person who is trained to follow procedures to the letter.)

      2. HelloHello*

        I’ve been the person desperately trying to get through a security line at an airport (thanks to budget airline shenanigans, it had taken a full hour to get my boarding ticket printed that morning) but I did, in fact, ask every person in line if I could move in front of them so I could make my flight. I made it about ten minutes before they shut down boarding, and I’m super grateful to everyone who let me skip them in line for it.

    5. Susan Ivanova*

      Another one that was probably satisfying for the spectators:

      Long before TSA, my mom was a US Customs Inspector at DFW Airport. They didn’t do shift work; if a plane was arriving at 1AM, you got overtime from 5PM to however long after 1AM it took to clear the flight.

      On one of those flights, a certain Dallas Cowboys football player who was not a US Citizen kept trying to cut in line, playing the “do you know who I am? I’m [Loud Guy]! I’m a Dallas Cowboy!” He kept getting punted to the ends of lines. Finally he gets to my mom.

      Mom looks at his special “this person is the only one who can do this one specific job” paperwork. And it says “play for the LA Rams.”

      Now, she’s got some discretion in situations like that, because paperwork can lag. And she’s no football fan, so if he’d kept his mouth shut she wouldn’t even have known. But he’s spent so much time annoying passengers and customs agents alike that she flags it with Immigration, and back he goes, to get some unhappy Cowboys lawyers out of bed to fix his paperwork.

  74. Zombeyonce*

    When I was a freshman in high school, I was the dishwasher/busser for the restaurant in the local country club. Part of my job was to inventory the desserts at the end of each night, which were things like pre-sliced pieces of cake and ice cream pre-scooped by a morning prep person, and write it down so they’d know how much to prep the next day.

    There was a kid my age, a child of a member who dragged him along while they went golfing and left him with nothing to do. He would spend hours helping me out with things before the restaurant opened for dinner, like folding hundreds of napkins, setting tables, and assorted tasks. (He definitely had a crush on me but I still appreciated the help.) With my tiny amount of inventory power, I’d regularly slip him a plate/bowl of dessert at some point during the night and mark it on the inventory list as “dropped,” “squished,” or just miscounted.

    I got help with my work that was hard to keep up with for the great cost of about $0.84 per shift that I didn’t have to pay, and never got caught falsifying the inventory sheet, the country club got some very cheap labor without ever knowing it, and a teenage boy got extra treats and to hang out with a girl he liked. Win-win-win!

  75. Lady Kelvin*

    I work for a four letter government agency in a very high COL area with very few job options. We have a hard time keeping people, we hire them, they work here for a few years, then transfer to another office in a cheaper place to live. Previously our leadership were pretty strict about WFH, it had to be scheduled and not more than 5 days in a pay period/3 days in a week. Well they have been reevaluating this policy since COVID (go them) and decided that while the federal level rules require is to be in the office once a week, there’s no reason to be there more if you don’t want to, although you still have to have a set schedule for when you are in the office/WFH.

    My supervisor has taken this a step further and is making all his staff put in the paperwork for the maximum telework schedule. He plans on having a weekly coffee hour on the day we are all required to be in the office to get together and chat/talk science/etc. And then we are free to work wherever we want the rest of the time because we can always come into the office but can only WFH on your scheduled day. This way you don’t have to ask permission to WFH whenever you want or need to.

  76. I was "only a temp"*

    In my 20s, I worked for this company that was horrible about hiring people through a temp agency as contract workers and then stringing them along with promises of a full-time employee position, without actually hiring people into said full-time positions. Some of the people were pretty toxic, so for part of my time there I was constantly waiting for the day they would call me and just tell me not to show up the next morning / that day (happened to lots of people, including one of my friends). In general, they were real sticklers for following the letter of contractor vs employee law in our state when it came to any perks or benefits of working there – catered lunches, company gifts, certain celebrations, etc, so I missed out on things all the time.

    For months, I worked for some of the really horrible people, but the head admin of another department, Sally*, liked me. When she had the opportunity, she exerted her power (she was the big boss’s admin) to get me switched to her department. Even though I was still a contract worker, I was treated far better. Sally and her boss both gave me their company gifts that holiday season, which were AmEx gift cards. Technically, that was a big no-no as it had been broadcast that those were gifts for the “real” employees and not at all for us contract workers, but it meant so much to me at the time and I know Sally enjoyed breaking the rules in the name of good. The amount was probably trivial to them because they were both financially secure, but it was a few hundred bucks and so was a windfall to my cash-strapped self.

    There were other times that Sally bent or broke the rules because she could get away with it, but that’s the one I remember best.

    *Name changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

  77. Water Everywhere*

    The company I work for had in place a small payroll deduction to cover the cost of coffee for staff. This company is not at all cash-strapped and I personally thought it a ludicrous, penny-pinching requirement. When our first lockdown happened in 2020 and everyone had to work from home for a time, as a payroll admin I got permission to deactivate this deduction for the duration. Somehow, I’ve never gotten around to reactivating it ;) If anyone higher up has noticed, nothing’s been said.

    2. ZSD*

      Wait, did *everyone* have to have this deduction, or only people who announced they drank coffee?

      1. KGB*

        Back in the 90’s my mom worked for a company who deducted for coffee and other misc. supplies. It wasn’t a lot but everyone paid for coffee not just those who drink it. One guy would go in every Friday around 2 pm and make a double strong pot of coffee, stand there waiting for it to brew while he drank something else, and then slowly pour it down the drain. If he was going to pay for it he was going to use it even if he was just throwing it away.

  78. Laure001*

    This takes place in France thirty years ago. A lot of files were still paper only, and not much was on computers.
    A friend of mine, let’s call him Thomas, was interning in a very important bank. Thomas was 23 or so and already very competent, kind of cutthroat. He was given some responsibilities and sent to go and see an elderly farmer, heavy in debt, somewhere in the mountains far from civilization. Thomas was supposed to tell the man that if he kept missing his loan payment, the bank would evict him and sell the farm.
    The farmer, who did not have many visits, received him well, got out his older “vieille prune” bottle (plum liquor, it’s very strong) and offered Thomas a drink. They had a great time and spent all night drinking and talking, about the history of the farm, about the farmer’s family, etc.
    Thomas’ internship was coming to an end a few days after. When he got back to the bank, he shredded all the paper files about the farmer, erased the only mention of his debt on the computer, (no back up at the time of course) and went on his merry way.
    Even if the bank did find out, a few years after, that there was something fishy, the time it would take such a huge, slow administrative structure to realize what happened and to recreate the farmer’s file, the man would have been long dead, hopefully in his beloved farm hidden in the mountains…

      1. Elizabeth West*

        I think it would make a better stage play and I would pay actual money to see it.

      1. Laure001*

        Thank you everyone! I am not in touch with Thomas now, it’s been years, but I guess I could find him on Facebook. I wonder if he acted similarly again, but I’d bet he didn’t.
        As I said, Thomas was ambitious with a strong personality, and I think he just did…what he wanted. He wanted to save that guy, he did, and did not think twice about it. I don’t believe there was any idealism behind it.

  79. Liv*

    When I was 19, I was on holiday in Paris with a friend. On the day we were due to leave I was feeling really ill, and to cut a long story short, I ended up having my bag stolen while waiting for my Eurostar home (I’m from the UK). My bag had my passport, purse (with my ID and all my money/cards) in. I freak out that I’m not going to be able to get home without my passport or ID. I go to the police hut in the train station and explain what’s happened, and the guy tells me very apologetically that there’s nothing he can do, and to contact my embassy. I burst into tears, and I guess he takes pity on me (or just wants to get rid of a hysterical English girl) because he walks me to the boarding area and has a conversation with the woman at the desk in French. I end up missing the train I was booked onto, but they let me board the next one, even though I have no passport, and no other proof of identity. To this day I have no idea what he did to get the woman to let me board the train home, but I am forever grateful.

    Side note: Throughout all of this, my ‘friend’ was exceptionally unhelpful and ended up getting the train we were booked on without me, leaving me stranded in Paris with no money and no idea how I was getting home…

    1. N C Kiddle*

      This reminds me of an airport worker in Germany in about 2000. I was flying out to visit my boyfriend for Christmas, there was freezing fog and all the flights were disrupted. I managed to get on my flight, but I discovered when I arrived that my luggage had not. I didn’t speak much German at that point, and the thought of having to deal with it alone made me burst into tears. Meanwhile my boyfriend could see me through the glass but couldn’t get to me because I hadn’t cleared customs. He asked if he could go through and help me, but security told him all the staff spoke English so I’d be fine.
      I got to the front of the queue and that’s when I started crying. The woman on the desk asked (in English) if I had anyone waiting for me. I said yes, so she walked me past security and into the arms of my boyfriend, who was able to deal with all the lost luggage paperwork while I just sobbed gratefully on his shoulder.

  80. Double Shelix*

    I won’t even get into the thousand tiny cuts associated with this situation, like for example the customer providing deeply flawed procedures we weren’t allowed to deviate from, the Project Manager lying to my director behind my back, or telling me every nit pick the customer had about me (“He is concerned that someone of your….size may not be capable of moving comfortably in lab, or be capable of performing the delicate operations this chemistry requires.”)

    But to summarize, i spent 2 weeks with a customer following me and constantly belittling me, when his project at our CRO was not going well. His 1 week visit got extended to 2 full weeks, and every day we worked 10-12 hours. I once took a bathroom break and said i’d be back in 20 minutes, when i returned he said, “That was 31, don’t let it happen again.” ANYWAY. Around Day 5, the director figured out what was happening, and started staying onsite until the customer left, and would pop into lab and encourage him to GTFO and let me go home. Once customer left every night, Director, a member of the LDS faith who did not drink would give me a bottle of wine from a secret stash and send me on my way.

    The best moment was, when the customer finally left at 4m on the last Thursday. I prepared the paper Absence Request Form and walked it to the Admin, who sat outside Director’s office. I handed her the form and said, “I will not be in tomorrow.” Director came out of his office, ripped up the form and said, “I think you have 8 hours of General Duties to put on your timecard tomorrow. I better not see you here.”

    We are a CRO, and charging time to accounts is the one ring that rules us all. 8 hours of General Duties is absolutely not allowed. And yet. He was one of those directors i would have taken a bullet for, and that was one example of why.

    1. raktajino*

      Did the director have a secret stash of booze for the specific purpose of placating his non-LDS colleagues? Because I love that.

      1. Morgan Hazelwood*

        I just imagine it’s the pile of host-gift wines people have given him, that he never intended to drink.

        #notAWineDrinker #theyAddUp

      2. Roger C. Hole, Mayor*

        I’m LDS, and I have a small bottle of desk whisky. I think of it like my sidearm, I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. It’s made me a few friends along the way.

        1. feath*

          It’s almost like keeping a lighter on you when you don’t smoke, for if you ever work/interact with smokers.

  81. Siege*

    This is probably going to be identifying and I don’t care. I was sent to a Midwest convention back in 2007 that was a BIG deal to my company. My company was the chief sponsor in fact. So for us it was a big industry party with fans which meant we brought in creators for autographs, etc. One of our top four creators was at this event. He’s a nice enough guy but a lot of cult of personality, so he tends to hold court.

    In the course of one of these beets, which I joined very late, I ended up being the last person in the bar from that group, and the bar manager came over to point out that Creator’s Group had stiffed the bartender on a tip. I was embarrassed and also pretty drunk, but I regret nothing about the enormous tip I dropped on my tab, because eff that, she’s doing her job, she deserves a tip.

    We had an expense program that required receipts but there were certain situations where you wouldn’t get a receipt – taxi rides were one, convention-center meals were another – so the company had whatever olive about no-receipt reimbursement. I was always really pleased my hoss agreed with me when I came back and explained what had happened that we had to make it right and I did the right thing. (For all I know, this is habitual by Creator, but it doesn’t matter.) He had me submit various expenses under the no-receipt limit to recoup my costs for that tip. And to be clear, it was things like claiming a taxi ride when I went to a bookstore to fix an oversight by our brand team when I’d really walked there, so I wasn’t double-claiming or whatever. But my boss really did take a risk to make my decision right for me and I’ve always appreciated that. He had my back from a few other incidents at the same convention, and what he cared about was his team, not the company. He’s a good guy.

    I also appreciated that the bartender at the hotel poured all my drinks VERY heavy after that. They had to be triples at least. It was ridiculous.

    1. Siege*

      I think my autocarrot is hungry. Beets should be events and olive should be policy. And I don’t know why my boss is my hoss.

          1. allathian*

            Yeah, it does! I also quite like autocorrupt, which I picked up here, but it lacks the absurd humor of autocarrot.

      2. Professor Plum*

        “I think my autocarrot is hungry.”
        I think I will be using that line to explain all future autocarrots!

  82. FalsePositive*

    My (big) company is mostly salaried exempt workers with a fair amount of flexibility and able to WFH. We have set vacation days, but don’t really track sick days unless you actually need a long leave of some sort. If you have a cold, take a sick day. And a lot of people work from home more or less when sick so it’s not a problem until It’s a Problem.

    A couple years ago, my mom had to have a joint replacement and I was going to be her sole caretaker. I was really worried about gathering up enough days to take of her and ended up need more time than I thought. I came back to work and starting proposing how to claim some sick time and vacation time and what days I’d worked a half day, etc, etc. My manager waved his hand and said don’t mark down anything, I didn’t need to track anything. It was fine. Whew! Magic paid leave.

    Then I switched managers and my mom needed another join replacement (a different one) and now I had a good idea of how much time I would need. Knowing the “just take the time” was not a guarantee, I brought up needing time with my manager and asked how he’d like me to take it and he sort of tossed out doing FMLA. Okay, fair. Well, I started investigating how to do FMLA and the paperwork seemed rather a pain for what I needed. I started digging around our benefits site and figured out we offer 5 days of family emergency care (manager’s discretion) and a couple of years ago the company had technically given us a sick day bucket of 7 days with the option to roll over 7 days. But no one bothers to track/mark it off. So on paper, I had 5 days of special care leave and 14 days of “official” sick time. Which was exactly what I estimated I needed. I sent this to my manager and he approved. Easy for everyone.

    Another coworker’s father was very ill and I guess my manager give him the vague “maybe FMLA??” too. Luckily he asked me what I was doing and I was able to give him the 19 days of paid leave plan to care for a family member. I gave him a copy of the email I sent so he could copy/paste and get management approval with minimum paperwork. Sadly, he didn’t need as much time, but at least he didn’t have to waste it filling out a bunch of forms.

    (Not that FMLA is insurmountable, it just seemed like overkill for what we needed when our job is usually pretty flexible).

  83. Abogado Avocado*

    I was volunteering at a large shelter after a Category 4 hurricane hit our city, flooded neighborhoods that had never flooded before, and forced many people to have to evacuate their homes with their pets. One of the evacuees was an elderly man in a wheelchair whose dachsund sat calmly in his lap. The rule was you dropped your pet off at the pet kennels in the shelter and then went to eat and claim your sleeping cot while volunteers fed, walked, and otherwise cared for your pet. Pets weren’t allowed to stay with owners because the shelter didn’t want stressed pets fighting or biting evacuees in the sleeping quarters.

    Still, the dachsund’s companion appeared very distressed by the storm and its aftermath. You could imagine him worrying if he’d ever be able to get back into his home. So, following the lead of the shelter’s manager, we just all looked the other way as the man kept his dog in his lap, took him to eat dinner (we brought over dog food for the dachsund), and accompanied the man to the sleeping quarters for single men. And no other evacuee complained about not being able to bring their animal with them to eat or to the sleeping quarters.

    Good leadership can make a big difference.

    3. Bluebird*

      This would piss me off, and I’d be making complaints if someone got to keep their pet with them when my cats were crapping themselves in terror in a cage. That’s outrageous. He’s distressed by the storm? Join the club.

      1. JustSomeone*

        I mean, I would absolutely be worried about my pets in a situation like that, and dismayed we couldn’t be together. But sending this guy’s dog away wouldn’t make my pets any happier.

  84. CCC*

    When I was in college I had a semester where my books were going to be very expensive, more than I could afford. But all of them were available from the library but needed to be returned after a month and couldn’t be renewed. I sorted out that the late fines would be only a fraction of the cost of buying or renting the books, so I checked them out and at the end of the semester I went to the library to return them and pay. The person working there was curious about how I had gotten so many fines, even though I seemed organized (I had the cash ready to pay the fines). When I told her about my situation and my plan, she looked at me for a long time, and typed a little on her computer, and then said “Oh, it looks like these don’t have a late fee on them after all. Have a good summer!”

    3. CCC*

      Just want to add that it was like $150 in fines. Not small change, especially for a student in 2009. She was awesome.

    6. Gracely*

      I would love this, except for the fact that it means anyone else taking the same classes that semester who needed one of those books definitely didn’t have the same opportunity to check them out.

    7. Blinded By the Gaslight*

      People who do this are why academic libraries have to put such limited loan times and high late fees on textbooks, and resort to charging students for the full cost of the textbooks when not returned. Newsflash: library budgets suck! They don’t have money to buy multiple copies of every textbook for every class; they’re lucky if they get ONE for SOME classes, maybe two or three if faculty have older copies to donate. So while this little caper benefitted *you*, I guarantee you that it caused problems for all of the other library staff who had to deal with other students who were upset and stressed out because they also really needed that textbook that semester, too.

      For $150 (or far less!) you could have just photocopied or scanned the chapters you needed each week for that semester, which would have allowed your fellow students to also use the book.

      I sympathize with being a broke student facing criminally high textbooks prices, but . . . don’t do this, people. It’s really selfish.

      1. Megumi*

        Seconded.
        I’m an academic librarian. This is why most academic libraries don’t buy textbooks at all! We spend even more for them than students do (different purchasing contracts, cataloging and processing costs), then they’re either checked out and lost or stolen off the shelf.
        The point of a library is to provide information for everyone, not to serve as one person’s personal bookstore.
        That said, I do support waiving most late fines. Most overdues are brief, or honest mistakes. But this person’s gaming of the system isn’t the same thing.

  85. Seeking Second Childhood*

    Does it count to use seniority as a force for good?
    Specifically a senior, male, permanently work-from-home engineer I know was in a company-wide call about unmasking.
    “Just to clarify, you want us to be considerate of other people’s about masking. Does that include when I have someone visiting me in my office, can I can tell them they need to have their mask on? I need to know this for when I do come to the office because (medical reasons everyone knew already).”
    After some hemming and hawing, the president agreed that yes anyone down to the most recent admin hire could ask even him to mask up when working in the same area.
    My developer friend says he received a couple of thankful phone calls, one from someone who had not yet revealed her diagnosis to anyone.

    2. Blink*

      The commercial director at my old job used to ask very basic questions at the end of any all-hands meeting if there had been a new product launched or a new process. He always asked at least one thing that I was thinking, which I appreciated it.
      I would do that on a smaller level with my team. We’d get product managers come down to demo new products (we were the customer support team so needed to know what changes were coming) but a lot of the time they’d get quite techy. So I would cheerfully ask 101-level questions like ‘remind me, this will only apply for x customer type, right?’ and ‘if x goes wrong, what’s the bug reporting procedure again?’
      It was a polite fiction. They knew that I knew, but there were so many terminally shy people in that team that ‘any quesitons’ was otherwise met with resounding silence.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I use this technique to get around communication gaps between technical and non-technical people. For example, person A asks a question but with the wrong terminology, technical person B answers the question they think was asked. Since I can tell that information was lost in translation, I repeat person A’s question with both the technical terminology and a non-technical definition “just to be sure I’m understanding this.”

        Sort of like how in Star Trek the captain will tell the engineer to do random technical-sounding jargon (“Recalibrate the deflector array to boost the subspace signal!”) and the engineer immediately responds with a simile (“Ah, yes, just like solving a jigsaw puzzle!”).

  86. Madeleine Matilda*

    At the beginning of my career 25 years ago, my boss was a lovely, thoughtful man who had run our office for ~30 years. One day in late spring or early summer, he came back from lunch a couple of blocks away at the farmers market. He went to all 6 of us in the office, gave us money, and sent us to the farmers market to get ice cream from the first batch of the season of homemade ice cream at the Amish farmers stall.

  87. Elle Woods*

    When I was in college, I worked at a clothing store chain geared toward young women. The location I worked at was near a huge public university as well as several good size private colleges so we sold a lot of clothes to college women. These women would wear an outfit to the club, put the tags back on, and return the items even though they reeked like cigarette smoke. Store policy said said if there were no rips or tears we had to accept the return. So we would, but the items smelled so bad that there was no way we could sell them again. Corporate told us we were supposed to mark the items as damaged, record them in the system, put them in the backroom, and add them to the trash each night. A couple coworkers decided this policy was asinine; they marked the items as damaged and recorded them in the system. Then they took the smoky clothes home, laundered them, and donated them to local women’s shelters and high schools.

    3. Chirpy*

      My previous store did a similar thing. We’d take the torn dog beds, unlabeled cans of cat food, etc, anything that was unsellable but still technically usable that was marked “destroy” in the system, and donate it to a local animal shelter. The shelter was incredibly grateful.

      Alas, current store’s IC person is exceedingly by-the-book, so we have to give it to him so he can double check and throw it out himself (or leave a note explaining in detail why we didn’t, which is only allowed for things that are dangerous/rotten/infested and have to go straight to the dumpster.)

    4. Rose*

      This is beautiful. I was thinking I’d take them home to wash them and the keep them myself. Your coworker sounds amazing.

  88. MamaBearDontCare*

    A manager rejected my PTO.

    I’m salaried, and I put in 2 hours of PTO for a doctor’s appointment. My manager rejected it, and told me in person that anything less than half a day wasn’t worth reporting. My previous job had us working on government contracts, and we were supposed to track our time meticulously, down to every 6 minutes (tenth of an hour). So being informed that I didn’t need to put in for (or make up) every appointment I had was a huge change (and at the time I was trying to save up some PTO for maternity leave, so there were a lot of appointments and the extra time meant a lot to me).

  89. Anon for this*

    I work in HR. Look, sometimes we have to do things we don’t like or agree with. But I do try to use my power for good.

    – during the pandemic “accidentally” added additional time off to our holiday calendar so that people can have extra paid time off. I knew once the cal was published execs wouldn’t roll it back because of the optics. (We actually already get tons of paid holiday time off, but it was the freaking pandemic and everyone was so burnt out.)

    – several times presented the “better” option for things (swag, food, office supplies, etc.) as the only option available so that staff could get something nicer/more useful. I always knew it was in budget so there wasn’t an appreciable difference to the company either way.

    – let people take home stuff that I knew they needed/was expensive and it unfortunately “broke” or “got lost” so oops we just have to replace it. It was good for people to not have to worry about us asking for it back.

    – privately counseled several people on leaving the company

    Our company is actually pretty good overall and is by no means a bad workplace. But sometimes you just gotta help people out first and foremost. I don’t really feel bad about any of these things.

  90. Longtime Lurker*

    When I was in my twenties, two months after I started a new job working for the VP of my organization, my Dad’s Cousin passes away in an accident. While he wasn’t technically my uncle, we were very close to him. We grew up going on vacations with his family and he had come with my Dad to help me move for the new job just a few weeks before he passed away. I found out in the morning at work and went to the bathroom and sobbed. Because I was still in my trial period, I had no time off. My new boss , the VP, sent me home and called HR and insisted that they give me paid time off for that day and the day of the funeral even though it completely violated their policy. When I cam in the next day, she told me that she worked it out and I was covered, take the time to spend with your family.

  91. Annie Onymous*

    This is from a long time ago, as you are about to understand.

    Way way back, in the time before computer library catalogues, school libraries had to be manually inventoried to know which books had or had not been returned before the end of the school year. At my middle school, the librarians chose to do this during the last week of school when we were doing standardized tests. This meant that during the last week of school, you were supposed to return any library books and you were not allowed to check any out. I was the type of student who finished my tests early, and because these were standardized tests, that meant that I had a lot of time to sit quietly and wait for the next test to be doled out. You were allowed to read if you finished early, and I was in the midst of the Lemony Snicket series. God bless the librarian who looked at my sad little nerd face and said, “Ok you can take the next one in the series but you have to bring it back by the end of the day!”

    I went through two of those books a day for the rest of the week, exchanging them between exams.

    1. TiffIf*

      Wait, what? The Lemony Snicket books were all published between 1999 and 2006. Every library I know of, school and public, had computer library catalogues by 1999. I remember the card catalog sitting gathering dust in my middle school library in the mid 90’s because it had been replaced by computerized systems.

      1. Anonymous Hippo*

        I’m not sure my current library is computerized today, though I haven’t been by in a couple years.

      3. Zombeyonce*

        I graduated in 2000 and my small town high school still used a paper card catalog. A lot of places just don’t have funding or staff for tech upgrades, and this was as true then as it is now.

      4. Annie Onymous*

        While the technology was certainly available, and our school did indeed have computers, even in the library, they were still doing a manual hand catalogue with a card catalogue. I’m glad that where you live the librarians were given the tools to do their job, because I’m sure ours would have loved to be able to have the same. I wonder how long they had to beg for it before the school district gave the ok…

      6. quill*

        My first elementary school didn’t by the time I was in middle school, circa ’02. My second elementary did.

        Guess which one had good funding?

      7. Gracely*

        My high school had upgraded by that time, but I know our jr. high, middle schools, and elementary schools hadn’t all switched over by the turn of the millennium. I think it took a few years (likely they took turns using the equipment over several summers). And I was in a district with decent funding (not amazing, but not terrible).

        Shifting from a card catalog to a computer catalog takes time/equipment/staff, none of which have ever been easy to come in most public schools.

  92. Serin*

    The spouse and I used to go for long visits to his parents on the opposite coast. This was in the days before e-books. The spouse and I are bookworms; his parents were not. They didn’t even have a library card.

    When our need for reading material became acute, we went to the front desk of the local library.

    Spouse: “Do you have any kind of temporary card for visitors? We’d love to check out books, but we’re just here visiting family. We don’t have a local address.”
    Librarian: “You do now. ”

    Which is why for years I carried a library card for a town I had never lived in.

    1. Nina*

      I was in extremely temporary housing on an Air Force base in California for a few months, and the library in the town the base technically belonged to had a special grade of library card where you could get a card with no real address on file, they just wrote it up as ‘Air Force base personnel’, and you could have half as many books out for twice as long as if you had a normal address. It was great.

