let’s talk about times when someone righted someone else’s wrong

by Alison Green on October 3, 2024

Today’s “ask the readers” is for my mom: let’s talk about times when someone righted someone’s else wrong (a favorite pastime of my mother). Maybe a colleague stood up to the office bully on behalf of a more junior colleague, or a new manager flagged a pay gap and got it fixed, or any other time a brave person said, “This isn’t right, and I’m going to fix it.”

Please share your stories in the comment section.

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{ 297 comments }

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  1. Caz*

    How about one from my own mother.
    My mum was a Special Educational Needs Coordinator in a mainstream school (commonly abbreviated to SENCO, in the UK at least.) She was really bloody good at her job and ended up being made head of her department. Immediately on appointment, she informed her headmaster that she was renaming the department, and she wasn’t asking. They weren’t going to be “special needs” any more because every kid knows what “special” means and it becomes a slur. They were going to be “learning support”, because everyone needs support now and again. They still focused 90% of their time and energy on kids who would traditionally be labelled SEN kids, but they also had the time and space for the kids who were struggling with the history homework this week and just needed a bit of occasional extra one-on-one time. When she retired, the school library was named after her.

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    2. Minimal Pear*

      I love this! I’m disabled and really dislike the term “special needs”. It feels so euphemistic, like being disabled is some disgusting thing that has to be hidden behind vague language. And I think having the assistance open to everyone could help with stigmatization and is just generally a great idea.

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      1. Caz*

        She is sadly deceased but many people admired and appreciated her – parents and kids alike – and that appreciation spurred her to do more all the time. Thank you ❤️

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    5. Excel Gardener*

      Reminds me of a story my parents told me about when my brother was in elementary school. He had had delayed reading and speech due to a minor physical development issue (weakness in the mouth or something, I don’t really remember, he grew out of it eventually). Anyway, by the time he was in 2nd grade he was a bit behind but still in the normal range for reading and speech, but for some reason his teacher disliked him and had zero patience for him, so she kept sending him to the special education teacher.

      Eventually the special education teacher, who understood what was happening, decided to take my brother under her wing for reading and writing lessons that year, and provide him just as much focused attention as the other special ed kids, even though my brother was at a much higher level than the other special ed kids. She even had him assist her with the other students at times, which helped raise his self-esteem.

      By the end of that year, my brother was at normal levels of reading and writing and did fine in school, eventually becoming an engineer. He just needed some individual attention and a teacher who believed in him.

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      1. NothingIsLittle*

        This reminds me of my teacher who tried to get my sister diagnosed with ADHD even though she doesn’t have it (and didn’t meet most of the obvious diagnostic markers) because she didn’t want to have to deal with her. (My sister is almost certainly on the autism spectrum, but I’m the one with ADHD lol) I’m so glad this ended up working out for your brother!

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      1. ferrina*

        YES! Beyond the issue of the slur (which other commentors have noted more eloquently than I could), I love that some of the attention went to kids that could just use a little catching up. My kids’ school does this, and it is sooo helpful. It’s a great safety net for a kid that is starting to fall behind, and it gives them a chance to catch up. Back when I was a kid (80s/90s), if you fell behind, you were in Special Ed for life whether or not you had a medical need. If you fell behind, you would stay behind (unless your parents had the resources to help you- it was a big issue with privilege gap). But with this new model, you can fall behind, get some support and catch up. The right services at the right time for whoever needs it. Love this so, so much.
        Your mom deserves that library.

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    7. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      Love this so much. I’m only on the first post and my eyes are teary. My coworkers are going to think I have a problem today.

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    8. Strive to Excel*

      It’s interesting how most of our modern slurs for people with disabilities started out as the actual medical term for it. People keep coming up with more and more delicate euphemisms and it keeps not working because no one wants to be classed as being “lesser”.

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      1. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        It keeps not working because people without disabilities continue to categorize people with disabilities as lesser.

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        1. Georgina Sands*

          Exactly, this. It’s not disabled people who ae trying to change the language, it’s the ableist non-disabled people who keep trying to call me “differently abled” or some such, yuck

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      2. Beth*

        Many of our modern slurs started out as the ‘polite’, ‘mild’, or even self-chosen terms for a specific group. I’m thinking of all the words for LGBTQ+ people that have gone through this–queer and gay have both been reclaimed but have been/are used as insults too, many others that we used to choose for ourselves now have a bad enough history that I don’t want to list them. I think some racial slurs have gone through similar evolutions, too.

        It turns out when you have a word that’s used to label a specific group, and a lot of people view that group as lesser beings, that word will end up being used as a slur. There’s no word that’s delicate enough to hide prejudice.

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      3. ReallyBadPerson*

        I was surprised to find that in the high school where my son teaches, the faculty do use some of the older medical terms to make it clear to one another what the needs of the student are. For example, one of my son’s students was clearly struggling, and my son, a first year teacher, was at a loss how to help her. When a more experienced colleague explained that the student was “MR,” it really helped him recognize that there would be different measures of progress for this student. Maybe a 60 out of 100 on an exam would be success for this girl. I know we are often horrified at the older terms because they have been used as slurs, but they do have meaning, and can be used in a neutral way to communicate.

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        1. Bunch Harmon*

          There are many other options than using a slur to explain a student’s needs. If you’re in the US, your son should have access to the student’s IEP with reading and math levels as well as appropriate accommodations.

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        2. ShanShan*

          Speaking as a lifelong teacher, this is a terrible idea.

          A 60 out of 100 on a test would also be a big success for a student whose beloved grandmother died the week before, or the one who is raising a newborn, or the one who is working three jobs, or the one who has a chronic pain condition that keeps her from sleeping. A 60 out of 100 would be a victory for a lot of students. But we don’t have special labels for them, nor do we need them.

          Applying a label to tell teachers when it’s okay to judge a student based on their performance on a test and when it isn’t is unnecessary because it is never okay. Ever.

          You give students a grade that reflects their mastery of the material, you offer them help if they ask for it or seem like they need it, you make sure they get access to whatever support resources their doctor says they need , and you treat them with unconditional positive regard no matter what number you wrote at the top of their tests. That’s it. That is the whole of the Law. The rest is commentary.

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        4. C*

          Except that the neutral term in the USA is intellectual disability, and in the UK it’s learning disability. (The UK uses the term learning difference to cover what I’m the USA is learning disabilities, things like dyslexia or ADHD.)

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      4. Frieda*

        “Disability” is not a delicate euphemism and it’s not a dirty word. There’s a whole, beautiful history of disability rights and disability studies, and just this week Alice Wong, a longtime disability rights activist, got a MacArthur fellowship.

        ReallyBadPerson, in my educational setting (and I work alongside teacher education professors so I’m confident I have a handle on the language taught to the rising generation of teachers) “MR” whether you mean the initials or the full term would absolutely not be considered appropriate language. Fwiw.

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      5. Zombeyonce*

        The reason that a lot of the old medical terminology is now offensive is because it was used as a way to label people so they could then be shunted off to a place outside of society where they were treated as subhuman. It may have been “medically accurate” (though that’s often debatable with the way diagnoses happened), but many labels were used as tools to marginalize and harm people in a way that was framed and presented to the world as “help”.

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        1. MassMatt*

          Great comment. The euphemism was often not only in the medical terminology but the fact that shunting people into inferior schools and programs away from the public eye was referred to as being somehow good for them.

          There was and is a nasty racist component to this as well. See “Subnormal: A British Scandal”, a BBC documentary (available on Amazon Prime) about how nonwhite children were disproportionately labeled intellectually inferior and shuffled out of regular schools and into hellish institutions where instruction was minimal if not nonexistent.

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      6. NothingIsLittle*

        No, it keeps not working because people designate the disabled as “lesser.” Able-bodied people like to use the trappings of disability as an insult and actual disabled people are routinely ignored. This is a very common pattern in the language surrounding minorities — look at words like the “n” word, which historic evidence suggests was co-opted as a slur specifically because it was originally used by African American laborers [Pryor 2016].

        PS. Usually the “people [who] keep coming up with more and more delicate euphemisms” aren’t disabled. I’m disabled; I call myself disabled. On the other hand, I can’t even use my disabled parking pass in front of my family because that would require them to acknowledge that I’m disabled, which is insulting. That’s not to say that other people with disabilities don’t have different preferences in how they are discussed, but rather that they generally don’t tie themselves up into knots to come up with complicated euphemisms.

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    9. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      I just read this and thought of Dennis Dunstable: “Please,Sir, I’m ESN.”
      Sir: “And, err, umm, Dennis, you, ahh, know what that means?”
      Dennis: “Yes, Sir. I’m Educationally Sub Normal.”
      -Please, Sir. Series 1, 1968.
      Thanks to people like your moms who fight to stop this horrific labeling. Now if she could only do something about the cafeteria food. /jk

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    10. You Had Me At Moein*

      Caz, I love this story. Your mom sounds like she was pretty awesome.

      My mom did the same job (including as department head) for 31 years. There was no library named after her when she retired 18 years ago, but many former students and some of her more recent students’ parents still send her holiday cards every year. A few come by the house to visit.

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    11. MotherofaPickle*

      *My browser crashed in the middle, so apologies if this posted twice.

      As the Mom of a SpEd kid, I want your mom as an administrator. What a wonderful woman.

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  2. Nonny today*

    I worked at a chain bookstore in high school, mainly as a cashier, and for my first holiday season, I had to occasionally gift wrap things. This is a free service we provide, which we’re not trained for. So I was pretty new to it, I’d done it before but for family (aka small stakes).

    One of my very first gift wrapping experience was for an impatient lady who was SO rude to me. She might’ve had awkward shapes, not just flat books, but when I was done she commented something to the effect of, “if I’d known it’d be like that I would’ve just done it myself,” and stormed off. It nearly brought me to tears, so much for thinking I’d done an okay job.

    The customer behind her was the sweetest person who reassured me it was fine, I was doing a good job and left me maybe $5? (We don’t get tips! Or we’re not supposed to anyway, but she wouldn’t take it back.) The man after her kind of reiterated the same thing and left me a few dollar bills too. Any time I remember that rude lady, I finish by remembering the nicer people behind her. The kind of person I aspire to be, even though I freeze too often and get awkward in tense social situations.

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    1. WeirdChemist*

      Mine’s also from a retail job!

      I had a job where I had to answer customer calls a lot. If we ever got a call with a customer that was excessively rude or inappropriate, he would ALWAYS transfer the call to himself so that we wouldn’t have to deal with them. This started after I took a call that literally made me cry – I got called a “useless waste of oxygen” and “a shame on humanity that shouldn’t bother existing” (because we sent this woman a catalog… no, really). He took that call, reamed out the woman for treating his employees that way, and made a policy that we could always transfer any customer calls to him and he would handle them.

      In a sea of nightmare retail bosses, he was the best :)

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      2. Dittany*

        Not that it matters, but why did she object so strongly to being sent a catalogue? Was it the subject matter, or did she just passionately loathe junk mail?

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        1. Old Woman in Purple*

          Some people just aren’t happy unless they have something to complain about &/or someone to make miserable. My grandmother was like that.

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          1. ferrina*

            Are we related? All four of my grandparents were happiest when judging and condemning the rest of the world. I did not mourn their passing.

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          2. goddessoftransitory*

            Yep. We’ve got a small cadre of “not happy unless I’m miserable” complainers where I work, and you can trace the pattern of their bitching–first things are undercooked, then, when you’ve made notes to make sure the pie’s baked through, they’re OVER cooked. Then, after a few months, they switch to the toppings being too skimpy, than too heavy, then they start complaining about the salads. You could set your watch by it.

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        2. Maisonneuve*

          A former manager of mine had a customer yell at her and then burst into tears after asking why she received a catalogue. Well, you got one because you bought something at our very expensive store. In the customer’s case, she bought nothing but was then pretty sure her husband did for his mistress.

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        3. Bast*

          They are angry because their boss reamed them out/their spouse cheated/their dog died/insert another reason, and can’t take it out on the person who actually is making them upset, so they take that anger out on someone who is completely unrelated to the real issue, and usually is in a position to where they can’t fight back. (retail, customer service worker, sometimes children, etc). I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually weren’t upset at all about a catalogue but just needed to yell at someone.

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      3. Lab Rat*

        When i was working retail, I had a customer come in asking for an “expletive *slur against gay people* for his expletive *slur* son”.

        I was so shocked I said “excuse me?”

        *AND HE REPEATED HIMSELF*

        I said I couldn’t help him, and it made him mad. I spoke to our manager who was this tiny, balding british man about 5 feet tall and HE approached the customer who REPEATED THE SAME THING.

        Manager kicked him out of the store after telling him HOW INAPPROPRIATE THAT WAS in the most british way possible.

        He also stood up against all manner of irrational customers for us and never, ever placated someone just because they were shouting.

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    2. AnotherOne*

      I worked essentially the same job and my store used me as the go-to gift wrapper if I was on shift cuz my high school band did gift wrapping as a fund raiser, so I was just like books? calendars? after wrapping basketball hoops, this stuff is a breeze.

      (Though my store did have a set policy that we were allowed to keep tips if we rejected them twice and they were offered a third time. Cuz for some reason, it came up enough that we actually had to have a set policy on tips in a bookstore.)

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  3. Panda*

    An employee left and I took on her duties in addition to my own because I had her job before her and was the only one who knew what to do. My manager fought with HR to pay me extra for the months I was performing the other person’s job.

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    1. Aww, coffee, no*

      I had a team try and push to make me cover the work for one of their leavers, on the grounds that I was the closest match to the skills needed and they didn’t want to find a replacement.
      My manager totally refused to let them put this on me; as far as he was concerned I had one full-time job and it wasn’t acceptable to try and make me to a second one – regardless of the pay (not that I think they were going to pay me more, anyway).
      He succeeded in making them recruit a replacement. He also totally backed me up every time I refused when they tried to get me to take on ‘just this one task, surely it won’t take you that long’. Actually yes, yes it would take me that long, and I can’t help, sorry.

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    2. Three Owls in a Trench Coat*

      I’m currently in a similar situation. We’re a new division and don’t have a full staff yet, so I volunteered to cover many tasks that a dedicated staff member will eventually do. Our admin/receptionist quit suddenly last month, so I also volunteered to cover reception and admin duties in the interim. I got a raise pre-COL adjustment (increases the COLA) for my flexibility and willingness to step up to help.
      I’ve also streamlined some of the admin work, created new intake forms, compiled a resource book for the next admin, caught up on the work queue distribution (it was behind when she left), tackled an appointment scheduling mess, and stayed on top of my documentation audits. B)

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  4. juliebulie*

    I had to go out of town for the day. My lunch was a Happy Meal from McDonald’s. It was about $3 (it was a long time ago). My boss (a close relative of Guacamole Bob) refused to approve the expense. I asked someone from Accounting about that, and she rolled her eyes and said that was crazy and she’d pay it.

    In retrospect, I should have expensed my mileage as well, but I was young and didn’t know.

    Not the sexiest story, but I was shocked at how stingy my boss was.

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  5. ThatGirl*

    Two years ago there was an opening on my team, and I had a former coworker who was looking for a new job and who I knew would be great to work with again. So I told her about the opening and let my manager know I highly recommended her.

    After she got the offer, my manager called me to let me know that she had accepted, and also that Coworker had asked for a bit more money than I was making at the time. And my manager didn’t think that was right, so she got HR to raise my pay to be a bit more than Coworker was going to be making. It was not a huge amount, and I might not have ever found out about a discrepancy, but I really appreciated Manager doing that.

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

      I had that happen to me- a new employee negotiated for higher pay than I was making and I would technically be her supervisor, so my manager gave me a raise. The kicker? I had gotten a raise earlier in the month, so I had two pretty good raises in under 4 weeks.

      At my former employer, they brought back an employee who had predated me to do my job AND paid her a significant amount more. The women who covering my old job got a big raise and a bonus to match the new employee’s pay. Turns out, I had been significantly underpaid for what I was doing (which is one reason why I’m very happy where I am).

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      1. ThatGirl*

        Yeah, that was my second raise of the year AND I got another decent one on the merit cycle. It definitely earned my manager some loyalty from me.

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    2. Artemesia*

      I was cut in a merger but managed to get a job with a new researcher coming into the University and when he became Dean he brought me on as first his assistant, then associate Dean with faculty rank. (the merger had cut departments and so anyone in a vulnerable department was let go). My salary was grossly out of line with most people in the new entity and one of the first things he did was give me a 20% raise (VERY hard to make happen in this setting) and then the next year a 15% raise so that in two years I had a salary reasonably equivalent to others of my status. We were in a low paid school but it made a big difference. He really had to expend capital to make it happen and it inspired me that when I was a later department chair I used the capital I had to provide a similar equity bump to one of our most important professors who because he was not a noted researcher and had come through the merger with a low salary was grossly underpaid. He had created a program that provided much of our schools revenue and it was shocking that he made so little.

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  6. Caz*

    Oh, another one! My old boss knew my worth (arguably better than I did) and determined that I was underpaid. Because I work in the NHS, getting a new pay rate was …an undertaking. He took the time over 18 months to completely rewrite my job description from the ground up (12 months) and then get it through banding (another 6, plus some tears). When we got the “right” outcome – on the second try – he also made absolutely sure that the uplift would be backdated by 6 months. Best boss I’ve ever had, 10/10 would work for him again (and actually tried to but he didn’t have any vacancies!)

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  7. Andrea*

    My legal name is my married name, but I’ve used my maiden name at work forever, and it’s mostly not been a big deal. But at my last job, someone suddenly decided that everyone had to use their legal name for their email, on their business cards, everything. It was wildly confusing — a lot of “who is William? I’ve known that guy as Chuck for 20 years” — and of course it’s a minefield for trans folks.

    I complained to HR that not only was it confusing, it was affecting certain genders and gender identities more than others, which put the company at risk. The response from our very conservative HR manager (a woman about my age) was “maybe if you used your husband’s name like a normal woman, you wouldn’t have an issue.”

    I went straight to the VP of my area (my boss’s boss) and repeated both my complaint and what the HR manager had said. He got in contact with the VP of HR and instructed that everyone who asked for their contact info to match their preferred name should be accommodated. The HR manager HATED me after that, but I never had to explain my name to anyone again.

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        1. goddessoftransitory*

          I read that at almost imploded. My God, OP, how you managed to not just…*imagery of explosions, roaring, dinosaur combat*

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      2. 1-800-BrownCow*

        Sadly my HR manager would likely react the same way. She’s very conservative as well and has made similar comments regarding situations at work that don’t match her ultra conservative morals and beliefs. It took months for her to change the company directory to the new first name of a transgender employee who started transitioning and asked to go by their new name. She updated that directory multiple times when new employees started or others left. Even updated someone’s last name after their wedding, but she conveniently “forgot” (or so she claimed) about the transgender persons name change.

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    4. Former professor*

      At my old university, our systems would recognize exactly one name. So the name on your paycheck had to be the name on your insurance had to be the name in the course catalogue had to be the name on your email. I was a decade plus into an academic career with dozens of publications and was absolutely not changing my professional name, but obviously needed to be able to show ID at the doctor to match my insurance… thankfully a similar situated friend had found the workaround of having a legal name with a space rather than a hyphen (“Alice Smith Jones” instead of “Alice Smith-Jones”) and just not telling HR about the name change (to remain “Dr. Smith”). Which is RIDICULOUS in the 21st century as the only way to handle this!

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      1. MassMatt*

        I’ve worked several places where changing an internal email address due to marriage was an *enormous* undertaking. For some reason it required many email requests, forms filled out, multiple approvals, and weeks of work if not more. In two cases the people were told this was outright impossible. I shudder to think what it’d be like for someone transitioning.

        Why was it this way? No idea.

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        1. Great Frogs of Literature*

          Gmail for Business is REALLY bad at name changes — you can change the name easily enough, but the display name lives in the recipient’s email so you have to get everyone you talk to to remove the old entry in order for your correct name to show up for people you emailed before the name change. And as of five years ago, there wasn’t any way to override it, even by admins. It was a Whole Thing every time someone got married and changed their name.

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    6. Lab Rat*

      I had to quote the MFing Human Rights act of Ontario to get HR to not deadname me. (I had JUST moved and could not legally change my name for 12 months).

      They backed down. My professional college backed down (but I had to send a SCATHING email to them because they were NOT going to let me do it. Then the president of the professional college emailed me as damage control. It was delicious.).

      But apparently they put my legal name in parentheses on one of the union lists, thereby outing me anyway, but thankfully all but one coworker was a jerk about it and I blacked out the name when the new lists were posted.

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  8. TheExchequer*

    My boss (whom we’ll call V) skipped talking to her direct boss and called up her boss’s boss (whom we’ll call M) on my behalf to advocate for me, to tell M that the extra workload they were giving me on top of the already overwhelming work I did was, perhaps, a bit much. (Actually, the story I got later, hopefully dramatized, was that V was so mad, she cussed out M, and M was so upset, she hung up on V!). It didn’t actually affect my workload in the slightest (I was still very much in the fog of “if I keep doing an unreasonable amount of excellent work, it will eventually be rewarded!”), but I really appreciated how far V would stick her neck out for me.

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  9. EMW*

    A former coworker recruited me to his current company. When he asked me about salary I told him $X. He said: “What I heard you ask for was $X+30k. Hold firm on $X+20k because the recruiter will try and talk you down and you won’t be happy in this role for a lower salary. He was extremely right and I’m very thankful for his guidance.

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    1. Paint N Drip*

      Anyone who corrects a low-ball is such a superhero to me – whether you don’t have the information to know better, whether you don’t have the faith in your skills, or anything else, bless the folks that guide us toward equitable pay.

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    3. Coffee Time*

      I also have a “corrected low-ball” story, although in a very different context! After graduating college, I moved from a low cost-of-living city to a very high cost-of-living city. I took some babysitting gigs, and the first person I babysat for offered me $10/hour (this was in 2014.) This sounded similar to what I had made in my former city, so I agreed. When I got another babysitting gig with a different family, and they asked me for my rate, they were SHOCKED at my offer of $10/hr. They told me it was way below market rate, and insisted on paying me a higher rate, in addition to a generous tip every night (I’m pretty sure the tip was just, all of the cash currently in their wallets). I really appreciated them- otherwise I just wouldn’t have known!

      (Also, those parents always came home super late, which, if you’ve ever babysat, you know that’s the best part. Making money while watching Netflix as the kid sleeps!)

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  10. Insert Pun Here*

    This one is small but I’m proud of it anyways. Many years ago I had a coworker who I really, really, REALLY disliked. This coworker had an unusual (for white Americans, which most of my workplace was) name, which was pronounced in a way that was not immediately obvious or intuitive to native speakers of American English. Our director (3-4 levels above this coworker and kind of intimidating) consistently said her name with the logical-but-wrong pronunciation, and at one point I took advantage of a private conversation with him to correct him — and the correction stuck.

    We’re both still in the same industry (though not the same employer) and I still dislike her, but at least people are saying her name correctly.

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    4. Ally McBeal*

      I have gone by a nickname (diminutive of my legal first name) since I was 13; the only person allowed to use my legal name was my late grandma, after whom I was named. In my early 30s I took a job and HR automatically coded my email signature with my legal first name because that’s how it appeared on my tax paperwork – we were at a university that had been embracing preferred names for STUDENTS for several years, so that was frustrating to begin with. Fortunately I got that corrected within 2-3 business days, but one coworker in my department had really attached herself to my legal name, despite being introduced to her personally with my nickname. She did it several times over email until my manager stepped in without my even saying anything to my manager about it. I was grateful to/impressed by my boss and my coworker adjusted really easily after that.

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  11. Andrea*

    I thought of another one. My first job in my field of expertise was at a TERRIBLE company — low pay, not a lot of time off, micromanaged down to the minute, etc. I’m still friends with most of the people I worked with there because you bond with people in situations like that.

    One day a guy I sat near, but he wasn’t on my team, was incredibly sick. He was exhausted, couldn’t breathe, had such a sore throat that he couldn’t talk. His immediate boss wasn’t around, so he went to his grandboss, who was the big boss of the whole place, to see if he could go home. The grandboss said, and I quote, “no, just try not to breathe on anyone.”

    My own boss was out that morning, but when he came back, he heard about it and went to the sick guy and told him to go home, and told him “next time you’re sick and your own boss isn’t around, you come to me.”

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  12. TRex*

    These are more a series of tiny corrections but the impact is massive for me. At work my pronouns are they/them (outside I use some neopronouns in addition to they/them, but that’s life on hard mode for lots of folks and not worth getting into in the office). Occasionally I hear coworkers correct each other if they mess up, even when they don’t know I’m in earshot, or there will be a gentle correction in the chat of a video meeting and it’s just.. it’s huge honestly. I had to get HR involved in my last job because someone refused to use my correct pronouns, but here everyone pitches in to remind each other and it’s the best.

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    2. Anon Teacher*

      Oh, I had a similar situation, except I work with kids, and it was actually one of my students correcting another one! Truly, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a tween say, “Um, Anon’s pronouns are they and them,” in the most patronizing tone imaginable. My job is rough sometimes, but other times it’s incredible.

      Reply ↓
  13. CWW*

    I was a first year social work intern in child welfare without any previous white collar experience and was extremely eager to do whatever was asked of me and show how good and dedicated and smart I could be. Unfortunately, this meant experienced and stressed and overwhelmed workers were cornering me when I was alone and asking me to do things that would take work off their plates but would not teach me anything or train me in any way. Much of it was clerical and harmless but not the point of the internship.

    The cherry on top of all of this was when I was asked to do a home visit to the home of a known and convicted murderer with an open cw case by myself. It’s easy, they said! Just see if there’s food in the fridge! Just see if there are any exposed electrical wires! Watch out for aggressive dogs! And so on.

    One of the other supervisors figured out what was happening. The other workers were sat down and told they were no longer to ask me to do anything by myself and if they were so excited to train me, they were free to take me with them and teach me but I was no longer going to be the first visitor to an unknown home. I was instructed to tell this supervisor and my supervisor if anyone cornered me, who they were, and what they wanted.

    It did not happen again. And it taught me (a) what my internship was really for and it was not to get even better at people pleasing; and (b) how to advocate for younger, newer, inexperienced workers.

    Reply ↓
  14. BigBird*

    Not office-related, but my daughter in middle school. She had a friend with mild special needs who ate at her lunch table every day. Apparently he had once walked into the girls’ room by mistake in elementary school and as a result one of the girls at their lunch table objected to his presence–5 years later. Given a “it’s him or me” ultimatum, my daughter chose him, and they were both exiled to eat alone. This went on for several weeks but as more “outcasts” joined the table it developed a weird fun energy that encouraged even more people to join and it became THE table. I did not know any of this was going on until I got an email from the original student’s mom with the subject line “Your Daughter is My Hero.”

    Reply ↓
    2. In the middle*

      Kids can really be the best. We had a Ukranian refugee join our middle school mid year (he had Seen Things) and one of my most annoying lunch tables of goofy 7th grade boys swooped in as the new student walked in the cafeteria, invited him to join them, took him through the lunch line. Basically folded him right in like they’d known him forever. I emailed the parents that night to let them know that their goobers were growing into really nice people.

      Reply ↓
      1. Lizzo*

        Oh, this is making me cry. We have so many refugees in my own city who have Seen Things (So. Many. Things.) and seeing them make social connection and have some sense of normalcy is the most wonderful thing. Especially the kids.

        Reply ↓
      2. Lab Rat*

        When I moved to a different country as a preteen, it was the goofy annoying boys who took me in as their own.

        At the time I had no idea what gender dysphoria was, but I was allowed to be what i thought was a very boyish girl around them. Turns out I am a girlish boy.

        Reply ↓
    3. ndqueer*

      as a neurodivergent queer, who knew neither of these things in middle school (I just knew things were hard and social interactions were confusing) but I was absolutely part of a parallel outcast crew, my heart is FULL. I love this so much. 10/10

      Reply ↓
      1. Bunch Harmon*

        As another neurodivergent queer, I had a similar experience. I fell out with the friend group that I had been a part of since elementary school, and fell into the outcast group. It was lovely! I could talk about the things I actually enjoyed and didn’t have to hide them. Of course, this all centered around the lunch table. I told my family that I made a social transition. Years later my grandmother confided that she thought I had become a communist.

        Reply ↓
  15. Aggretsuko*

    One of my bosses shut down my coworker who was bullying me. He’d been bullied himself and he managed to make her stop. He couldn’t fix the rest of the situation of the entire group hating and shunning me (which is fair), but he made it stop. And while he couldn’t stop management above him from punishing me, he made it clear that he didn’t think I’d done anything wrong. I miss that guy.

    Reply ↓
  16. ProudMama*

    Not work-related, but I always loved this story about my daughter. In high school, her Spanish teacher had a mistake on her Scantron answer sheet that resulted in my daughter not getting an A. She was only going to fix my daughter’s test, but my daughter pitched a fit and insisted that the teacher re-grade over a 100 exams so everyone else could potentially have the better score. She came home that day saying, “the school might call you today….”

    Reply ↓
    2. Katie*

      Honestly it wasn’t all that ethical not to regrade. If I had been that teacher and didn’t have the energy to regrade, then everyone would have just gotten that question right and added points too everyone.

      Reply ↓
    3. Bonkers*

      She had to fight for a Scantron re-grade? Jeezipeet, what a lazy teacher. Couldn’t even be bothered to feed some papers through a machine to get it right? FFS.

      Reply ↓
  17. Willow of the Conglomeration*

    When I was in my old position as an admin for a maintenance department at a large plant, my boss was on vacation – meaning I had to answer to Plant Manager. My interactions with PM were generally very limited since I worked in a different part of the building.

    On this day, PM came to me and said I needed to order a repair for a flat tire on a piece of heavy equipment. I asked which tire it was. He snapped at me “You don’t need to know that” and walked away. I responded with, “Yes, I do, it’s the first question they ask – ” and that’s when he literally slammed a door in my face.

    About five minutes later the heavy equipment mechanic came to me and said that PM told him that I was refusing to call for service. I explained that no, I just needed to know which tire and PM was refusing to tell me. He sighed and said it was the front driver’s side, I thanked him, and called the company.

    I later learned that he went to PM and RIPPED into him for the way he spoke to me, telling him that he needed to learn how to talk to people.

    I appreciated that far more than I could put into words. I know that the issue was that PM didn’t know and wasn’t about to admit that he didn’t know, but either way there was no reason for him to speak to me the way he did.

    Reply ↓
    1. Cinn*

      “I know that the issue was that PM didn’t know and wasn’t about to admit that he didn’t know, but either way there was no reason for him to speak to me the way he did.”

      See, I don’t get why people can’t just acknowledge that they need more info? Like doesn’t the PM here know that he’d get what he wants done faster with a “I’ll just check with Bob, back in a mo” or a “Dave knows, can you please check with him?” admission than screaming at someone? (Which is a douche move and shouldn’t be done anyway, but it’s not even like it would get the job done.)

      But I love the fact that the mechanic went and gave him a taste of his own medicine.

      Reply ↓
      1. Willow of the Conglomeration*

        PM was one of those people who could NOT admit he didn’t know something. See, he knew everything about everything. And if he didn’t know it, then it wasn’t something worth knowing.

        Reply ↓
      2. MsM*

        Defensiveness, especially if you feel like you should know. When I have twinges of that, I try to remind myself the other person isn’t asking questions as an attack, take a deep breath, and start figuring out the best way to get the information.

        Reply ↓
  18. Tiny Office No More*

    For several years I had been stuck first into a cubicle then in a tiny, windowless office barely bigger than a coat closet. There was no airflow, so if I closed the door to keep out the noxious fumes from the x-ray developer thingy, I’d suffocate. At that time, my job was heavy on paper files, which overflowed the filing cabinet and could be found stacked on top of it, around it, and underneath a chair. I had been begging for a larger space, or the very least a space to house my overflowing files, to no avail. While I was on vacation, leadership did a walk-through of our larger area, and my colleague (who is just an awesome person to work with!) was very quick to show them my office, tell them why I had to keep all this paper, and why I needed additional accommodation. I came back to work with the news that I was being moved into a larger office nearby, with space for 3 lateral filing cabinets, that I wouldn’t be sharing with anyone else, and what color paint and carpet did I want? Sadly not all the walls went straight up to the ceiling, but I had a door, and since I could easily hear everything going on outside my office (and I mean EVERYTHING), I could pretend I wasn’t around when my idiot boss knocked on my door. Probably the best thing about my office was that it was bigger than hers, and she hated that.

    Reply ↓
  19. Jane Bingley*

    When I first joined a company as a team member in an entry level position, I quickly discovered there was a “missing stair” senior level exec. (For those not familiar – a missing stair is someone who’s clearly a problem but rather than deal with them professionally, new team members are either warned to avoid them or learn the hard way). He was rude, made sexually explicit comments, joked about domestic violence, and chalked it up to his culture – he wasn’t from the country where our company was founded, but neither were about a third of our team members, and he was the only one who regularly broke basic HR boundaries. Everyone knew he was a problem but no one wanted to take action.

    After a couple of years at the company, I was promoted from team member to team lead. Shortly after, one of my team members complained to me that he’d made a sexually suggestive comment to her. She was just venting, but I realized I had both real power and real responsibility now. So I met with her and we walked through her options (ignoring him, her addressing him, me addressing him as her boss, or formal HR complaint). She chose to file a formal complaint, which I supported her in doing, and he faced real consequences for the first time ever. Shortly after, he left our organization, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to get away with his nonsense any longer.