    2. VC*

      This happened to me! When I moved to BigCity to find a job after college, I had to wait for my roommates’ lease to end before we jointly moved to a new apartment, so I temporarily stayed in my grandmother’s guest room and left my books behind. In the first week, I went to the local library and applied for a card. When I got to the desk, I explained how I’d just gotten there a week ago and didn’t have any proof of address yet, but I could pay the $20 fee for a non-resident card. The librarian just looked at me and said “Never mind that, here’s your card.”

  93. The_artist_formerly_known_as_Anon-2*

    School employees , in places that provide breakfast and lunch for the kids, are supposed to destroy lefotver food.

    This includes throwing away perfectly good cereal packages (sealed), and literally pouring gallons of milk in small containers down the drain.

    Many view this as sinful. So – on the “QT” – less fortunate kids were asked to bring their red wagon to school on the last day before vacation – and a towel or blanket – and the food went home with them.

    The same thing is done often with old school textbooks – they are often left on the public school’s back deck, or in the schoolyard, and the local parochial school is called and told that they’re “out there for recycling. Don’t get any bright ideas, Sister!! “….

    1. Observer*

      I agree that throwing away perfectly good food is sinful.

      I’m SO glad that some people were willing to do something about that!

    2. Chauncy Gardener*

      Wait, what? Pouring milk from small containers down the drain?? Oh my gosh. You guys totally did the right thing! Thank you!

    3. RK*

      This is a weirdly common misconception among schools – but assuming you’re talking about the US, there isn’t actually a requirement that the food be destroyed! Programs can always donate unused foods to 501c3 non-profit organizations, and “Share tables” are allowed and encouraged by USDA to allow students to put back any foods that they are required to take, but don’t want, and allow other students to take those foods at no charge. This is particularly true for foods that are packaged or that are washable or have non-edible peels. Unless your local health department has particularly strict rules, there’s definitely no need to open unopened cereal or milk to destroy it!
      Source: I’m work for the state agency that oversees these programs in our state.

      1. Sparkly Librarian*

        Our public library serves summer lunch through a USDA program, and we grilled our trainers on the specifics of this rule. At the end of the week, I usually brought a crate of little milk cartons (and occasionally fruit) over to the closest tent city after work. They’d been rejected by our lunchers and put on ice on the share table, then back in the fridge after the lunch time ended. I hear some sites made pudding for their kids. So long as we weren’t over-ordering with the intent to have leftovers, we were free to use the unclaimed food as needed.

  94. Meghan*

    There was a guy at my work who paid a little too much attention to one of the women. It was pretty small stuff like bringing her gifts if she looked sad and interrupting her in the lunch room with her work friends, but nothing more than that. Still, I knew it made her uncomfortable but she was too scared of confrontation to say so. I was in charge of assigning random groups for a holiday office morale event and saw that the random group generator had put them together. I quietly moved him to another group that I thought would handle him better.

  95. Inspector Gadget*

    I’m a government regulator and regularly use my power to assist the people I work with in the businesses I regulate. I’ve worked with the same people at some places for over a decade, so we’re friendly. When I do inspections, I talk with them about what they need to do their jobs more effectively, especially stuff their bean counters are blocking. If it’s something related to the field I regulate, I’ll “recommend” they do or buy X in my formal inspection report they get a copy of. Then they use the old, “Inspector told me we have to do/buy this!” argument to get what they need.

    Works almost every time.

  96. Hiring Mgr*

    When i was in college i worked at a convenience store and felt bad for a homeless guy so i gave him $40 out of the cash register. I realized shortly after this was a bad move, so luckily I was able to replace the $40 with scratch ticket winnings

  97. Sharpie*

    I had a job once cold calling people to sell double glazing. We were given photocopies of pages out of the phone book and expected to go through each number and run through a script.

    The week we were given pages with addresses from my town, I went through the sheets to find the one with my surname so that I could cross out every one of my relatives so they wouldn’t get a call.

    (It was a crap job and I was there for about four months. One of the worst jobs I’ve ever done and that includes retail. Never again.

    1. Jules the 3rd*

      Yeah, I always feel sorry for the people in jobs like that. I get regular calls from alumni groups and ‘services’ my employer offers, and I try to be extra nice to the callers as I’m turning them down.

      1. Morgan Hazelwood*

        I give $10 a year to my alumni fund. Each year, I ask “do you still get a piece of candy for each new or increased pledge?”

        Usually, they say yes, so I’ll go up exactly $1. If they say no (once before, and now with the pandemic), I’ll drop it back to $10. Just enough to make a crappy college job a little brighter, without spending money for a school that doesn’t really need it.

      2. N C Kiddle*

        I did a stint in telephone market research, which was possibly not quite as horrendous as sales calling but it’s a close run thing. Ever since then, I make sure to be polite but firm with all types of cold callers.

  98. Random Bystander*

    I mentioned this relatively recently in a reply to a reply, but I’ll go ahead and put the story here on its own. This is not a recent event, but it has stuck with me.

    As background, I worked in an office in Location A, approximately 1.5 miles from my house. Owned by the same company is Location B, approximately 25 miles from my house. At Location B, there was a somewhat related job which was, at that time, under the same grandboss that sometimes needed additional coverage. For some time, “Annie”, a co-worker at Location A had always done the additional coverage, but it was decided that it should not be just “Annie”, but that the additional coverage should be provided by each of us (four in total) in rotation, and that the other three of us would each need to go to location B for a week for training, one at a time.

    At that time, gas was quite expensive, and while it doesn’t matter to the business, I was also a single mother of four and my ex was not paying child support, and driving to location B every day for a week would add $75 to my expenses (in addition to the added expense of adding nearly 50 miles to my commute any time I might actually have
    to do this job). So, I asked about reimbursement, and was told “no, you’re driving from home, so there’s no reimbursement–we’ve checked”.

    Well, as it happened, Annie lived something like 28 miles from Location A (her normal work site) and 25 miles from location B–in two different directions, not like passing one to get to the other, so apparently they had checked in her situation, and since it was a wash (and even slightly beneficial to her to work at the alternate site), no extra reimbursement. Well, “Betty” also lived fairly far from work, and let’s say that it was 15 miles from home to Location A and 22 miles to Location B, also in two different directions from her home. She stated that she didn’t have a problem with the added cost, and so didn’t ask about reimbursement. “Connie” was a single woman with no children and no pets who also had a relative who lived in town where Location B is, so while she would otherwise have been in the same boat as me, she just went to go stay with her relative for her training week. So, I was really the only one who was going to be substantially hurt by added costs, as well as being the lowest paid person in the office. I pleaded, I said that I could not afford that commute, but no dice–had to go, could not receive reimbursement for the added gas costs/mileage.

    My children all got free breakfast and lunch at school, and the only place I had in the budget to make any cuts would be to reduce my own meals to just dinner with the children. It was quite normal for me to get to under a dime left in the bank account the day before payday–it was truly that tight.

    So the time comes when it is my turn to go up for training, and I’ve done what I could do to scrape together the money to get myself there and back. Second day up there, the trainer caught me not eating lunch, and I admitted that I could not afford to do so. This is where the “misuse of power for good” comes in:

    1) She gave me a cafeteria voucher. These vouchers were supposed to be given to visitors (like the person coming with a patient who was having a procedure with anesthesia who, of course, would need someone to take them home), *not* to employees. She then insisted that I go get lunch.

    2) After she sent me off to go eat, she called up a friend of hers who worked in the finance department of the employer. (Trainer was *hot mad* about my situation; she was actually the one who told me about “Connie”‘s solution to the commute problem). Turns out that per finance, I *was* supposed to receive mileage per corporate policy at IRS rates for the mileage as determined by subtracting my normal round trip commute from the alternate site commute. Once the finance department had been clued in, the reimbursement *was* going to happen … suddenly supervisor reached the conclusion that it was no longer necessary for me to go up there to train or be in the rotation to cover the alternate job. I did get the pay for the days that I had made the alternate site trip.

    1. Chauncy Gardener*

      So your manager went against Finance’s rules? Why? Because it would have hit their budget?
      Geez. Jerk.

      1. Random Bystander*

        Exactly, they didn’t want to take the budget hit of paying the mileage due me according to Finance’s rules, even though it probably wouldn’t have been a serious blip on the budget outside of that training week. Of course, it wasn’t insignificant (at least to me)–nearly $27/day–but then at that time, I was earning $9.95/hr.

  99. SallyForth*

    My husband almost doubled the salaries of his mostly female inside sales staff (salaried at around $40k, no commission even though they were pulling in huge contract renewals) after having a request for raises under pay equity turned down. He did it by eliminating their department on paper. This was a huge cost saving measure in Sales Support because of how budget lines were set up. He then hired them for the openings he created in Sales. Salaries in Sales were then way over budget but because he could justify it with the revenue numbers he already had from Support, he was covered.
    This was 20 years ago and they all still talk about the career changing after effects.

  100. Lulu*

    A former company I worked at was rife with ridiculous bureaucracy. There were forms for everything. Including, I discovered, a Lost Boarding Pass form. During an international trip, I had lost the mid-leg boarding pass for the return trip, which we were required to turn in as part of our travel reimbursement. Now note, we were in Hawaii so it wasn’t like I somehow cheated the company-I was back in the office, I’d clearly taken the flight they had paid for. To top it off, the form included the question, “How did you lose the form and how can you prevent it in the future?” My response was, “If I knew how I lost it, it wouldn’t have been lost.” A few months later we got a new CEO. He went around to various divisions for meet and greets. In his introduction speech he said he wanted to be a “problem solver”. So, during the question phase, I- a lowly mid-manager- shot my hand up. When I explained the form, he laughed and said, “What did they think you did, swam?” And that was the end of the form.

    1. AcademiaNut*

      It can actually be more complicated that this – there’s an epic thread on one of the Friday chats where someone had exchanged the fully refundable plane tickets provided by the travel agent for a cash refund (fully refundable tickets are significantly more expensive than non refundable), purchased cheaper tickets on a different airline, and pocketed the difference to have more to spend during the trip. Things… did not go well during the trip.

    2. christine crang*

      This boarding pass thing is a requirement at my work (and in most organizations I’ve ever worked for) because we receive federal government funding and the federal government requires boarding passes for any trips charged to them to be kept on file and routinely claws back funding when they’re found missing in an audit. The federal government does this because, indeed, it is possible to buy a flight at one rate, submit the receipts, then get it refunded and arrange alternate transportation eg on budget airlines, with a non-refundable ticket, with partial driving, etc. There’s no need to have the form be so condescending but these requirements aren’t necessarily made-up bureaucratic silliness.

  101. Knitting Panda*

    A really small situation — a couple decades ago when I worked retail in high school and college. Most customers paid in cash or check, some with credit cards.

    I got tired of giving back 90+ cents in change, so I made a “give a penny / take a penny” container and brought it out every shift, usually starting with my own money. I also started allowing people to get “cash back” when they wrote personal checks, even if it was just to write out whole amounts for easier balancing. My cash and check balances were off but as long as the total matched, no one cared.

  102. Anonymouse*

    I worked as a student employee for a university department that didn’t pay employees for training or for a day of “mandatory volunteering” after training. Our compensation was supposedly that we got to move into the dorms early (required for training) and got a free T shirt and lunch on the mandatory volunteer days. I let this slide the first year, but the year after I also worked for HR and learned that I could anonymous report this. HR took care of it, but my boss was still trying to tell people they couldn’t be paid for the training before HR found out. We kept our timesheets as a spreadsheet on the office computer desktop, so I went in and adjusted everyone’s time sheets just before they were submitted.

  103. Salymander*

    I worked in a medical office when I was a teenager. A woman was sitting in her car before her appointment, and decided to takeoff her massive diamond ring so she could put on hand lotion. She forgot to put the ring back on, and it fell out onto the parking lot. She didn’t notice until she got home. I took her frantic phone call, and when we brainstormed about where the ring might be she suggested that it might be in the parking lot. I was happy to find that it was still there, and so I brought it in, out it in an envelope with her name on it, and hid it in a little hidey hole for valuable items behind the lost and found box in the nurse’s station. Massive Ring Woman said she would be there soon to pick it up.

    Massive Ring actually sent her husband, who was a notoriously rude, sexist, abrasive man. He stomped in and accused me of trying to rob his wife, and said I belonged in jail. I was about 17 years old, and up until that moment I was feeling very pleased and proud that I had managed to help Ring Woman. I started crying as Ring Woman’s Mean Husband continued to look over me and yell.

    The nurses were really angry, so they all pretended that they didn’t recognize him. His wife had been a patient there for years, and we all knew both of them by sight. He tried to show ID, but they just shrugged and said that his wife would have to pick up the ring because we didn’t want to get into trouble with the police for handing the ring over to a stranger. We didn’t want to go to jail, after all!

    When Ring Woman and Rude Husband came back, he offered me $10 as a reward. I had recovered my gumption, and I just raised my eyebrow at him while politely declining a reward for doing the right thing. Those nurses in charge of the lost and found box used their power for good, and it was a useful lesson to 17 year old me.

  104. whingedrinking*

    During the brief time that I worked in film as a production assistant, we were on location in a house. They’re setting up the shot in the living room; I’m two rooms over in the kitchen and I can’t remember what I was supposed to be doing there, but rule one of every shoot: when we’re rolling, do not make any noise. So when I hear “rolling” come over my headset, I stop and lean against the oven.
    To my horror, it’s one of those very digital ones with a touchscreen, and it starts beeping loudly. Needless to say, the take is ruined.
    Fortunately, the first person on the scene is the generator operator, who’d been in the dining room and not the living room. He takes in the situation immediately, winks at me and strides over to stand beside me, and when someone else charges in demanding to know who forked up so bad, he says, “Sorry guys, I was leaning against the oven. Won’t do that again!”
    Dude saved my job – you can fire a PA at the drop of a hat, basically, but you can’t just get rid of a genny op without a much better reason.

    1. hamburke*

      I didn’t realize this was a thing until we moved into our new house a year ago and have a gas range for the first time! It’s not an issue with an electric range with the knobs and buttons on the back. I’m constantly turning on the proofing oven and the oven light…

  105. Micky D's gal*

    I probably have examples of this from my current job since I’m an HR liaison for a large department now and this is my general personality, but the ones that come to mind are from my time working at McDonald’s. They are so strict on “corporate” standards that are often very silly and I used to do all kinds of stuff to actually serve the customers. I remember one time a sweet old lady wanted a rootbeer float, which isn’t something we sold. I just put soft serve in a cup and filled it up with rootbeer and rang up a soda and a cone. She was thrilled! Didn’t seem hard to me.

    Another one I remember – the ingredients are all very measured and the mustard only comes out of the thing with a super tiny squirt. If someone ordered extra mustard technically it only was supposed to be 2 squirts, but that was barely any. I remember arguing with our GM that if someone goes to the trouble to order extra they REALLY like mustard! So I’d put on a decent amount, or make sure to add packets to the bag if I was at the counter.

    So much stuff like that including treating our own staff well and packing them food to take home, not ringing up break meals for colleagues (yes, we made minimum wage which was $5.85/hr at the time but were expected to pay 50% for any food purchased on break).

  106. Fleur-de-Lis*

    I have worked in public and academic libraries for over 20 years. One of the things I do every time I leave a job is… go in and waive a whole bunch of tiny fines that have kept people from checking out books. If I stopped seeing someone in the library regularly, I knew they had a fine they couldn’t pay. I also have tended to follow back up with any campus reporting for fines that went over a certain dollar amount. Not replacement item fees for lost or damaged stuff, but those little fees that add up. For the places where I worked, the fines were NOT a big part of the budget and were often more expensive in labor costs to recoup than just… not charging them in the first place.

    My favorite was when I waived the fine for a teen whose family just couldn’t cover the $8.65 that she had accumulated. This kid read voraciously, and it hurt my heart when my colleague wouldn’t check out to her any more. So I waived the fine but marked it as “paid” in the system. For the cash drawer, we wrote everything on paper, and didn’t use a printout or report from the system, because my colleague couldn’t figure out how to get it to work! I hope that kid is still reading everything she can get her hands on.

    BTW – I’m now a community college library director, and we went completely fine-free here this fall after extending loans repeatedly through the pandemic so folks didn’t have to worry about trying to return stuff while we were closed. We also changed as many loan periods to VERY VERY LONG as we possibly could without making high-demand items inaccessible, and we are not generally charging replacement fees for lost books either.

    If our students and other community supporters can’t afford gas or rent, why on earth should we put barriers to accessing information in front of them??

    1. Dobby is a Free Elf!*

      If I had a librarian like you in my life, I would probably still use libraries.

      I was *extremely* disorganized as a kid. Finally realized as an adult that it’s ADHD, but, you know, can’t go back…

      I am terrible at returning books to libraries. Terrible. I love to read, but I won’t even take my kids in to check out books, because I will stay on a schedule for days or weeks and then just out of the blue miss a week or two, and suddenly a month and a half has gone by and I have another massive fine. Never lost a book permanently; just forgot to return them at the predetermined time, and sometimes, they rode around in the back of my car for…way too long…before I remembered. After accumulating $60 in fines for the books I checked out to write my senior thesis in college, I said the heck with it. I no longer do libraries, and it’s a shame, because I love them.

      1. Jules the 3rd*

        A lot of libraries are fine-free now, you should check your local library’s policy.

      2. TradeMark (Librarian)*

        Come back! :) Chances are that your local library has done away with fees due to the pandemic. If not, come back anyway if you can afford to. Libraries that are still charging fines during the mess of the past two years probably really need the money.

      3. quill*

        Not sure if you’re a “if it’s digital it doesn’t exist” reader but many libraries have ebook / audiobook online loans that essentially return themselves.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          When I went to check out digital audiobooks from my library, the default loan period was 7 days and I couldn’t figure out how to extend it. One book I waited a long time for was 21 hours long, and it auto-returned with 45 minutes left unread. Noooooo!

      4. Fleur-de-Lis*

        Please come back! As others have noted, many public libraries have also gone fine-free. I don’t want to over-identify myself (I’m in California), but my college welcomes community members who might not be currently registered for classes. AND we stopped charging for those community user cards so it’s just like being part of another public library. Sadly we can’t extend database access to off-campus library users who aren’t currently affiliated with the college, because we have pretty restrictive licensing agreements. However, you can use them in the building or logged into guest wifi on campus, and that is a pretty common workaround for public colleges and universities in the United States!
        Anyway…. please give it a shot again! Many library workers have been working hard to overcome historical barriers to access. There are still folks who are all “teach a lesson” about fines, but I am finding more and more, library people are committed to removing punitive practices like fines that don’t actually serve a purpose.

  107. RJK*

    As a teenager, I worked at a lakeside summer resort. Guests could rent small outboards. The hours were 8 to 6, but dedicated anglers wanted to start earlier. The owner was difficult and said, “tough luck–no boat use before 8:00.” There was no legal or other rational reason for this, and he wouldn’t even know, as his house was nowhere near the docks. So I’d privately tell the renters which boat was theirs the afternoon before and have it all gassed up–they could take it as early as they wanted.

  108. Bagpuss*

    On separate occasion, both I, and a friend of mine, have been the recipients of staff bending the rules on ticketing (I assume because in both case were were nice to them and polite about having been the ones making the mistake)

    My friend had booked ticket to a show and when he showed up, realised that he was a late – I think he had booked for a matinee but mistakenly showed up for the evening performance, but it may have been that he booked for one week and showed up for the same performance but a week later. He didn’t realise until he got to the box office to collect his ticket and read the confirmation e-mail.

    He then told them what he’s done, that it was 100% his own fault, and asked whether they had any seats available for that night that he could buy (as he wanted to see the show, and had travelled into London)
    rather than sell him a new ticket, they exchanged his ticket for an equivalent one for that performance, and didn’t charge him – as he said, they probably didn’t lose much as the ticket they gave him was unlikely to sell late close to the performance, but they could have sold it to him rather than giving it to him, and didn’t. And obviously they couldn’t have re-sold his old ticket as the show it was for was over.
    I rather suspect that the box office clerk bent the rules to do it, though.

    On similar note, when I phoned the box office of a different theatre a couple of weeks ago to say I had just realised that I’d stupidly managed to double book myself, and to ask whether I could switch my tickets to a different night, they did that for me for free. Having read the T&Cs, they should have charged me an admin fee, and I can only assume that being polite and upfront that it was entirely my own mistake, and not demanding anything was the reason they didn’t.

    1. Bluenoser*

      Several years ago, I went on a trip to New York with my parents. Dad booked tickets to see Wicked, my obsession at the time, but when we got to the theatre on the big day, we realized that Dad had booked the tickets for the wrong week. The theatre staff were kind enough to let us sit in the isle (and certainly break some major fire codes) until about half an hour in when they let us take some no-show tick

  109. Order of the Banana*

    I had a very cool history teacher back in high school who thought that textbooks were stupidly expensive, so he’d tell his students on the DL not to worry if they didn’t buy the textbook for his course (“I’m not telling you to boycott textbooks, but I’m not not telling you to boycott textbooks.”) He would go out of his way to plan a curriculum with as little reading as possible and supplemented it with other media. We watched a lot of documentaries, played history-themed Jeopardy, had live actors come in to do re-enactments of historical events, did field trips, etc.

    I guess at one point an overly-involved parent complained that he wasn’t doing his job properly because where were the tests??? The mandatory readings??? The 5-page essays??? The higher-ups clearly didn’t have a problem with my history teacher but they forwarded the complaint to him anyways, just as a “oh btw, here is a thing that happened”.

    My teacher decided he would take this feedback in stride, so he printed out packages for us and told us we were all to read this package for the next class, where we would be tested on the contents of the package. Our assigned reading was about weaponry used in ancient civilizations (with a very lengthy section about trebuchets).

    Our next class, he left a note on his door to come out to the football field. He was standing there with several boxes of things like cardboard, pool noodles, egg cartons, ropes, etc.

    “Today you will be tested on your knowledge of ancient weaponry. You will be split into teams, and tasked with building melee weapons using the items in these boxes. Then, you will prepare to go to war.”

    We spent 25 minutes out in the field smacking each other with pool noodles, cardboard katanas, and nerf-guns-poorly-disguised-as-bow-and-arrows. At one point, he brought out one of those Human Slingshot bands so we could also slingshot each other around (“historically inaccurate but the closest we can get to emulating a trebuchet.”)

    I’m pretty sure this wasn’t what that parent had in mind, but we all walked home with an A on our “test” that day.

    1. Sharpie*

      I love your teacher. The best way to encourage anyone to learn is by making it interesting and maybe even fun!

    2. Gumby*

      I mean, he sounds like a great history teacher. But I am totally side-eyeing a high school that doesn’t provide textbooks for free. We didn’t have to pay for any of ours as long as we turned them back in at the end of the year in roughly the same shape as we got them in. (They were replaced every 5-8 years – each year a different department got new books/upgraded. So I actually got to keep my AP US History text since they were slated to be replaced the summer after I took the class.)

  110. the cat's ass*

    Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth i worked in a bakery with a bunch of HS friends. There was a rule that when the pre-made birthday cakes/other products passed a certain sell-by date they could be taken home by staff or thrown away. We really enjoyed giving away a cake of two to sweet customers (“eat that in the next couple of days, okay?”) especially if our pig of an owner was sniffing around for food. “Nope, we threw everything out before you got here! Sorry!”

    1. Squidlet*

      Close friends of ours wanted to make my daughter a cake for her bat mitzvah, but something went wrong at the last minute, I can’t remember what. She went to the local bakery and asked if they could help, and the owner gave her a huge cake for free, that someone else had paid for and not collected. He could easily have charged her as well and made twice the money.

  111. Yellow*

    I worked at a grocery store in high school as a cashier. If an item’s price didn’t come up when it was scanned, instead of attempting to get a manager to go look for how much something cost and hold everyone up, I’d just ask the customer if they thought 50 cents was a good price, and then just manually ring it up.

    1. Gracely*

      I did something similar when I worked a cash register at a textbook store. And, if my boss was being an asshole that day, somehow we’d have so many more people end up with a surprise 10% discount.

  112. ThursdaysGeek*

    I was at a work dinner out of state. We were at a very nice restaurant, and there were probably at least 15 people at the table. The most senior person took the ticket and paid for the dinner. As we were leaving, and some had already left (including the person who paid), the person who waited for us came out in a panic, “The credit card slip wasn’t signed! Is Mr. X still here so he can sign it?” We looked at each other, and of of my male co-workers said, “I’m right here”, took the ticket, and forged his manager’s signature.

  113. Daisy Gamgee*

    I have a friend who is a middle school teacher in Texas. Not only she but all her coworkers have sworn to defy the current efforts to use the law and CPS to attack trans kids. Since she started teaching she’s been keeping track of her students’ names and pronouns and who they’re out to/not out to. I am honored to know her.

    1. Jules the 3rd*

      Bless her, and good luck to her and all the trans kids in TX, the LGBTQx kids in FL, and all the kids everywhere.

    2. A. D. Kay*

      This Texan says she’s a hero! We are doing everything we can here to protect our trans friends, neighbors and kids.

  114. Fuzzyfuzz*

    My company is generally great, but have a very skimpy PTO policy for your first year. It goes up substantially, but all PTO hours are in one bucket (no designated sick, vacation or personal time). Everyone hates it and it is constantly brought up, but no movement. Anyway, the first time I got sick a few months in, my first boss said; “OK so you’re working from home.” I countered that I really wasn’t up to working and she said. “No, you are ‘working’ from home” and approved full work days. I realized eventually that she did this consistently for new-ish members of her team so that they wouldn’t need to burn through vacation. I’ve taken this example now that I’m a manager.