    I was SO proud of my employee, who not only righted her wrong but played huge role in getting a crappy person out of our company and made all of our lives easier. And on my part, it felt good to realize that as a supervisor I could make a real difference in the office experience of my employees.

    Reply ↓
    1. Sandi*

      Similar story:
      We have a coworker who has been a bit touchy for years. I vented to my boss last year and she asked to tell his boss. I didn’t want him to be punished because no one had ever told him no, but now he knows and has stopped and we are all happy. I am so thankful for my boss!

      Reply ↓
  20. EMW*

    Thought of another one. Cw antisemitic graffiti

    Due to lack of parking I started parking in a different lot and walking a new path into the building. I noticed some poorly cleaned graffiti on a brick wall. I stepped back and realized it was a swastika – the paint wasn’t there but the brick was faded in a blurry shape of it. I was alarmed this was on the side of the building facing the street. Raised the issue with HR and they explained someone has spray painted it years ago and that was the best they could clean it since it was brick. I said that’s probably not a good solution and asked for them to see what else could be done to remove all traces of it. Nothing happened for months. Every day it enraged me as I walked past it. I spoke with the plant manager. Same story. I asked why they thought this was a good solution for such an inclusive company that promotes their values so highly.

    Finally on the way out of the building after a particularly horrible day at work, I decided enough was enough. I called the ethics hotline. I planned to report it anonymously but it was very clear everyone would know it was me. Two days later the wall was painted red. I’ve never been so satisfied with the immediate results of a complaint as I was for this one. Both the HR manager and PM pulled me aside to make sure I saw it. I said “Of course! I walk by it every single day.”

    Reply ↓
    1. Strive to Excel*

      Woooooow.

      Kudos to the ethics hotline, and shame on the HR and PM! They could probably have commissioned a local graffiti artist to do them a quick doodle. Or hung a banner over it. Or escalated it themselves.

      Reply ↓
      1. Ally McBeal*

        I would’ve straight-up brought a can of spray paint to work and taken care of it myself. During the 2017-2020 presidential administration, I took a Sharpie with me on my daily mental health walks to scratch out all the “Hillary for prison” graffiti and other QAnon bs that was proliferating at my local park. I cannot imagine walking past a swastika every single day.

        Reply ↓
  21. ExplainiamusMucho*

    In the clown rental business (I do clown communications) we often hire assistant clowns for shows. Our two biggest clowns decided to blacklist an assistant clown because she didn’t want to sleep with the head clown (yes, really; they were that classy). They went to the secretary with some farflung reason; as far as I remember it was something like “her clown technique isn’t up to par”. The secretary – who basically ran the whole place by that time – simply said “No”. Then she hired the assistant clown for the next three shows. The two big clowns huffed and puffed – but honestly, what did they expect? Only a fool goes against the secretary.

    Reply ↓
    1. Human Embodiment of the 100 Emoji*

      I know the clowns are just a way to anonymize, but I can’t help but imagine a serious meeting with the secretary happening with everyone dressed in a full clown costume.

      Reply ↓
    2. Zephy*

      I’m not sure if you’re using clowns to anonymize your industry or not but I kind of want this to be literally about clowns.

      Reply ↓
    4. Media Monkey*

      i so hope “clown” isn’t a placeholder for what you actually do and you are really in clown communications!

      Reply ↓
    6. Kiv*

      Petition to use “Clown Communications and Rentals, Inc.” in place of Teapots, Inc. for particularly absurd situations.

      Reply ↓
  22. Hannah*

    I was working as an adjunct professor for a college that had the majority of their students attending online only. I had just saw something about adding pronouns to email signatures and such so I added my pronouns to my “about me”. New classes started and a student emailed me, they were transitioning and didn’t want to be a bother but if I was ok with it, could I please use their preferred name / pronouns? Absolutely, no problem!

    But this wasn’t a brand new concept to be transitioning and I had seen other schools allowing their online system to reflect preferred names so I went digging, surely my school with their huge online presence had a way to do that too that I could share with my student? Nothing.

    I tried the proper channels and didn’t get responses. Then I went to the Assistant Dean and wow was she on it! She had been part of a DEI committee already and was shocked that she too couldn’t find an easy way for my student to change their display name. She went digging and something better than an old paper form was “in the works” but it might be multiple semesters before it was released. So she got the old paper form and publized across the college that people should be using it. And I got to circle back to my student with a message that said I had no skin in the game as to what they chose to do but I had found better knowledge and wanted to share it.

    I was thrilled to see their preferred name show up a couple days later in all their online posting :)

    Reply ↓
    1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      Bless you. I’m not transitioning, but I got married and changed my last name, legally, SEVEN YEARS AGO and when I started going back to the community college I had attended before, they declined to change my display name in the Canvas system to match my legal name of record. Which blows my mind. I’m not asking for them to change it to a nickname or a chosen name just for funsies, though even if I was they should be able to do that, I am literally asking them to update it to match my current legal name, and they won’t do it. (If anyone knows how I can do that in Canvas myself, please do tell.)

      Reply ↓
      1. Selina Luna*

        I don’t know how to do this on mobile, but here’s how to do this on the desktop site:
        1. When you log in to Canvas, at the top left, you’ll see the word “Account.” Click on that.
        2. You’ll see a menu with the word “Profile.” Click on Profile.
        3. It will open up your profile, including your name.
        4. If your organization allows you to change your name, on the top, right you’ll see a button that says “Edit Profile” with a little picture of a pencil. Click on that.
        5. The top listing is your name. If you want to add a picture, this is also where you change that.

        Reply ↓
        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          Thank you! I can add a name pronunciation, but I cannot change the display name. Sigh.

          Reply ↓
        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          I did set my pronouns following those instructions, but at least for my school’s setup, modifying the display name there isn’t allowed either. They have my legal name EVERYWHERE ELSE, including “full name” and “sortable name” – literally the ONLY place that shows my old name is the display name field.

          Reply ↓
      3. Grimalkin*

        This reminds me, I DID transition, and I sent my alma mater an email heads-up about it for their records, thinking maybe they’d update my name in their records for fundraising calls and such…
        Good news: the person I emailed went above and beyond and actually changed my old college email address so that it used their usual system but for my new name, making it look like I had had the current name all along! With the old version still receiving emails but redirecting them to the corrected email address! (Not that it really mattered, since I had been out of there for a few years and only had a handful of fairly useless accounts still tied to my old college email address. But it was a very nice gesture.)
        Bad news: they… never actually updated my name in their records for alumni, as per the fundraising calls/emails/letters I still get sent to my deadname. Though at least having the deadname on there makes it that much more obvious that it’s junk communication I can dispose of without a second thought…

        Reply ↓
    2. nonbeenary*

      This reminds me of something lovely that happened to me as a college student. I’d had my name changed with the school, so my email, student ID, etc all reflected my preferred name, but obviously some systems still had my legal name, like financial. At one point, I was involved in a project that had a tiny bit of media recognition (think a small blurb in the local paper). Someone in the administration, who I’d never met before or since, noticed they used my legal name and not my preferred name in the blurb. She couldn’t get the blurb changed since it was already published, but she did find the hole in the system that caused the issue and fixed it. Then she emailed me to let me know it would never happen again, to me or any other student on campus.
      While I personally wasn’t too bothered by the original error, it really made me feel seen and cared for as a trans student to have someone go through all that effort for me.

      Reply ↓
  23. Junior*

    I was fairly junior and had gotten the chance to work on a big project at one of our sites in another city. I was asked to be on site for two weeks – this tripled the duration of my daily commute.
    Two weeks turned into nearly three months and I regularly spent more than 12 hours at work (I was exempt). My travel expenses were not covered since HR only looked at your contractual main office.
    Our commercial manager was complimenting me on a job well done after I returned to work at the main office and she brought up the commute. I mentioned I actually lost money because of high fuel costs. She was very indignant on my behalf (I had no idea this was not okay) and marched straight into our MD’s office and demanded I would be reimbursed. It took less than a week to process and that money literally saved me from going into red on my account.

    I am glad she looked out for me.

    Reply ↓
  24. Stepping up*

    This is from my own mom. Back in the day she was a special education teacher’s assistant, and would help pick up students on the school bus. There was a student she was very close with and one day, my mom helped her on the bus and they waved goodbye to the student’s mother and sibling. Unfortunately, while that student was at school, the family was murdered. It was truly awful.

    My parents stood up and took in the student, even looking into adoption. The extended family was available to take in the student however, so no older sibling for me. But I always thought that this was one of the greatest examples of compassion and love. My mom was unable to fix the horrific incident but in the time immediately following that she stood up and did everything she could for that student.

    (Details vague because god forbid someone recognizes this.)

    Reply ↓
  25. Tippy*

    I was a cashier in the pharmacy at a big box store (long time ago) and we had a customer who was absolutely ugly to me. I had been called a little earlier in the day that my grandma was admitted to the hospital so I was already upset and this elderly man did not like that his insurance would not cover the amount he thought they should on his medication. I get it dude but I didn’t set the price, call them. Instead he proceeded to scream, insult and berate me in the middle of the pharmacy. My head pharmacist and also our manager came over, told the customer it was a crime to threaten a pharmacist and he considered him screaming at me counted, so he had the guy thrown out of the pharmacy. The actual store manager came over to tell my boss he couldn’t do that. Turns out he can. The pharmacy doesn’t fall under the guidance of the store so my boss told him to go f off (he did not use the abbreviation) and walked away.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ellis Bell*

      Why are some retail managers so keen to have screaming, abusive customers who aren’t even spending money most of the time? I never understood that.

      Reply ↓
  26. gingersnap*

    Small one but still sticks with me. My former boss and I were planning a conference that was strictly invite only. A known (and annoying) consultant was having trouble getting the required executive sign off to be invited and didn’t swing it by the deadline. He finally found a newer exec to sign off and eventually weaseled his way into the conference mere days before it began, causing me (the admin) a lot of extra work. Since he couldn’t register via the online system, I had to do everything manually and unfortunately there was a typo on his name badge. Day 1 of the conference and he loses it, screaming at me about how his last name is his family’s legacy and honor, I must have a new badge for him at once, etc. I had been at the venue since about 6am and it wasn’t a typical event space so there were no printers available. My boss sees him causing a scene, leaves the VIPs she was tasked with handling, and physically put herself between me and this guy. In the calmest, yet scariest, voice I’ve ever heard, she tells him that he is never to speak to her staff that way, he has been offered a sharpie and a blank name badge, and any more discussion will result in his being asked to leave. He slunk off and she turned to me, assured me he was nuts and overreacting, and went back to the VIPs. This guy was known to be demanding and crazy so I wasn’t on the brink of tears or anything, but I was so appreciative that she shut him down before I even had to consider how to respond. I felt so supported.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      10/10 to your boss. This is a nightmare scenario of mine, but fortunately I’ve never had anyone at any of my events get that upset over a name badge.

      Reply ↓
  27. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

    I had a boss in a former job who was just awful – power tripping, immature, and really mean. I tried to insulate my team from him as much as possible but it wasn’t always possible. Someone new was crying in my office at least once a week about him (subordinates, peers, subordinates of my peers…).

    People were fleeing the organization left and right, which was a big deal because it was a desirable place to work.

    I tried talking to him and it went nowhere so I went over his head to his boss. When his boss did nothing, I kept finding new people to raise the issues to – grandboss, HR, EO, Chief of staff, many others. Nothing.

    Finally someone came to me and said they thought about getting into a minor car accident every morning just to avoid going in to work.

    I went back to one of the leaders and told them what I had been told, that we are utterly failing our people (as well as failing to practice what we preach since the type of work we did was wellness related), and that if someone died it was going to be their fault.

    They finally removed him! And it ‘only’ took a few months, which in my industry is lighting speed.

    I got a mediocre performance review from him as a result (he could not give me a bad one without justification but he could give me a meh one; first one I’d ever gotten in several decades that wasn’t glowing) and I could not be prouder of that.

    Reply ↓
  28. EEB18*

    At a previous organization, I worked closely with “Jane.” I was basically one step behind her in my career – I would get promoted from assistant to associate and she would get promoted from associate to senior associate, etc.

    Jane knew I was extremely underpaid (I was hired in 2012, was very happy to get a job in my field, and didn’t negotiate). When Jane left the organization, she knew I was going to be promoted into her role. She sat me down and told me her exact salary and what her salary had been at each previous position within the organization, so I could see how underpaid I was compared to her. When I was offered the senior associate role that Jane vacated, I used my background knowledge of what she had been paid in that position to negotiate an extra $6k for myself. I absolutely would not have received that money if Jane hadn’t given me crucial information and encouraged me to push back on our manager’s initial offer.

    Reply ↓
  29. gingersnap*

    Oooh I thought of another one.

    Another (different) conference. I worked in academia for a religious university. This conference was international and had clerics from all over the world. There was one priest who was behaving inappropriately with myself and the other female admin. We avoided him the best we could and I chalked it up to being a woman working for the church. However, said priest was a member of the same religious order as the dean of the school hosting the conference. The dean heard in passing about the behavior of this priest and was furious. The priest had already left but the dean had me and the admin send him details of our encounters and then he wrote a scathing letter to the priest’s superior expressing his anger. He cc’d us on the letter and it was ruthless. I was new to working for the church, and ended up doing about a decade of religious work, and this remains the singular time that a cleric, without being asked, stood up for the people who worked with him and called out bad behavior. If more people had been like him, I probably wouldn’t have left.

    Reply ↓
    1. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I worked at a fast food chain in high school. One night (not long after I started to work there) a man came in to place a large order with many special requests. This was in the 1980s, so you couldn’t push a button on the register to specify “no pickles,” you had to tell the person making the food. I took the order, read it back to confirm, and within a few minutes he left with his 2 bags of food. He came storming back in yelling that his order was wrong, that I was stupid, and that women in general were useless and couldn’t even handle a brainless job like putting food in a bag. He then yelled for a manager. My manager, who was in earshot of all of this, marched over to the counter, stood as tall as she could at 5 feet, and said very loudly and forcefully, “ Sir, I AM A WOMAN.” She took the receipt from him, gave him his money back, and told him to leave the store immediately. He then tried to take the bags of food off the counter on his way out, but she grabbed them and put them in the trash, never breaking eye contact with him. It was immensely satisfying.

      Reply ↓
      1. Medium Sized Manager*

        That genre of fast food manager is such a blessing. I once told a guy that I would cut him off if he kept calling me baby/trying to stroke my face, and my (male) manager told me that EYE was inappropriate and should have just gone along with it to avoid a complaint to corporate. He deeply regretted it when I told him corporate was welcome to write me up for not tolerating sexual harassment.

        Reply ↓
  30. Metadata Janktress*

    Both my most recent previous boss and my current one are wonderful advocates for not letting me get assigned too many things at work, or to have to interact with external parties that are rude/difficult beyond reason. My favorite though was when I was on bereavement leave to help my husband with a death in his family. I had someone emailing me multiple times in a row about a project that wasn’t urgent, they just HAD TO KNOW the status because they were “important.” My old boss emailed back on my behalf basically telling them to stop, I was out on leave and would respond when I could. Tiny little thing, but when I was so overwhelmed with life stuff, it meant the world to me.

    Reply ↓
  31. NotQuiteCool*

    I’ve tried to do this across my career, to advocate for people who can’t, but here is the most dramatic one.

    My first real job was in a bookstore. During my time there, the assistant manager began to secretly date an employee (there’s a very dramatic story of how we found out, but that’s for another day). This AM would give small favours to their secret partner — like the two of them going to get pizza for the team while the rest of us worked a night shift — but it was mostly small stuff.

    Then the Main Manager went on holiday for two weeks and the gloves were off. The preferred employee spent the whole time with the Assistant Manager, using temps to run her section (the biggest section of the store). She’d also strut around the store like she owned the place, with an attitude that everyone else was below her. She effectively did no work for two weeks, and it was really obvious when you looked at her section. So obvious, in fact, that the Manager came back and instantly pulled her aside to give critical feedback about her work. He didn’t know she hadn’t actually been working, he just critiqued the results.

    That talk led to the employee, with backing from the AM, making a formal complaint against the manager. She claimed that she was being harassed by him, and unfairly picked on. Other booksellers knew the truth, we had seen what the two of them were like while he was away, but what could we do?

    My solution was to secret myself away in the attic of the store and call the area manager. I was in my very early 20s, and had met this man twice in my life, and I still remember the nerves I felt making that phone call. But I felt that it was important that the area manager know the whole story, and the manager not get unfairly punished. The Area Manager thanked me for the call, promising to consider the whole story.

    The Manager wasn’t reprimanded. The Assistant Manager was moved to a different store and the employee ended up leaving. I never know how much impact my call had, but I’m very glad I did it.

    Reply ↓
  32. AnotherAcademic*

    I was hired in at a low salary because I was too scared to negotiate properly (scared the offer would be withdrawn). Because subsequaent raises were based on the intial pay (say, a 2% raise), my salary continued to be well below market value. When I asked my boss for help getting a fairer salary, he refused–but *his* boss stepped up, got me a significant raise, and got it back-paid for six months. She didn’t have to use political capital on my behalf, but she did, because she wanted to make things right.

    Reply ↓
  33. Jules the 3rd*

    I worked in a large open office space for IBM – about a hundred people in 4′ high cubes. We heard all the conversations or phone calls around us. I sat on an aisle, and my neighbor across the way was one of those guys. Over 50 (about my age), liked to make people laugh, cared some about the topics he used (ie, not racial or anti-woman, IBM is good about picking people who are not hateful like that, at least in my experience) but that’s as far as he’d grown. ‘Kids these days’ were one joking topic, for example.

    One day, he reported a fact that was new and stunning to him: 20% of American adults had a mental illness! He made a couple of mild jokes about it. About ten people heard him; on average, two of us would have had a mental illness. I am one of the two – OCD diagnosed and under treatment. Very few people at work knew that, and he was not one of them and never would have been, in the normal way of things.

    Later that day, he had a call with an unpleasant customer. In the course of complaining, he said, “Well, SHE is CLEARLY one of the 20%. What a jerk!” I was flushed and scared but managed to get out, “Ya know, I am actually one of the 20%. OCD. Could you maybe not equate bad behavior with being mentally ill? That makes it harder on us.” He apologized and stopped talking. I nodded an ok and went back to my work.

    It was… a touch awkward between us after that for a few weeks, but he and his wife had been complaining about being required to come back to the office, so when they stopped coming in, I assumed he retired. Not a bad person, but.

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    1. Jules the 3rd*

      ps: yes, I am finally saying the name of the ‘fortune 500’ company for whom I worked. I got laid off from there earlier this year when they closed down the part of manufacturing that I supported. After four nervous months, I found a new job that I like very much and that I am well-suited to do.

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    2. Paint N Drip*

      Good for you bringing it up!
      I swear people of that age range SO often need to be reminded that ‘otherness’ is all around them. My boss is an old guy like that and historically just not “with it” – but he is continuously trying to learn and be open-minded. No, depression isn’t sadness. No, autism isn’t only found in mental institutions. Yes, mentally ill people are all around us as coworkers and neighbors. No, being 100% healthy isn’t a given and you can’t always see it. If you’re up for it, I think that sharing what’s going on with you can really change the minds of people like this – saying ‘this is what OCD looks like’ can be an extremely powerful move.

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      1. Edwina*

        I didn’t think the age range can be blamed for people not understanding that lots of other people are different from them. I’m 61, and I’m part of a lot of the categories that some people are oblivious about.

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    3. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      I love that you were able to do this!

      Recognizing that not everyone can or is safe to, of course, but I did it as well when our grand boss was calling people with PTSD crazy and I said “I have PTSD too, and also I’m maybe a touch crazy, but the two aren’t related in my view.” And surprisingly, he actually agreed and said he had PTSD too and stopped using the word crazy!

      Reply ↓
      1. Jules the 3rd*

        It is one very good thing about IBM: they strongly encourage people to not be jerks, and if an employee sees / hears someone being a jerk, they are encouraged to say something, whenever they feel comfortable to do so. I counted up six different *explicitly protected* response paths in one training, from ‘say something directly’ through ‘talk to your mgr / their mgr / hr / our anon box’ to ‘talk to an ombudsman who will do everything possible to keep you anonymous.’ I used that last once; appropriate consequences happened and it seemed that no one ever knew I was involved.

        IBM competes on integrity and does work to keep that part of the culture alive (yes, despite the age discrimination lawsuit…).

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  34. WeirdChemist*

    A story from my dad! His office was hiring for an internal promotion and he was on the hiring committee. My dad asked his assistant to black out all of the identifying information on the applicants resumes so he could make his recommendations blind. When he met with the rest of the hiring committee, his suggested applicants were… significantly more diverse than the the rest of the committee. My dad chose to specifically champion one applicant, who the rest of the committee admired they “didn’t notice how strong her background was” (read, probably didn’t bother with her resume that closely) but they allowed her to interview, where she knocked it out of the park and was offered the job. Several years later, she was kicking butt in the role and the guy the rest of the hiring committee wanted for the job “because he was due” had been fired for misconduct… oppsies!

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  35. Medium Sized Manager*

    My mom is that person in many ways. One of my favorites is not from when we had hockey season tickets years and years ago. For those who have not been, it get really loud, especially when the home team scores a goal. There was a ~4-5 year old kid in front of us, and he spent the first period in a little ball plugging his ears as hard as he could. During intermission, my mom tracked down guest services and got him some ear plugs, and it was a whole new kid – he was jumping and shouting for the game like everybody else. Apparently, it was their first game, and his parent didn’t know that a) it was REALLY loud and b) guest services had free options, so they were really grateful. I like to think my mom helped that little kid develop a lifelong love of hockey that day.

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  36. Kowalski! Options!*

    I think I’ve told this story, but I’ll tell it again…

    Over 30 years ago, I was a working vacationer in the UK, and got a number of temp jobs because I could type really quickly in English and French. I got sent to a small real estate age near Notting Hill – the owner needed someone to fill in for a week, and for the most part, it was straightforward secretarial stuff – phones, typing.

    On the fourth day, a woman called, demanding to speak to the owner, and she was very vocal and very rude. I was taken back by the volume, more than anything – she was so loud that the owner of the agency could hear her across the room.

    “Put her on hold,” he said. So I did.

    He then took a deep breath, picked up the receiver, took the call off and proceeded to bellow into the phone “DON’T YOU TALK TO MY SECRETARY THAT WAY. NOT NOW. NOT EVER.”

    I’ve been working in offices for over forty years and no one has ever defended me or come to my aid as quickly and decisively as that man did.

    Wherever you are, thank you.

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  37. Nightengale*

    This was a joint effort

    The year was 2006 and the H1N1 (bird flu) was raging. I was a resident in a pediatric ICU and we had the sickest kids in the state and shortages in PPE. The rapid flu tests for people with H1N1 were all coming back negative so we were behind getting treatment started. I came in one morning and was handed the phone by the resident who had worked overnight and was supposed to stay for rounds. Except that her follow-up flu test taken earlier in the week had just come back positive. I greeted the attending doctor with “I sent [sick resident] home with flu and the vaccine is now in employee health!” He brought the whole team down to get vaccinated before rounds.

    Except they wouldn’t vaccinate our student. We had a senior student rotating with us who was taking care of the same sick kids and at just as high a risk as the employees. But she wasn’t an employee so she couldn’t get the vaccine through employee health. And student health didn’t have the vaccine yet. Most students weren’t at high risk of exposure but our student was.

    That afternoon another senior doctor came in who I knew was on the infectious disease committee. I let him know that our student couldn’t get vaccinated due to this loophole/policy. To this day I am not sure exactly who said what to whom but he took her down the back staircase and she came back vaccinated.

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  38. Selina Luna*

    I don’t know if this counts, but I frequently stop fellow teachers from intentionally misgendering students. That’s bullying, and I won’t put up with it. And if you’re wondering why they’re allowed to get away with that, welcome to rural America.

    Reply ↓
    1. Paint N Drip*

      That definitely counts. You’re awesome!! Those kids will remember you fondly (they’ll remember the other teachers too, but they’ll remember you stood up for them)

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    4. Liz*

      Thank you. I don’t understand how adults can be so cruel to children and come away feeling righteous about it.

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  39. Nobody Special*

    I was a newly hired C-suite leader in a large nonprofit with some really problematic power dynamics, particularly with the super grouchy CFO; he was nasty, ignored anything that inconvenienced him, and everyone in the administrative office was terrified of him. A few weeks into my time there, one of his sweet, bubbly and well-loved fiscal analyst employees was notified that her ex-husband, the father of her three kids, had unexpectedly passed away. While they were no longer close, she was super concerned about how her kids would react and desperately wanted to go home to be with them before they got the news from social media. Grouchy CFO wouldn’t let her. There was an upcoming deadline of hers for that evening only he could sign off on, and he was refusing to even look at it, saying “I’ll get to that by the end of day, you can wait”. She tried to explain the situation to him, but he wouldn’t budge. My office was across the hall from Super Grouchy CFO, so she drifted in, collapsed into a chair, and started crying. I felt awful for her. Our always-absent CEO wasn’t there to do anything. I knocked on CFO’s door, but he wouldn’t get up to respond to me. So I went and got the spare key and let myself into his office, asking him to finish the task they were working on so she could go home. He was belligerent and shouted at me that he would get to it when he would get to it, to mind my own business and to get the &$#@ out of his office. I marched right up to him as he sat on his computer (playing solitaire, no less) and said “I have decided that this is my absolute top priority for the day, so I will stand right here and give you all the support you need, until you are able to finish this task and she can go home.” I then stood right next to him, silently, for about 10 minutes while he huffed and sputtered at me. He got so irritated that he grabbed the documents, signed them, and then shouted “FINE, JUST GO AWAY”. The sweet analyst was so grateful and relieved, she rushed off to her car and sped home to her kids. It’s been 15 years since then. She and I are still the best of friends.

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  40. trailing spouse*

    My husband was the VP of operations at a small tech company, second in command to the owner (who was not a good dude). The owner sucked at running a business and decided he needed to lay off all the staff except my husband, who would help him rebuild. He was too chicken to do the layoffs himself and made my husband do it. Husband successfully fought for notice + severance for these employees and called recruiters himself to help them get placements.

    So husband lays off 14 people in individual meetings over two weeks, and on the second Friday can’t find the owner. Eventually the owner materializes at the end of the day and lays off my husband, effective that day. No severance. Husband also discovers that owner had backdated the last day of employment for a bunch of folks so that he would not have to pay their health insurance for December (one found out because the doctor’s office called to tell him his kids wouldn’t be covered the next week). Husband threatened to report the owner for small business tax fraud among other things, and after sending us a bunch of nasty letters from a disbarred lawyer, owner suddenly restored insurance.

    And now husband is without a job or severance — in December, when no one is really hiring. But then! The mother of one of his former employees, who was an IT manager in a very large company in town, was so grateful for how husband treated her daughter that she created a new position for him on her team, called their recruiters and directed them to fast track him, and gave him a raise. This all happened within two weeks. Basically my husband saved Christmas for a handful of families, and then one of them saved it for us.

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    3. ferrina*

      This needs to be a Hallmark movie.

      That ex-boss is horrible! Good on your husband for fighting to make sure everyone got coverage and severance! And that is so beautiful how it came back around. Love when karma kicks in!

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  41. Cwaeth*

    Years ago I was working on an international production. Somehow, my name was left off of the list of contributors. I was disappointed, but didn’t want to make a fuss about it. My boss stepped in and insisted that I be included before it went public. He said I should always get credit for my work. I was grateful then – and I now am indeed insistent about receiving credit for my contributions!

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  42. Riggs*

    I worked for an engineering firm and was participating in a field test where operators would be required to periodically change batteries and download data from our sensors every 8 hours. I realized that while I was going to be essentially co-located with my system, other folks would have to drive over an hour each way. When I brought this up to the PM he responded that they can sleep for 5 hours and then take naps later. I told him this was not okay, especially considering people would be driving in very remote places in the dark. A little while later I learned that the systems had been updated to have batteries that would last for 16 hours rather than 8!

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  43. Butterfly Counter*

    I teach at a university and I have a PhD. Yes, I’m bragging, but it’s also important for the story.

    When I first started part time teaching, I got $XXXX per credit hour for that semester because I had a PhD. Basically, I was the top end of the salary band due to my education.

    The next semester, I saw that I was $WWWW per credit hour. I mentioned it to my chair, thinking it was because I was teaching a different class, but he flipped out and got me back my appropriate salary. The problem was that I got re-isssued back to $WWWW every semester and I had to make a stink about being on the higher salary band.

    When I got hired full time, something similar happened. I don’t know if it was something to do with my name or if someone in payroll just had it out for me randomly, my salary would be reset at the beginning of every semester to the lowest salary available despite raises and other salary bumps over the years.

    But then we got a new department coordinator. She was aghast that this kept happening to me. Not only did she ream out payroll the second time my pay was reset under her watch, but she personally oversaw that they awarded me any back pay that was “missed” over the years. She’s been here four years now and my salary hasn’t been reset for the past 3 and a half.

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  44. H*

    This is a story from my late father. Many decades ago, my dad worked for a US company based in the Northeast, with a subsidiary based in the pre-Civil-Rights South.

    The only Black employee at the subsidiary was the janitor. The subsidiary adhered to Jim Crow segregation policies (ugh) and refused to allow the janitor to use the men’s restroom. Clean it, yes. Use it himself, no.

    My dad’s boss (a big VIP) learned of this situation on one of his first trips South to the subsidiary. The VIP stopped using the (white) men’s restroom and peed in the sink in the janitorial closet, same as the janitor, during his visits to meet with management.

    That segregated-bathroom policy ended right quick. My dad was full of admiration for his boss.

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    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Your dad’s boss was utterly and completely awesome.

      And yikes, they expected the janitor to pee in the sink. That is horrible.

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  45. Former Manager*

    I had been on a job that had become increasingly toxic and unbearable due to my manager (HR was not supportive despite the volume of documentation that I provided to them). Not surprisingly, I left and took a new job at a new employer.

    During my very first week at New Job, we got a pretty bad snowstorm. It was still snowing when I got up to go to work, but I got ready anyway and headed out because Toxic OldBoss did not believe in weather delays. As I was pulling out of my driveway, my new manager texted me and said, “Please work from home today. I don’t want you to risk coming in on these roads. Lease just call or text me anytime with questions.”

    I still love my new manager and my job almost 2 years after that interaction (and yes, my Toxic OldBoss was fired in a particularly awesome fashion about a year after I left. One of my old mentors texted me about it 10 minutes after it went down).

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  46. TrixieRose*

    When I was a younger lawyer (~5 years out of law school), I was at a huge hearing with tons of other lawyers. We had to take a break in the hearing to sort through a ton of motion papers and organize them for the court. One opposing counsel, with whom I had already had a few ugly run-ins (see below), asked me to go make copies for him, to which I responded “I’m not your secretary.” His response was “obviously not, because she’s younger and hotter.” I was speechless. But my first-year associate, George – who was older than me age-wise, but had only been working as a lawyer for 9 months – immediately said “You’re going to apologize to her, right?” Surprise – he did not! George then told the three male partners, and one male client, who were with us in the courtroom what had happened. They all made it clear later that what had happened was incredibly inappropriate and that they 100% had my back.

    Prior run-in: opposing counsel had called me after I sent a letter about his client’s discovery problems (which is completely routine) and SCREAMED at me, saying how dare I send such a letter, that it was completely inappropriate, that this case was pending in the Midwest and this is not how people behave in the Midwest. Well game on: I had grown up in the Midwest, gone to college in the Midwest, so I told him that he didn’t need to educate me on how to behave like a Midwesterner, to which he replied “Well if that’s true then you’ve been WARPED by New York.” I was so shaken after this that I called my two office besties, crying, who immediately came to my office and helped me compose an email recounting his behavior. (Did I mention he had also screamed at my secretary?) And then the next day, these friends put two giant cardboard cutouts of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Spike in my office with speech bubbles saying “Warped” and “Very Warped.” Setting aside that it scared the daylights out of me when I turned the office light on, it was an awesome thing to do.

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  47. Leela*

    I’m still mad about this, so even though I did the righting I’m going to share it.

    I work in job that serves indigent members of the public so we frequently have people in all kinds of mental/physical/emotional states arrive at our office. Simultaneously, when people are promoted into management they are no longer in direct service and usually view this as an opportunity to completely ramp down how much they work. We are open to the public 8:30-5:30. What this means is there are frequently times in the morning/evening where there’s no managers or supervisors in the office. As is so often the case our HR is actively problematic.

    One day I was in the office a little after 5 and a colleague came by to tell me that a person was creating a problem at the front desk with our admin staff. I’m the most senior person in the office that I see, so I go up to check it out. There is a person berating my colleague at reception, unfortunately this is not unexpected. But infuriatingly, our HR manage is standing on the other side of the lobby just WATCHING this. Not intervening, not assisting, just…watching. She then watches me tell this person I’m a supervising attorney, he needs to leave, and then escort him out of the building. At no point does HR check with me or my colleague if we’re ok.

    Afterwards my colleague emailed all the supervisors/management to 1) highlight the problem and 2) ward of what we both thought my come from HR: me getting in trouble for “lying” about being a supervisor.