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

    I don’t know if this really counts or not. Worked at a busy call center. Sometimes you just need a 5 minute break after being screamed at for 20 minutes over a $1.25 tax on a cell phone bill. We were not allowed to go into any other status unless it was our break, or our manager had told us to go into training. We also were not allowed/able to call out from the computer system phones (what was connected to the sales database). Someone figured out that you could call yourself from another phone and it would cheat the system.
    Each desk had its own physical phone with an extension number. If you call from one desk phone to the next desk phone just by dialing the extension and would put you into busy status and it would look like you were taking a call at the supervisor’s desks. However, since it wasn’t coming through the database the call wasn’t recorded for “quality purposes” so no supervisors replayed an empty call.
    So what this guy did took the phone from the unused desk next to him to call his extension. then he would just either chill out for a while and pretend to be working or he would go to bathroom or whatever he needed to do. It was amazing and he never got caught (or the Mangers didn’t care)

  116. Snow Globe*

    A number of years ago I was promoted and got to move from a cubicle to an office. It was exciting at first but within the first week I started having frequent headaches, which I figured was from the bright fluorescent lights (4 different lights in a small office with all white walls). I asked our facilities manager to have one of the lights removed, but he said he couldn’t do that because it would be an OSHA violation. I later mentioned this to our maintenance man, who came by my office with a burned out bulb, and replaced a functioning light with the burned out one. Sweet relief!!

    2. Zephy*

      My office is about 8’x8′, with six(!) fluorescent tube lights in the ceiling. Two of the three lights directly over my workstation are getting pretty dim and the third one’s completely burnt out. I will never acknowledge this. If anyone ever decides it’s a problem, I’ll bring in lamps from home to light the space and keep the overheads off.

      1. Magc*

        At my last full-time-in-the-office job, my next-cube neighbor and I had big desk-height-to-ceiling windows (I’d been there a long time; she’d been there at least a decade longer) and desk lamps, and we both HATED the overhead fluorescent lights.

        We turned the bulbs slightly in their sockets so they would stay off, but eventually the maintenance staff noticed and would turn them back so they would turn on again. I think eventually we either left a note or I worked late enough to let someone know that we were fine with no overhead lighting.

        Reminds me of my parents’ place in Maine — fairly rural, with street lights only where a house was, and they hated having a street light. My younger brother threw rocks until one connected, and after a few cycles of the bulb being replaced and then broken again in short order, they stopped replacing it.

  117. nnn*

    When I moved into my first apartment, I subscribed to the local newspaper and got an introductory offer of $1 a week.

    Sometime later, I got a phone call from the newspaper asking me if I wanted to subscribe to the newspaper for a dollar a week. I said I was already getting that offer. So he asked me if I wanted him to extend the $1/week introductory rate once it expired. I said sure, why not? And we both come away from the conversation happy.

    Sometime later, I get the same call from the same guy. I tell him I’m already getting the offer, he asks if I want to extend it, I say sure, we both leave happy.

    Sometime later, same call from the same guy. So we have a bit of a conversation, and it turns out if he extends my introductory offer, he gets the same commission as if he had sold me a new subscription. So I tell him to just keep extending it, no need to call me every time.

    So, with no further intervention on my part, I kept getting the newspaper delivered to my door and being billed just $1/week – for 17 years!!

    I hope that guy got a lot of commission!

  118. Bananas*

    I worked as an admin in the sales team for a software company in the 90s whose accounting folks were absolute a**holes about the letter of the law regarding expense report reimbursements. Didn’t feel like sitting in line on the toll road so you could get a 50-cent receipt? Well, I guess you weren’t getting reimbursed. We don’t believe the airport is 50 miles from your house, so we’re adjusting your mileage–that kind of thing.

    They also had a notoriously stingy per diem meal expense policy that didn’t include lunch ever because, “You eat lunch on your own dime every day, what’s so different about when you’re traveling?” and also included ludicrously low budgets for very expensive cities like New York and San Francisco. So a friend of mine would max out their per diem while traveling by buying gift cards at national chains. They’d eat on the cheap on their own budget, and when they were back at home they’d treat support staff like me to drinks and lunches using the gift cards. All the admins loved them and processed their orders first!

    (I only ever learned this trick when I was promoted and she shared it with me).

  119. LKW*

    Not sure if this fully aligns but many years ago I worked in a one-hour photo place. Remember cameras that used film? After holidays we would be flooded with pictures and while we could typically get photos developed and printed in under an hour, holidays had us backed up. There were two machines, the film processing machine, that stabilized negatives and the picture processing machine that printed the pictures. They moved as fast as they moved. You couldn’t speed them up and one the process had started, that was it – it was completely and totally linear. Film was developed and printed in the order it was received. There were no rushes, no one got to skip ahead on holidays.

    One post holiday rush a woman was just irate that she was not going to get her pictures when she decided they should be done. She was yelling at my co-worker and making a big deal in a store filled with customers. My co-worker hit his limit. He found the woman’s negatives, took a look, opened up the photo printer as it was chugging along, and pulled out her photos from the middle of the machine, dripping in chemicals. He offered them up and said “You wanted them now – here they are.” When she looked at him aghast, he said – “If you don’t want these, then we’ll have to print them again and now your pictures will be printed after all of the people who waited patiently for their photos. Come back in a few hours or call ahead if you want to check if they’re done.”

    No one else complained about holiday photo delays (I mean, they rarely did anyway, but no one standing there had any issue).

  120. The Tin Man*

    I wish I thought of this earlier when this was posted…

    I used to work at a gym. To cancel a membership you had to either do it in person or mail us a certified letter. This policy was FIRM.

    There was a man and his son who had signed up and I learned that the son (only 19-20) had passed away. At a later point the son’s grandmother called to cancel both of their memberships, without giving the reason. I did so immediately and over the phone. My only regret was not canceling the son’s as soon as I learned what happened instead of when I got the phone call. I applied that lesson when I found out another time that a another member had passed so I canceled his membership without anyone getting in touch about it.

    1. fposte*

      I still remember the guy at the phone company when I called to cancel my father’s account after he died. The guy was very young and deeply unprofessional in the best possible way; I may have been the first bereaved person he’d ever encountered, and he was full of kind blurts and assurances that I didn’t need to worry about technicalities. Those things really make a difference in a sad time.

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

      That gives me horrible flashbacks to when we had to try and “save” customers’ cell phone lines after a member has passed away. “Are you sure there’s no one else who wants to take over the phone? Are there any voicemails you want to save? This could be repurposed for a tablet line.” If someone dies or is terminal and laying in a coma just cancel the subscription/phone line/ whatever. They don’t need people pushing them into stuff.
      ** sorry about the rant.

    3. AdequateArchaeologist*

      My father died very, very suddenly and it absolutely traumatized us all. We spent the holidays trying to sort basic things out like changing her over to the primary account holder on our utilities so she could actually do things with the account.

      He died just before Christmas, in a different county, and it ended up taking almost a month from his death until we could get the certificate. The death certificate was required to change over utilities from the deceased, but my mother needed immediate access to the account. The utilities account manager, upon figuring out the situation, was just like ” well, clearly you have power of attorney and since he’s not able to manage things himself, you can totally do so on his behalf *wink*” and let her take over the account. We still had to send the certificate later, but that small kindness was a small bright spot in a terrible time.

    4. Observer*

      This is in stark – and very good! – contrast with companies that go to the reverse extent.

      I’ll post some links in my response.

      1. Observer*

        Verizon: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2011-may-31-la-fi-lazarus-20110531-story.html

        Dish: https://consumerist.com/2016/02/05/dish-wants-400-to-let-daughter-cancel-dead-moms-account/

        Comcast: https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/my-husband-passed-3-years-ago–on-our-comcast-acco-5128257.html

        Comcast: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/07/15/331681041/comcast-embarrassed-by-the-service-call-making-internet-rounds

        AOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY

  121. The Cosmic Avenger*

    OMG, I just remembered one! I was ordering a whisky at a restaurant bar, and I saw a really good one, a Laphroiag 25 or 30, so I asked the bartender how much. Well, they looked it up…and didn’t find it, so instead of asking or making up a price, they said well, the Laphroiag 10 (the most common one) is $10, so I’ll ring it up as that! I ordered a double and tipped them 100%, and ordered it again one more time that night! I looked it up, and it probably should have been between $50 and $150. I would have been worried about them getting into trouble, but they were so very quick and sure about it, it seemed unlikely.

  122. NeutralJanet*

    When I was in college, a friend and I saved up what was a lot of money to broke students to get tickets to a Broadway show that was closing soon. We got absolutely the worst seats in the house, the view was obstructed and our backs would literally be against the back wall of the theater, but when we showed the usher our tickets so he could give us directions, he told us to move up to orchestra seats that hadn’t sold that night.

    1. Can’tAdultToday*

      Oooh! We did similar. Had tickets to a Vegas show, waaaaay up high, and were seated several sections lower by the usher. I was thankful and excited because it was my first concert ever.

  123. Biologist*

    I think that this one might resonate most powerfully with readers who have been in PhD programs, but maybe others will find something to like as well.

    In my PhD program, there was a seminar series in which graduate students were given the opportunity to invite and host a visiting speaker. One of our responsibilities was taking the seminar speaker out to dinner, which was awesome, because it gave us an opportunity to network and also gave us a meal covered by the department (something that always felt extremely important as graduate student). The student host was given the department credit card for these meals with the instruction that the speaker should order whatever they want, but the students should use discretion (totally reasonable expectations).

    I hosted a speaker during my third year in the program who was very excited about choosing a restaurant for dinner. He asked us to explain the department’s policy for ordering food and who would be paying, and we were happy to provide a summary (“You should order whatever you want!”). He proceeded to order nearly the entire menu for himself, but only eat from one plate, while all us graduate students looked on stupefied. When it came time to wrap things up, he asked that all of the leftovers be packaged into to-go containers and asked that all five or six graduate students present take everything home with them. It probably amounted to 2-3 days of meals for each of us.

    In the moment, I was baffled by all of this, but recognized a few days later that the speaker had (correctly) assumed that the seminar budget could handle this kind of expense and decided to provide a real kindness to some struggling grad students. Now that I am in a faculty position myself, I use every opportunity to “accidentally” order too much food for student lunches or seminars and make sure that it all goes home with students.

  124. Ann Onymous*

    When I was a few months into my first professional job after college, my manager found out that I was planning to fly home early from a family reunion because I’d only accrued 4 days of vacation at that point. He told me to please take the full week off and enjoy the time with my family. It was probably a very small thing to him, but it was a big deal to me – my extended family is spread out all over the country, so this was the first time in 10 years we’d had the whole extended family together.

  125. Book hoarder*

    When I was in grad school, I couldn’t finish in the spring but was doing a big push to finish my thesis over the summer. I knew if I returned my library books at the end of the semester when they were due, it might be weeks or even a couple months til I could get them back (thousands of students all returning at once overwhelmed the staff every year). So I kept them, because library fees are cheaper than another semester.

    Go back end of summer to return them with my available cash to return the books and find out the damage. The fine was at least 2x the cash I had available, so I paid what I had and said I would come back in a few days (can’t graduate with fees) and explained why I hadn’t returned them on time. When I came back there was zero evidence of any fees owed.

  126. Lab Boss*

    I worked at a Boy Scout summer camp for years, at the rifle range. One year we had a camper with some kind of muscular disease- he was in a motorized wheelchair and had almost no strength. The safety rules say that a gun’s trigger must require at least 3 pounds of force to pull (this is incredibly high for any actual shooter, it’s to make sure inexperienced youth don’t carelessly jostle their gun and shoot it). This kid couldn’t physically pull the trigger back. So we did a little off-the-books maintenance and all of a sudden we had a gun with a trigger weight of more like 2 ounces. I sat next to him 1-on-1 to make sure he didn’t have an accident with the hair trigger. He still struggled but was able to complete his merit badge, and the smile on his face could have lit up a room.

    We found out from his father later that it was the only badge he could complete that summer. He knew he was unable to do most of the activities but wanted to go to camp anyway, because it wasn’t likely he would be around for another summer. I’ve never regretted blatantly circumventing a set-in-stone rule for him.

      1. T. Boone Pickens*

        Same. It’s gotten a bit misty in here. Really good stuff Lab Boss. Really good.

    2. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

      99.999% of the time, a story about a hair trigger and a little kid would give me hives.
      Good on you for going the extra mile on this one, Lab Boss.

  127. Lab Boss*

    Not a tearjerker, but when my friend got married the bartender quit and the reception venue had to scramble for a replacement. They ended up with a lady who’d retired a couple months before and came back for a night as a favor to her old boss. We ordered a round of shots and she looked us up and down before announcing “we don’t do shots, only on the rocks.” She then pulled a single ice cube, crushed it with the bottom of a rocks glass, announced “there, that’s rocks,” and nudged a tiny fragment of ice into each glass before pouring us our whiskey with a wink. Her tip jar floweth over that night.

  128. JMA*

    Back when I was in college I worked in a storage facility for highway toll tickets, distributing new ones and storing old ones for audit purposes. One day when a group of us had lunch plans to celebrate a coworker’s retirement, the lead, who hated everyone and didn’t want to go to lunch, decided to leave early just to spite everyone since we couldn’t leave the building unattended. So, we ordered in and I drove a forklift into his office, removed his desk that was covered in work and an uncapped bottle of soda, and drove it into the warehouse. I stored it 3 racks high, and then parked the forklift. Didn’t spill a drop. I can’t say the same thing when he came in Monday morning and retrieved his desk from the warehouse.

  129. Nanc*

    This isn’t related to my job but I think my boss’s actions count in the spirit of the story request so here goes.
    Our team (except for me and the boss) is entirely remote. A few years ago he flew in our nine remote workers so we could meet in person, see a play at our local regional theater and have lunch. It was about a month before Christmas and he always gives everyone a holiday card with a $100 gift card (in addition to our bonuses!) but this year he popped to the bank and got 10 $100 bills so he could put cash in the cards. We went out to lunch and at the next table was one of those guys (I’m sure there are women who do this, too, but this was a cliched man with a plexiglass belly window who seemed to think waitstaff should just get better jobs if they wanted to make more money and were obviously unable to do anything to his standards). After they were seated he pulled out 10 $1 bills and placed them on the edge of the table and told the waiter that would be her tip but every time there was a problem he would take away $1. You can see where this is going. His drink had too much ice. He dramatically picked up $1, snapped the bill between his hands and stuck it in his pocket. A second later my boss reached into his wallet, pulled out a $100, snapped it between his hands and with a flourish placed it on the end of our table. Every time plexiglass belly window guy took away $1, the boss threw down another $100. In the end the waiter (we had the same on) got $100 plus the 20% on the check from boss and nothing from the other table. After our delicious lunch the boss sent us to pick up dessert from a local bakery while he ran to the bank for more cash.
    For those who have never heard the joke: a plexiglass belly window is sported by people who spend all their time walking about with their heads stuck up their posteriors–you wouldn’t want them to bump into anything, would you?

      1. ThursdaysGeek*

        That’s kind of amazing! Did the glass-bowl recognize what was happening every time he removed a dollar or was he oblivious?

        1. Nanc*

          Oh he knew exactly what Boss was doing! We’re a big tourist destination and local restaurants are all privately owned. If we had been in high tourist season the manager or owner would have booted the party out or taken the table themselves. As it was it was a pretty quiet day in the middle of the week the manager may not have been on site or was in the office. Boss knows the owner and called them later to make sure they got the real story. And for the record, boss isn’t super wealthy but we have a strong company and he was in a position to throw down this kind of cash. We’re also a college town so many waitstaff are students.
          What made it really fun is that we’re a pretty quiet, introverted group but we were super chatty that day. As in “oh, look, they have crushed ice! I’m normally a cubed ice person but I was in the mood for crushed ice! I’m so glad they gave me extra!”

    2. Curmudgeon in California*

      Ah, so a plexiglass belly window is the mitigating treatment for people who have a bad case of recto-cranial inversion!

    3. The Tin Man*

      That’s amazing. I would love to be in the position to do something like that one day.

  130. BL*

    The “rules” said that overtime was only available in “exceptional circumstances” but I was charged with managing the overtime budget. My staff were not highly paid and were often living paycheck to paycheck. We always managed to find an “exceptional circumstance” at work when an employee asked for OT to cover some necessary but unexpected expense. Someone being able to fix their car, have their septic tank pumped, pay the dentist mattered more than not spending the OT money in the budget.

    Another policy also said that only “full time, regular employees” received uniform allowances for cold weather gear (coveralls, carhartt coats, hats and gloves). One of our student employees showed up without a coat. They had to choose between buying books or a coat so they bought textbooks. I asked him to run outside and check the locks on the building. Since I had asked him to work outside in the winter it was only fair to make an exception to the policy provide him a coat. We provided him a voucher for a coat, hat and gloves.

  131. Sarah*

    I rolled my car on a gravel road. I was doing some consulting in a small community, and I hadn’t know that a portion of the road there was being graded every day in the morning. I was coming back in the afternoon and encountered some huge potholes, and when swerving to miss one hit another one, my tire blew, the rim caught the road, and then presto – car was a write off and I was fortunately still alive. I did break my arm when it bounced along the road a bit, when my car was going down the road on its side. (Pro tip: try to keep holding the steering wheel.)

    An ambulance eventually came for me, gave me some laughing gas, and brought me to the hospital. I soon saw a RCMP officer who interviewed me (who I knew – it was a pretty small community). He asked me how fast I was going, and I told him I was going about 80 K. He said no, no, how fast were you going? I was confused, and repeated that I had thought I was going just about 80 or so. He then said, more slowly: Sarah. The speed limit is 70. How fast were you going?

    Oh! I said, with a sudden flash of realization. Oh, 70! I was going 70!

    Okay then, he said, and wrote that down in his report.

    Note for Americans – 80 km is about 50, 70 km is about 45.

    1. The_artist_formerly_known_as_Anon-2*

      Yeah – some people who go to Canada for the first time see “Speed Limit 100″ (or en francais, Maximum Vitesse 100”)…. WOW! That speed limit, and so close to town, too!

      I was raised on having to go “back and forth” on metric measurements. So there’s little confusion, but for some… oh boy….

    2. Lab Boss*

      My old car had a digital speedometer, with the number readout really big and mph/kmph very small beside it. I had a friend who used to love to switch it to metric and see how long I’d drive down the rural highway at 55 km/h before I realized what was going on.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I picked up my car after getting an inspection and someone had switched from mph to km/h. I was pretty new to driving, so I assumed I had a horrible lead foot, because I was going 40 in a 30mph zone. I couldn’t figure out why everyone was passing and honking at me until I got home and took a good look at the spedometer.

  132. Cold Fish*

    A requirement for one of my business classes as UNLV was a group community service project. One of the guys in my group volunteered with the Boys & Girls Club, while another had an in at a casino which had a kid friendly exhibit and was able to get us free tickets to take a group of kids from the Boys & Girls (about seven or eight 10-year olds). After which we took the kids to McDonalds which we split the cost between the 4 of us college kids. (Now if you’ve never been to a fast food place on the Vegas Strip, assume everything cost twice as much as the same food a mile away off the strip.) It happened that the manager on duty was covering the cash register when we ordered. When he found out what the outing was, he only charged us for the burgers/nuggets and threw in all the fries and drinks for free.

  133. fposte*

    A friend of mine badly damaged her car one night when she hit some kind of huge metal thing, likely fallen from a truck, on the interstate. When she called her insurance company the guy said very carefully, “I want you to understand how your insurance works–it doesn’t cover you if you hit a stationary object. Was there *any chance* this object was moving?” My friend got the hint and said oh, yes, of course, absolutely it was flying across the road, and her damage was covered.

    1. TimeTravlR*

      Reminds me of the time we had a branch break a hole in our roof. When the adjuster came, he kept saying things like “Are you sure this was like that before? Do you think this was damaged too?” He finally told me that he was so pissed off at the insurance industry for the way they treated Hurricane Sandy victims that he was purposely padding all estimates from here on out!

      1. A Feast of Fools*

        The same happened to me when I got my roof replaced in 2010 (or 2011?) after an especially bad storm season. The adjuster said that, surely, my 20-year old, weathered wood fence looks like that because of storm damage. Same for the gas lamp out front that hadn’t worked since I bought my house in 1998. Also the 30-year old patio cover. And isn’t that water damage on the underside of the soffit, even though the roof never leaked? You never know, sometimes the rain blows sideways in these storms.

        1. AnotherJen*

          Oh gosh you reminded me: My husband and older son happened to be visiting my 82 year old Aunt this past August, when her zillion-year-old AC compressor finished leaking through the ceiling of her bathroom and the drywall fell in. (It apparently had been leaking for a while.) Right about then, my son drove her car into town to visit my mom, and the brakes started smoking. Then she wound up in the hospital (for reasons not really related to everything else) for the weekend, for low blood O2 — not COVID related, but COVID adjacent, as she’d practically shut down her entire life and hunkered inside for the last 18 months or so. She made it out of what she and my husband dubbed “hospital camp” and got a reasonably clean bill of health from the pulmonologist by the time I got out there. My brother managed to get the car looked at (it was basically fine) and dropped it at her preferred repair shop. We contacted her auto insurer, and made everything work on that side.
          The home insurance folks wanted us to walk through the house with our own phones having installed their app on it, which required agreeing to things like “we’re going to control the camera and speakers on your phone” and “you should never expect to have privacy on this device again”. We told them we were sorry, but there was no WiFi at her house (which was almost true, as there was no WiFi available to use for their BS). We called the nice insurance broker back, and she was appalled. 20 minutes later I got a call from a local adjuster, asking when she could come out.
          She was AWESOME. She and my aunt (who was a longtime teacher in that area) connected right away, and she walked through the entire house finding every single bit of (actual or imaginary) water damage, taking photos, and declaring that it was a dangerous loss, and needed replacing. (In fact, she wasn’t wrong about all of it — when the walls did get opened up there was some water damage back in there, but not nearly as much as she assumed.) Between the fact that my husband had pulled down the damaged drywall and bagged it right away, and the fantastic insurance payout, all the repair work was covered, including adding some grab bars in the bathroom, as well as most of the compressor replacement.

          Helping out an 82-year old retired teacher who’s already pretty stressed out? Was a serious use of power for good, in my book.

    2. Lab Boss*

      My renter’s insurance covered the contents of my fridge if there was a long power outage. Sure enough, it happened, and to help me prepare my claim my agent told me “now, if something was in your fridge we assume it was there for a reason, so it counts as a loss. Even something that you definitely could keep and still use. And you’ll have to buy full items to replace what you lost, so you’ll want to list the full price even if they were mostly empty. And we assume you’re a man of good taste and use only the finest brand-name items, never store brand.”

      1. Run mad; don't faint*

        Post one hurricane, our adjuster kept asking us if we had shrimp in our freezer, large amounts of it, fifteen to twenty pounds perhaps? How about beef; surely we had two or three roasts in there, too? They were trying so hard to get us money. I really appreciated that.

        1. Lab Boss*

          See I’m in the midwest, so for me it was venison. Everyone and their brother has some home-processed venison in their freezer, but to replace it commercially is $$$

    4. quill*

      Reminds me of the time my parents, grandparents, brother and I were driving back from the airport at night and hit a downed street sign, which had bent over all the way into the left lane. Absolutely severed the car frame bit between the windshield and the diver’s window.

      Normally there would have been a fine for hitting the street sign as it was technically still attached, but the cop at the scene (who only didn’t hit the dangling sign because he knew it was going to be there after we called in!) wrote it down as unattached, because “it’s just as dangerous as if it were unattached road junk.)

      Saved my grandparents a LOT of trouble with the insurance.

  134. Zombeyonce*

    I have to say, I’m loving that a good portion of these stories are about librarians being amazing, kind, and generous. Alison could do an entire post of just wonderful library stories!

    2. never mind where I work*

      Yep. I’m a librarian and I feel honored to have such wonderful colleagues!

  135. fort hiss*

    I worked as a teacher’s assistant overseas in a country that is famous for working long hours even when there’s nothing to do. Expectations are often different for foreigners so my hours weren’t quite as long as the teachers, but I still did a lot of thumb twiddling for appearances sake when my actual work duties were often light.

    The vice principal (who is basically the office manager in this situation) would sometimes come over to my desk on quiet afternoons and send me on “patrols”. “Go walk around the neighborhood, go by the train station, then head home when you’re done!” he would say. He also didn’t dock my PTO when I called out during hurricanes or other events (teachers had to come in even when classes were canceled). I always felt looked after by him!

  136. Katie*

    Raises for a portion of my team was entirely based off of their performance rating. I was the only one who had say, so as long as they were doing what they were supposed to they got a top rating so they could get the ‘best’ raise (which still wasn’t much).
    A year in, they changed it up, so I couldn’t do it anymore.

  137. DoomCarrot*

    I had been planning to go to a hobby convention for ages, but my supervisor wouldn’t approve my leave, because he had disappeared without a way to contact him. (He went to a monastery for four months and didn’t even tell his secretary. The things tenure will let you get away with!) And without him being out officially, nobody else could do it.

    It was tangentially related to my work – think aerospace engineer at a sci-fi convention – so I had the organisers invite me as a speaker, then got it approved by the department head and got to go all expenses paid from my work travel budget and without using any annual leave. All for doing a one-hour fun lecture while I was there…

    I even got commended for doing “scientific outreach to non-standard audiences”.

    2. Calamity Janine*

      from what i know of how big the real science tracks at DragonCon have gotten – the convention and attendees were likely absolutely delighted, too! so not only was it some creative thinking that meant you got to go, it was a genuine treat for the people who came. (even if they didn’t attend the panel.

      1. Calamity Janine*

        oop fumbled enter too quickly.

        any way there’s a whole thing of respectability politics in conventions – having a real scientist is often worth two dozen anime voice actors. that respectable guest often means hotels and conference centers look more favorably on the sci-fi and fantasy nerds.

        plus there is legitimate science outreach to be done! God only knows how many black women got into STEM after seeing Uhura on the original Star Trek series – but there’s a long list of the ones we know about, up to and including an astronaut who then got to work as an extra for an episode of Star Trek TNG.

        it might have seemed silly at the time, but that award for reaching out to non-traditional teaching platforms was richly deserved!

        as was your nice weekend at the con ;)

        1. DoomCarrot*

          It was nowhere near as big as DragonCon, and it helped that I knew the organisers personally – as well as many of the attendees, because I’ve been going for years.

          But one of the people in the audience now uses the thing I was explaining/teaching in their professional life, so I guess it’s a win all around!

  138. Considered Secularist*

    I have a good friend who grew up in the north of England during very hard economic times. While in high school and college she worked in the deli department of a supermarket. If someone came in and asked for a very small amount (like 2 or 3 slices) she assumed they were having a tough time and would slice a bit extra and slip it into the bag after she weighed the requested amounts. She says after awhile she had “regulars” who would only shop during her shifts. Sh never got caught. She has now had multiple corporate treasurer/ CFO jobs and shakes her head at her youthful self but I have always thought it was pretty great.