    Multiple managers/supervisors thanked me for intervening. They still don’t stay until the office closes. HR never spoke to me or my colleague. We do get recommendations for meditation events to fix our burnout…

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  48. Manon*

    I have been the grateful recipient of generous mentoring in my career, and I’m finally in a position to pay it forward a bit, so I’m very much enjoying the newfound power. I also have the AAM community to thank for the low-key but constant reminders about what is reasonable and fair in the workplace.
    I’m the department head of student services at a high school. I am currently dying on a hill regarding compulsory community volunteer hours. One of the (admittedly murky) rules about the volunteer work is that you cannot volunteer for a for-profit business. (They should be paying students for their work! We will not enable labor exploitation!)
    We counsel students to go back to these employers and ask to be paid for their work. Understandably, few of them have the nerve to do this, but I was thrilled when one day a student popped into my office to let me know that she had spoken with the business owner and was going to be paid retroactively for the work she had done! I was so proud of her.
    So thank you AAM friends: you’ve given me the courage to let my pigheaded side loose

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  49. kiri*

    This is one that is really a “white colonialist society doing the bare minimum to right generational wrongs” sort of thing – but I’m also really proud of my mom for it. She was a public high school teacher for 30 years at a small, rural high school whose longtime mascot was an anti-indigenous slur (shared by the Washington Football Team). In the late 90’s, she was a leader of a movement to change the mascot – she led meetings with members of our local Native nations and town community members, spoke in school board meetings, and took a TON of heat from the “it’s really a sign of respect” and “we don’t like change” crowd. I remember being vaguely embarrassed by it as a tween – she would cover up the school’s logo on her school-issued planner, that sort of thing. But the movement succeeded, and looking back I’m SO proud to say she was a part of it!

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    1. ThatGirl*

      My high school had that same mascot through …. about 10 years ago, which is REALLY unfortunate. But they finally changed it. And then I got an email from the alumni association that they’re fundraising by selling t-shirts and other things with the old name/mascot on it.

      I do not know if anything will change, but I wrote a polite but firm email that I was not okay with this, that there had to be other ways to raise funds, and that I didn’t really CARE if other alumni wanted those shirts, it was Not Okay.

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  50. Medium Sized Manager*

    Also had to share a story from when my husband worked retail – he is a 6 foot tall white guy with a beard and perma-frown, so he’s a little intimidating if you don’t know him. In contrast, all of his coworkers were a) short, b) women, and c) not white, so he was regularly the “enforcer” if somebody was rude. My personal favorite is when somebody was reaming his coworker because there was a line and she “had a flight to catch.” He interrupted with “it’s an airport. Everybody is here for a flight,” and she magically had time to patiently wait in line.

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    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Oooh, this reminds me of one from when I worked retail. Over the Christmas period, the company took on some new staff, some of which were quite young, about 18-20, and one of those young women was at a checkout just before we closed on Christmas Eve and this guy came in – he sounded half-drunk – and started complaining about how long she was taking to serve people. A middle-aged man berating a young woman for a queue being long on what is probably the busiest day of the year!

      The deputy manager (who was actually only 22 herself) overheard and told him that if he was in such a hurry, he should have come in earlier!

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      1. Medium Sized Manager*

        The audacity of customers never ceases to amaze me! If you don’t want to wait in line, then you can leave!

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  51. Me, Myself, and Irene*

    The summer after my freshman year of college, I was enrolled in a public speaking course. It was required for graduation. After my first attempt at a speech for a class assignment, the instructor was devastatingly unkind in his public feedback, including telling me that I had failed. I did my best not to cry in front of everyone, but I’m sure that they noticed how upset I was. At the next class, the professor publicly apologized to me for the way he had spoken to me. I found out later that close to the entire class (it was summer, so a small group) banded together, went to his office, and scolded him.

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  52. Catgirl*

    I worked in a laboratory and the building for some ridiculous reason turned on and off the heating by the calendar, not the temperature. On this particular day it was freezing cold outside but because the calendar showed it was spring the building wasn’t heated and the lab was 15’C (59’F). Our team was mostly young women. Our manager, an older Scottish man, came into the lab and asked how things were going. One of the women mentioned the lab was cold and a male team member said “Just like a woman, always complaining.” Our manager snapped “That kind of comment is totally unacceptable. We do not tolerate that sort of thing here!” We were delighted.

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  53. Anonymous Law Grad*

    When I was in law school, my civil procedure class was taught by a federal judge who had a well-known reputation for being a creepy lech. (Like, he married his law clerk and was still creeping on the secretaries.) Somehow, I had attracted the attention of this creeper, but I didn’t really know what to do about him, since his behavior toward me wasn’t overt. He called on me in class every class period for nine weeks straight. I just thought that he was being a jerk. But a guy in my class, who was an older student (about my father’s age) making a career change approached me one day, let me know he knew what was up and that he would put a stop to it but not to ask any follow-up questions.

    Creepy judge professor never bothered me again. I have no idea what my classmate said to him, but I’m grateful.

    On the upside, because I got called on with such frequency, I made sure I was extra prepared for class that semester. I know civil procedure inside and out, which helps me out a lot now that I’m a judge.

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  54. Sylvia*

    This one is about a beloved former supervisor. Our workplace had a monthly tradition of each department taking turns hosting a potluck and bringing dishes for the other departments to enjoy. My turd department manager not only forgot that it was happening that day, but forgot that it was our turn, so he decided that everyone needed to give him $15 immediately so we could buy pizza for the potluck. (This was back in the early 2000s, so $15 was more like $25 or $30.)

    I was probably the lowest paid person in the department, my husband was chronically unemployed, and I had two little kids in day care. Also, we got paid once a month and it was the last week before payday. That $15 was our food budget for that week. I had no idea what I was going to do and was so ashamed of my situation. I told my immediate supervisor, Jane, and she paid my portion of the pizza. Afterwards, she hid two leftover boxes of pizza before anyone else could take them, and told me to take them home to my family. I’ve never forgotten Jane!

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  55. Anon for this one*

    My mom.

    When she was pregnant with me, she was a surgical resident working acute care & trauma rotations. She requested to be moved to less strenuous hours. Leadership tried to move her to a ‘fluffier’ rotation (I don’t recall which, exactly) and framed it as accommodation for the reduced hours. This would have significantly negatively impacted her career. She told them hell no, stayed in the trauma and acute care rotations, and kicked serious butt until I was born, then came back from maternity leave and continued kicking serious butt. She then absolutely insisted on finding and working a part time job and ever since then has really pushed back on leadership making her work unreasonable hours (her ‘part time’ is 36 hours a week in 12 hour shifts at a time – full time is more like 60+ hours). Her whole life has been pushing back in her own small way on the idea that being a surgeon requires you to be doing your job 150% of the time and completely alienated from any human contact as a result.

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    1. Anon for this one*

      And I’ve only just realized I missed the prompt slightly – mea culpa! I should have added that ever since then she’s been a huge advocate for getting the other members of her groups the same sort of support she would have wanted. She even attempted to get a prior group to unionize after hospital admin started asking for some really absurd things – staff cuts that would have made hours almost punitively long and significantly lowered patient care standards. That fell through, unfortunately, so she’s moved to a different hospital and continues to be whatever the opposite of a doormat is for admin.

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  56. Wilma Flinstone*

    in the 90s: SVP liked to pinch the cheeks of the woman with whom I shared my office. She flinched every time, but didn’t say anything. One day SVP tried the same with me. Having grown up with brothers, reflexes took over. He got a backhand to bat his arm away and a shout “Don’t EVER do that!!” Since we were among many others in our department, SVP was super embarrassed and apologized profusely. No cheeks were ever pinched again.

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  57. Pottery Yarn*

    I used to volunteer in the hospital ER. One evening, a teen from a nearby summer camp came in with one of the college-age camp counselors because half of the fleshy part of his ear was kinda dangling off after a freak accident at camp. The teen did not want to get stitches, and even called his parents (pre-iPhone/FaceTime) and kept telling them it wasn’t that bad and he was fine. The camp counselor did not know how to persuade him otherwise and his parents were leaning toward letting him go without treatment, so I stepped out of the room, grabbed the first doctor I could find (head of the department), and said he needed to come with me NOW and tell this teen’s parents that he needed stitches. Sure enough, he took one look at the teen’s ear, took the phone, and told his parents that he definitely needed stitches. Turns out, the teen was afraid of needles, which is what was driving him to try to get out of having the procedure, but he survived and now his ear is intact, lol.

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  58. Czech Mate*

    Also from my mom: for years, she was a nonprofit VP. President of the org was abusive and awful in all of the ways that it’s possible to be. She was eventually fired, and the board instituted my mom as interim President.

    My mom knew that the staff was burned out, tired, frustrated, worried about what would come next, etc. She said that as interim President, her biggest goal was taking care of everyone’s mental health. Her first actions were to:
    -Close the office for one hour each day to give everyone a full lunch break,
    -Have 1:1 meetings with every single employee about how they were doing, what their concerns were, and what they wanted to see change in the org,
    -Allocate resources to support employee professional development

    The board unfortunately decided not to keep my mom as the President permanently (that’s another story) but many of those employees have since reached out to my mom to say that she was the best boss they’d ever had.

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  59. ghostlight*

    I worked at a very seasonal theatre company (super busy in the summer, still some programming in the fall, but way less intense), and I was going on a trip over a long weekend with my best friend/coworker, and we realized that our trip could be extended if we had Veteran’s Day off that Monday. Problem was, our company recognized very few holidays, even in our off-season.

    My friend and I (admittedly for our own selfish reasons) both played dumb and asked our managers if we had Veteran’s Day off, and they then checked with the managing director, who ended up reevaluating the holiday policy entirely. We ended up securing several more paid holidays off for the entire staff!

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  60. RLC*

    Years ago our small work unit was hit with an extraordinary complex and time consuming emergency project. Staff detailed in from other units to help, very much an all-hands-on-deck situation for weeks on end. After the project wrapped, all but two participating staff received large cash awards…we got t-shirts. Our boss was HORRIFIED and tried unsuccessfully to get compensation for us too.
    So he did the next best thing: hosted a barbecue at his home for his team and their families and presented us with lovely gifts (purchased with his own money) to thank us for our efforts. A small gesture that made us feel recognized and valued for our hard work.

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  61. CeeBee*

    Alison – you are one of my favorite right someone else’s wrong. You have helped so many people empower themselves, amplify others’ voices, and have been a voice of reason. So many people writing in, saying, is this banana-pants or what? and you affirming them — chef’s kiss!

    May your Mom’s memory always be a comfort and bring a smile to your face.

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  62. Lab Rat*

    An outgoing manager burnt a ton of bridges with us. Our interim manager asked what could be done and people were a little afraid to approach him (he is super nice btw).

    I organized some of my more timid coworkers, coached them on how to approach him with their grievances and for those who were too timid, they allowed me to air grievances by naming situations and not necessarily names.

    I have coached people on their rights with regards to our provincial and federal human rights acts with regards to discrimination and disability and armed with that knowledge people have been able to push for their own needs.

    Now everyone wants me to be a union steward and I said if I was nominated I wouldn’t turn it down.

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  63. AnonyNurse*

    Not sure if this counts, because I was ‘wronging’ myself. About 15 years ago, when I was a new grad nurse, I made a medication error. I gave a pill intended for one patient to another patient. While the errant drug was pretty innocuous and posed minimal risk to the patient, it is still a NEVER event. I was, and still am, horrified at this mistake. Yes, there were systems issues that contributed to why I made the error, but in the end it was on me.

    I was sobbing as I self-reported my error to the resident responsible for the patient. That hospital and that unit were known for being pretty toxic, with lots of bullying. I expected to be ripped to shreds.

    She looked at me and said, “If you weren’t human, you wouldn’t make mistakes.” She went with me to talk to the patient. I explained what had happened, the resident reassured the patient that there’d be no ill effects. I’d stopped crying by then, but my face was still puffy and red, so there was no hiding it. The patient patted me on the hand and said, “it’s ok, dear. Just look after me extra tonight.”

    I work in public health now and don’t do patient care. But “if you weren’t human, you wouldn’t make mistakes” has become something of a quiet mantra to myself, and one that I share with others when they need it. I don’t remember the residents name, but I remember her kindness to me that night, and the gentleness of the patient. Getting kind of misty eyed thinking of it now.

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  64. jane's nemesis*

    I had a junior colleague, Mary, who had horrible stage fright. She was terrified of the spotlight.

    At our office holiday luncheon, we had this funny colleague, Barry, who always did all the patter while he was emceeing the raffle drawing that was done to raise money for charity. He’d make funny jokes and had volunteer assistants to help pull tickets and pass out the baskets. The first Christmas party that Mary worked on my team (I had worked with her before and recommended her for the job, we were pretty close), we were standing in line to get drinks at the start of the luncheon with this older colleague on our team, Jane, who announced that she had volunteered Mary to be one of Barry’s assistants! Mary turned white as a sheet and looked like she was going to throw up.

    I pulled Jane aside and said she needed to fix this, that Mary couldn’t be Barry’s assistant. She looked confused but said okay….

    We proceeded with lunch, with Mary looking like she was going to cry with dread through the whole thing. I was trying to reassure her, saying Jane said she’d fix it, but she was doubtful.

    Sure enough, when it was time for Barry to start the raffle drawings, he tried to call Mary up over the microphone! I shot Jane the absolutely dirtiest look I could muster and jumped up quickly and said “oh, Mary’s not feeling well, I’ll help instead!” and rushed up. Luckily everyone proceeded as though nothing had happened and eventually I forgave Jane, who just did NOT understand Mary’s phobia. But Mary never felt comfortable at another holiday party.

    The real happy ending is that a few years ago, Mary got treatment for her social anxiety and can now comfortably do something like this! It’ll never be her favorite thing but it no longer causes panic attacks.

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  65. No Mercy*

    My Mom started work at a new law firm late in her career as a legal assistant. One of the first files she worked on was a case involving a young man who was driving a company vehicle when it rolled in a catastrophic accident. He became a paraplegic with a brain injury that prevented him from holding a full time job for the foreseeable future, if not the rest of his life. The other tragedy is choosing the lawyer my Mom was working for as his representation for his insurance claim. The lawyer was fairly new in her career but had already gone through a number of assistants before Mom arrived as she had a propensity to go over the same documents multiple times with her red pen and send them back for editing without actually moving forward with anything of importance. Thus this young man was stuck in a holding pattern waiting for insurance money or any kind of income as the lawyer did her usual red pen edit routine with the paperwork. My Mom took the calls from this man for weeks, trying to soothe his anxiety and do her best to get the ball rolling only to be blocked by her incompetent boss on every level with more inane edits on routine documentation. Finally my Mom made a decision. She was very nervous as she had never gone behind an employer’s back to help a client (she never had to!) and she felt a wave of disloyalty and fear at being caught. She took a deep breath and stuffed that down and started making phone calls to various government departments. She expedited the paperwork herself that would get him benefits through the government while he waited for the outcome of the insurance claim. Before long he was receiving cheques to support himself and thanking her from the bottom of his heart. Mom was so disgusted by the lawyer, she quit that job but she may have advised this young man to look into getting new representation before she left.

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  66. Annisele*

    My employer once made a new rule that very junior staff couldn’t ask questions of senior staff who weren’t their direct manager. Up until that point we’d all just asked our questions of whoever we thought was appropriate, but once the rule was introduced junior people had to ask their manager and then have the manager approach the senior person – there was to be no direct contact between the junior staff and the senior people. We didn’t have that many senior staff, and the point was to use their time well and make sure we only used them for genuinely difficult issues.
    I thought the rule was completely ridiculous, so the next time a senior person said good morning to me I said “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to talk to you any more” (to my shame I was a little rude). Said senior person went away looking extremely confused.
    A month later I had a huge pay rise and a promotion. I didn’t find out why for years, but it turned out the senior person had asked questions, found out about both the new policy and my grade, and gone ballistic over the fact I was as junior as I was (I worked with him quite often but I wasn’t in his management line, and he’d assumed I was paid far more than I actually was). He’d made all sorts of noise about me being both the only woman in my department and the person with the lowest pay, and that was the reason HR had promoted me. He also made HR look at the salaries of the relatively small number of other women in my division, and many of them got pay rises too.
    The senior person never told me about any of that; I found out from somebody in HR after the HR rep left the company.

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    1. ferrina*

      Wow! Sounds like a lot was going wrong at that company. Glad Senior Person started yelling at people and making things happen.

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  67. just passing through*

    I (she/her) was working in an conservative industry and my usually wonderful grandboss made a mildly sexist comment to me, meaning it as a compliment that he was passing along from a new hire I’d trained (think: playing into a mostly positive female stereotype). I wasn’t sure if my (male) manager would open to me raising it, but after sitting on it a few days and rehearsing a bunch of ways to explain why it was sexist, I eventually brought it up with him. Rather than me having to go on the defense to explain myself, he just immediately got it and understood why it had made me uncomfortable. I was so relieved. He talked with the grandboss and the new hire who had made the original comment about why it was inappropriate, got apologies from them and then asked me how I wanted to proceed from there, giving me a few options of things he could do on my behalf if I wanted to take it further (I didn’t). It wasn’t the kind of thing that had a material impact on me, but it at least set the precedent that those kinds of comments did not have a place on our team. That manager made me feel so supported.

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  68. Mouse named Anon*

    This is very small in comparison to others but I have never forgot it.

    When I was 16 I got a job in a shoe store. It was one of my first jobs and it was kind of a culture shock to me. I was also not used to working on my feet, so I by the end of my 6-8 hour shifts I was exhausted. One particular Saturday we were doing alot of restock, inventory and heavy lifting. I got there super early. By noon, I was ravenous (during my childhood and teens i had alot of trouble regulating my blood sugar, I would shake uncontrollably and had terrible brain fog if I was hungry). For some reason our district manager was in. My store manager told me to take a break, he could see I was visibly shaking and hungry. The DM looked me dead in the face and said, ” No breaks today, get back to work”. My store manager brought me aside and headed me ten bucks. He said “Go get lunch and take a break I’ll deal with DM”. As I was leaving, I could hear him say ” DM, she’s 16 and needs a break… Shes going, whether you like it or not”. I am almost 40 and I still remember it. Wish I remembered my manager’s name.

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  69. Dana Lynne*

    I am proud of something I did to help fellow instructors. At my last college, several of my colleagues were meekly agreeing to basically work for free when teaching what are called “overload” classes in addition to our regular teaching load. Besides being illegal, the practice apparently was pushed on them through guilt and admonitions to help out and be a team player.

    I refused to do it, talked back to our boss the dean and his guilt trip, pointed out it was illegal and openly encouraged all my colleagues to do the same. It was a shame how cowed some of them were!

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  70. girlie_pop*

    In my last job, I worked primarily with salespeople in a conservative, kind of old-school industry, and as a result, a lot of the salespeople were old-school and conservative themselves. They didn’t like change or learning new things, which I could mostly work around, but it was very frustrating at times.

    Once, I was working on a client-facing document with a salesperson. Even after I showed him how to make comments on a PDF and he commented how easy it was, he refused to do it and insisted I make changes from notes he hand-wrote on printed-out copies of the document. This resulted in me staying late a few nights in a row trying to decipher his handwriting, which was…not great, and make updates to the document.

    We got the project done, and it was successful, but when my boss heard about the hand-written-changes thing, she told me to email him and tell him he couldn’t do that anymore and that he needed to provide typed comments on Word or PDF documents. He emailed me back, basically blowing me off and, in so many words, saying, “I’m the salesperson here, and I don’t have to do what you tell me.” It was a pretty rude email and I was honestly a little bit shocked.

    My boss’ cubicle was right behind me, so she heard me give a defeated laugh and asked what was wrong. When I told her, she pointed at the pile of marked-up copies sitting on my desk (which, no exaggeration, was probably half a ream of paper) and asked if that was all of his changes. I said yes, and she picked them up and walked away in the direction of his office. Half an hour later, she came back and said, “He’s going to use comments on PDFs moving forward, and if he tries to do anything else, just tell me, and I’ll deal with it.”

    And she was right, he did use comments on PDFs moving forward instead of hand written changes! But he was always pretty cold and unkind to me until I left, I assume because he resented me “telling” on him. I didn’t really care though, as long as I didn’t have to take a late train home because I was sitting in my cubicle trying to read his chicken scratch anymore!

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  71. Veryanon*

    This one isn’t work related, but it’s one of my favorite stories.

    A few years ago, my daughter was in high school and she spear-headed an effort to get the school district to provide free feminine hygiene products in the restrooms. She had to do a presentation to the school board, (which was comprised mostly of middle aged white guys) and when one person said, we can’t do that because people will steal them, she said “well, if they’re stealing tampons, they must really need them, don’t you think?”
    She got the school board to agree, and now the governor of our state (PA) is touting the fact that he’s made free feminine products available in all public schools. I like to think she inspired him. :)

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    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Well, we can’t give away toilet paper in public bathrooms for free either then, right? Lol.

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  72. Pink Pony Club*

    I worked at a non-profit. I wasn’t making great money, but I loved the work, my boss and colleagues. At some point they hired in a new HR person, who was really struggling. I noticed my pay check was higher that it should have been. I looked and saw that my insurance for myself and my family wasn’t taken out. I alerted HR and they said it would be fixed by the next check. The next check it happened again, and then again. Finally, something was fixed, and 3 insurance payments would have been taken out of my next check, which basically meant I wouldn’t get one. My boss was livid and went to the CEO. The CEO was also livid and quite mortified this happened. He asked the HR director to basically eat the cost of everyone it happened to. Citing it was the right thing to do. I don’t know why or how (being the directive came from the CEO) but the HR director wouldn’t do it.

    My boss (with the CEO’s blessing) basically somehow overrode the system. He basically was able to submit for a one-time bonus in the amount of my insurance so it was a wash.

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  73. Web of Pies*

    My first real job out of college was wildly underpaid, but I didn’t know/know any better. Eventually, a teammate got promoted into a management role, thus getting access to everyone’s salaries. She pulled me into a meeting like “omg TAKE THIS RAISE NOW” it was like a 40% bump. <3

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  74. Venus*

    It’s not work related, and not exactly righting a wrong, but I’m still so thankful it worked out:
    I was on public transit on a crowded bus and 4 young guys were harassing someone else. At a bus stop the one guy got off, while the 4 had a quick chat amongst themselves. They decided to get off and beat up the one guy. As the first of the group passed me, I grabbed his backpack and stopped him from moving. A few long seconds later the doors closed and blocked them. He never wondered what stopped him, thankfully, because I’m very conflict avoidant and small. The crowded bus meant the others couldn’t see what I did. I was so lucky!

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  75. Holy Discrimination, Batman!*

    My mom’s former pastor and former church secretary having been caught … ministering to each other …. her church was looking for a new pastor, who would hire a new secretary, and mom was filling in as the temporary secretary. She was head of the women’s circle so she was on the pastoral search committee, and as acting secretary she was the person printing out the applications and getting them ready for the search committee.

    The first meeting, the head of the search committee threw out all applications that weren’t obviously white men. He told mom that when she prepped the applications, she was to make two piles – one of women and “foreign sounding” people, and the “important” pile that she would bring to the meeting.

    So for all future meetings, mom the secretary would make two piles as instructed, and put the “important” pile in the locked lower drawer of the desk to protect its importance, leaving the “unimportant” pile on top of the desk while she went to lunch. After lunch she’d go to the search committee, but she’s forgotten to take the applications with her, and she’s a retired old lady and could one of the younger people please go get the applications, she left some on top of the desk ….

    Church got a lady pastor of color. Head of the search committee transferred to the next parish over in protest. Mom the secretary got a kick out of telling him that yes, she’s transferred his membership records … and she’s sure he’ll love his new church, since Pastor Kevin and his husband have a welcome dinner for new parishioners the first Sunday of every month!

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  76. ragazza*

    This isn’t mine, but a friend who is not white found out that two white men she worked at who had the same level of job responsibilities as her were both making more money than she was—and she was more qualified (had a higher degree, etc). The company gave her a huge raise when she pointed it out, although really that should not happen in the first place.

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  77. librarian in waiting*

    My mom was a high school teacher who looked as young as the kids she was teaching. Her sister was still in high school, but a different one than my mom taught at. Sister’s best friend was being relentlessly bullied for her looks. My mom heard about it and told them both to go to a local restaurant after school that all the kids hung out at and to pretend not to know her.

    Sister and friend were there, so were the bullies. Bullies started bullying and my mom walked up to the biggest one, spit in her face and basically told her not to mess with friend any more or she’d be back. She absolutely would have been fired from her job (and maybe should have been?) had anyone realized she wasn’t a teen but a teacher at another high school!

    This was 50 years ago and every time I talk to my aunt’s friend she tells me how grateful she was to my mom.

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  78. Inconsequential Pickle*

    Due to a series of reorgs and role changes (that weren’t entirely initiated by me) at Big Tech Company, I (female) was suddenly in a more prestigious role, and was pretty sure I was being underpaid. I planned on asking for a substantial raise and I asked male coworker with the same job title sitting next to me if he would tell me his salary to benchmark if I was doing the right thing. Yep that confirmed he was being paid $20k more than me, so I asked for that at the next raise cycle.

    My manager not only got me that, he actually got me something like 23k, which was a 25% raise, and was outside of what my manager was even authorized to give so he had to get director approval to make it happen. (Cynical me says they figured it was cheaper than a lawsuit over equal pay, but hey I still got the money)

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  79. The Prettiest Curse*

    I may have told this here before, but we adopted our previous dog from a county shelter in California which was unfortunately a kill shelter because it had very limited budgets and space. The shelter director kept our dog around for several months after he would otherwise have been euthanised, simply because he was a very sweet dog and she really liked him. Eventually, we found him on Petfinder and not only did the director waive the (low) adoption fee, she also found some volunteers to drive our new dog to meet us halfway to our city, because we would otherwise have had to drive 200+ miles to get there. He was the Best Dog in the World, until he died a few years back.

    My current dog is also a rescue and is the reigning title holder of Best Dog in the World. Rescue pets are the best. :)

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  80. MaryMary*

    My husband does this as his default setting. He has shared his salary with female colleagues to make sure they were getting paid appropriately (they weren’t; after he shared this, they were). He tirelessly works the phones to make sure laid off junior employees get a better job. And he recommended against hiring someone who very clearly assumed he was the boss because he was the only male interviewer. He proofs female and BIPOC friends’ email drafts when they want to ask for something big at work (only if they want him to, of course) to suggest how he would ask for it as a straight white well-off man so they can do it that way or split the difference. So not one big fancy story but just a lifetime of trying to give a small boost at work to people who haven’t had his level of privilege.

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  81. Annie2*

    I (a woman) started a new job. A man at my exact level started a few weeks later. About a month later, our entire group was out for drinks when we discovered the man was making $20,000 more than me for the exact same job. A senior woman in my group marched into the partner’s office first thing the next morning and read him the riot act. I immediately received a very sheepish apology, a $20,000 raise, and retro pay to my start date.

    This is the value of talking about salaries with your colleagues – and of standing up for your colleagues in situations of injustice.

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  82. Kimchi*

    There was this coworker, “Carol” who I had a real bad person eating crackers attitude against. Carol had been going through some tough stuff, but I had no sympathy for her, and was grey rocking. Anyways, she came into work crying one day because of a horrible thing that happened to her, and I was distancing myself. I’m working somewhere else, and then I look up and see “Julia” come over to talk to “Carol”. I’m still in my little negativity bubble, until I look up again, and Julia is hugging carol. It kinda snapped me out of my person eating crackers mentality, and I tried to be nicer, because Julia showed me that even if you dislike a person, and even if that person causes problems for other people, they are still a person who deserves basic kindness.

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  83. Bing the Merciless*

    Here is an example of when NOT doing something is the right thing to do. My son’s college girlfriend and her mother were horribly abused by their father/husband, had fled their home to escape him and had not notified anyone of their new address. My son was living with them in another state during his summer internship with a blacksmith. As luck would have it, their address was accidently disclosed to the abusive soon-to-be-ex when divorce paperwork was filed, and he showed up at their home screaming at 6 am. But instead of the two terrified women he expected he found my son, quite muscular after a few weeks of blacksmithing, who calmly opened the door, said “what’s up?” After being started at in silence for what seemed like an eternity, the POS left, never to return. My son called me, shaken, and said that not beating him to a pulp was the more difficult thing he had ever done in his life but he did not want to do anything that would make him appear to be the victim instead of the people who actually were. Have to admire that restraint.

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    2. ferrina*

      Major kudos to your son!!
      I hope that the POS assumed that the address was wrong and that he lost the trail on the two women.

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  84. GeeseInFlight*

    At the end of the 2020/2021 school year I was drowning. My principal was leaving. For inscrutable reasons, she’d decided that the only grade in the school that would do hybrid learning was my kindergarten class, so I was trying to teach kinder math in person and on zoom simultaneously. We weren’t allowed to use paper, so I had to spend hours recreating every task in Seesaw. We’d been through three aides by January and then my principal gave up on hiring anyone. We had extreme and unsafe behaviors. I was supposed to be teaching half time and doing teacher leadership stuff half time, but my partner teacher was so inept at managing the behavior that by March I was in the classroom full time supporting during her half of the day. But I still had all my other duties to deal with too. I have never been so burnt out and discouraged.

    Which all came to a head when we got a GIANT curriculum shipment that had to be unpacked and inventoried. It was nearly a hundred boxes of all kinds of different science materials. It would have taken at least a full day. There was just no way to find time in my schedule. Eventually I gave up on squeezing it in and emailed Old Principal and New Principal to ask if the building would be open after the last day of school so I could come in on my summer break and do it then.

    Old Principal said that would be fine. New Principal said that she didn’t want me to do that, and that she’d come do the inventory instead. I so badly wanted to make a good impression on her that I pushed back a little, but she didn’t want me spending any of my summer at school. She said she wouldn’t ask anyone to do work she wasn’t willing to do, and that she’d take care of it.

    In the end, she saw what a huge job it was and decided to just skip inventory altogether and give the materials directly to teachers. But that’s who she’s been for the last several years, and I am SO grateful.

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    1. GeeseInFlight*

      And of course I forgot to clarify: unpacking wasn’t really my job, but Old Principal told me that someone needed to do it and not to sound so stressed about it. She was mostly a quite decent person to work for, but that was not the best moment I had with her.

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  85. Not my usual name for reasons*

    I have a coworker who deals with customers, I sometimes meet them with him. He is charismatic, smart and has an encyclopedic memory of customers and the tech they use. He is also prone to making misogynist comments and flirts with the food service staff at restaurants even when they are 20 years younger than him. Two times I’ve seen him go way over the line (not physically but verbally) and while I was still gasping in shock one of my other coworkers (also a guy) has called him out in detail on why what he did was wrong. The upside is that this seemed to be effective, the offender was contrite and acknowledged his fault at the time. On this last trip I’ve done with him I did notice him flirting a bit, but it was not egregious and seemed to be reciprocated (he also mentioned to me that he is divorced now). Now if he would just avoid dredging up WW2 history in places where Americans might not be very popular I’d say things were much better.

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  86. PivotTime*

    This is a recent win that I’d like to share. I’m in a Master of Legal Studies program, which means I’m learning how the legal field works but I am not a traditional law school student, nor do I want to be a lawyer. My university’s career office is supposed to help all students, but I could never get the software platform to work to either set up an advising appointment or to access workshops. I am currently job hunting and I need all the help I can get as I try to pivot into the legal field.
    The conversations would go in an infinite loop like this:
    Me to career office: I can’t log in to career platform, no advising or workshops. Help.
    2 Weeks later career office responds: You’re a student at the law school. Go talk to them.
    Me to law school advising: Hi, I need help w resume and job search.
    Law school advising: You’re not a traditional law student, so you’re not our responsibility. Go to career office.
    After months of this nonsense, in June of this year, I emailed my advisor and explained the situation. She was confused and asked that I send another email to career office explaining what program I’m in and send me their response.
    After waiting 2 weeks- when they’re supposed to have a 24-36hr turnaround time), I receive the usual “Go to the law school” message and forwarded it to my advisor.
    She emailed them back, marking the email as urgent and cc’d me. They ignored HER for over a week until she both called and sent another message. The message they sent her was basically the same message they sent me. Advisor is furious, because she’s been sending students in my program to career office and obviously they’re not getting helped.
    This lead to advisor having a meeting with the director of career office. According to advisor, director apologized, is retraining frontline and triage email staff to actually be helpful, and now advisor is working with both the law school and the career office to design a hybrid model for students in my program going forward, where legal specific job searching will be done by the law school and general resume and linked in searching will be done by career office.
    You may ask” Well why wasn’t this already set up?”. I don’t know!
    I suspect that since the majority of students I’ve met in my classes already have a job that they’re getting the degree to help with, or are deciding whether to go to law school and using the degree as a proving ground, that maybe no one raised a fuss until me. I pay too much for this degree to not get some help.
    Good news is that I now have someone from the law school helping me with my job search and I’m feeling better about the situation.

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  87. whimbrel*

    Ooh I actually have one!

    We have work holiday parties, as most do, and our office’s top boss sent out an invite email about the upcoming event with some logistics info and a description of the event, which included an inappropriate name for a ‘white elephant’ gift exchange.

    I replied to the email (just to him personally) to say that I didn’t think the term was appropriate, and that we had several colleagues of that ethnicity who could be made uncomfortable by his use of the term.

    He sent a reply to me thanking me for pointing it out, and then reply-all’ed to the invite apologising for the use of the phrase and that it wouldn’t happen again. It’s been a decade but I am still pleased that I spoke up and that it was well received and appropriately acted on.