    1. Curmudgeon in California*

      One SF&F convention I was heavily involved with a while ago had a specific hard science programming track. The convention was incorporated as a 501(c)3 organization, with “education” as our reason for existing, so the science track and its speakers helped us maintain our non-profit status. It was relatively easy getting science speakers because many people in the aerospace industry are SF&F fans as well. It was win-win all around, IMO.

      1. Curmudgeon in California*

        This got threaded wrong – it was supposed to be on the response above this. Sorry

      2. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

        Was this really a business disguised nonprofit? I’m asking because is it is, that hurts real nonprofits.

        1. Gabrielle*

          I don’t see why you’d think that. SFF conventions are labors of love, often run purely by volunteers and with a budget that breaks even or just saves any extra to cover next year’s expenses.

        2. Curmudgeon in California*

          No, it was a volunteer organization that put on the convention to educate and raise money for other charities. We could have just had the SF&F education, but having the additional hard science track made it hard for even skeptics to say “that’s not education”. We didn’t make any profit, believe me, and even the staff had to pay partial memberships to keep it afloat.

          I’ve been doing SF&F conventions off and on since 1979. Even the very few that are organized as “for profit” ventures seldom make money unless they are literally nickel and dime-ing the fans for everything. Then they go under because word gets around that they are overpriced and abuse their volunteers.

          SF&F conventions that are non-profit pour all of the money they take in to paying for the venue, paying for the guests (some of whom have huge appearance fees), feeding the volunteers and raising money for other charities.

          BTW, most of the “real” non-profits I’ve worked with have been total sh*t-shows. Think “{big fish, little pond”. Many of the larger ones I’ve seen from the outside pay their execs millions and put very little money to actually serving their clientele – cough*unitedway*cough.

          Getting a small org with an annual event certified as a non-profit is not easy, and maintaining status gets hard if you have a IRS rep who doesn’t think SF&F is a legitimate genre of fiction.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          “Real” nonprofits… like the NRA? Pretty much anything that doesn’t make a profit is eligible for nonprofit status, not just things that we would consider “charitable”.

  139. The Rural Juror*

    My company encourages us to volunteer in the community, but even if it’s during working hours we have to make up time to get 40 hours. To me, it kind of feels like they’re making themselves look good on the kindness of their employees. There are instances where they donate money or pay for groceries, but for the most part we have to find a way to make up time with billable hours.

    My manager was recently promoted. They had us bill the next volunteer hours as “admin” so we didn’t have to work late. Maybe they can help the company will finally realize they should be donating our time when they encourage us to volunteer!

    1. The Rural Juror*

      Was typing on my phone and realized and edit I made didn’t make sense. They sometimes pay for groceries for us to make a lunch for a shelter or whatnot. Many times the events they donate to require man hours, such as driving to the location and physically making the lunch, not just delivering food.

  140. Scott D*

    When I was moving, we had to dispose of at least 100 cans of old paint that were stored in our garage. Our city allow us to only bring 15 cans per day max. The first day I went with 15 cans. Then went back the next day with 15 cans. The worker remembered me and said “how much paint do you have?” and I said about 90 more and that I’d be coming back for the rest of the week. He said “just bring them all and we’ll keep it between us.” He saved me lots of driving back and forth.

  141. ___JustNo___*

    I worked as a temp at a bank when I was in grad school. The temp company would mail us our paychecks (no direct deposit then) but unfortunately the post office regularly refused to deliver our mail. This was because if somebody parked anywhere near the mailbox, they would not get out of their truck to give us our mail. As a result my paycheck was always late.

    One paycheck was very late, and of course as a grad student I had no way to cover my bills without my meager paycheck. I called the temp company and asked them to cut me a new check. They refused, however and said it would need to be 7 to 10 days before I could have a new check. And I would have to pay a processing fee.

    The executive assistant in my department was the world’s sweetest lady and she was not having it. She called a friend in Accounts Payable, asked a favor, and then call the temp agency. She told them that the bank was going to hold off on paying the temp company for the entire month’s temp services until I received my new check. (This was about $10,000 – about 20 times the amount of my paycheck.)

    Guess how long it took the temp company to call me, super sweet, and asked me to come pick up my new check?

  142. Snaffanie*

    Back before this was a more common practice, my mother always believed that overdue fines stood in the way of people enjoying the library and were a dastardly invention. So in her role as one of the heads of the Circulation desk, she would wipe away fines left and right. Word got out and people would show up with books that would be years overdue and she’d wipe the fine and welcome them back to enjoying the library. She always said, “As long as I get the book back, or we come to some kind of arrangement if that can’t happen, there is no reason you should feel like the library isn’t available to you.” She’s one of the good ones! :)

    1. TimeTravlR*

      Thank your momma! I was actually afraid to return a book once because it was so overdue and I didn’t have any money to pay!

    2. Squidlet*

      The public library system in my city (actually a big metropolitan area with many individual local libraries) has a ‘library amnesty week” every year. People can return their overdue books and have their fines erased. It’s awesome.

  143. TimeTravlR*

    This is the kind of story that can fall under power for good or power for bad category. Her intent was to be bad but it ended up good… at least for me.
    I was in the military in my technical training school. At this particular time I (call me Sailor1) was in night classes, which meant that I couldn’t be put on the duty roster (for fire watch) at night. I had told the scheduler this but she “forgot.” So when she made the schedule she put me on a midnight – 4 am watch and I let her know that I am in school. She was not happy, to say the least. But, being a good sailor, I found someone (call her Sailor2) to take my place, told the scheduler, and made the change to the roster.
    Turns out the scheduler thought my name was Sailor2 and proceeded to schedule Sailor2 for the absolute worst watch schedules, all in an effort to get back at me (for her mistake). I felt bad for Sailor2 because she was a nice person. But not bad enough to correct the scheduler.

  144. Seal*

    As an undergraduate, I worked in on of the smaller branch libraries on campus. It was open evenings until midnight and back then they only have one person working the 6pm-midnight shift. We also had a copy machine in back that was for staff use only. You had to use a physical key to unlock the machine to make copies. The key was stored in our rare book vault, which was generally left open during our open hours, although if someone accidentally shut the door they had to find a staff member with a key to unlock it. For whatever reason there wasn’t another copy machine in the building (this was way back in the 80s before such things were common). One of the very strict rules that came straight from the head of our branch library was that no one was supposed to make copies for students, ever.

    One of my fellow student workers worked a few of the 6pm-midnight shifts. He was an arrogant jerk to the rest of us, but very good at sucking up to the boss, who absolutely loved him. This guy fancied himself as an entrepreneur, so when he worked those shifts, he’d get the copy machine key out of the vault, charge students to make copies, and pocket the proceeds. When he locked up he’d put the key back and thought no one was the wiser. Except he started quietly bragging to those of us who worked until 6 about his little illegal business venture. One day I’d had enough and “accidentally” shut the door to the vault with the copy machine key locked inside. Since all of the full-time staff had left for the day, there was no one around to ask to unlock the vault. He didn’t see me close the door to the vault, but I saw him later staring at it looking rather irritated. After that, I regularly shut the door to the vault whenever he was working the evening shift. He left at the end of the semester, no doubt a bit poorer than he had expected.

  145. Pikachu*

    I’d just like to give an enthusiastic high five to all the library fine fairies in the comments today.

  146. Performing Flea*

    Our president’s wife sat at the front desk and governed the office supplies with an iron fist. She watched them like a hawk – as in, you’d have to bring her an empty tape roll for her to give you a new one. One of my coworkers had both knees replaced/couldn’t walk easily and was on the opposite side of the building from these precious supply drawers. Between the two of us, we carefully tracked the days she had off, and when she did, I would grab supplies for both of us away from her watchful eyes. [to clarify: I never took the last of anything and I didn’t take way more than was needed] At my new job, I’m pleased to report that I order the office supplies now! I have no interest in who takes what and when, provided they let me know when supplies are low or empty.

  147. Lucas*

    Years ago I was working for a company with very conservative owners (whose views were pretty much what you’d expect from, say, a person who voted for Trump), and they would send out a company bulletin on occasion which always featured a collection of “inspirational quotes” which tended to be very generic and cheesy. The person who was in charge of collecting the quotes for this was very low on the food chain (like me) and was queer (like me), and after he gave his notice, as his final act at the company, he chose all quotes from LGBTQ celebs for the upcoming bulletin. The powers that be did not notice, and the bulletin came out right in the middle of Pride month.

    1. feath*

      Have a friend who did something very similar at their office when they were looking for inspirational quotes or something and it was June!

  148. Double Shelix*

    I don’t know if this counts, i am unclear if a rule was broken. Since the owner did it, maybe not? But i’m writing it down and if it makes its way into a different list, just as good.

    A couple summers ago, my mom went to sell her early 2000s minivan. This thing was running fine, mostly intact inside and out, but the AC didn’t work. It just wasn’t the right vehicle for her in her retirement. Because it was so old and she was in a hurry, she arranged with the junkyard/metal recycling facility to sell it to them by the pound. So we all show up in the van with the title, and she gets it weighed, and starts the sale procedure. At one point she said, “I hate to sell it since it runs fine, i’m just in a bit of a rush [because dad’s health stuff here].”

    The owner perks up and said, “It runs? No issues?” Nope, engine fine, doesn’t burn oil, heat works, just no AC. Owner gets on the PA and pages to the entire lot, “Joey, report to the office, Joey, to the office immediately.”

    Joey comes up within a minute, and there is a huddled conference, then he drives the van out of the lot and around the block a few times. Pops the hood, people pull various oil sticks and filters. Finally, he shakes his head and walks away.

    Immediately, Owner, Owner’s Wife, other employee all reach for their wallets. $20 bills are stacked up and Joey is called back. They hand him the money, he starts crying. Honestly, i start tearing up as i realise what is happening.

    Joey has no car, and lives 20 miles out of town. Other Employee, who works in Small Town 10 miles away goes out of his way to give him a ride every day. Joey, has between him and his wife in their blended family, SIX kids under the age of 10, three in car seats. Joey just started working at Recycle Yard and has no money saved up and certainly doesn’t have the $120 on him that the yard was going to pay my mom for the van. So Owner said, “He’s family now” and they all gave him cash to buy him a van.

    My mom was THRILLED to sell the van to Joey. She doesn’t need the money. She just wanted the van gone. She signed the title on the spot, took the money, we all piled into my brother’s car that was waiting for us, and were so pleased to have helped out.

    The rule breaking was: did the owner break his own rules by A. taking business away from himself to allow Joey to buy then van? And B. loaning Joey the money from his own pocket? I bet he did. Do we care? Absolutely not. It was amazing to witness.

    1. Order of the Banana*

      This is so sweet and one of those things that restores your faith in humanity–the few times where “we’re like family here” actually results in a net positive for the employee!

  149. Terrible as the Dawn*

    I worked retail in the mid-aughts. Like every big box chain, we were required to play certain music over the store’s PA system. This music came to our store every month direct from corporate in the form of a single CD, never longer than an hour, and usually closer to 45 minutes. The result of this was that any employee working an 8-hour shift in 2008-09 got to hear “That’s Not My Name” by The Ting-Tings like a dozen times every day, as if retail wasn’t awful enough.

    After months of this particular song (for some reason, corporate REALLY liked The Ting-Tings), my supervisor, an old school no-nonsense type that ran the warehouse with a firm hand and lots of aphorisms, went into the electrical room and disconnected a single wire in the volume control, which made it impossible to turn the music up at all. A long season of blissful radio silence followed.

    As far as I know, the managers never figured out what had happened to the music, though eventually it was restored when the store got upgraded to a digital feed.

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

      OMG as someone who worked retail from 2006-2011 THANK YOU MANAGER! Christmas was the worse by far. Like I swear there was like only 4 Christmas songs that played. Because of this I really dislike a lot of Christmas songs.

      1. Terrible as the Dawn*

        Solidarity! The Ting-Tings was SOMEHOW the same year that we had three straight months of holiday music. They started with a couple of tracks on the November disc, went full steam in December, and then just when we thought we were safe, there was the January disc, which still had holiday tunes. We were really relieved in February to discover not a single jingling bell, until we realized February’s disc had brought the return of The Ting-Tings.

    2. Chirpy*

      That’s great. I actually counted once, and our store had 25 songs on the Christmas playlist. Except there were about 6 versions of White Christmas. Sometimes they’d play back to back.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I worked Christmas break at a tiny toy store that was the owner’s passion project… except she lost interest in it. She was never in the store, she never hired a manager after the first one quit, she rarely put price stickers on the big-ticket items, she never answered the phone when I would call about special orders or more help needed, she never replaced the bar code scanner, etc.

        As a consequence of this total neglect, she never found out that I played Paul Simon’s Graceland and Return of the King Soundtrack CD’s all December long. Many customers seemed relieved to get away from the incessant Christmas music.

    3. allathian*

      Reminds me of my time in retail. We at least had 4-hour tapes. The sound quality was awful, and I was heartily sick of the Christmas music by the time the holiday actually rolled around, even if they didn’t start playing it until Advent.

      As a customer, I’m rarely even aware of the music in a typical store, unless it’s too loud. This is why I don’t shop in clothing stores for young people, and probably won’t do it even when our son starts to fit that demographic.

    4. knitcrazybooknut*

      There are youtube videos with the old store tapes from various department stores. Lots of flashbacks — good and bad — in the comments on those!

  150. AC*

    My husband of less than 24 hours and I were waiting at the airport gate to start our honeymoon in Tuscany when the airline paged us. At the desk, a stern-faced, uniformed airline employee asked to see our boarding passes. Confused, we handed over our two coach tickets. He looked them over, shook his head, and said, “No, there are no good.” He ripped them up.

    “No good for newlyweds at all,” he continued. “These will be better.” He handed us two boarding passes for first class.

    Turns out, my husband’s relative works in the hospitality industry, and had made a few phone calls , with the final call landing the the front-line Alitalia employee’s hands. It’s hard to tell who was happier, us or him.

  151. aBigOlAnon*

    I was an analyst at a company that paid miserably. My pay was pathetic, but our call center reps had miserable pay. While I was doing routine work, I noticed a discrepancy in some call center records. Turns out that some call center reps were getting credit for calls they weren’t administering. I suspected something sinister, but it was actually the opposite. If a rep was one call away from getting a bonus at the end of the month, another rep would let them take credit for their call. So everyone was working together to make sure at least one person got a bonus.
    It didn’t happen much, maybe 2 or 3 times a year which wasn’t anything to skew personal results.
    And since us minions were paid next to nothing and execs where showered with bonuses, I let it slide.

    1. Blink*

      we used to do that with tickets, back when I was a cs agent. We had to close an arbitrary number every four weeks, and there was one girl on the team who was an absolute sweetheart but just not quick enough to hit that number. So if she was close, we’d just send her tickets where we’d done the work to close, meaning she would hit her bonus. Always with a bit of cover – it was from an account she’d worked on, or a customer she’d already spoken to. Technically we shouldn’t have done that, but we all loved her, and once you hit the ticket number you didn’t get an extra bonus for doing more.

  152. Facilitate Kindness*

    I know someone who is a facilitator in meetings with government child protection departments and parents to discuss the particulars around a child’s living arrangements, education, visitation etc. Sometimes the parents have created a risky environment for children, sometimes the parents just aren’t present in a child’s life for various reasons and sometimes parents are caught up in what can only be described as bureaucracy gone mad.

    These meetings will often be held in-person and, occasionally, one of the parents is in custody and will have to dial into these meetings via video calls. In my country during covid, visits with inmates have been restricted so much that in-person visits have essentially been cancelled for the last two years and video/virtual visits and phone calls have been difficult due to staff shortages, quarantine etc.

    Sometimes, where parents are still in a relationship and one spouse is in custody, they will take the opportunity to catch up despite having an audience. In these situations, and as these meetings often last longer than an hour, the facilitator will arrange recess breaks and will advise the parents that they’re welcome to remain in the conference and that the other parties will leave the room for the break. Afterwards, the facilitator will return and advise the parents that they’re resuming and then the other parties will rejoin.

    It’s such a small gesture from the facilitator but I think it shows an incredibly level of kindness, generosity and compassion for parents during what is undoubtedly a stressful and distressing time. The facilitator knows that it isn’t their position to judge any party, but coordinates that opportunity for the parents to reconnect (and, arguably is of benefit to the meetings as the parents can reconnect privately without detracting from the purpose of the meetings).

  153. Over It*

    This is a small one. When us non-essentials were brought back into the office last summer, we were told we had to work 3x/week in the office during core hours…which are 9-4:30. So basically we have to work between 8-4:30 and 9-5:30. We’re not coverage-based, so this is needlessly rigid. You can get HR approval to work outside core hours, but the policy is you have to be in the office every day without any WFH privileges if you do. Someone on my team has a long commute and has a low-key arrangement with my boss to work 6:30-3 on her in office days + two WFH days 8:30-5. We all know this person is unavailable after 3pm 3x/week, and due to the nature of her job it doesn’t negatively impact the rest of us in any way.

    1. Random Bystander*

      I don’t think that is a small thing, to be honest. At one point in the past (after the story that I related elsewhere in thread), the company was bought out and we were given new jobs with the new company that resulted in a bit of a shuffle. My new grandboss was a rigid ‘seniority rules’, even when it didn’t make any sense. I’m not sure who determined it, but in the old job, my hours had been 8-4:30; however, with new job, the core hours were decreed to be 8:30-5 (we are not directly patient-facing, nor did we receive incoming calls unless it was a callback on a voicemail that we had left). If you had enough seniority, you could work a different schedule until a certain number of people were left with the new core hours schedule.

      You might think that a half hour shift was not a big deal, but going from 4:30 to 5pm for an end time meant that I was no longer available to work the part-time job that I had landed (it was retail, and if I couldn’t work 5-9 on a week night, my availability didn’t work for that job–since they closed at 8:30, there was no flexibility to work later than 9–the half hour being for post-closing tasks). Later, that grandboss was actually encouraged to leave, and we got a new grandboss who was an absolute dream. (She declared it stupid to worry about “coverage” in an area that did not take incoming calls and told me “effective tomorrow, you can revert to your prior schedule”). It made no difference to any of my co-workers whether I came in at 8 or 8:30 or whether I left at 4:30 or 5, but that difference was *huge* to me.

      So, yeah, someone who eases needless rigidity is definitely using their powers for good.

  154. Macaroni Penguin*

    There was this one time that I (a social worker) bought poutine for my client after a medical procedure that required general anesthesia . As part of my job, I supported him to the hospital for his appointment. This poor guy struggled mightily with anxiety, and he had to fast before the exam. After everything was done, I asked my groggy client how he felt. The client responded that he felt terrible, and the only thing he wanted in the world was poutine. So, I offered to take him to the hospital cafeteria to buy him poutine. (He being a low income individual without money at that time of the month. The client was a very sweet human who sounded totally dejected). The poutine was consumed with sleepy enthusiasm by my client. Due to the unique circumstances, I hoped that I could get the poutine reimbursed as a One Time Expense. Here’s the thing, my Role is not supposed to buy things for clients, nor does poutine technically meet the reimbursement standards of a Once Time Expense. As I have absolutely no deceptive skills, I just explained the situation to my supervisor in the expense request. The poutine reimbursement form was approved! Supervisors can indeed feel compassion and support comfort poutine. (Yes, I work in Canada)

  155. Goldie*

    In her previous job at a huge corporate entity, a former GM of mine had an assistant who had a baby. The maternity leave policy at the company at the time was TERRIBLE. Like, shamefully bad. So, she told her assistant to take as long as she needed, and filled out all the HR forms to show that said assistant was back to work at the set date. Meanwhile, the assistant stayed home with the baby for an additional month or two…with the GM looking the other way for that entire time. SHERO!

    2. Squidlet*

      I worked at a very large company that provided 4 months of paid maternity leave as a benefit – on a par with what other, similar, companies offered. It was a good benefit, because the legal requirement was for only 6 weeks of _unpaid_ leave.

      It remained at 4 months for many years, and then one of our senior execs became pregnant and obviously looked into the maternity leave benefit. Lo and behold, it was increased to 6 months! She could easily have afforded the additional 2 months unpaid, but she must have pushed for the policy to be changed, which was awesome for everyone else.

  156. Lisanthus*

    Long ago and far away, I worked in financial aid at a large, expensive university in an expensive city. It was so long ago that a) student loans were still made via banks, so the lender reps sent high-end gift baskets to the office at the holidays b) there was a large open-bar faculty/staff/admin holiday party with a massive table of crudites, cheese cubes and crackers, dips, etc. in addition to the passed appetizers.

    The baskets were much too large for the staff to consume and we all felt guilty receiving them anyway, so we would pull out a few “I crave this every year” treats apiece. The director then told the work-study students it was their turn. If work-studies didn’t empty the baskets that day, then they were put out for all students coming into the office. (The fresh fruit was the student favorite.)

    A lender rep came in for a meeting one day, asked why their basket was on the main counter, and was told they were very generous but we could only eat so much so the rest was going to students. The rep was thrilled.

    The next year, every basket that came in from every lender rep was the next size up with a call to the office beforehand from each rep of “Tell me if the students…uh, you all…like this basket, will you? We order so many gift baskets for clients that we get a big discount, just saying….” because the rep had told the story far and wide. Apparently the collective opinion of “If we ALL send larger baskets, then nobody gets a competitive advantage and we should support the nice office staff in feeding their students, right?” had taken hold.

    At the holiday party, I had a rule with the work-studies who had been hired to play music and/or the office work-studies I could smuggle in partway through the night as my “plus-ones” once the upper administrators had either made their appearance and left or were drunk enough not to notice. The security guards were all university employees so didn’t care as long as no one was causing trouble.

    My rule was that they couldn’t go near the bar or I would smite them (they were all underage) and they couldn’t actually bring Tupperware containers into the party. But I would supply them all with more discreet Ziploc bags and play blocker at the end of the evening in front of the still-massive table of easily stored/portable/pre-cut food so they could load up on stir-fry makings, cheese cubes, etc.

    The caterers pretended nothing was happening so long as the students didn’t go for the passed appetizers and make themselves conspicuous. (“Whatever’s left on the table is just going to get thrown out anyway because of safety regulations,” one muttered at me. “No booze and we’re good.”) The director pretended nothing was happening but couldn’t play blocker before leaving because that would be too obvious.

    One year, a very tall, broad, older assistant dean was still at the party and saw what I was doing because the work-studies I’d smuggled in were all taller than me. I thought I was about to get in trouble, but he walked over and interposed himself in such a way as to shield the one actually filling their Ziploc from view. “I remember,” he said ostensibly to me with a significant look at us both, “what it was like when I was a grad student not making much money and how I’d look for events at my university to attend based on free food afterward…”

    He beckoned another tall and broad assistant dean who also twigged to what was happening. “Gosh, we order a LOT of food for this party, don’t we? Look at HOW much is left! It’d be a shame if it were to go to waste…” the second assistant dean said, nodding, and they engaged me in conversation as we all just happened to keep shifting around to allow the students I’d smuggled in to fill their Ziploc bags and make a retreat.

    After the students had left, the first assistant dean grinned. “Thank you for the most fun I’ve ever had at this godawful party. See you next year with your young guests! I’ll bring some Ziplocs too!” He did, yes.

    Those favors were returned years later when I went to grad school and was a student rep for a faculty senate committee. The staff assistant loaded me up every meeting with all the granola bars, bottled water, and so forth that hadn’t been eaten because “Oh, please, I have so much of this in the office for all my various meetings that it’s coming out my ears. Give some to your fellow grad students if you can’t eat it all…”

    And one junior faculty member gave me a ranking of department receptions to crash. Her recommendation was “I crash the B-school receptions all the time even though I’m in [department omitted]; they have the best food. If you throw a blazer on over that top you’ll just look like a new faculty member. Go for it and if I see you at one I’ll vouch for you. They order so much it’s just going to go to waste anyway….”

    1. To the Analytical Engine!*

      This one made me all teary! I loved the too-big baskets! The Assistant Deans having a marvelous time playing blockers! And that you eventually got to be on the receiving end!

  157. Alex*

    I was hired for my current job at entry level several years ago, right before the winter holidays. I’d come previously worked a bunch of part time jobs stretched together, and been on my state’s deeply underfunded low income insurance plan, which meant long wait times. I hadn’t been able to see a specialist for a two years and an originally-small health problem was snowballing to multiple ER visits.

    On paper, my company doesn’t start your insurance until after the first 31 working days, and you aren’t allowed to take leave in the first 3 months either. In practice, my boss told me to work remotely and assigned me only a 30 minute task to completely on 2 days either side of Christmas, and was able to use a date mixup to “accidentally” sign me up to start my insurance the first day of the new year. After I got insurance, he gave me flex time to get the care done.

    I still work at that job, years later, although he was promoted to manage the entire business line nationally. I’ve seen him bend rules other colleagues in health crises. Other business lines at my job have serious turnover (it’s the nature of consulting work) but ours has the best retention rate in the 2000+ person company. I think that type of flexibility makes a big difference.

  158. Cait*

    I used to work for a popular ice cream shop. We often got people who came in with their toddlers. Most of them were reasonable people and would order their toddler ice cream in a cup. But every once in a while we got a chaotic evil parent who demanded their 3-year-old get the largest ice cream in a kids cone. That’s like trying to balance a beach ball on a thimble. I knew exactly what would happen. Within 10 seconds of getting that cone, said toddler would inevitably drop the contents on the floor. Cue hysterics. Cue angry parent demanding a new (free) cone. Cue me spending the next 20 minutes cleaning up the mess.
    I wasn’t supposed to do it, but I didn’t care. I told them we had “house rules” about large ice creams in small cones. I HAD to place the entire treat in a cup for them (with a spoon) before I handed it to them. I told them the cup was free (it wasn’t supposed to be), because I figured the time I wasted doing the clean up was worth more than the price of the cup.