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      1. Butterfly Counter*

        I think it’s another term for “white elephant,” not that term itself. (I’m unaware of the actual term whimbrel is referring to.)

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  88. nora*

    Gonna brag on my husband for a second. We are both state employees at different agencies. His agency is notorious for paying less than the industry standard for his profession. Almost two years ago one of the big newspapers in the state published a database of all state employees’ salaries. This was how he found out he’s the lowest-paid person in his role, despite having more seniority than most of them. He started agitating for an adjustment. It took seven months, multiple rounds of appeals, the involvement of higher-ups who should never have had to intervene, and ultimately the threat of legal action, but he not only won his adjustment, he convinced upper management to re-evaluate the entire salary structure for all employees. I’m not sure exactly how many of his coworkers got raises but it was a significant number.

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  89. Not Sure What to Put*

    TW: Potential SA

    The government organization I worked for worked with a contracted company. After not seeing someone at the contracted company for months, we chit chatted a bit and he kissed me! I had encountered the person on the way to a meeting, so I just turned and walked away. After the meeting, my employee told me “you seem distracted, are you OK?” and I just replied, “X kissed me!” Employee got quiet for a minute and then he said, “you know, you don’t have to tolerate that. You need to report it, and I’ll back you up in any way that you need if you want it.”

    I knew it was wrong and I wasn’t at fault, but I was so shocked my brain couldn’t process it. It meant the world that my someone heard what happened, believed me (not for one second was there “did you lead him on?”), and then supported me.

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  90. Jonathan MacKay*

    Many years ago, I worked in a restaurant as a host. The owner wanted me to do something unethical, (specifically – lying to my own grandmother about when the safety bar was to be installed in the accessibility stall in the women’s washroom. As far as I know, it never was) which I protested against.

    I discovered that my hours were being significantly reduced, and when I asked the owner about it, was given the excuse that business had hit a slump and they couldn’t give everyone their full hours. Of course, it turns out that when I walked in to confront him, I noticed that someone new was being trained for my role.

    I ended up getting fired, and discovering such by getting my Record of Employment in the mail the following Monday…. which means it had already been sent out before I confronted him on Saturday.

    Before getting dismissed though, I was given a card from the servers with the equivalent a weeks pay inside…. which had come out of their tips. I noticed them signing the card, and they brushed me off when I asked about it…. so I was quite pleased and surprised when they took it upon themselves to do that.

    I’ve often wondered what happened to them after the restaurant closed – as two in particular were older than me, and would probably be at or past retirement age by now.

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  91. Awesome Possum*

    Thank you, Alison! This is one of my favorite ideas you’ve asked for: a combo of uplifting & popcorn-munching side-eye. I was delighted by your article on your mom. What an honoring eulogy. May her memory last forever, and may her legacy be a blessing to all.

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    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Thank you. Relevant story here: last week, in her final days — which she knew were her final days, because she scheduled her death in advance — my mom was making calls to officials of the hospice program she was enrolled in, trying to get some problematic hospice practices changed.

      She knew she wouldn’t be alive for any changes to benefit her but, as she said to me and my sister, “Probably most hospice patients don’t have the energy to speak up about this stuff but I do so I’m going to get it changed before I die.” (We have been assured by the people she talked to that they are indeed going to make some changes.)

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  92. Clarelisabeth*

    I’m so sorry for your loss. Your mother sounded pretty incredible and I’m sure that you will feel the loss of her for a long time.

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  93. Not my usual name for reasons*

    My first job out of college the business was having a rough patch, and the engineering department had some internal politics. My manager was on the outs and one Monday we came in to hear there was a layoff going on. This included a new hire that was supposed to join our group that day. When our manager was told he could not start the new guy he resigned in protest, and came by to say good bye to me and my supervisor. He then spent a week finding a job for the guy he had recruited, then found himself a good job too. One thing is that I’m not sure that I or my supervisor would have been safe, either of us might have been on the list too. Instead we got moved under the guy who I was renting a room from… this was awkward at first, but he is a nice guy, and soon moved out to be with his fiance… 40 years later it all worked out in the end!

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  94. HSE Compliance*

    I had just started in industry from government and had been with the company probably 8 months or so. I doubled my salary in that move, and my pay was within ‘normal’ range, but lower end. A male employee had also just started – we were in the department covering different areas but very comparable roles. I had a second degree and an extra year or two of experience. Relevantly, I am female.

    I was called into our manager’s office about 2 months after he started and he was RILED… and he was normally the chillest of the chill people. He sat me down and told me that it was RIDICULOUS what he found out – the male employee was making 12k more than me. Manager could not figure out why we had been hired like that and was personally offended on my behalf. So, for the past month and a half, he had been working behind the scenes to get me a raise. He got me 15k for a pay inequity I didn’t know existed and forced the corporate HR to go through and redo all the salary reviews, leading to some other inequities evened out.

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  96. Just A Dog Sofa*

    My former company expanded greatly during the pandemic, and so onboarded lots of new people, remotely. Additionally, because WFH changed our workflow, jobs like mine (that had originally been two people supporting two leaders per project) shifted to one person supporting two leaders per project. Which was fine! No onsite meetings meant you could always be at your desk to get work done and be available via teams tools to support as needed, which helped with clear communication.
    Guess what? After return to office, the company decided to keep the new model of 1 person per two-leader team – but – did nothing to help leaders adjust expectations. Suddenly, leaders who were used to someone at their beck and call found that half the time, that person wasn’t there!….because they were supporting the other leader and frantically running back and forth. And – no one had realized that in the old model, new supports always had a reliable seasoned support partner? So no one had built a training module, or in fact done anything for new supports other than drop them into a project with no guidance and twice the usual workload and expect them to succeed.
    We let go and replaced something like 4-5 people from my role in that year, mostly new hires, and I barely made it through myself. Once I realized what was happening was bigger than just me struggling, I went to HR and my department heads, and then reached out to some other solo support folks, and we started having a monthly lunch to discuss learning opportunities and taking care of each other. These lunches turned into roping in the seasoned assistants, who were able to help us break down, phase by phase, all of the responsibilities we handled on a lifetime of a project (usually 4-5 years) and exactly how much training we would need to be able to handle a project alone (literally, what is this new department, how long do you work with them at what point in the process, what do they need from you and you need from them, how can you find answers to questions, etc).
    THEN we took the entire set of data back to HR and our department, and eventually, to the heads of the company, and laid out for them why so many poor folks had been utterly failing. They were, wonderfully, a bit shocked and appalled, and I’m happy to say that when the company eventually shrank back to pre-pandemic standards, what had been projected for 5-6 layoffs in our roles ended up as just 1, and staffing returned to pre-pandemic standards.
    This was my first experience in workplace organizing, and though it took a very long time and lots of consistent pushing and patience, I’m incredibly proud of our group effort; and that I left that company better than I found it, with training procedures in place and a support system for any incoming staffers. Go team!

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  97. Grey Coder*

    I was working in a software startup, one of a small number of women in an overwhelmingly male environment. All of us on the technical side worked from an open plan office, but there were some field sales people (all men) and the executives were remote, so we used Slack for general communication.

    One day, one of the sales guys signed a big contract and posted a picture of the customer and their team. Another sales guy made some objectifying remarks about one of the women in the picture. Another one chimed in with his own follow up.

    I was not up for a battle on that day, so I rolled my eyes and resolved to ignore it. My (male) technical peers, however, were having none of it. The sales guys were thoroughly roasted in Slack, and I believe they got a separate telling-off from the CEO later on.

    That was the first time I’ve ever felt someone had my back at work. Unfortunately the startup later folded. I miss those guys.

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  98. Another Academic Librarian too*

    Years ago I worked in a small college library where the librarians were significantly paid less than other equivalent teachers/faculty. There was an almost a year of union fraught negotiations. I was the union rep and there was no teacher/ faculty support of pay equity, but final agreement gave the librarians an equity raise of almost $10,000 each. EXCEPT the administration said the most recent hire who had been in position for about 3 months. The librarians said no that the newest librarian had to also get the equity raise even if it came from our “pot of money” This same group years later when there was a financial crises took a one day a paycheck pay cut furlough so none of the clerical staff would be laid off.

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  99. cmdrspacebabe*

    Pretty low-stakes, but: some of of my colleagues were integral in developing a very big, visible project, collaborating with a lot of other groups for well over a year. The project received an award, but the nominator didn’t include my colleagues’ names, just the other groups. Our team happened to be organizing the awards ceremony and realized they’d been left out. They were disappointed about it, but thought it was too late and they didn’t have the standing to complain.

    Myself and another colleague, moderately incensed on their behalf, quietly met with our manager and got permission to reach out to the awards team. Turns out it was just an error! They immediately corrected the nomination, and we (very secretly) added the missing names to the awards presentation.

    Then we had a watch party, impatiently waited for the moment, watched my colleagues’ faces light up when they saw their names, and enjoyed the warm fuzzies all afternoon. (:

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    1. ferrina*

      Yay! Good on you! I’ve been on the other side of this, where there was no recognition. This makes such a difference!

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  100. ferrina*

    My first office job was a nightmare. I was hired at entry level, but within less than a month every senior person on the team had quit or been fired. The next few years in that role were crazy- I was doing several people’s jobs, including things that were way out of my scope of experience. Since the department head had been fired, the VP who oversaw that and a couple other departments delegated a lot of that job to me. The VP would constantly promise to hire people, then the budget would mysteriously freeze so we couldn’t make an offer. On my annual reviews the VP would penalize me for not completing department goals- goals that were made assuming three people would be in the department, not me by myself. At one point my VP started calling me Sr. Title to external stakeholders- when I asked if that meant if I was getting a promotion, she told me that HR wouldn’t let her promote me, but she could call me by a different title. Finally that VP was forced out, another one took charge and restaffed the department, and I was abruptly laid off.

    One of my coworkers in another department had been witness to all of this. I sometimes cried in the office he shared with another one of my office friends, and he got to witness everything first hand. He had left the company about a year before I was laid off, and when he heard about what happened, he talked to one of the managers at his new company and highly recommended me. I don’t think the opening even got posted- I did a couple interviews and I got the job. I’m eternally grateful to my coworker for that.

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  101. I don't work in this van*

    My first real job out of college had me editing the entertainment section of a small newspaper. Though most of my work was editorial, I was not in the newsroom org structure. The news editor (notorious for abusing and pushing talented women out of the company) was not a fan. At one point, she sent me an email assigning me a task for a story one of her staff was working on, which I pushed back on (it honestly would not have taken very long, but I was on my print deadline and it wasn’t my story and why couldn’t the guy writing it make the phone call?). She went full bananapants, causing her boss to storm in and yell at me for being insubordinate, lazy, disrespectful, etc., specifically citing rudeness in my email, which he (or news editor) had printed out and read aloud dramatically (the email was basically: I don’t have time for this right now, if you need it by EOD, could you ask someone who works for you to do it?). My boss asked me to search my inbox for emails from the news editor, and proceeded to read HER aggressive, rude, disrespectful emails to me back to him (I kept a folder).
    News boss eventually petered out and wandered away, while my boss took me out for a fancy lunch and bought me a drink before sending me home early (it was my birthday).

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  102. Thiago*

    I want to mention that this column -and this thread in particular- are causing positive changes in real-time. I have been reading these comments, and remembered that there is a change I’ve been meaning to request at my workplace (higher education).

    I just reached out to the head of our department to see whether students who pray outside during breaks can have a dedicated prayer space. He said, yes, absolutely. It’s going to have such a positive effect that the students know their religion is welcomed on our campus.

    AAM and its community = amazing!

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  103. hi there*

    I’m very proud of having advocated for and designed a severance package for hourly direct service workers when a major covid-funded project shut down after covid. We didn’t have to at all based on the size of our organization. Nobody else was thinking about it, and some even questioned it. But to me it made sense to give folks that appreciation and support as they had to go back on the job market. That was the best $20K of my nonprofit’s money that I’ve ever spent.

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  104. Jigglypuff*

    I work in a public library and we have to input lots of information for new library cards, including patron names. I noticed that our system had a space for preferred names and that if you used that slot, the preferred name would pop up on the screen instead of a person’s legal name. This is a HUGE benefit for trans and nonbinary folks and also for others for a whole host of reasons, so I changed our paper form to include the preferred name slot and trained my staff on how to navigate adding and using a preferred name for a patron.

    The last time this came up, a teen patron was at the circulation desk with their parent, and my staff member did a fantastic job add the teen’s preferred name. The parent looked at the teen and said, “See? I told you this was a safe place.”

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  105. Prudence Snooter*

    Haha as an Internal Auditor, this is pretty much my entire job. Maybe I don’t do the actual righting of the wrongs, but I point out the wrongs and make people give me proof that they were righted.

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    1. Bitte Meddler*

      Samesies!

      As an internal audit intern, I had one woman cry over the phone to me because her location had “failed” to meet the cash deposit policy and she thought she was going to be fired.

      Turns out, the policy never took into account remote, rural locations where the physical logistics literally prevented employees from meeting the policy requirements.

      I was able to assure her that her job was safe and that I’d make sure the policy was re-written.

      And, yes, it does feel good to find things that are wrong and to be able to float them up to the very tippy top of the food chain to get them addressed.

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  106. Pdweasel*

    When I worked at a grocery store during high school & college, there was one customer who was a total creep to female employees and management never made good on their warnings to him. Whenever he’d come to the customer service desk (where I worked) to buy lottery tickets, my middle-aged male coworker would handle him so the women could go on break/hide behind the dry cleaning rack/be Very Busy with something in the back. Dennis, if you ever read this, I still appreciate it!

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  107. Zellie*

    Years ago, I took a job in a city that was less expensive than where I was living. I did my research and thought the salary I accepted was in-line with the cost of living. Well, it wasn’t, mostly due to rents. Other parts of the move were stressful, but the money situation didn’t help.

    I had been recruited for the job and when the recruiter followed up with me to see how everything was going, I expressed my concerns with the salary and cost of living. She said she’d take care of it. Well, she did with a 12% percent pay increase. In hindsight, I realized they probably had a range and expected me to negotiate (which I didn’t, but lesson learned) and so the pay increase. I’ve never forgotten that as it made a world of difference.

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  108. Meg*

    When I left my old job, I spent several hours in an exit interview outlining all of the ways in which the managers in my team had excluded me because of my disability. I had copious notes about the incidents and ideas on how to be inclusive (which I’d sent to the managers to no effect) and I sent all of these to the HR adviser.

    I’ve since been told by friends that one of the managers – someone promoted, so not one of the useless ones – has been tasked with addressing some of my points. Apparently there’s already some change!

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  109. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    I recently had my almost ten years ago Professional Headshots redone, and OUCH! that was a hit in the wallet. Being the HR Director, I then got to thinking how many of our Team Members at Management level and above have never had a Professional Headshot done, and could probably not afford the expense of getting one done.

    One of our C-Suite has a hobby of photography, and has done some amazing Headshots for her friends and family. We put our heads together, and we have scheduled Headshot Sessions for everyone Team Lead level and up who does not have one, or the one they have is out of date.

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      1. It's Marie - Not Maria*

        Yes, and many of them are first generation white collar workers, and have never been given the perks of professional development. I want them all to be successful, and not have to face some of the challenges I did as a first generation white collar worker. It may seem like a small thing, but the morale boost to them is definitely showing!

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  110. Crow Whisperer*

    At my last job, we had an entire department of finance, accounting, and IT support staff overseas. That company had a system where co-workers could acknowledge each other by sending an e-card, which would also be sent to their manager. There were rewards points awarded with each card, though I forget how many. Accumulate enough, and you would get a cash gift card.

    I was working closely with one of the overseas staff on a project of mine and his morale was in the tank. We talked about it and he said that at the monthly overseas all-hands meeting, the local managers would single out and congratulate the employees who had gotten enough rewards points to get a cash gift card.

    For all the years that this person had worked with my department, he’d never once received a cash gift card, despite me and others having sent him a lot of Thank You / Good Job! e-cards.

    I dug around and learned that a *manager* is the only one who can give reward points that will lead to an actual payout. So I emailed our department managers (there were five) and told them that they were going to take turns each month awarding the overseas person some cash, especially since the money was already in our budget and it was use-it-or-lose-it.

    He got monthly cash rewards every month until he eventually resigned for a promotion at another company.

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  111. Josame*

    I’m a Senior (job title) so I often have to fix my coworkers’ mistakes. One notable day, I had spent the entire day fixing other people’s ridiculous mistakes and I was pretty frustrated. When I got home, I complained to my husband – in great detail – about every moment of my day. I paused for breath (not yet finished complaining) and my husband said, “and your shirt is inside out”!
    It was! I’d had no idea. (It was a solid color shell so the tag sticking out on the side was the only sign it was inside out.) The rest of the complaints just vanished from my mind; I could only ask why I hadn’t noticed this earlier.