    At this same ice cream shop, on my first day of training, I was put on cone duty. This meant using a smaller version of a waffle iron to make the cones. I was told I was only allowed to spray the iron with oil every three cones. First one was always fine. Second one was always a little frayed. Third one was always a disaster. I tried everything to get them off but ended up with about a half dozen ripped cones. My manager came to see how I was doing and reprimanded me but offered no solution to the “3 cones to 1 spray” rule. When I ended up with another half dozen ripped cones I started sneakily giving them away to people. Then I started eating them myself to avoid backlash. I got a stomachache after my 5th one. Finally I decided the 3:1 rule was BS and sprayed the iron every time. My manager was very impressed by my improvement. When I trained new people I told them about the rule and that they could feel free to ignore it.

  159. Margaretmary*

    This wasn’t something I saw personally, rather something that made news here in Ireland, but…I think it’s rather nice. Basically, in Ireland, we have free college education for those whose parents earn less than a certain amount (in practice, I think about 60% of college students have to pay the €3,000 a year fee), but it only applies to EU nationals. We also have an issue with how long it takes to process claims for asylum, with people remaining trapped in the system for years, so…as a result, some young people finish secondary school and find themselves unable to go on to third level as they have to pay fees far higher than the €3,000 even, while their families are not allowed to work.

    A young girl in this situation got top grades and a place in…I think it was the College of Surgeons. Her principal went to the papers and she was benefited by the fact the Minister for Education came from and represented the city she lived in. The Minister rang her up personally and told her to accept the place and they would find a way to make it work.

    I think the college ended up waiving the fees or offering her a scholarship.

    In one way, it may have partly been an example of the whole parish pump politics that sometimes cause a lot of problems in Ireland (Ministers putting their local area first, though to be honest, I think even if the Minister hadn’t been from the city, something would have been done), but definitely a positive example of it.

  160. Pat*

    A new mandate required each agency to provide all employees certain training. Each of 10o + agencies had to independently figure it out as their was no authority/funding for a joint effort – even though people at the program level BEGGED. The project team a large agency created the training as an online module using common market tools and made it very generic, easily edited. Once done, they offered to share it freely with any other agency that wanted it.

    Their own leadership had denied the request for joint development. And had they really focused solely on their own environment, the development tools would have been different (more expensive).

    The choices they made – without official approval – benefited hundreds, if not thousands.

  161. A Feast of Fools*

    Big Box Home Improvement Store: A near-daily customer was the first member of his family to immigrate to America. His family was coming for a visit, the first time he’d seen them in about a decade. He was making improvements to his home to impress his parents and siblings.

    He had also fallen in love with American football, specifically the Miami Dolphins (were weren’t in Florida and our area’s team had its own rabid fan base). His crowning touch in his home was going to be a wall-to-wall, custom Dolphins rug for his Entertainment Room.

    The rug manufacturer messed up and sent the wrong one. It was still the Miami Dolphins but it wasn’t the pattern he wanted. The best we could offer was a refund or re-order. His family was due in a couple days but the order turnaround time was long, like two months. He started to cry. The stress of getting everything “just right” had gotten to him and this was the proverbial straw. He chose to re-order and left the store, upset but not yelling at anyone. Just really, really heartbroken.

    I had his phone number from the order and called him later that day. I told him that it had been decided that since we likely wouldn’t be able to sell the rug to anyone else, we’d just give it to him since he was a steady & loyal customer. And that way he’d have at least *something* in his Entertainment Room when his family arrived. He drove over immediately and I helped him load it into his vehicle. He was teary this time, too, but in a good way.

    So, yeah, I stole an expensive rug from my store.

  162. ferrina*

    Many years ago I worked at a daycare. One day we were hit by an earthquake and everyone had to evacuate. No one was allowed into the building until it was cleared, and that wasn’t going to happen for at least a day. We were waiting for parents to pick up their kids, but traffic was at a stop (due to earthquake) and it was going to be a couple hours.
    Meanwhile, we had hungry kids with full diapers. All we had was some water bottles. After attempting to negotiate with my director, I finally looked her square in the eyes and said, “Ma’am, I am fully disobeying your orders and I am going into that building. I do so in defiance of policy and your direct order, so insurance shouldn’t hold you liable if I get hit with a ceiling tile. Now, who needs what from inside?”

  163. Anon for this*

    I once had to violate the “no visitors for anyone who is not a child” rule during the pandemic because it meant that the woman who just gave birth to a dead baby couldn’t have her husband there (in her one person room, so no danger to anyone, just a really stickler to the rules supervisor on this ward). We smuggled him in.

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

      OMG! Thats horrible. In all the hospitals in my area people giving birth were allowed 1 support person. And you know they can make exceptions too.

    3. Heffalump*

      That is heartbreaking. The supervisor must have had a rulebook where their heart should have been.

  164. Heffalump*

    Not from my personal experience, but in Waiter Rant Steve Dublanica relates that when he was managing a fairly swanky restaurant, he gave a good-sized discount to a couple who probably couldn’t have afforded to eat there otherwise. The wife was clearly thrilled that her husband had been able to take her there.

    The restaurant was fairly dysfunctional, and the owner was a control freak. I suspect Dublanica enjoyed sticking it to him.

  165. Radical Edward*

    Without going into too much boring detail: my manager at Big City Job had to travel a lot for work. My role didn’t normally require overnight travel, but something came up and suddenly I was out of town twice a month every month, and had to learn how to do expense reporting as if I were a salesperson (time consuming and frustrating). Manager knew I liked to travel to see friends in the same general area, and they taught me how to ‘tweak’ the expense form (and my timesheet) so that I could do my work and then segue into a long weekend out of town. It wasn’t falsifying hours or anything, but the forms were so complicated and specific that I would have never figured out the trick on my own, and assumed I had to just come straight back. I got so much added value out of those trips!

  166. Kumquats Are Nature's Sour Patch Kids*

    My friend (let’s call her Kumquat) worked in admin at a nonprofit that ran homeless shelters. During the pandemic, there were huge staffing shortages, so she volunteered to do some swing shifts at one of the shelters (so not her normal job). The people living at the shelter were required to do some light daily chores, which staff were supposed to check on but NOT help with (teaching responsibility, establishing routine, etc.)

    One night, a woman got back to the shelter at 9pm after working a full day. She had just picked up her two pre-teen kids, and all three of them got right to work on their chore, which was cleaning the shared shelter bathroom, because even though they were tired, they didn’t want to get demerits for not completing their chore. It happened that some other kid at the shelter had purposefully clogged the toilet with full toilet paper roles and… it was gross.

    So Kumquat is sent upstairs by the regular staff to provide supplies to deal with the clog but NOT to help (remember: responsibility). She takes one look at this mother and her two kids, all busily at work to clean a bathroom they hadn’t even been in all day (because: full time job that doesn’t pay living wages), and she puts the gloves on, gets down on her knees, reaches into that toilet, and deals with the clog. And then she goes back downstairs and tells the staff that yup, the woman and her kids fully took care of it.

    It was a small thing, but I like to think that it did those kids good to see a white-presenting, probably obviously upper middle class woman elbow deep in a toilet because ultimately she has no more or less worth has a human being than they do.

    1. Magc*

      “Every human being is a unique and irreplaceable work of art carrying intrinsic and unsurpassable worth.”

      (A.R. Moxon)

    2. Imaginary Number*

      Nothing wrong with assigning chores to folks who live in a shelter but I’m so incredibly icked out by the concept of “the residents aren’t allowed to get any help because they need to learn responsibility.” The assumption being that if a person is homeless, it must be due to some personal failing on their part and therefore they must be “trained.” Just … ugh.

      1. Alpacas Are Not Dairy Animals*

        Yeah, if a person has survived being unhoused for any length of time (let alone with kids) I have to assume that they know a lot more about responsibility, resilience, and resourcefulness than I do.

  167. Eco-Logical*

    In the UK, hospitals don’t routinely do group B strep screening prior to birth. (For those who don’t know, it can be passed on to the baby during birth and cause life threatening illness to them). I asked my midwife about getting tested for group B strep. Oh, she said, official NHS advice is no testing, you have to pay privately. Then she paused. Unless you have symptoms….do you have these symptoms? I didn’t catch on initially, but she looked me right in the eyes, and said ‘No. Do. You. Have. These. Symptoms?’ Yes! Yes I do. And that’s how I got screened for group B strep on the NHS when it’s totally against the rules (their website even says this is very rarely tested for, go private).

    1. ferrina*

      I love when healthcare professionals do this. It sucks that they have to, but I appreciate it so much.

  168. DEAngel*

    My uncle was tangentially but innocently involved in a major crime. He sold the land where the stuff was done, no idea what it was going to be used for. When being interviewed by the Feds and going over the details of the sale, he said “in hindsight I should’ve known something was going on.”

    The lead investigator stopped him and replied “I didn’t hear that, you didn’t say that, don’t say it again. Someone who just wants a big win could use that to seize everything.”

    1. Have you tried sparkling at it?*

      That comes up a lot in the activism work I do, which is often less than 100% legal. Like, as a hypothetical example, we jaywalk sometimes.
      There’s a lot of “I didn’t hear you say something self-incriminating” and “you mean that’s just a hypothetical story, *right*?”

      1. Very anon for this*

        “I clearly did not hear that, because otherwise this would be a conspiracy and obviously no conspiracy is being planned.”

  169. Ihmmy*

    A million years ago when I worked retail, we had a customer come in who started haranguing my coworker. I forget what he said but it was rude, condescending, and beyond what any customer should get away with. Our asst. manager was on lunch break, manager was off that day. So I told him to leave. I 100% did not have the authority to kick customers out and he very definitely could have complained about me but you don’t get to talk to my coworker like that without me getting defensive on her behalf.

  170. Jessica Ganschen*

    I bought my car just a couple months before I moved to a new state, so the plates were still good for quite a while. Since it was my first car, and my first time moving while owning a car, I had no idea you were supposed to get plates for the new state within ninety days, or else there’d be a fine. When they did finally expire, I went to the DMV and told the employee what I was there to do. He asked, “how long have you been living here?” I told him. He said, “But not full time, right? You’ve been going back and forth?” Confused, I said no. He repeated, “But you haven’t been a full time resident, right? Because there’s a fine if you don’t get new plates within ninety days.” It finally clicked for me and I said, “OH! Yes, I’ve only been a full-time resident for, uh, the last month.” I was a student at the time, on a fairly small stipend, so I really appreciated him doing that.

  171. AdequateArchaeologist*

    My employer is currently working on a massive project with receipt based per diem because it was a client requirement (and this client is happily paying over a quarter million per month, so we aren’t about to turn down that money). If you don’t spend it, you loose it. So while it’s not as great as being able to pocket tax-free money, many of our field crew have used this opportunity to get a nice backstock of essentials.

    Problem is after 8+ months you run out of room to store more beans rice etc. But they’ve figured out that no one cares where the food goes after purchase. So a few of our staff bought extra food and donated it to local charities where they do field work. They’ve also figured out how much of a tip they can leave before accounting throws a fit and will leave big tips to their servers every time they go out.

    It warms my cold dead heart because the system sucks for our field staff, but they’re basically gaming it and making it work for others.

  172. Anon for This*

    I used to work for a large and extremely dysfunctional company. I was a VP across the hall from the notoriously grouchy curmudgeon of a CFO. Everyone was terrified of him, he kept his door locked all day and wouldn’t answer if you knocked, nor would he pick up his phone. If you interrupted him, he berated you. When I started working for the organization, it took him over a week to introduce himself to me – mind you, I could see his door from my desk.

    One of his underlings Sansa was a total sweetheart who was known for being incredibly cheerful despite the soul-crushing environment. I adored her, as did many people in the building, but she was terrified of the CFO. One day, they had been working on something incredibly time sensitive for the IRS – a deadline that had to be submitted that evening before midnight. All that was left was to get the CFO to sign the document, so he had set a meeting at 4:30 pm to sign it. Around 11 am, she got a call that her kids’ stepmom had died unexpectedly.

    She rushed to CFO’s office in tears, a total mess, and knocked and knocked and finally he threw his door open and started shouting at her. She stood there shaking and sobbing and asking if she could leave because she had a death in the family, and he closed the door and told her to come back at 4:30. She stood there dumbfounded, and since I overheard everything, I called her into my office.

    She told me the story and cried that she just wanted to go home to be with her kids. Since I was a VP with a key that opened all the office doors, I took the document, unlocked his office, marched in and stuck it three inches from his face and said “sign this now so Sansa can go home to be with her kids”. He stared at me blankly, and then grumbled something and turned around to his laptop and started typing to ignore me. So I jumped in front of him, closed his laptop, and sat on it while holding out the document and a pen. After some shouting and cursing, he snatched it from me, signed it, and threw it back at me. I took it to Sansa who was hugging me and crying. She was able to get it submitted and leave the building a few minutes later.

    The best part was that the CFO demanded our CEO “write me up for my behavior”. So my CEO, who was sick of CFO at this point, gave me an official write up that just said “thank you for your behavior, you did the right thing” and put it in my personnel file.

  173. Red5*

    I worked in a place once where the organization did it’s party planning by requiring one volunteer from each section to participate on a committee. Most sections rotated volunteers so everyone got a turn, but the boss in MY section only volun-told the women each time a new committee was formed. To add insult to injury, the boss dismissed our complaints since party-planning is a “chick thing.” The next time the boss came to me and informed me it was my turn again, I refused in front of the whole section. Boss sputtered and spurted, “what do you mean, no?” I told him I wasn’t participating on another party-planning committee until every man in the section had taken his turn. Boss replied in that joking/not joking way people do, “Well, I could add it to your rating objectives and make you do it.” I laughed right in his face and said, “Go ahead, but you’re just going to make more work for yourself because I’m STILL not going to do it, and then you’ll have to write me up.”

    Guess whose boss participated on his very first party-planning committee.

    1. TimeTravlR*

      Yay! This is why I have not volunteered in years, and had to put my foot down a few times. I got tired of doing it because not only was I often the only female, I was also the admin, so *of course* I should do it.

      1. PleasantlyGrumpy*

        Asking out of a place of confusion and concern, because organizing such events is absolutely in what my office considers to be our admin’s job jar…is this not the norm that the admin would run such events, having the organizational skills and calendar access for work-related functions? What am I missing?

        The only thing I can think of is that our events have a mandatory work-related tie, so they’re never “just” a party. It’s not as good as a bear awareness briefing, but could be a quick weather safety notification or an awards presentation as everyone is eating dessert or whatnot.

        1. Lunch Ghost*

          If it’s officially considered to be part of the admin’s job, then expecting them to do it as part of their job is fine. The problem is when it’s allegedly done by rotation or volunteer, but everyone else refuses to take their turn or volunteer so it gets pushed on the admin.

          1. knitcrazybooknut*

            If everybody’s in charge, nobody’s in charge, and the least powerful ends up with the job.

  174. clownfish*

    This is from one of my retail jobs. One of our regulars – lovely guy, came in weekly, was always friendly – came in one day absolutely stinking of smoke and looking obviously shaken. Turns out his trailer had just burnt down the night before and, aside from his dog, he’d lost absolutely everything. Well, managers could mark damaged goods down as (basically) trashed, so my manager at the time took him aside, told him to go round the store and get whatever he needed and we’d take care of it. He came to the cash register with clothes, bedding, dog food etc. and my manager rang it all through and then marked it all as damaged goods, zeroing the bill completely. I thought it was a really kind thing to do :)) I don’t work there anymore but he was definitely a good manager to work for!

  175. Here we go again*

    When I worked for a shady start up, and I knew they were about to go bankrupt. I called customers to cancel orders to get refunds before the bankruptcy was filed so they could get a refund to their credit card, and told customers not to buy, so they didn’t loose thousands of dollars. Also gave merchandise off the sales floor for orders that were incomplete, like partial orders. Could’ve gotten fired for that.

  176. Hannah Lee*

    I know there are a lot of librarians on these threads, so I wanted to offer this story of a couple of anonymous librarians who used their powers to do good, years ago.

    When I was a kid, we didn’t have much money. I loved music, but my only options at the time were whatever came on the radio, and whatever my older siblings, mom happened to buy. One day, I discovered that our local public library had music that you could borrow with your card. Every week, I’d walk a mile and a half downtown to the library, spend an hour browsing and finding music by artists I’d never heard of, artists I’d heard of but never had a chance to listen too … all kinds of music in all kinds of genres, all of it by incredibly talented musicians, and then walk the mile and a half back home clutching as many LP’s as they’d let me borrow. I discovered so much wonderful music that way, some groups, musicians who are my faves til this day. Whoever used their procurement power to source and buy that stuff was a … okay maybe not a life-saver, but absolutely a creative soul saver. They had great taste, often had albums by singers who covered talented songwriters, so sometimes 1 album for score my 5-6 artists to explore.

    A few weeks ago I was ‘at’ a virtual concert by Bruce Cockburn, a Canadian singer-songwriter I’d discovered at that library. And I mentioned that aside from hearing one song on the radio, the local library was where my life-long love of his music started. And someone else in the concert chat said they same thing happened for them … at a completely different library in a different town. We both were reminiscing about how much good music we were exposed to because of those amazing librarians who made it available to anyone with a library card.

    1. OyHiOh*

      I learned so much about music, the same way :)

      In my case, cassette tapes, but oh man, what I learned and discovered outside of the narrow classical/jazz/church music lanes I was otherwise exposed to!

  178. Lizianna*

    In college, I worked at the reservations desk for a small day-cruise company in a touristy town.

    We had a pretty strict cancellation policy, but because my manager was the owner’s daughter, she had the authority to waive it if enforcing it felt unfair. Basically, if someone called to cancel and they were outside of the refund window, we’d tell them that, but if they had a good reason (I remember one woman who’s son had broken his leg on an earlier part of the trip), we’d put them on hold and check with our manager to see what she wanted to do, and if she wanted to give them an exception, we’d transfer to her. Or if they argued with us, we’d say, “I can’t grant an exception, but let me see if my manager is in.”

    The first question she’d ask every time was, “Are they being nice to you?” If the answer was no, she would stick to the policy. She would not tolerate doing favors for people being rude to her staff. If they were being rude, she’d still take the call so we didn’t have to tell them no.

  179. Beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox*

    Years ago, I went to a horrible doctor who made me cry. Just an awful dude, didn’t listen or answer questions about the FIVE prescriptions he handed me even when I verbalized concern, hyperfocused on a non-painful skin condition that I didn’t care about when I needed treatment for something that was making life miserable, etc. Never wanted to go back to him again. Fast forward about three years, and I’d forgotten his name and accidentally scheduled with him again. I didn’t know until the clinic called to check on my insurance and I realized they had really old insurance information for me. No big deal, what I was going in for was a very standard mole check. I figured nothing terrible would happen.

    Well, the dude was still a jerk, still didn’t listen, still hyperfocused on an issue that had nothing to do with the reason I was there, still made me cry — only this time, he actually SAW me cry and cared not a bit.

    They wanted to biopsy the mole that I went in to get checked, and when that happens, there are two options for closing the wound: stitch it, which reduces scarring, or I think just bandaging it? But stitching it meant that I would have to come back in and pay another specialist copay all to remove two stitches. I was dealing with some expensive, serious medical issues and the idea of paying another $40 just to have two stitches removed was completely overwhelming at the time. But I couldn’t decide if I wanted to risk the scarring or not.

    The nurse who’d taken all my vitals and such was an absolute angel. She waited until he was gone, asked if I knew any nurses. Yes, half my family members are nurses. She then said she could sneak a stitch removal kit to me and I could have one of my family members remove the stitches. “Just don’t tell him.”

    I ended up not taking her up on it and risking the scarring. I didn’t feel right taking it. But I still remember that nurse and how nice she was to me while her boss was being just the biggest jerk on so many levels.

  180. workerbee*

    Shortly after graduating college, I had cut up and disposed of my credit card. I was getting out of debt, and did not want the temptation. However, due to a few unexpected bills, I did not have enough cash on hand to buy a plane ticket to fly home for my grandmother’s funeral (unexpected). I had the account number of course, but did not have the expiration date. (the cvc wasn’t a thing yet) The nice person on the phone explained they could not give out that information, which makes perfect sense. I was so sad, in shock over the loss. I told her I was pretty sure it was XX/XX. She reiterated she could not give out the information, but that I was not wrong. Took me a second. Without her kindness, I don’t know how I would have made it back to my family. I’ve never forgotten what that meant for me!

  181. not this time...*

    I used to be responsible for collecting insurance enrollment paperwork from new and current employees who have experienced a qualifying event. We were instructed to review the paperwork (not electronic) to ensure it was completely filled out, sign/date with the receipt date, and send on to the head office for processing. The deadline for submission was 30 days from hire/event.

    One time, a young female employee had a complicated pregnancy, complete with extended pre-birth leave/bed rest, and an extended post-birth recovery and special care needed for the child. Around 90 days after the birth, the employee contacts me to find out why her child isn’t listed on her insurance and the hospital is billing her direct for the specialized care. Turns out, during all the chaos related to the birth, she’d neglected to complete the required form and send it to me within the 30 days. I instructed her to complete the forms and get them to me ASAP – but to leave the date fields blank. Upon receipt of the forms, I “noticed” that she neglected to fill in the date, so I “helped her out” and added the date in – for 10 days after the birth. Completed my required review, and signed it in as received just 5 days after she signed it.

    I sent it over to the head office for processing with a note “These forms were misplaced in the local office, apologies for the delay!”. Enrollment was processed with all due haste and the little child’s care was fully covered from Day 1.

  182. I don't mean to be rude, I'm just good at it*

    I was running the high school – school store at my inner city location. Not all, but many of our students came from financially challenged families. I had senior girls assisting me and of course, once the new year passes, talk becomes “Prom”.

    Over the years I have become an expert on prom dresses, flowers, limo’s and everything else prom related. One of my girl’s approached me quietly and said Sadie and Fanny are really depressed because they won’t have enough money to pay for “Prom”.

    There are organizations that sell prom dresses for $10 and on the Saturday our whole crew was picked up by me and at the front of the line. Problem #1 solved.

    Prom tickets were not cheap so I gave each girl 10 candy bars and told them to sell them in the lunch room and give me back the $10 at the end of the school day. This was breaking more rules than I can count but all the girls had a memorable prom experience.

    My principal at this time was a hard ass, but a really fair hard ass. He approached me during “Prom” and said, “Don’t do it again, but thank you.”

  183. MonkeyPrincess*

    I worked at a fancy woman’s boutique, and one evening a teenage girl and her aunt and aunt’s friend came in, all in a rush. Her mother had died not too long before, and she had been horribly depressed, and wasn’t going to prom. The girls’ friends and her aunt had FINALLY convinced her to go, and had organized an amazing evening. But prom was tonight, and she didn’t have a dress.

    I heard them whispering about how the clothes were more than they thought, but there wasn’t really time to go someplace else, and even the Aunt’s friend was whispering to the Aunt that she couldn’t afford this and surely there had to be an alternative, but the Aunt was insisting that the girl HAD to go to Prom with her friends and had to have the perfect dress. So the girl picked a dress, and looked absolutely amazing in it, and she actually looked really happy (which she hadn’t when they first came).

    And they got to the register, and I took a pen, and on the inside bottom hem, I put a little mark, and they were like “WTF are you doing, lady?” and I explained that I couldn’t in good conscience sell them a damaged dress for full price, and I was going to have to mark it off, and I think I gave them like 75% off. The girl was absolutely glowing, and I really hope that she had a happy prom.

  184. Office Chinchilla*

    A close friend of mine decided to change paths and moved to another state to be closer to her family at what turned out to be just before the pandemic. She ended up working for her sister’s small business (not her goal, but work was hard to find). She’d been in remission for ten years for a condition that meant she still had regular MRIs just in case, and after one of those MRIs her doctor called the sister and said “I’m calling right now as a friend. Get the best health insurance for your employees, and then call me back and we’ll discuss this MRI.”

    The last year has been a whirlwind of adjusting expectations and trying new treatments. My friend passed last month. Dealing with her sickness and passing was very hard for everyone, but the fact no one had to worry about how to pay for everything was a miracle, and that doctor deserves everything good in life.

    1. Too Many Birds*

      WOW. I am so sorry for the loss of your friend. What a good doctor, and how absolutely fucked that our country works this way.

    2. Pocket Mouse*

      I know someone who had a similar interaction with a doctor: “Do you have long-term care insurance? I can’t talk to you until you have long-term care insurance.”

      Major blessing in this disaster of a healthcare landscape.

  185. Kawani*

    I worked at a bookstore for a while in the children’s department. Bookstores get sent literally hundreds of ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) of books, to read, review, and to drum up publicity for the published book. When a kid came in who was, say, a big fan of Jane Doe’s books, and I know we have an ARC of Jane Doe’s new book sitting in a back room, I’d grab it for them. Same thing for if it was just a kid who’s really excited to read and looking for something new.

  186. squirreltooth*

    One of my first publishing jobs was working at a magazine company in the middle of a salary freeze. I was making appallingly below market while living in NYC, so to supplement my income, I did extra work from home that was technically classified as freelance, but I was still basically scraping by. Macs were pretty much required, both in office and at home, and my cat bit through several charging cords at home, which cost an arm and a leg, enough to seriously impact my grocery budget for the month. The IT guys, who were about the sweetest souls in the whole company, made sure a replacement fell off a truck for me. A little thing, I guess, but that job was 95% hell and their kindness meant so much to me.

  187. Pipe Organ Guy*

    Years ago when I was in graduate school, I checked a reserve book out overnight, or so I thought, and returned it the next morning. When I got a notice for a pretty hefty fine, I found out that the person staffing the desk that night thought I was going to return the book in the next ten or twenty minutes because I hadn’t specifically asked to check it out overnight (I had checked it out about 20 minutes before closing), and checked it out to me for two hours. A friend who was higher up the chain waived the fine. It turned out that the person who checked the book out to me made that assumption all the time. The friend who waived the fine? Well, he’s retired now, and he’s part of a group of several of us who were all in college around the same time who spent most of our time around the School of Music. All four of us are involved in music at our church.

  188. SherSher*

    Many years ago, my friend was on the brink of 21 and in the Navy. In that time, and in the particular Navy town, the bars had a tendency to serve the Sailors regardless of age. Old enough to serve, old enough to be served, perhaps?
    Anyway, one night he had quite a few too many and got picked up outside the bar (not driving) by an eager cop. Spend the night in the drunk tank. Then had to go to the courthouse and pay a fine. It was like traffic court, kind of. Not a big deal. He got there, gave the guy his info. The guy looks at his license, and says, “Close enough to 21, case dismissed.”

  189. Too Many Birds*

    This is so minor, but I was totally taken by surprise. My kiddo had been having problems with bathroom accidents in kindergarten, and we were using a sticker chart that showed that if she was able to go X number of days with no accidents she could have a donut after school.
    On the momentous occasion, I took her to the Dunkin Donuts on the corner, and with a little coaching, had her order the donut herself, making sure to say please and thank you. The sweet woman at the register gave it to her on the house, even though we didn’t order anything else. It totally made my kid’s day and I was very touched.

    1. WellRed*

      I was at a Dunkin’ drive thru right after my brother died. I must have looked awful (nit realizing it) because the employee handed my my coffee, ducked back in and then out again and handed me a blueberry donut saying “ blueberry donuts make everything better!”

  190. KateM*

    I can add another library story:
    In the same house that our town’s library is situated, there are rooms for community hobby groups. Because TPTB of our town decided that the printing prices must be the same in library as in their own center, those prices are crazy high – something like 0.50€ for one A4 B/W printing when the library in next town over has it at 0.05€, and let’s not even talk about color printing. A friend of mine who attends a painting group and so sent her kid to print out a photo she wanted to use as a reference for painting – A3 color. Librarian asked what is it for, and when heard that it’s for his mom who is in painting group, said: “oh, painting group? then it’s free!”.

  191. CheesePlease*

    Not specific to any of my workplaces, but I will never forget my high school math teacher who specifically violated the school policy on re-doing homework / tests etc (which was that tests and quizzes could not be retaken). It was a college-level math course beyond the AP level, so no student taking the class would be getting college credit for completing the course. She allowed us to re-do every homework assignment twice, and every quiz or test once, given that we spend lunchtime with her reviewing our mistakes. I spent more lunchtime in her classroom than with my friends that year – but I learned more than college-level math (which thanks to her, my freshman year math courses in my engineering program I confidently aced!). I learned that mistakes weren’t final, but that with patience and encouragement I could tackle difficult things even if it took me longer than some other students. I am forever grateful to her that she went against official policy, and focused on the needs of her students.

  192. Vimes*

    When working at an organization for homeless youth in a specific city, I was the cause of an all staff email that basically said “PLEASE DO NOT IMPORT HOMELESS PEOPLE”. I didn’t technically break any rules, but one of my clients had a friend who was gay and living in a place that was physically dangerous to be gay in an unsafe living situation. So the client paid for their friend to come to where our agency was and I gave the friend an introduction to our agency immediately after they got here and advocated for them to be officially assigned to our agency.

    I couldn’t actually be disciplined because a homeless services agency can’t discipline someone for bringing an LGBTQIA teen to safety—the blowback would be immense if it were ever found out the agency had done that. And I do understand their point, because we honestly didn’t have remotely the cash or resources to help all the homeless youth already in our city. But this kid was in danger and I’m not sorry.

    1. Daisy Gamgee*

      Do you know the starfish story? “You can’t save them all so it doesn’t matter.” “Well, it matters to this one.” You saved that kid, and that matters immeasurably.

  193. Rose*

    My boss, who I got along great with, was either pushed out or fired by upper-middle management (who I also quite like) for reasons I don’t really understand.

    I was new to the company and unfortunately took three weeks off due to an extended illness. Upper-upper management sucks and essentially I used a year of vacation in my first 3 months on the job. It was a big source of stress, and I knew burn out was coming. On my boss’s last day, somehow someone accidentally deleted my record of PTO used. Whoops! No one could then remember what days I had taken. When HR asked, my new boss reentered three days of PTO I knew I was out and decided it was good enough.

  194. Nameless Internet Individual*

    My wife and I had designed our wedding program and headed off to FedEx Office to print it on nice paper and copy it, trying to save money. It was late at night because that was when we had time to do it before the ceremony. Besides us, the only person there was an extremely pleasant FedEx Office employee, who showed us how to use the copier to make the two-sided copies. We must have tried ten times but every time the copier did not work, even using her guidance. Eventually she saw us struggling and made the copies herself on the machine behind the front counter, even using a machine to fold them all for us. When we asked her how much for all that, she just smiled and said, “No charge! Congratulations!” A blessing.

  195. Anon Today*

    Before COVID my company did a fair amount of large meetings, offsites, etc. that involved ordering bagels or lunch or whatever. I had handled these orders many times, putting a 20% tip on the account, and sending it off to Accounting. Then we got a new CFO who informed me, “We don’t tip. We’re a nonprofit. We’re public servants.” Uh, no. The guy who wheels the sandwiches and cookies to the building does not care about that. So when I placed orders I started saying, “And your delivery fee is?” 99% of our accounts don’t charge delivery fees. But by never quite saying “we don’t tip anymore” (because she could hear me) I got 99% of them to catch on. There was one who didn’t and then someone (a secretary usually) had to go into her own wallet to tip the guy. I was so delighted when she left, and even more delighted by the scuttlebutt that she didn’t really want to leave but was managed out.

  196. Kesnit*

    Summer of 1998, I did a study abroad in London, then some friends and I went backpacking around Europe for 4 weeks. I had friends stationed in Germany, so took a brief, solo, detour to meet up with them. I had planned to meet back with my traveling buddies in Venice.

    We all had Eurorail passes, but knew they were not valid in Switzerland. I planned my trip from Germany to Venice in a way that (I thought) would avoid Switzerland. I was wrong. The train went through a corner of Switzerland. When we stopped, the conductor came down the train, checking tickets. When he saw mine, he told me we were in Switzerland and my ticket was not valid. I started to panic, trying to think of what I would need to do to get out of Switzerland and into Italy, when the conductor looked at me and said “Five dollars.” I handed him $5 and he walked on.

    At the time, I thought that was the fare I would have paid had I had to catch another train. (I did mention my brain was in freak-out panic mode, right?) It wasn’t until I thought about it years later that I realized that $5 went right into the conductor’s pocket. (It is ironic that I had US dollars since I’d been overseas for about 2 months at that point. I only had US currency since I had been on a US Army base.)

  197. nnn*

    I was a student trying to pay my own way through university. I didn’t qualify for many types of financial aid because of my parents’ income, but I wasn’t actually getting any financial support from my parents.

    I was being interviewed for a workstudy job, and one of the questions was “Are you in financial need?”

    I paused. I was in financial need in real life, but didn’t meet the on-paper definition because of my parents’ income.

    The interviewer noticed my pause, and said “Of course you’re in financial need, you’re a student.”

    I agreed enthusiastically with that assessment, got the job, and was thereby able to afford to complete my degree.

  198. The Wizard Rincewind*

    In college, we had an interim professor take our class on a trip to Europe and he was SO worried about the “underage” students drinking (which, of course, would be perfectly legal in the countries we were going). He made us all promise that we would “act like we were in the US” while we were there. I assumed that he wanted to make a really good impression in hopes that he would be hired permanently.

    Fast-forward to the trip in the spring semester. While we are abroad, the professor gets the news that the university will not be hiring him and he’ll be replaced in the coming fall. Dick move, school. Anyway, his nervousness about underage alcohol consumption suddenly vanished and when a boat tour got cancelled due to poor weather, he replaced it with a brewery tour! The brewery tour came with a pint of beer and then we got lunch at the restaurant attached to the brewery, again comped by the trip budget, and most people ordered another pint as well. The brewery had been operating since the 17th century. It was a blast.

    I happened to be sitting next to him at lunch while he discussed the cancelled boat tour and I was frankly astonished by the sudden 180 in attitude so I asked, “Professor, what do you think [School] is going to say when they see all this on the budget?”

    His response: “What are they going to do, fire me?”

  199. My Mom's the CEO, You Know*

    I’m an emergency social worker at big hub hospital. My department is staffed 24/7 because we’re part of the offshoot of Emergency Room/Emergency Intake department. Just before the pandemic our administration partnered with the local nursing school to give nursing students part time jobs during the semester. It was a great idea but in the beginning, it was a nightmare.

    My mom is the CEO of the hospital. Almost nobody knows this except HR and my great-great grand boss. We have different names, neither one of us are from this city, we both live in small towns on opposite sides of the city and I was hired first seven years ago. The hospital had a bad reputation the last few decades for severe nepotism, and my boss got caught in the crossfire quite a few times. People still try to pull the family card but it doesn’t fly anymore, thanks to my mom actually. Mom was headhunted for the job specifically to foster restructuring and prevent the nepotism from getting worse/stop it altogether. Even my boss didn’t know we were related.

    My department got a crop of nursing student part-timers in the office last year before Christmas and they all sucked. We had four students, all range in age from mid-20s to mid-30s, all of whom would pull stuff like “my uncle is on the board” or “my mom’s the head of labor and delivery” or “my father-in-law is an executive” and then they’d make insane schedule demands and then sit in the doctor’s lounge and watch TV all day. My boss would scramble to accommodate them and give in to their stupid demands because she was so used to the negative toxic crap from before the restructuring. One day my boss was a tearful wreck trying to find coverage for the weekend because one of the students emailed her something along the lines of “my mom’s the CEO and she doesn’t want me working weekends.” That’s news to me and I was very over these students. I shut the door, called my mom on speaker phone and spilled the beans. I was like “I have a shitty sister who tries to bully people? MOM HOW COULD YOU NOT TELL ME!” We all had a good laugh and the nursing student job placement program got a drastic overhaul, also giving my boss a promotion and letting her form a management committee to place the students and monitor them. Also turns out the student’s mom was the former CEO’s secretary (who no longer works at the hospital).

  200. Vimes*

    Also fyi to anyone who works with homeless people (ignore me if you already know this)—so there’s this thing where, especially if your clients is BIPOC/LGBTQIAA/super smart and articulate/any combination of the above community organizations loooooove to have them on panels, boards, etc because hey instant diversity. But the staff members inviting them (who have homes, and are paid to do these boards as part of their jobs), mysteriously think that it is ok to ask homeless people to volunteer their time for meetings the staff member wouldn’t do without being paid, because apparently being homeless means you should work for free. $&@$ that. Ask or have your client ask about “meeting stipends”. Sometimes, although technically group members aren’t paid, there is in fact a way to reimburse people for transportation, etc, and sometimes it’s pretty generous but it will never be given if the client doesn’t ask.

  201. VegBabe*

    At my last job I worked closely with salespeople. One of the reasons I left was that salespeople were increasingly being allowed free reign to do whatever they wanted and it made my job (and many other peoples’ jobs) very unpleasant and frustrating.
    A new-ish salesperson who was the son of a very senior salesperson wanted me to make a big chance in a process I use (that worked well for everyone) just because he didn’t like the way it was done. It was going to be a massive headache, but his supervisors didn’t really care – if he wanted it, he got it.
    I was talking to a much more senior salesperson that I had a great working relationship with and mentioned that the process would be changing. He asked why and I told him the reason and that I was really frustrated because it was going to be a ton more work for me. He said he would take care of it and ended the conversation.
    The next day, the sales supervisor emailed me and said the process wasn’t changing! The more senior salesperson had called him and expressed some very serious concerns about it, and since seniority very much matters in that organization, he got his way. The process change truly would not have affected him really at all, but he still threw his weight around for me a little bit.

    1. Американка (Amerikanka)*

      That was very nice of him! Am glad some higher-ups still care about people.

  202. Birb*

    Once, on my company’s old employee assistance plan, I’d used all of my 6 visits, but was having a CRISIS YEAR. It is so hard calling and telling people you need help, but I finally called them, teary, and asked if it was possible to extend to a few more, as covid closures had just started a couple of weeks prior and I was really struggling. I kept having to stop talking to regain composure, and fully expected the employee to be as cold as other EAP employees had been.

    Instead, she told me “It is against the rules to extend your account for any more visits, but there aren’t any rules that say I can’t create a new account for you with six more visits.” I told her I really appreciated it, but did not want to ask her to do something that might get in trouble and she kind of just laughed it off and was like “nah, I’ma do it!” I still tear up thinking about it, it really kept me afloat.

  203. Lunch is delicious, by the way*

    To entice people to return to the office despite the pandemic, management arranged for daily, freshly cooked catered lunches.

    When Omikron hit, less and less coworkers came to the office though and of the ones that did come to the office, well. Let’s just say that for many, a free lunch five times a week is a big enough reason to risk exposure. But with so few people coming into the office, a lot of food went to waste. Management wasn’t happy with the (food and money) waste and there was talk about having to pause the free lunches until more people returned to the office again.

    Our office manager said she’d take care of it. We assumed she’d cancel the service. Instead, she bought lunch boxes and send out a company wide email to inform everyone when the cateres would come to pick up their equipment and the leftovers. So anyone who was in the office should load up on leftovers and take them home. The way she phrased it it sounded like this was coming straight from management. We have a lot of part-time employees in low level jobs; students, mothers returning to the work force, single parents, pensioners supplementing their income. A lot of employees are grateful that the company doesn’t just turn a blind eye, but basically insists that people take home bunches of leftovers every day.

    Management didn’t know anything about this. But since our office manager had already set everything up and sent the email they also didn’t care enough to put up a stink.

    People are now returning the office. Our office manager is obviously increasing the number of lunches ordered as well, because there are still plenty of leftovers that people take home despite the increasing number of people. Management is keeping quiet since employees are happy and returning to the office now anyway. And most employees don’t even know that the only reason the lunches have continued is because our office manager went rogue.

  204. Catherine*

    I worked in a team with members based in several countries. We had frequent work trips to those and other countries, however the expenses policy for food etc varied hugely between our home locations. One very large (6ft 6) team member was based in a lower cost location which translated to being paid less (relatively) and with a very very low expenses limit. We would go for team dinners together, but our colleague would be miserably picking at the cheapest option, still being hungry, having to pay from his own pocket or going somewhere really really cheap on his own.

    A conspiracy was born where the rest of the team rearranged the bills so we each claimed for more than we’d ‘spent’, so our colleague’s allowance covered his share. We were able to have some nice dinners together, our friend and colleague had enough to eat and didn’t have to worry about the cost.

  205. Poppin' in for This*

    When I was 19, my mom died after 6 months in a near-coma state. I had been using her checkbook, etc., to deal with everything (rent, utilities for our shared apartment, food, etc.) but did not have official POA. The day after she died I rolled up to the bank and, although I have never been a cry-er, teared up and told the teller that I needed to take my mom’s money out of her account because she had died. The teller said, “Oh, I know your mom. Don’t worry.” She gave me all the money in her account (probably a whopping $500) and I didn’t have to fill out one form. I will never forget how kind she was.

  206. Rigged*

    I was the Manager at a fitness club that had facilities and a reputation to be friendly for elderly and disabled clients (connected with a physical therapy clinic). We had one elderly client who really enjoyed the heated pool for her arthritis, and the pool classes were one of her few social outlets. When her husband passed away, she let me know the end of the current month would be her last, as she was no longer going to be able to afford it. She was clearly upset, but I didn’t know what I could do.

    As the Manager, I was allowed to create various promotions and giveaways for the club, within reason. I made flyers for a new drawing where members could win a t-shirt, water bottle, sports drink, or the 1 in 100 chance – a year of membership!

    I made a little bowl of tickets that were mostly sports drinks (so my boss wouldn’t kill me LOL) and let members draw a slip when they checked in. I made a second bowl of tickets that were ALL a year of free membership. Guess what, when she came to check in on Contest Day, she got to pick from the rigged bowl.
    After she “won,” I disposed of the rigged bowl and tickets, and she literally cried tears of joy and hugged me.

    Look, everyone got a free sports drink they never would have received if I hadn’t made up this mostly harmless scheme, and I have no guilt!

    1. Off My Lawn, You Must Get*

      It’s a wrap, folks. Rigged won.
      Everybody go home.
      Well, well, WELL done, random person on the internet.

  207. NotAnotherManager!*

    My supervisor at my first job let me take a nap on company time. I’d pulled an all-nighter, and we finally finished the deliverable at 2:30 in the afternoon on Day 2. My supervisor wanted to send me home and give me a paid day off the next day as a thank you for working under such onerous circumstances. The head of HR, a petty tyrant on their best days, said I could either take the rest of the afternoon OR the next day off with pay but not both. My supervisor arranged for me to take a nap on the office couch of someone who was out that day, woke up up when it was time to go home, entered the normal end-time on my timesheet for me, and told me not to come in the next day.

  208. Domette!*

    While working in higher education at a public school, I did a stint processing residency applications – the forms to file for students to be considered “in-state” residents (and be assessed tuition at significantly lower rates than non-resident students). The paperwork requirements were really stringent, and I had to adhere to them closely. A lot of times, I’d have to go back and forth with folks to get additional information and documentation……but if there was any information that indicated a student was undocumented, I’d approve regardless of what paperwork was provided. Undocumented students had enough on their minds already.

  209. Eng Mgr*

    This one is about me.

    I’m a manager of a small team of engineers. I’ve unilaterally decided that our team doesn’t observe the start of Daylight Saving Time on Sunday at 2am, but rather the prior Friday at 4pm. So one Friday a year, the clock springs forward, and like magic it’s 5pm on a Friday and my team ends our workday an hour before the rest of the company.

  210. No Dumb Blonde*

    This isn’t a misuse of power, just an example of doing good things quietly. I work for a small government agency that was facing a major policy change handed down from On High that would have slashed our previously approved longevity and merit increases (which were not large to begin with). Our officers in the highest pay band (including my boss, the executive director) gave up their own small increases to leave more into the budget for the rest of us. I adore my boss. No ego, no power plays, no micromanaging. Just calm and steady leadership, removing obstacles on our behalf without some staff even knowing about it.

  211. Sparkles McFadden*

    After 30 years at my company, I was job eliminated over the phone while on vacation. Part of this call was to inform me that I had bring to my six-year-old laptop to the office by the end of the week. I requested that the company send a shipping box (something that was done routinely) and they insisted I had to show up in person.

    I brought the equipment to the head of Desktop IT, a professional and unfailingly honest man. He took my old laptop and asked me to sit down and wait. He took a brand new laptop out of its box and put it in a brand new computer bag. He then took my very old laptop, reformatted the disk and did a software reload while we chatted. When the software reload had completed, he put the old laptop in the box than belonged to the new laptop, and sealed the box. While handing me the new laptop in the new bag, he said “The guy who fired you insisted that I order him a brand new laptop, so I did. I never said I’d give it to him. Now it’s yours.”

    So I left with a brand new computer that had switched identities with a computer that was slated to go to the electronic burial ground. I’m told the new division head who did all of the firings never noticed that he was using a six year old laptop.

  212. Caro*

    I was getting my degree at night, and working in a related professional job by day. The degree wasn’t essential to have the job but was directly related to the work and highly advantageous to succeed at it and progress.

    A week before my graduation I told my boss I was going to take a PTO day to go. She blurts out ‘No’ really quickly, I take a deep breath and get ready to push back on this when she realises what she’s said and clarifies ‘I mean don’t book it in as PTO, I’ll just mark you down as being at offsite training that day. Consider it a graduation gift’.

    I haven’t had the opportunity to pay that misuse of power forward, but if I ever do, I will.

  213. AnonSchmivy*

    I used to work in the bursar’s office in a university. This might have been a University that was a “shmivy league” one in a city on the east coast that sounds like “Schmiladelphia”. Anyhow, we sent accounts to collections. A lot of accounts to collections. Too many, in my estimation. So I started looking at the reports really closely.

    As often happens, we assessed a late fee on overdue balances. The policy was to only waive these fees in extreme circumstances.

    Also important to note is that there was a big emphasis on attracting first generation college attendees, and a similar emphasis on need blind applications.

    I started to notice that if I waived some of these fees, the accounts would come to $0, and thus no sending to collections.

    So I focused on these accounts first. Then the accounts for grad students in social work and nursing.

    Reduced our send to collections accounts by about 65%.

    I’d like to think I helped a few folks get a better start.

    2. MigraineMonth*

      Bravo! Fining people money for being too poor to pay is so disgusting.

      I’m glad you made the college walk the walk for first-generation and need-blind attendees, not just talk.

  214. Bibrarian*

    I’m a public librarian- not management level but I have a good amount of authority. My system won’t get rid of fines, but they do allow senior staff to use our discretion. Well, that little bit of power certainly goes to my head! I wave almost every fine that crosses my path, and if a more junior staff member needs approval to wave a large fine, they know to call me as I’ll clear that sucker. I was open about my dislike of fines when I was hired, so if management has a problem with it… well, they can’t say they weren’t fairly warned :)

  215. Catherine*

    Oh, another one I remembered. When I was very young, I had to leave my family’s home and was living in a shared house with four other young women. Money was very tight for all of us. A family friend was doing a side hustle delivering bakery goods very early on Sunday mornings. There was always some leftover unsold goods – mainly bread rolls – that were supposed to be disposed off. Instead, he filled a large plastic sack with the leftovers and tied it to our door handle. I knew it was him but he didn’t say anything as he’s quite shy. The ‘bread fairy’ was a hero in that house – five of us lived off free baked goods because of him.

    1. Curmudgeon in California*

      A friend of mine briefly worked at a bagel shop. Every couple days they would toss out their one- and two- day-old bagels at the end of his shift. So he brought a bag of perfectly edible bagels, no mold or anything, to our game nights. A few seconds in the microwave softened them up just fine.

  216. Snowy*

    I got my first car as an early graduation gift, so I only had it at college for maybe the last month, but the on-campus parking pass would have still cost the entire semester’s price. One of my friends happened to work in parking services, and told me the schedule of when both they and the city monitored the parking around campus. I had to move the car twice a day, but as long as it wasn’t moved into the farthest lot until after 7pm, and was out on the street around 7am, I missed both campus and city parking enforcement. She saved me several hundred dollars.

  217. Smith Corona*

    On my first day at a new job, I walked through the lobby and heard a sound that I had not heard in years. I looked to see if I was correct and I was astonished that I was. At this company the EA ruled with an iron fist as she had been there over 30 years, so whatever she said to do was company policy. She hated how handwritten envelopes looked and said that labels printed on a printer looked smudgy. Because of this, there was a typewriter behind the front desk – in 2012 (she also had one at her desk). Every letter mailed out, label printed, report cover sheet, ect. was to be done on the typewriter and woe to those that broke this rule. We went through 13 admins at the front desk in 5 years, one left at lunch and never came back, due to this as most of them had never had to work on a typewriter before (they did have computers as well). We were getting some windows in the lobby replaced as they had started to leak and EA decided to take vacation during the construction. The first day that she was gone, I took the typewriter with me when I walked out the door and I threw it in the big construction dumpster as I walked to my car. When she came back a week later I had to tell her that we were very sorry, but the typewriter was accidentally knocked onto the concrete floor during the construction process. Due to its age, it wasn’t fixable and that accounting would not allow us to purchase another one as it was such outdated tech. No one ever found out the truth and we were magically able to retain staff at the front after the typewriter was gone. When EA retired last year we gifted her the typewriter that she had at her desk – we are now free!

    1. Anon for this!*

      *snort*
      Reminds me of when I was hired as a controller for a company. My accounting manager was an absolutely lovely person, but could not use excel to save her life. She would add up the numbers in an excel column on her adding machine and then input the total at the bottom of the excel column (and staple her adding machine printout to the printed out version of the excel sheet. Yes, true). We sent her to innumerable classes. No change. I sat training with her innumerable times. No change. I finally had had it. I said ” Jennifer, you CANNOT use your adding machine anymore!” And I threw it out the window, 10 floors down (there was nothing below us, fear not!). She cried and I hugged her, but she finally learned how to sum in excel.

  218. ICodeForFood*

    Years ago (1990s), I was out in Chicago for business, followed by a weekend visit to my cousins there. They’re lovely people, but tended to run late, so of course I was late for my flight home when they dropped me at the airport on Sunday. I knew I had little chance of being seated on the flight, so I told the gate attendant that I knew I was late, but if there was any way I could get on the flight and get home, I’d appreciate it. I guess even back then flight attendants were used to dealing with overly entitled passengers, because she asked me to wait a moment, and then upgraded me to first class! I don’t know if that was against the rules, but it was a really nice thing to do. That’s the one and only time I’ve ever flown first class.

    1. MM*

      I love when flight attendants and airline employees flex like that. Too many stories to count, but the best stories (worst times) are when your situation has gotten so ridiculous that it’s become airline gossip and they know who you are before you even stagger up to their desk.

    2. Lady_Lessa*

      My story about flight workers. This was actually one who worked at the desk. I was flying out for a job interview. At least one flight between the cities was cancelled due to thunderstorms. So I was waitlisted for the next one. Some folks ahead of me on the list were trying to get two seats on the next flight, and were making a stink. The worker came to me, I told her why I was going, and she put me on the flight.

      I got into the area after midnight, but interviewed pretty well. Both I and the company discovered that I would have fit there like Roman numerals and Arabic numbers. (I still respect the company, and felt good about buying an instrument that they had gotten rid of)

  219. Anonymous Hospital Employee*

    Late to the post but I have a good one:

    I work in a hospital and during the omicron surge I was re-deployed to our employee health services to do the secretarial work in a PCR testing clinic open for employees and their families.

    The official communications from our employee health services about their PCR testing clinic used the phrase “immediate family” which was only defined deep in a buried FAQ page on our intranet, so I ended up fielding a lot of questions from employees about what counted as “immediate family”, usually accompanied by pleas about how desperately this person needed to be tested. The omicron surge absolutely overwhelmed COVID testing in my area, with all appointments booked up and multi-hour lines at walk-in testing locations.

    Now, I read that FAQ and knew what my employee’s definition of “immediate family” was, which was pretty much only children, spouses and parents. I also knew, because I helped register family members for appointments all day, that at no point would they be asked what employee they were related to and how, so it would be very difficult to sort the “allowed” family from the “disallowed” during a hypothetical audit.

    It didn’t feel right to me to turn people away during a public health crisis over what my employer thought “immediate family” was (not all families look the same!) so I always said yes. Does my significant other count as a “spouse” when we’re not married? Yes! I exposed all my roommates to COVID, can they come get tested with me? Yes! Can you help me register my whole 10-person extended family for tests? Yes! Once, I even quietly registered a random man as “family” after he missed his appointment at our public clinic and was on the edge of a breakdown because without a negative test he wouldn’t be able to see his kids for the holidays.