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  112. Call Me Dr. Dork*

    One of the times I worked for a brogrammer startup (but I repeat myself), one of the top honchos called me into the office and told me I was getting a raise. Turns out, the office manager (one of the few other women in this business) raised holy hell when she saw that the newly hired junior developer was getting paid more than I was. Of course, I was the only female programmer and of course, I was the one doing the boring, keep-the-lights-on jobs that kept the money flowing.

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  113. Once a Year Commenter*

    I was bullied about my weight in high school by another student. It went on openly for some time with no intervention from anyone, including drawn-out
    “hog calling” noises directed at me in the halls between classes. Finally, the principal learned what was going on. He called me into his office and said he had been bullied about his weight when he was younger. A large man, he had tears in his eyes as he apologized for the way I had been treated. He said to leave it with him…the bullying was going to STOP. I don’t know what he said or did to the bully, but the bullying stopped and I was grateful.

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  114. Madame Desmortes*

    I had an op-ed column in a decently important trade magazine for a few years. Once I wrote an op-ed calmly and clearly explaining why the current Big Thing In The Field was a bad idea and wouldn’t work out well for anyone.

    Guess who was super-invested in that exact Big Thing? The CIO!

    I got an email from the CIO’s assistant asking for a meeting about my op-ed. Oh sh– I thought, and went apologetically to my department chair explaining the situation. If I was in hot water, at least the chair would hear it from me and not the CIO, you know?

    The department chair looked at me a good long moment. “Madame D,” she said, “we didn’t hire you to be quiet.”

    And I never heard another word about it, not from the CIO’s office, not from anyone. I’ve never felt so supported by my management chain. (Also I was completely and utterly right about that particular Big Thing not working out…)

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  115. Spanky and the gang*

    Warning- racially charged story

    Working as a teller years ago. VERY busy Friday, first of the month. Teller next to me (older African American lady) was a seasoned (20 year) teller, excellent at her job, everyone loved her.

    Older white gentleman came in to cash a check at her window. She apologized but since he didn’t bank with us, she couldn’t cash it. He would have to go to the bank in which the check was drawn, or where he banked. He became very angry and very loud, but she just kept apologizing. Then he called her a racial slur and asked her if she knew who he was.

    She very calmly put her ‘next window’ sign down in front of him, walked out to the lobby, into the Manager’s office (who was helping other customers and had his door shut), and told the Manager what the guy said.

    The Manager (27 year old white guy) didn’t even hesitate, he excused himself from his customers, walked over to the old man and said, “NO ONE talks to my employees that way, leave now and don’t ever return,” then ushered him to the door. Old man left screaming that we’d be sorry, he was someone important.

    Teller went back to her window, called ‘next,’ and calmly went back to work. We heard that Older man called corporate to voice a complaint, but the Manager had already told Corporate the whole story, so Corporate politely told the man to F off.

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  116. Astra*

    Ohh I have one – this was during Covid so was huge considering what people were facing with employment
    I’d been with the company for 10+ yrs at the time and was (and still am) one of the top performers in my department. We had midyear reviews coming up which were usually just a quick check in to see how things were progressing and if goals were being met. This was usually just done with supervisors so when the time came and I saw my Manager and Supervisor on teams alarm bells started ringing….
    Meeting starts and things are going well – the usual chit chat. They then tell me that – unknown to most – there is a process for reviewing salaries and compensation to ensure employees are being compensated fairly. That my salary is about 10% lower then it should be compared to someone else with similar years of service and expertise – and that I am effective immediately and back rated 3 months getting a 10% raise to put me where I should have been all along. I was speechless at first at getting a midyear raise was unheard of at my company. I’ve never appreciated my manager and supervisor so much before – the fact they say that my salary was lower then it should be and fought to get it corrected meant so much

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  117. Jason*

    I had a terrible first grade teacher who had no business teaching anymore. She may have been a good teacher at one time but it was obvious even to my 6-year-old brain that she was too sick to be an effective teacher. I was a bit of a rambunctious boy but nothing too extreme. I was also very bright and incredibly bored in her class. She touched my boredom as not understanding the material and put in all the bottom levels for reading and math. Thankfully, my second grade teacher was amazing. She recognized I was very intelligent and got me into the appropriate academic track. I think I would have fallen through the cracks without her.

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    1. ferrina*

      Yikes! I was also a bright kid who er, found ways to entertain myself when bored (undiagnosed ADHD). I fell through the cracks until college. The teachers who can truly see a kid and help them find their place (especially since kids change so quickly!) are worth their weight in gold

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  118. Master of Bears*

    Many moons ago, when I was brand new to my first job out of college, I accidentally swiped my purchase card at Starbucks. I realized it a second later, ran back in, and the manager voided it out for me and re-ran the transaction. When I told my boss, she laughed and said it sounded like no harm, no foul.

    Cost accounting did NOT agree. Based on the tone of the comments on my many returned expense reports, you’d think I’d tried to defraud a children’s hospital. Also, none of the three people rejecting my expense reports agreed with each other about how it should be reported.

    It all came to a head with an amazing phonecall from my boss to her boss (VP of our department) which I was lucky enough to overhear.

    My boss: Hey Cory? Do me a favor. Count to ten.

    Cory, sounding absolutely baffled: Uh…one, two, three, four–

    My boss: Okay, this phone call has now cost more than the $4.95 Molly didn’t actually spend. Will you approve the damn expense report?

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  119. Lou's Girl*

    My first ‘big girl’ job out of college was working at a large corporation as an Executive Admin. There were 5 of us Admins that sat in the open space, outside of the Executive’s offices. Our VP of Marketing was known for being a not nice, suck up. Once a week she would come up with some sort of treat and make a big deal of handing them out to the Execs, but not the Admins. She would also raid the Executive kitchen and help herself to any drinks, food, etc., even our own personal stuff us poor Admins brought from home.

    As Admins, we didn’t really feel like we had a voice in the matter, the Execs seemed to really like this woman, so what can you do?

    One day the Marketing witch came around with cupcakes for the Execs. This time, the COO was standing next to my desk and when she handed him a cupcake, he smiled, looked at me, then said to her “what about the Admins?” Marketing witch stammered a little, then stated that she must have run out.

    He said, “if you don’t bring enough for everyone then don’t bother bringing any. Also, the Executive kitchen is for people on this floor only (she worked on another floor), you will need to stop taking stuff out of it and helping yourself.” It was all I could do not to laugh.

    She stopped everything- she stopped bringing treats to the Execs, stopped taking our stuff out of the kitchen, and stopped talking to us Admins altogether unless absolutely necessary. I guess she thought one of us ratted her out. I checked with the other Admins and apparently none of us had said anything, the COO was just incredibly kind and observant.

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  120. LivesinaShoe*

    I thought I didn’t have a story, but I do. Although nothing has changed for this event, perhaps it will in the future. In my town, a business owner is using a law to harass a new service so they cannot locate in the best place for them (trying not to completely disclose it).

    Got an email from a friend of mine inviting me to a thank-you gathering for their clients – at the business owner’s space. I wrote back and said that I wouldn’t be able to go because I think the owner is a bad person doing bad things for our beloved town. Friend wrote back that they weren’t up on local politics – I did not indicate that I thought anyone with location-linked services should probably know about local politics – but that the rent had been paid to the venue already and so it wouldn’t be able to change it.

    My hope is that as word gets out, fewer people will be willing to patronize the business doing the bad thing.

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  121. Koekje*

    I was working a customer service job when a coworker was transfered to my site after a falling out with the other CSRs at his building. I didn’t know all the details, but it turns out this person had a pathological need to correct every single thing anyone said, no matter how offhand or low-stakes (I was once subjected to a lecture on the migratory patterns of moose after mentioning something I’d seen in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon). Combine this with a habit of saying random words in French and you can see why people found him tiresome. After several 40 hour weeks of this, I started to feel pretty stupid.
    It all came to a head one day when he corrected something I’d said to a customer and started openly laughing at me. I must have seemed pretty dejected, because on the way out of his appointment, the customer I’d helped passed me a note essentially saying he’d seen what happened, it was uncalled for, and he hoped I wouldn’t my coworker take away my smile. It was exactly the kindness I needed and it helped me realize that I didn’t deserve how I was being treated.
    Because other CSRs saw what happened, the site manager got word and asked to see the note. My coworker was called into the office and when he came back, he’d obviously been crying. He wound up apologizing to every CSR there, again nearly in tears, and seemed genuinely contrite. It was a wakeup call and he actually did the work and stopped correcting people. We even became friends and started hanging out after work, and to this day we still keep in touch. He’s a really good person and it’s wild to me how our friendship started.

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  122. desk platypus*

    Unfortunately in my library work I haven’t had many people who look to right wrongs, which goes against so much of what our work should be. I’ve just had bad libraries, I have other library friends with more positive stories.

    But one day I did get fed up with a bad management policy regarded creepy patron behavior. We were having an issue of certain patrons following a particular younger staff member, I’ll call her Emily, as she shelved books. They never spoke to her, never touched her, but they hovered very obviously throughout the shelves. Management said they couldn’t do anything about it and Emily should just keep vigilant.

    One day I finally witness this (I only occasionally helped on public desks) and had enough. I marched right over, stood beside Emily as she shelved, and stared right back at the most frequent stalking offender with my arms crossed aggressively. I was not polite as I said, “Can I help you find something?” He said no. I said, “Then what are you looking at?” in a clear ‘I know what you’re doing’ voice. Before he could answer I said, “Never do this again, leave right now, or I’m calling the police.” (I actually very rarely invoke law enforcement, they never really helped us, but I knew it would work on this guy.) I told Emily she was done shelving and to please work in the back. I wasn’t her manager, or a manager at all, but she scrambled to it and once the guy left she profusely thanked me in near tears. Word got back to our bosses and they decided that actually now we could say something to patrons who made us uncomfortable. It was deeply frustrating but at least management finally agreed to do something. Also that guy stayed away!

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    1. Still a Public Librarian*

      Another public librarian here, THANK YOU for being that person! My previous library management was like that, and my current library absolutely doesn’t tolerate it, and I am so grateful.

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    2. Ellis Bell*

      I love this. “Stay vigilant, Emily!” is what you say to increase tension in a horror movie. Why can’t people just admit they have no idea what to do.

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  123. Still a Public Librarian*

    I used to work circulation in a tiny suburban library in a very liberal area. When Covid hit and shut us down in March 2020, it became instantly obvious that our director believed the lie that Covid was fake: refused to mask, kept travelling (on airplanes), tried to refuse us unemployment, was pushing to reopen with ZERO safety precautions, mocked us for trying to get her to adopt ANY safety measures. My coworkers (the ones who got told they had to come in or wouldn’t get paid and couldn’t afford to not get paid) were panicking; our cataloguer was having panic attacks. We all tried to talk to her directly and got shut down, ignored, or mocked. I, someone who gets hives over confrontation, looked at my fortunate financial situation, decided enough was enough and told my coworkers, I can afford to lose this job; y’all can’t — so I started making a big noise to the library board and to anyone else who would listen. I just kept pushing and pushing, and it worked! We delayed opening, put in place curbside procedures, etc.

    In July 2020, the director fired me. With great smugness. Good look for a public library, eh, firing a single mom in the early days of Covid? I regret nothing.

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  124. TQB*

    Can I self-report and brag? A member of my team was being driven mad by an outside party. Without giving detail as to our industry, this person was due to receive a bunch of money as a result of what we were doing. He gave my pal NO END of trouble about signing documents, notarization, etc. I wasn’t in the actual room, but it spilled into a lobby and i happened to walk through. The person was whining and challenging the very clear and reasonable things my friend was telling them. I kept walking, only to hear the guy say “But how long will THAT take, I have APPOINTMENTS.” I turned around, introduced myself as the Big Cheese, told the guy he was SOL and that he could come back tomorrow as we could do no more for him today. I escorted him to the elevator and out.

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  125. Miriam Collins*

    I was working at a small college years ago when we were making the switch from DOS to the Windows operating system. There were training sessions held for all faculty and staff and then one person in each building was assigned to be on-site help. I was the help for my area but I was also called upon by people in other areas who couldn’t get help from their person for one reason or another. I discovered that faculty designated as helpers were paid a stipend of $1200 while I, as an administrative assistant, got nothing. My director found out about this and insisted that I be paid the same as faculty for the extra work.

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  126. Back in the '90s*

    Super low-stakes, but it meant a lot to me as a young 20-something back in the back in the ’90s.

    At the time, I worked as a shift manager at a small coffee roaster. For the holidays, the two male owners got each of the full-time staffers presents.

    I saw a couple of my male co-managers open theirs — boomboxes! Whoa!

    One of the owners watched me as I tore the paper off my box with great excitement, only to find … an off brand pot and ladle. (Yes, I am a woman. No, I didn’t talk about cooking a lot.)

    I couldn’t help it, I immediately teared up.

    The owner’s eyes went wide. I don’t remember him saying anything, but it was clear he realized they’d made a mistake.

    The next day, he presented me with a tiny box from him and his co-owner. In it, was something even better than a boombox.

    A silver coffee bean pin.

    I still have it and cherish it, and I still get my coffee from that roasters.

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  127. epicdemiologist*

    One of my first jobs when I was an undergrad was working drive-through in a burger chain restaurant in a football-crazy college town. This involved serving a lot of abusive drunks until 2 or 3 in the morning. My assistant manager, may God set a flower on his head, would often step in and help. For example, one drunk bawled out “GIMME A GODDAM F***ING CHEESEBURGER!!” My mgr reached past me, grabbed the mic, and said in his most velvety customer service voice, “I’m sorry sir, we don’t have any goddam f***ing cheeseburgers.” Drunk customer drove off in a huff (hopefully he didn’t hit anyone).

    BTW, this paragon of managers was working 80 hrs a week with no overtime (40 hr at one store, 40 hrs at the store across town) to support his pregnant wife, who was also working full-time while getting her Ph.D. Our upper management were absolute dreckbuckets.

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  128. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    At the time I worked on a 10 month contract at the university. I was considered full time, just had June and July off with no pay. I started in the fall 2019 so I had a prorated amount of vacation for September through December. January 2020 it showed the full amount in my account (around 2 weeks). December 2020 comes and I do not have enough time to cover the christmas holidays. Campus was open but each department chooses if they will remain open. We were not student facing so we closed from December 22 through January 4th. It took weeks between myself, my manager, HR and the head of the university system’s HR to figure it out. HR had quoted me the wrong information when I was offered the position. Since I was not full year full time I did not qualify for the full amount of vacation. Since I had used up most of the vacation time earlier in the year I was 2 days short. My manger was LIVID! I think she was more angry than I was. We worked it out where I did some “special projects” and worked from home for those few days. Essentially I just sent some emails and updated a few documents. It took maybe an hour. She told me not to worry about anything! She was one of the best bosses. I’m in a different department now (full, full time) but I still see her often. My managers here are great as well!

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  129. Golden Handcuffs*

    Early in my professional career, I was in a job that had direct contact with all management and executives in my company (I managed a very specific benefit). One of the Senior VPs (who was technically 7 levels higher than me) asked me to do something that had previously been allowed but had recently been made a compliance violation by our parent company and was no longer allowed. I emailed him back to let him know (very politely and delicately) that I would not be able to fulfill his request. He absolutely lost it and reamed me via email, copying in the head of my functional area (who was a level below him.) That person reamed him back, via email where I was copied, and told him to never speak to any of his employees like that again and if he had an issue with me adhering to compliance regulations, then he needed to take it up with him directly and to leave me out of it. I have never forgotten that and I actually still work under him today, in a separate function in our company. He’s an excellent leader who is willing to stand up for the people who need it and who is willing to have the hard conversations. I truly hope he gets to be the head of our company someday.

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  130. Csethiro Ceredin*

    My dad ( a now-retired government astrophysicist) is a good egg and always advocated for people on lower rungs of the ladder. He didn’t grow up privileged so he knew those jobs are not easier or less important.

    In the 90s his program was moved from the big federal science head office to an observatory in a fairly small town. Upon arrival he found that the place had a rigid social hierarchy with The Astronomers on top and the technologists and (mostly female) administrators treated like dirt.
    After one day of academic posturing at The Astronomers’ Table in the lunchroom he thought screw this and sat with the technologists, who were both nicer and more competent.

    Over his time there he advocated hard for the admin and tech people on temp or term positions to get permanent roles, calling the VP of their government agency and saying the place would fall apart without them. It worked because he was working on international projects at the time, knew a lot of senior people, and he has a certain bulldozer quality when his sense of justice is offended. Once he passed the point of a guaranteed full pension he got even more blunt because what were they going to do to him?

    Several people got good, secure jobs, better offices, and so on. It was delightful.

    Also, his program’s repair and admin work always seemed to get done first.

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