    I figured that if anyone ever noticed was I was doing it would be really easy to play dumb, because in the chaos I was never officially trained on the FAQ’s definition of “immediate family”, but no one ever did. Working on the COVID frontlines during the omicron surge was a terrible experience, and the only bright spot was getting to override that rule and help more people get tested.

    1. Chauncy Gardener*

      You are the BEST. Thank you for this and thank you for your service during this super tough time!

    2. KateM*

      So, a parent living in another country whom they could only meet maybe twice a year would be “immediate family”, but a roommate with whom they used the same rooms from day to day would not?

      1. MigraineMonth*

        My current definition of “immediate family” is “people I may have exposed to COVID”. So my parents are extended family until they come visit, but the maintenance worker who fixed my toilet? We’re very close.

  220. Accountress*

    In high school in 2004, I had a panic attack at the dentist because I couldn’t breathe through my nose like I needed to. So we got a recommendation to an ENT- a solo practice, just her, a nurse, and a business manager.

    At the time, our insurance paid 80% of the costs billed, and then directed the doctor’s office to bill us for the rest. This is important.

    So after the doc checked me out and gave her opinion of what I needed (tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, septoplasty, and bilateral inferior turbinate reduction), and my mom & I agreed to continue with this course, we moved from the examination room to the business office. Her manager had been going over our insurance plan (apparently ordered 3 weeks prior, when we made the appointment) with a fine-toothed comb, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves FILLED with insurance plans. A quick discussion of what I needed ensued, and then this happened:

    “Great!” she said. “So we can only get 80% back from your insurance for the procedures- lame. BUT they also pay 80% for follow-up visits. We usually do the follow-ups as a courtesy, but we’ll make an exception this time for the first…” (furious calculator typing) “Yeah, the first 4 appointments. Anything after that is on us.”

    We paid for my pain killers (Tylenol with codeine, used for 1 day before I switched to a non-codeine liquid OTC) and my fancy custom nasal spray from the compounding pharmacy. We never got a bill from her, I can now breathe through both nostrils (lefty was a hereditary little biatch, I’m generation FOUR of getting it repaired), and we recommended her to everyone who needed an ENT for a decade before she retired.

  221. cactus lady*

    I was a civilian going to a very important meeting on a military base. I was required to bring my driver’s license and proof of insurance to the main gate in order to get access to drive onto the base. When I got there, I realized my insurance had expired the day before, and I had left my new insurance card at home. I tried to explain this to the guard, and he said, “ma’am, I didn’t hear anything you just said”, so I tried explaining again. He interrupted me and said “ma’am, please stop talking. I didn’t hear anything you said.” And handed me my pass to get on base.

  222. Cat Mouse*

    Don’t know if this counts and is pretty mild to some of the ones I’ve read here, but I used work in webhosting and if you were polite I would often give free hosting instead of billing extensions. Or discounts past what we were generally allowed. Wanted to keep your dead husband’s site active for a year to let everyone get what they want off the site? Have 6 months free. Already 2 weeks past due and need another 2 weeks until your next paycheck? You were polite and didn’t yell at me, well instead of another two weeks and put you a month behind in payment, have a free month and then two extra weeks to pay without the site being suspended.

    We updated our base plans to different specs and you want to move to that? Sure, no rate change for you, we’ll just get that upgraded without the 5% price increase.

  223. Love to WFH*

    I was young and working as a secretary in a branch sales office of a big company. I had bought my first NEW car. It was a very modest economy car, but it was NEW!

    My manager asked me to run a work-related errand. On the freeway, a truck kicked a rock into my windshield and cracked it. My shiny little car only had 30 miles on the odometer. :-(

    The main office said they’d just pay for a kit to fill the crack with clear plastic. My insurance had a deductible that was more than I could justify paying for something cosmetic.

    My boss took the amount of the deductible out of petty cash, and handed it to me to get a new windshield.

  224. PTBNL*

    I’m a paralegal and back in my law firm days, we had to enter time within 2 or 3 days, otherwise we got fined something crazy like $100. I forgot a few times and my admin would call someone and say it was her fault, I sent to her but she forgot to get it in, they needed to waive the fine. And they did. One of many ways that admin was frigging amazing.

  225. Leelee Spaghetti*

    Years ago I spent some time working as a case manager for unemployed people, in a system which has warped into Parole Officers for Poor People rather than providers of genuine assistance through access to training opportunities, education, upskilling and help preparing for and getting to interviews. Nerdy knower of policies and procedures, I read the legislative framework and governing principles and found that we could access all sorts of funding if jobseekers met the criteria. I was there for a good time, not a long time and went overboard accessing the funding, much to the chagrin of my managers. Need a truck licence? Done. Upskilling? Qualification? Petrol to facilitate resume drop-offs? Done. Done. Done. My cases were constantly being ‘spot-checked’ and ‘randomly audited’, but in each case I could explain and justify the funding against our government contract to provide assistance to jobseekers. When I left eight months later to pursue postgrad, I was probably our managers’ least favourite person. But in the staff meeting following my departure, the managers announced that the clients I had been helping into work accounted for 40% of all placements across a 23-strong team. Who would have thought, that if you utilise the resources made available to you in the way that they are meant, that you can actually make the system work as it’s meant to?

    2. They Don’t Make Sunday*

      Replying so late but omg this is wonderful. And oh, what’s that? Your employer wanted to be paid a competitive rate for a government contract without putting in much effort? And it’s poor people who are “looking for handouts”? That employer could stand to learn a thing or two from its clients.

  226. Andi*

    Very minor, but meant a lot to me. In high school I worked for this arthouse single-screen theater with the world’s best boss. My parents were not always kind and had big food and body image issues. If I was having a bad day, he would often open up a new box of Red Vines or Crunch bars and – oops! – the scissors must have slipped a little and nicked this one. We can’t sell them open like this, so we’d better eat them.

    It wasn’t even so much about the shared candy, it was the kindness and love in the way he cared for me (and all the employees there.) We’re still friends more than 30 years later.

    1. Just Me*

      Oh that’s so sweet. Even for someone who didn’t have food and body image issues this just oozes sweet grandpa bonding to me.

  227. Chauncy Gardener*

    So this was a super long time ago when I was in an unnamed branch of the armed forces. I was stationed at a headquarters and an opposite sex friend was at a different one. So we would take each other as “dates” to all the mandatory fun that we had to wear dress uniforms to. So every time we went to one or the other of our events, we would always bring civilian clothes to change into in the car and then went barhopping. This may or may not have been in a tropical island US state, so you can imagine the bars were pretty good.
    So we were pretty looped by the time we got to random bar #3 or 4 that we had never been to before. We had a drink and were dancing and then the light dawned that we were at a gay bar. Now this was WAYYYYYY before the “don’t ask don’t tell” BS. We were deep into “if you get found out as gay, you’ll be court martialed and FINISHED.”
    We look around and we each see two people (four in total) from our divisions who are same sex and obviously together, looking quite nervous. We beat feet and get the heck out of there and finish out our evening.
    That was Saturday night. So Monday morning, I get a knock on my office door at work. It’s the two gals who were at the unnamed bar on Saturday night. Let them in and they hem and haw. Finally they come out with, “well, about Saturday night ma’am.” I say, “what about Saturday night? I stayed in because I didn’t feel well. Did you have a nice weekend?” Much bluster and blathering about bars and I finally say “I don’t know what you’re talking about since I was home sick all weekend. Have nice day folks” I thought they were going to pass out in the doorway. I gave them a wink and a huge grin and told them to get the f–k back to work. Best thing I ever did

  228. Waving not Drowning*

    Back when my twins were newborns, things fell over VERY quickly. By the 6 week mark, one baby screamed for hours on end, and I reached breaking point (juggling two bouts of mastitis, two newborns – including one that didn’t sleep only screamed, a toddler and a 5 year old).

    Paediatrican scheduled a stay for us at the local Mother Baby Unit to try and give me a break, and to work out what was happening with twin 1. Twin 2 had to come with us, and Hospital staff were cool with this, and were quite used to this situation. Twin 1 was technically the one admitted, as they were the one needing help. We were doing the admission paperwork, and I didn’t realise our health insurance had a gap if he was in a private room, and nearly cried when I was told there was a $60/day out of pocket expense (despite his twin being in the room with him). We had one income at that point, and it was going to be a lot out of our budget (we stayed 2 weeks). Head nurse looked at me, and said, twin 2 has sleeping issues too don’t they. I’m, no, no, only twin 1 has the issues. She looked at me again, and said again, rather strongly, twin 2, will be sharing the room with twin 1 – doesn’t twin 2 also have sleep issues – we can admit them too, and unfortunately they will have to share the room (which they were going to be sharing anyway – just only one formally admitted) That FINALLY broke through the fog, and I’m yes, it would be good to have twin 2 on the same sleep pattern as twin 1… She rang our Paediatrican, and said that on admission, twin 2 also has sleep issues, could he please do the paperwork to admit them as well – by the by, Mum has xyz health insurance… Paed immediately sent through the paperwork for twin 2 to be admitted as well. If we hadn’t been offered that lifeline, we would not have been able to stay as long, and it would have seriously impacted the whole family.

    (Twin 1 was diagnosed with silent reflux, started meds, and was a changed baby by the end of week 1. Twin 1 and 2 were mostly on the same sleep cycle by the end. And I was much more better equipped emotionally to deal with the sleep deprivation when I got home)

  229. Anon pharmacist*

    Oh, I just remembered, early in the pandemic, cleaning supplies, peroxide, alcohol, hand sanitizer, etc. were flying off the shelves. We sell individually wrapped alcohol wipes for people who have to self-inject or test their blood sugar. They’re about an inch square and you’d need a lot of them to do household cleaning, but I didn’t want our entire supply to be bought up by people who were cleaning and leave nothing for patients who actually needed them for medical reasons, so I brought them all behind the pharmacy counter and only sold them to people who actually had a medical reason to need them. Then I found alternate manufacturers of them to buy from our supplier, so I could continue to keep them in stock for patients.

    Now I have the opposite problem, as we administer Moderna vaccine, and with every box we get enough supplies to give the maximum 20 doses out of each vial, and we never use that many, so they pile up. I now feel happy to give patients some free alcohol swabs, syringes, etc. out of the stash that would otherwise sit around collecting dust. I had a trans patient who was injecting a small volume of testosterone, which I was concerned wouldn’t be accurately measured by the 3 ml syringes we normally stock to sell for such things, and I was having difficulty finding an appropriate product to order, so instead I gave them some of the 1 ml syringes from the government supply.

    1. Anon pharmacist*

      Then the other thing we do all the time lately, in re Covid testing. There are only so many slots that can be scheduled each day, but if we’re not too hideously overwhelmed, we can find time to test more people, but they have to book online before we can see them. So we have them book the next available appointment, even if it’s for days from now, then print the paperwork for it and fit them into today’s schedule.

  230. Rules Following Archivist (Usually)*

    I work at a public archives, which makes government records available to researchers of all stripes. Because we have a lot of 19th and 20th century documents that, by definition, cannot be replaced… well, we have lots of rules. One of the rules is no children under 13. The others involve things about pencils and not folding stuff.

    One day, a kid charged in ahead of his mom. I get ready to politely escort him out as he rushes to our one researcher, a historian, who is in the middle of reviewing a number of old education agency records. The child’s eyes light up and he says, “Wow! Are you a professor?” I hesitate — I expect the historian to give me the “please let me get back to my work, I paid for plane tickets to be here” look — and I prepare myself to have to do something I’d rather not.

    Instead, the historian pulls a chair up next to him, smiles, and says, “Yes. Want to have a seat? I’d be happy to show you.” And, for the next thirty minutes, he explained each document, what he learned from it, and how he put it together to make an argument for his book. The young future scholar watched, but he also asked questions. His mother choked up. I did a little too.

    I decided to not ask about the boy’s age. Now, yes, I ignored a rule here too — according to the rules, I should have politely asked the boy to leave — but the historian easily could have said no; he could have easily asked me, a state bureaucrat, to do some state bureaucracy. He didn’t. He did, instead, one of the kindest things I’ve ever seen.

    1. SportyYoda*

      This is one of the greatest things I have ever read and is absolutely going to be someone’s personal statement for why they want to study history.
      Or they were just a curious child who runs off and makes llama teapots (teapots that llamas drink out of) with no interest for history, which is fine; they still got a moment of kindness.

  231. Susan Ivanova*

    CEO of my first startup got a bee in his bonnet about a project that was running “late”, due to him accepting a time estimate that everyone in engineering said was a total fabrication – according to all the internal plans, it was right where they expected it to be.

    He decided that nobody could take any PTO until that project was back on “schedule”. Didn’t matter if you were on an unrelated project with upper management who didn’t lie, as I was.

    My grandmother was having her hip replaced on the opposite side of the US, and I already had the tickets to go spend a few days and hold her hand as she went into surgery. My manager (one of the best ones I’ve ever had) told me to go, he’d work it out.

    Grandma was fine and I never heard a word about it.

  232. Fake Eleanor*

    A few years back, I worked for a test prep company. We had an online SAT/ACT prep program for high school students that cost money, and a slightly less robust version that was free with a customized password. Some wealthier schools or districts negotiated access to this program for their students, and we considered it a worthwhile freebie/teaser for families that would most likely pay for tailored, fancier programs.
    I made a group acct/password for this free program and gave it to groups that contacted me (non-profits focused on first-gen college students, low income students, foster kids in group homes, etc). The groups had students who could never have paid for our programs, so the company wasn’t losing money. It was online and asynchronous, so zero marginal cost to the company, as well. But I liked knowing that my access to resources provided for the students least likely to get any opportunities for specialized assistance.

  233. Jonaessa*

    I’m not sure if this counts, but I used to work for the transportation department of a school district. Many of the rules in place deal directly with the safety of students. We didn’t make you register your kid for the bus to be mean–we did it so that if there were ever an accident, we would be able to notify you (among other reasons). People move in and out of school districts all the time and sometimes getting a kid registered for school and then the bus and then after-school care takes a few days. We could not assign a kid a bus until he/she/they had been entered into the district’s system. The school registrar did not enter students until he/she/they attended the first day of school. So after a full day of school, the record would download to us overnight, and in the middle of the next day, we could assign a route. That usually meant 2-3 days parents would have to take off work or be late just to get their kids to school. When the parents would call me begging and pleading to get their kids on the bus, I would remind them that these procedures were for their safety, security, and peace of mind. “Oh, you know where the bus picks up already and what time? Well, I cannot tell you we can allow your child to board that bus, but I will tell you that we are required to take any student who is at a bus stop in the mornig to school and sort it out when our drivers return to base.” They usually picked up on the hint–your kid can get a ride in the morning so by the afternoon everything will be squared away. I didn’t always do this because Heaven forbid a bus were to get in an accident with an unregistered kid aboard, but sometimes just throwing those rules out there helps the parents make a decision.

  234. Liz*

    My Dad in the 70’s moved to Washington DC as a poor college student. He was working as an elevator operator in the Capitol and was applying for law school. He got accepted for a night program at one of the local Universities but really was hoping to get into the normal day program. He went several times to the Law School admissions office to see what he would have to do to get in and during his visits, he became friendly with the admissions secretary. During one of the visits, the secretary grabbed him and said “fill this form out right now, give it back to me and wait here”. He quickly followed her instructions, she took the form, went into the director’s office, and came out with it signed. Turns out it was the form he needed to transfer into the Law School day program. When he asked her about it she said the Director had been fired that day and before he left he was signing every piece of paper that came across his desk. She liked my dad enough to use her powers for good on his behalf. So that is how my dad got into law school, by being friendly with a secretary and understanding who actually has power in a big system. I will always be grateful to that secretary because my parents met in Washington DC through some of his Law School friends and getting into that program changed the course of my Dad’s life.

  235. Trixie, the Great and Pedantic*

    When I was a freshman in college, I was in an honors program that had special deals and discounts with various cultural institutions in New York City, including the Metropolitan Opera. That season, they were performing Turandot, my mother’s favorite opera. As the discount was limited to one per person, I enlisted two friends and we bought three tickets, and I presented them to her for her birthday.

    I don’t know if the employee was sympathetic to three college kids, or distracted by three buxom college girls, but… I think the $25 discounted student tickets were supposed to be in the balcony, not the tenth row of the orchestra. Thanks, man. (The fact that my mother spent the train ride home bemoaning the weak voice of the male lead put a damper on things at the end, but that’s not the ticket seller’s fault.)

  236. PT*

    Back years ago when I was working at a camp, we had these communal latex swim caps the kids had to wear during swim. We’d line the kids up, and run down the line putting the caps on as quickly as possible, which means a lot of kids got a rubber-band-snap slap as we finished putting it off. But we had a child in class who was a burn victim, and he’d lost an ear in a fire, and he’d had some reconstructive surgery done recently, and this snap was excruciating pain for him. People tried to be gentle, but didn’t always manage to do it right.

    One of my coworkers said, “Oh that’s easy I know where the bin of fabric caps they sell at the front desk is,” and went in and, risking termination, stole one and set it aside for him. None of us “saw anything.” He was much happier to go swimming after that!

  237. Turnip Soup*

    One place I worked had free snacks for a few years and one day the second in command came up to me and pointed out some people taking extra snacks and how much money they were “stealing” (it was like…ramen and chips) and asked me to talk to them. I said no. He brought it up again later, so I went and found them, told them I didn’t care what they did with the snacks (they were just stockpiling in their office a few floors up), they were welcome to stockpile them, and if they needed to take ramen home, I very much encouraged them to do so as that was on the fault of the company for paying insufficient wages, then asked them to be more discrete around leadership because leadership was stingy despite our 9 figure endowment.

    I then sent an email to second in command saying I had communicated the issue and they understood the problem and wouldn’t cause issues again.

  238. Stripes*

    This is fairly minor but…I worked in a call center with a relatively unfair and overbearing dress code. You could get passes to dress more freely given to you by your supervisor. (Still had to look “decent” but you could at least wear jeans or a hoodie when it was cold in the cement wall building). The corporate policy was new hires had to follow the strict dress code, even though it paid minimum wage and for quite a lot of people it was their first job, and it was in a very poor area. A lot of people genuinely had to wait for their first pay check to afford to go to a thrift shop to buy clothes for work, all the while being harassed by and eventually written up by HR. Three of those in your first 90 days and you’d be out. That did not jive with me because you got paid bi-weekly, so if you were waiting on a check so you could buy pants that weren’t jeans-you were screwed in terms of write ups. They already had horrible attrition rates and it was a garbage job to begin with.

    I was a supervisor. I also was very involved with new hires. There was no system in place besides “A supervisor had to give you a pass/sign it” and hand it into HR for these “free dress” tickets. I made about a million. I gave them out like candy to new hires, especially when people would come to me upset because they simply *couldn’t* get new clothes, or they only had a couple of things and were going to buy more, but their kid needed something for school. I gave them out like candy to my tenured employees who I knew had the right clothes-but wanted to wear a hoodie and jeans because it was cold at work, or capris because it was hot. It wasn’t customer facing, and to me, I’d rather have had employees who somewhat wanted to be there than have to train new hires every three days because what a surprise, kids fresh out of high school in an economically depressed area don’t have unlimited dress pants.

    I inevitably had to leave the job myself, and I knew I was on my way out for a variety of reasons (mostly involving a family death) and I handed out stacks upon stacks of free dress tickets. They didn’t expire when a supervisor quit or was fired, so I gave my stash to a couple of trusted coworkers and told them what they were for. HR would have had my head if they figured it out because “We had an image to uphold!”, but again, if the difference between us having an employee and not was I let them wear a hoodie for a couple of days, I’d much rather see someone in a hoodie than go through interviews again.

    1. Anonymous Hippo*

      A dress code with an out is one of the dumbest things ever. If its ok for the business to allow exceptions, then the dress code isn’t necessary. I don’t understand the thinking behind this kind of policy.

      1. Stripes*

        You ain’t kidding! It’s why I even bothered doing the tickets to begin with. If someone performs just as well in jeans as they do in dress pants, and there’s a way out of following the strict dress code, why not? It just sort of morphed into me protecting people who didn’t have many other job prospects at the time, and myself from having to train people every week. It was very dumb!

  239. Anon for everything*

    Long ago I worked for a government ministry which was often sued by citizens groups for making regulations which violated the law or other reasons. This was normal because it’s how the ministry was set up. Industry could also sue if they felt the regulations were not in their favor. Once, someone on my team saw a citizens group had sued and they were quite correct. The issue in question would have involved the destruction of an entire really important habitat, in order to make some sort of sport pitch, with associated buildings, for the obscenely wealthy. I won’t say what particular type of sport, because this person could still lose their professional license from what they did, should it be recognized, even though it was a long time ago. The planned development would have polluted critical waterways, and basically just destroyed everything. It so happened that the person who saw this was familiar with the area and appalled about the potential devastation. So they waited until after everyone had left the office, took the file for the defence of the ministry, copied it all, left it at a certain street corner, and then called the citizens group and suggested that if they wanted information to help their case they should look at that street corner. The citizens group won and successfully protected their critical habitat.

  240. Not that other person you didn't like*

    When you said salties, for a minute I thought you meant salty people.

  241. COHikerGirl*

    Fun fact I learned, bear bells don’t really work. To bears, human voices means humans. Bear bells are more like birds to the bears ears and you can still startle a bear (really, startling the bear is where the danger lies, since adult humans aren’t go-to prey of bears).

    1. COHikerGirl*

      Nesting fail, this was supposed to be a reply in the thread about the Bear Awareness video…!

  242. MM*

    There isn’t really a story in most of these incidents, but based on what I’ve been reading, this is sort of a gratitude post from the other side to all the retail workers in these comments who have given people a break because they needed it, or just because. Shoutout to the many, many cashiers and shopkeepers who have:

    – Given me something for free on top of what I bought
    – Given me back more change than I technically should get
    – “Accidentally” not scanned an item or two
    – Let me come back and pay later

    Much of the time this is totally spontaneous on their part (so far as I can tell) and not financially needed on my part. But it’s heartwarming every time. If you ever doubted it, I promise these things mean something to the people you do them for. (Including people who don’t regularly frequent your establishment or see you often.) One actual story:

    During the first few months of the pandemic, right as spring was springing. I live in a neighborhood that was hit very hard, very early on; and I live very close to the hospital. It was an eerie, upsetting few months around here. (All those videos you saw on social media of neighborhoods that are totally silent except for constant, unending sirens? Yeah.) I live alone, my family are in different states, and I was working remotely, so my only in-person human contact was when I bought things. During one of the paper-goods shortages, the man running the register that day at one of my local corner stores let me stock up more than he should have. Not having expected this leeway, I hadn’t brought enough cash for all that. He said to pay him later. I asked if he was sure. He insisted, “lots of customers, I don’t trust, but you? I trust YOU!” I walked back out into the street, stared at the flowers on the trees and almost cried. (Similar thing happened around the same time at the store across the street. When I asked if she was sure, she just looked me in the eye and said “You are our neighbor.” I’m emotional just thinking about it.)

    Anyway, don’t let anybody tell you New York is a cold and uncaring city.

  243. Television*

    I used to work customer service/technical support at a place that serviced distributors, research companies and universities (things like clasps, filters, etc.) and our manufacturing/shipping procedures were terrible. It was common to have product backordered 3 to 6 months, sometimes even longer than that, and there were few companies that made these custom. For some reason, we would keep an insane amount of free samples on hand for salespeople to grease the wheels of major companies looking to purchase our products. The samples were no different than the finished products, just individual units instead of multi-packs. These companies were the priority when we got products back in stock because of high-volume sales, leaving smaller companies and university students waiting and waiting and waiting for their orders.

    We had so much sample supply on hand that it would expire before the salespeople got a chance to use them all, so I pulled all the samples that were within a couple of months of expiration and gave them away to customers with backorders. This wasn’t how they were intended to be used but, in a couple of months, they would’ve been thrown away anyway and the only real rule I had to follow was that customers needed to pay the shipping for anything other than ground.

    Pretty soon, it caught wind and our smaller customers started paying gobs of money to have these samples shipped overnight, early AM, Saturday delivery, etc. It became so popular that we started running out of samples. Those who had long backorders started canceling their orders and requesting these samples. People started asking for me by name or ending the call if other customer service reps answered.

    My boss found out what I was doing and I thought I might be in big trouble but after I told to him the number of unsatisfied customers waiting forever for their backorders, and likely paying for them with research grants that would terminate if their research weren’t completed on time, he realized that these unsatisfied customers would likely never buy from us again (and tell everyone they knew to avoid us like the plague) unless we did something for them. Everyone else in customer service chose to ignore them. I think it’s important to note that my boss was the one of the salespeople.

    Once we started getting backorders filled, I learned that the majority were going to large companies that had standing orders, leaving us with nothing to ship to those who had small orders, so I would visit our shipping department and ask them to pull a handful from those standing orders to ship to individuals who had still been waiting. We didn’t charge for anything until it shipped, so these large companies never paid for the handful of products we took from their orders and they didn’t even notice as they were receiving thousands of these units every single month. It baffles me why no one else thought of this.

  244. SportyYoda*

    This is a story a sales rep told me about things that can be done when you use a rep to do ordering rather than just place orders yourself, so take it with a grain of salt, but I believe every word.
    Our lab equipment sales rep had just sold a centrifuge (not to us, a different lab at a different institution). However, it was just over a certain price point where it needed to go through additional university bureaucracy; think two people to sign off on a form before it goes to the third person who actually gives the fund and the order couldn’t be placed until the end of the month; so a couple of different places for delays. Usually it’s one person and the order is placed once funds are confirmed… which can still take up to a month. The system without any additional hoops in place is cumbersome (we’ve waited over a month for items to be ordered, and they were run of the mill things like gloves and plastic consumables), and now the lab has to delay experiments while the additional work is done.
    Sales rep goes in and itemizes the parts of the centrifuge, so instead of one expensive item, it’s multiple cheaper items… which was enough to not trigger automatic extra bureaucracy.

  245. Poorly-written forms*

    We had a temp who was being brought on to a permanent position in a government office. Part of the packet to submit to HR is demographics of the selected candidate.

    The candidate: very openly a rather uncommon flavor of genderqueer, as self-identified.

    The paper form: seemingly written by someone half-asleep and lacking data collection experience, perhaps a few decades ago.

    The field for gender: open text.

    It’s government, and I work with data—there is simply no way gender is an open text box in the electronic system. I have zero doubt that when this paper form gets entered by whoever enters it, there are a small number of checkboxes available for that person to select and that the selected candidate’s self-identified gender would not be listed (except, perhaps, subsumed under ‘other’).

    I sat down with the selected candidate in a private spot, handed over the blank form and a pen, and said something like, “This form is required by HR to process your hire. I’m not sure why they give it to the hiring manager to fill out, seems like you should be the one filling it out. You’ll see there’s a blank space for gender, and whatever you’d like to put there, I’m more than happy to submit it that way and will stand by it if asked.”

    I got to see a big smile and submitted the form with this person’s self-identified gender written in. No questions or pushback from HR.

  246. Wolf*

    I submitted my application (on paper) a day late, but since I brought it in person, the secretary put it into the pile on the bosses’ desk. I ended up getting the job.

  247. Orange You Glad*

    Student interns/co-ops at my company are coded by HR as temps so they do not get holidays, early closures, or any OT for working on holidays that FTEs would get. The problem is, if the whole company closes at 2 pm the day before a holiday or long weekend, the student either has to stay to finish their day or take a pay cut. I started leaving their regular pay codes in place on those days and sending them home with everyone else. I want to leave early too and I don’t see any benefit to leaving a student to work alone in an empty office for 3 hours when the company is officially closed.

  248. B*

    Last week I learned that I could mute people on web-based calls, at the exact same moment that a chronic mansplainer was talking over the project lead and multiple other people for the fifth time in fifteen minutes (please note, Chronic Mansplainer is not in fact an expert in the space the project is in, he just has strong opinions that he thinks should always be not only heard, but articulated until other people bend to his will). So I muted him. I got to watch his face as he realized he was muted, and they were very angry, but a few minutes later he actually apologized for the interrupting! His excuse was that “he’s just a passionate old [title]” but I’ll still take the apology, and I’m very excited to now have this tool that we (I’ve shared this with a few colleagues who have had similar challenges with others) can use against the small segment of our colleagues that think it is acceptable and appropriate to act this way. Bonus – I tested it with a friend, and it turns out when someone is muted, they just receive a message “Someone in the meeting muted you” which means that even though I was prepared for there to potentially be consequences (and I’d already given my manager a heads up), this does not appear to have hurt me professionally at all.

  249. Dani*

    I used to work at a tourist destination aquarium.
    Part of the tour included a card, that you would tick off if you saw certain creatures. If you ticked this off and handed it in at the shop you would get 10% off and the tiny human who played would get a sticker.
    These cards weren’t tracked, they would just go straight in the bin. The prices were high in the shop so 16 year old me would always ask if you had filled in the card, or hand them one to give back to me.

    My little bit of rebellion but profit margins were like 90%, the multimillion company could take the hit.

  250. Anon for this*

    This one is pretty illegal but I know someone who worked in recruitment and who often tried to give, let’s say, certain underrepresented demographics a head start in the application process. I’m not sure that it worked but I know he tried.

  251. Bette Davis*

    I’m in HR, so this is borderline unethical, but I’d do it again (and probably will).

    Every year pre-pandemic we’d have these big holiday party blow-outs with tons of tech and cash prizes that employees could win with raffle tickets based on the number of toys they donated to the local children’s hospital or toy foundation. All employees, regardless of donations, also received one raffle ticket to make it “fair.” Well as you’d expect, those employees with the highest salaries were able to purchase the most toys and get the most raffle tickets, and those who made crap hourly wages usually ended up with the one pity ticket.

    The tech prizes were fun but the cash prizes were ridiculous, and that’s what everyone wanted and why people donated so many toys every year. I was in charge of the party and the raffle drawing, so I had the “random drawing” app on my phone, and no one else had access to anything. So, my plan every year, right before the party, was to sit down and go through the whole company list, with a special interest in those lower-wage workers who generally didn’t have a lot of tickets and pick the cash prize winners. I always based it on need – I knew this hourly guy and his wife were trying to adopt, this other employee had talked to me about how she and her husband wanted to do IVF and couldn’t afford it, another guy who had a disabled child, etc. Sometimes it was just people I knew were grossly underpaid. So I picked those people, memorized them before the party, and blatantly lied in front of the entire company when it came time to announce the raffle winners. If anyone ever asked to look at the list of prize winners on the app, woops the app hadn’t saved past raffles.

    I’ve done this every year, even now when the party has turned virtual and the cash prizes have gone down. It’s the only thing I like about the stupid party and being forced to plan it.

    (If anyone’s wondering, the gentleman and his wife now have adopted a baby boy and the other employee just gave birth to their first child, thanks to IVF.)

  252. Scintillating Water*

    My cat is diabetic, and everyone knows how expensive insulin is these days. She only goes through one vial every six months, but each vial is $300, which is a lot to pay all at once. There are discount codes that can bring the price down, but they specifically exclude veterinary prescriptions. So imagine my surprise when I got $100 off Fluffy’s last bottle of insulin because the pharmacist’s assistant found a discount code and “accidentally” used it on my order. I almost cried from relief.

  254. My Cabbages!*

    I’m a professor and teach several lab classes where I have TAs to help out with questions. When we have a slow lab week (like an exam instead of a full lab) I always let them know that they should definitely “show up” for the three hours of lab, even if they are strangely invisible and inaudible while they are there…

  255. Texas Teacher*

    The free/reduced lunch reforms under Obama Administration meant we had more salads, fresh fruits, and veg. It also had a calory limit that assumed kids were going home and having dinner. At our Title I school this was not a valid assumption especially the few days before payday for the parents. But the Federal and State laws + local health department rules made it illegal for teachers to buy extra lunches for kids or provide other food.

    Every teacher had shelf-stable food, apples, oranges, and grapes in their classroom that the kids could get. Our principal was a bigoted, misogynistic idiot several times over. So we had to hide these supplies from him. The kids understood and hid the food 0r flat out lied to him about where they got it. This was a K-5 school.

    1. Jenny Islander*

      Many long years ago, I worked at a McDonald’s. At that time the store kept hot sandwiches in shelves behind the cashier’s head. You made the sandwiches, put them on the shelf, and slid a little metal sign behind the last one that showed when the sandwiches had to be pulled, which was well before they would actually become dangerous–this was explained in the training video. The “expired” sandwiches had to be pulled on time and thrown away. They legally could not be sold.

      The manager at that time would take care of this herself, because her counter people were making sales or cleaning and her cooks were always cooking or cleaning. And then she would take that “trash” bag to the back door and hand it to a homeless person, who would take it to share with all their friends.

      The owner found out and fired her, but she did a lot of good until she was caught.

  256. Yo Yo Mama*

    Once upon a time a long long time ago, I found myself as a suddenly widowed 24 Y/O pregnant woman with a baby in my arms. My husband died suddenly in the Army overseas.

    Not knowing what on earth to do about, well, ANYTHING, I set about trying to settle things that needed settled.

    A lot of people wouldn’t talk to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t have standing to talk to a lot of organizations like the phone company, creditors, ect.

    My husband didn’t have a great history with car payments, and had rolled old debt into his more recent purchase. He was something like 19,000 in debt on a vehicle that was worth 5000 at the most

    When I called the loan guy (with the intention of paying this debt with a military disbursement), I had really no standing to talk to them. The loan predated out marriage, my name was on nothing, I had no paperwork.

    After no more than thirty seconds, the guy googles husband’s name, finds the military announcement of his death and asks if I want the car. I said not really, it’s in another state, I couldn’t retrieve it and it wasn’t useful for me.

    Then he just….made it all go away.
    Told me to have someone take the car off post and leave it, some tow truck will eventually tow it.

    $19,000.

    There is NO WAY that is protocol.

    I never heard about it again.

    1. Chilipepper Attitude*

      that is so nice! I hope that guy got all the good karma and had the life he deserved!
      Sorry for your loss.

  257. Chilipepper Attitude*

    I’m late to this.
    I used to work in a public library. The city would not allow us to give access to computers to anyone without a card and you can only get a card if you can prove you live in city limits. 17 and unders, however, could have unlimited access to the computers, they just had to get a login from the youth services desk – ie the kids desk.

    I asked every single person who looked near 17 how old they were. If I thought they could pass for 17 I would say back to them slowly and quietly, “no you are 17, and you just need to tell the staff at that desk you are 17 and would like a computer login.” I would go on to say, “if you try to get a log in from me, I can only give you 10 minutes, if you go to that desk, you can have unlimited time; IF you are 17 or under.”

    Most looked at me funny but got it. One teen, who did not have a card, asked me all the time for a computer login and I would say, “you are 17, ask at that desk and you can have unlimited time.” One day he came to me and said with a big grin, “now I’m 18 and I can get a computer pass from you!” He so wanted to get a pass from the “adult” desk. And he was so sad when I explained fully that I could only give him 10 minutes and he still had to go to the kid’s desk.

    To be clear, they could use any computer in the building, the logins worked everywhere, not just in the kids computers. We just had to count them this way at each service point.

  258. just a thought*

    My last big vacation before covid, my sister, her husband and I were supposed to go visit my brother working abroad in South America.

    My sister had gotten her and her husband’s tickets on American Airlines with no insurance or any possibility for a refund. Then about a week before the trip, she and her husband found out he had a medical issue and would need emergency surgery. They decided to skip the trip since it was not worth the risk with this sudden issue requiring emergency surgery.

    My sister e-mailed American Airlines explaining the situation and asked if they could somehow get a refund, flight credits, really anything since this was such an unexpected occurrence a week before the flight.

    The customer service person e-mailed back and said she was so sorry to hear they were experiencing this health issue, she knows how hard this must be, and they shouldn’t worry about the flight. She then gave my sister the FULL REFUND, which meant about $1000.

  259. Ann O'Nymous*

    I work as a speech therapist and specialise in working with transwomen. One lady is neurodivergent and needs a LOT of time to get herself in the right mindframe to be ready for therapy. Out of a 30 min session, it takes her at least 15 mins to get ready to start and 10 to get ready to lease. Officially, I’m only allowed to see her 30 mins (because that’s all health insurance will pay for), but as often as I can, I will book her for an hour, citing “admin time” for the added time, because I want her to be able to have at least 30 mins of actual therapy time, especially because she also needs to travel for more than 45 minutes to get here.

  260. Jenny Islander*

    I abused my power in order to teach my boss not to do something silly and dangerous. This was back in the days of dial-up internet (SCREEEEEooblydooblyAAAAAeeeee). There was one computer in this small business. I used it during my work hours, and my boss used it while I was out.

    One day I came in to see him repeatedly clicking the mouse while squinting angrily at the screen. He explained that he had been trying to open an email attachment for several minutes, but it just wouldn’t work. What attachment? He had no idea. Who was it from? He had no idea. But the subject line was “Urgent Documents Enclosed,” so it had to be important!

    This man, I repeat, handled other people’s money for a living.

    So I regretfully explained that he might (!!!) have picked up a virus, and I would have to have our anti-virus service inspect the computer immediately. And I connected the computer to the free remote inspection and cleaning service that Norton Anti-Virus used to offer. And I went home, because the computer would not operate while all eleventy megabytes of its drive were being s-l-o-w-l-y inspected and cleaned up, over dial-up, at 28K. And because I was on salary, I did not lose a dime.

    I should explain here that I had installed Norton myself and I updated it regularly. With disks that I got in the mail.

    He never, ever clicked an attachment from an unknown sender again.

  261. borealis*

    One of the first times I travelled abroad on my own was in the early 1990s. I was 19 years old, and I booked the cheapest air tickets I could find. My trip home was from Dublin (very early morning flight) via London, flying into Heathrow and out again from Gatwick. I had made sure I’d have enough time between the flights, but I had no idea how expensive the fare from Heathrow to Gatwick would be. I discovered that when I was standing in front of the tickets counter at Heathrow; I had almost no UK money (and no credit card), and I had spent the previous night at Dublin airport, not sleeping very much at all. The tickets sales staff showed me where I could go to exchange my Irish pounds for pounds Sterling, but then I’d have missed the airport shuttle, and my flight. At that point, I started crying, which was not something I did very often, but I felt pretty helpless, worried I wouldn’t get home, and so stupid for missing such an obvious thing! And the lovely, lovely ticket sales lady took the small amount of sterling I had in exchange for an airport shuttle ticket worth more than twice as much. I don’t recall her exact words, but something like “We do want you to leave England with a positive impression of us.” Which I did.

  262. Them Boots*

    I bullied a young co-worker to leave early. I was temping as an admin at this non-profit that assisted underserved people with their healthcare & the job included covering the receptionist’s lunch & bio breaks. She was young and had a major attitude but, whatever. Anyhoo, as I was settling in at the front desk she casually mentioned that she was going home for lunch and might be late coming back. Her boyfriend was home with their newborn and she wanted to check on him as baby was sick, had been running a fever, not taking a bottle and diarrhea for the past THREE DAYS! Now I’ve never been a primary caregiver but I did work as a professional cowhand on a +/- 3,000 head angus beef cattle ranch, and it was serious on Day 3 with baby cows! By extrapolation, a baby human must be even more delicate. I asked her if they’d gone to the hospital and she said yes, the night before they’d taken him to urgent care but the nurse in charge sent them home!!! (Mind you, this young woman was on the insurance assistance that our company handled, if that tells you about the pay…). So I flat out told her to get her purse, go home, take baby to the freaking ER and NOT LEAVE UNTIL SEEN BY AN ACTUAL DOCTOR. She said she might get fired for taking the afternoon off without notice. I told her I’d handle it and literally used my body to block her out the door. Then I went to our supervisor (older gent, no kid experience) and told him what I’d done and that her leaving for the day was my fault. Then I went to HR lady and told her same thing. I guess she had it out with supervisor because neither of us got reprimanded. Next day, receptionist called off to stay home with baby-great! Following day she came back to work and it turns out that the doctor had put baby on an IV for dehydration and kept him overnight because his condition was so bad. Family came home next day and she started showing me pics of the happy, healthy little cutie and thanked me for what I did. And she asked me to mentor her & took over my duties (a promotion!) when I left.

    1. Them Boots*

      Edit to add: I didn’t want her to speak with our supervisor before she left because I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t try to convince her to finish her shift (4+ Hours) before going home to get baby to hospital.

  263. crmofwht*

    When I was getting ready to graduate from college, my advisor and I suddenly figured out that I was missing a necessary credit. It had to do with me having started out planning to get a degree from the Arts and Sciences department and then switching to Engineering. Basically, there was a class that didn’t directly translate over, so I was missing a freshman-level chemistry credit. This was after 4 years of very high-level chemistry classes. I spoke to the Dean’s office, and they told me the only way to fix the problem was that I had to “test out” of the missing class – literally go take a test. I was frustrated, but I went and studied for it, even made myself a reference card (we were allowed a 1/2 sheet note card for exams.) On the day of the test, I presented myself at the freshman chemistry professor’s office. This guy was one of the most-loved teachers in the whole school, and I knew him well because he was the faculty advisor for the chemistry fraternity, which I was in. He seemed very confused as to why I had to do this, but handed me the test, and told me to get started while he went back to doing something on his computer. After about 5 minutes, he turns back around and starts asking me what other chemistry classes I had taken. I tell him, he nods and goes back to his computer. I continue the test, and after another 5 minutes, he turns back around, hands me a sealed envelope, and tells me to take it to the Dean’s office. While making very deliberate eye contact with me he says “You got a 78% on the test.” I slowly nodded at him, grabbed my things, and left. I had credit for the class the next day. RIP Doc Oc.

  264. Justasecurityguard*

    Back at my old job I was a school cop and was very familiar with the following phrases:

    “If I saw you two engaged in sexual activity I’d be required to report it”
    “If you leave the door unlocked when you cut school it creates a big security risk”
    “My allergies are so bad I couldn’t smell pot if I was smoking it” (my allergies don’t effect my sense of smell)
    “There’s any number of reasons his eyes could be red”
    “If you tell me your parent dropped you off it’s an excused late”

  265. Schnookums Von Fancypants, Naughty Basic Horse*

    When I was working for the Tollway Call Canter in the state of I would do everything in my power to waive fines. The system to pay tolls online was just so bad, but from my end I was allowed to match tolls paid online with a fine to waive it. Heck, there were times when they had overpaid on tolls the previous year and I used those toll payments to waive fines.

  266. Murmuration*

    Decades ago I was nearly a straight A student in high school. In the middle of my sophomore year I had to ask to be put in foster care. Well I didn’t know that was what would happen but that’s what it amounted to in the end. I went to the same high school afterward. Around lunch once or twice a week I would go to visitation with one parent. The class after lunch was in the one subject I did not excel in in normal times. After visitation I was a mess in that class – I barely finished any homework and the tests were disasters. The teacher gave me an A for the semester despite me not deserving it in the least. It was a small thing that meant a lot to me then and I’m grateful.

  267. RebelwithMouseyHair*

    Never had a shred of power in my previous job, but just once, the boss was going to be very late and called asking if someone could interview a person due to arrive any minute.
    I volunteered to do it, and used the boss’s interview questions.
    The young guy was very sweet (and cute but I swear I didn’t let that influence me) and we desperately needed to hire someone with his skillset.
    The question “where do you see yourself in 5 years time” was a loaded one. Most youngsters wanted to work for a few years in an agency to learn how they operated, before striking out on their own as a freelancer. But the boss would eliminate anyone who said that, because he was afraid that they would steal the agency’s clients.
    Sure enough, this was what the young guy said. I stopped him as soon as he pronounced the word “freelance”, with “Ding dong wrong answer!!! You’re supposed to say, “working here, supervising a dozen translators because the workload has grown so much”
    The boss arrived shortly afterwards and proceeded to conduct the interview as if I hadn’t said a word, and the guy got the job.

  268. BaaBaa*

    I was off sick a LOT with a chronic illness. Like, 60% attendance. I’d blown through all my paid sick leave (and this is in the UK, where we actually get a decent amount) and was on the verge of being fired, despite union involvement.

    Despite how low my attendance was, I was still the most productive member of my team, so my boss didn’t want to lose me, but my grandboss was really pushing for me to go. (Not sure why he’d always disliked me, but he had.) So sometimes, when I phoned in sick, my boss would tell me that, no, I wasn’t off sick, I was working from home on a project he’d assigned me. Using that trick, he gently edged my attendance up to the 75% level that stopped me from being fired. Having that stress factor removed had an amazing effect on my health, and I was soon at 80% attendance, even without my boss’s special help.

  269. SB*

    When I was a senior in high school, I wasn’t getting breakfast during the school year. Our family income was low enough that we qualified for free breakfast from the school, though high enough that my parents could perfectly well have afforded to allow us kids a bit of cereal, like they did on non-schooldays. But they got stubborn about us being “entitled” to free breakfast, and said we couldn’t eat at home on schooldays.

    It didn’t matter that the bus dropped us off so late that the cafeteria was almost always closed when I got there; no eating breakfast at home. So I wasn’t eating until lunch on schooldays.

    Ms. F was the school librarian. I was working for her as a library assistant during second period. When she got wind of what was happening, she intervened. She not only started providing me 80 cents out of her own pocket every day, but she gave me permission to slip out of the library when I was working for her and into the teachers’ lounge. Students were strictly forbidden in there, but Ms. F. said I could say I was running an errand for her. This meant I could use the 80 cents she’d given me to buy a pastry from the vending machine in the lounge. So I’d still be hungry during first period, but at least I wasn’t hungry during first, second, third, and fourth period any more.

    I will forever be grateful to her. Especially the time when she was out one morning, because she was at the vet having her beloved elderly cat put down. The day before, she’d taken the initiative of giving 80 cents to the other librarian, telling her to pass it on to me the next morning, and telling her about the arrangement. I would have forgiven Ms. F. for forgetting that day, but no, she remembered.

    You were the best, Ms. F. RIP.

    P.S. This is the kind of thing I try to pay forward now that I’m in a position to do so.

  270. Generally Catty*

    Our department had pretty clear norms on how to run a search for a new faculty member. When I chaired a search committee, I immediately set up a new meeting for candidates with faculty from other departments, including LGBTQ and faculty of color, so that candidates would get a realistic view of life in our (very white, very cis-gendered, very straight) department and university. My colleagues found out about it when they tried to stay past their scheduled meeting time for the ‘Outside Faculty Meeting’, and I came in and made them leave. They were FURIOUS with me that I had dared to violate their norms–and because there were meetings going on where they wouldn’t know what was said. I refused to back down, continued the meetings for the other candidates–and was able to hire our first black member of the department. I have zero regrets for this particular abuse of power.

  271. Bess Marvin*

    When I was in my early 20s, I lived in an apartment complex which charged a monthly fee for each pet a tenant owned. My then-partner and I adopted a cat from the local animal shelter, notified the apartment management, and began paying the monthly fee. Some months later, we realized that this sociable, good-natured cat would benefit from having another cat in the home. Though we didn’t earn much, we did the math and knew that we’d be able to afford to care for an additional pet–including the monthly pet rent. It’d be a bit of a stretch, but we knew we’d be glad we did it.

    After adopting the second cat from the same shelter, I went to the apartment office to let them know. On my way there, I encountered the new manager, and shared the news. When I mentioned that we’d adopted the cats from a shelter, she told me not to worry about the second pet rent.

    “The way I see it, you’re saving a life.” she said.

  272. Journalist Wife*

    Half a lifetime ago I waited tables at a very recognizable chain of restaurants that features stars and names embroidered onto the waitstaff’s brown aprons. (If you happened to have a maroon/red apron instead of a brown apron, it meant you were a shift trainer.) This was when I was in college, long enough ago that pretty much all restaurants still had two dining rooms–one for smoking, one for non-smoking. There was a middle-aged woman, “Debbie,” who waited tables on the evening shift and was the designated “closer” for one of the two dining rooms every weeknight, every week. The other dining room closing position generally rotated among a handful us, because technically, you had to be a “red apron” (trainer) to shut down a dining room. Shutting it down included “checking out” every other server there–assigning, supervising, and checking off “sidework” cleaning duties, weighing each server’s 35 lbs of mandatory rolled silverware in a tub, and inspecting their section’s tables for cleanliness, restocked table amenties, etc. before that server was allowed to leave out the front door.

    In addition to begrudging those of us college kids who were running around getting paid extra to train new staff because we had red aprons while she technically only had a brown apron, Debbie also clearly saw her night-shift closing duty as just about the only upward mobility she expected to see at midlife, and was OBSESSED with finding something wrong with EVERY SINGLE STAFFER’s closing work before they could leave. Not only would she start finagling (read: STEALING) extra tables seated outside her section as early as possible in order to convince the bosses to take people off the floor early so she could get their prospective tips, which was shitty enough in and of itself, it meant that she was crazy busy while the servers she’d screwed over and who were done with all their side work and now off the clock already still had to wait for her to find a break in her swamped waitressing duties to check over their sidework and closed-down table sections and sign off before they could leave the building. She realized this meant the desperate servers would then expedite all the necessary items for her tables on the waitline for up to half an hour many nights, trying hard to help her reach that “moment” when she could check their work.

    The clincher in all of this was that Debbie NEVER believed in letting a soul leave without finding SOMETHING wrong or overlooked with their close-down work. And if there was absolutely nothing out of place, she would invent something ridiculous that they had to do, like scrubbing a prep-line or grill-line floor, or something equally out-of-bounds for server duty (we were paid half of minimum wage because of tips, but we couldn’t earn tips after she stole our tables and removed us early from our shifts and sections, so our sidework was limited to the waitline, like cleaning soda fountains, coffee/tea urns, restocking coolers, etc.). Debbie was especially evil with inventive sidework for n00bs who didn’t understand what was or wasn’t outside their purview of responsibility (and also therefore outside Debbie’s purview of supervision). She ruled with an iron fist, was so unpleasant the managers hid in their locked office to avoid interacting with her, and she always made sure college kids were going home dirtier, later, and poorer than any older or non-student employees. It was her way of equalizing the universe.

    I finally got fed up with Debbie’s power trips on the nights I was working in her dining room rather than closing down the other one, and eventually stumbled upon a great trick that worked so well I began training EVERY SINGLE NEW EMPLOYEE with this advice: When working in Debbie’s dining room at night and shutting down your tables by swapping in fully-stocked sweetener/sugar caddies, completely-full salt/pepper shakers, replenished oil cartridges for the table lamps, etc., I made sure the trainees knew to always purposely prepare-but-leave-hidden one item on whichever table of theirs was nearest the waitline vestibule. I’d ask Debbie to please check our work, and we’d go get our personal belongings from the back while she did so, and drop the missing item in our apron pockets. The second she came back with the obvious response on what to go back and redo, we’d pull it out of our apron and place it on the table on our way out.

    Eventually, all of the other “red aprons” picked up on this and began training their new hires in the same technique. Debbie was too lazy to look any further than the original thing spotted that was wrong, so in a matter of months, her years-long reign of terror in thinking up horrid new ways to torture new hires was infrequent enough that her more evil, out-of-line requests were noticed by others and called out before she could enforce them.

    I’d like to say that’s the only time in my life I’ve needed to pull that trick, but as a veteran web developer for a university, I admit I have a handful of campus clients who also refuse to be pleased with their requested changes on the first round, so I make sure to format like one picture slightly off-kilter or one paragraph in the wrong html class when I answer their service tickets, with the already-correct version of the page waiting in the publish queue for my submission the second they respond with their clever “Aha! Caught this!” blooper on the page. Several of my team members have picked up on this, and begun applying the technique to their worst clients as well. (We have hundreds and hundreds of clients, so this is genuinely a tiny percentage of problem-clients we pull this with, but damn is it a time saver with all of that subset!)

  273. Anon This Time*

    I am in charge of benefits at my company. One time an employee called me and said, “Is my 4 month old on the the insurance? I remember talking to you about it. But I’m not sure you ever sent the form.” Well if baby isn’t put on within 30 days of the birth you can’t put them on the insurance. However, I emailed him the form and said. “Here is the form. If you send me the form you filled out previously dated within 30 days of the birth, we can get him put on the insurance.” So he sent me the form and I submitted it and pretended it was my bad that I didn’t submit the form earlier. Baby needed insurance so I had to do something!

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