Ask a Manager

Last week, I asked for stories about strangely dramatic reactions that you’ve seen people have to mundane changes at work. The comment section was full of fantastic stories — so many that I had to split my favorites up into two posts. Yesterday was part one, and here’s part two.

1. The sushi trays

While I was at the beginning of my career, I was working for a catering company as an assistant manager. We were catering for a pretty big company, where we would serve lunch on one station, and have a buffet-style on the other one. On the buffet, one of the most popular items was the sushi platter. We couldn’t refill it fast enough!

One day my company decided to switch the trays we were using for the sushi, from rectangular green ones to circular red ones. Mind you, the only thing to change was the trays, the sushi (made in the house by our licensed sushi chef) didn’t change a single grain of rice. OH – BOY!

People in that company went bananas over that. We received complaints, people refusing to eat it, people telling us it tasted differently. When we explained and swore that the change was approved by their company as well because the new trays were cheaper, prettier, and easier to recycle, hence lowering their catering expenses, almost nobody was convinced. A woman stopped me and tried to explain to me for 20 minutes that the colors of the trays would impact the taste.

I suggested to my boss to order the next batch of trays from the same company, but requesting them as greenish and as rectangular as possible. It worked. The sushi-gate was over, and so was my patience with that particular branch of Big Company.

2. The blinds

We had an executive who could not tolerate the blinds not all being set at the same level. It’s a three-story building with sunlight impacting computer screen visibility on three sides. It also impacts the office temperature by increasing temperature significantly when the sun comes around. People who sit by the windows often raise them and lower them throughout the day.

Maintenance went around and set all the blinds to the same height and we were directed not to change them. Ever. Obviously, we continued to adjust them to maximize comfort and the ability to see our computer screens. He was so upset about this that he ordered maintenance to go through and cut the strings on all the blinds (more than 100, at least) so that we couldn’t reach the strings to adjust the blinds. It took several months to play out and everyone wondered why an executive was getting involved with such a ridiculous thing.

The joke was on him. We are an engineering company. On the first day that the blind strings were cut short, several engineers cobbled together a tool that could reach up and grab the rings that were placed on the short strings, and the blinds were all adjusted to our comfort again. I just wish I could have seen his face when he drove up and saw his complete and utter failure.

3. The logo redesign

Two of my former grandbosses/co-CEOs of the company got in a fight about the new logo redesign during an all-hands Zoom meeting. They started screaming, one was near tears, and the other ended the entire meeting, kicking us all off the Zoom. Later in the day, I got an email that the next week’s all-hands Zoom was “postponed.”

Apparently neither of my grand-bosses spoke to each other the rest of the day after the fight. They finally resumed the all-hands meeting two weeks later when everyone “cooled down.” In this meeting, both the grand-bosses muttered non-apologies, basically saying “I acted this way because Other CEO did first.” The logo redesign never happened because they couldn’t agree on it. As of today, the company still has the old logo (and both co-CEO’s are still in charge). I will say my grand-bosses were competent, experienced, and well-respected in the field individually, and always treated employees well … but working with each other was like mixing water and oil.

4. The pizza

I’m Italian, and my manager took it as a personal affront that I did not particularly like Domino’s pizza. He would send me articles about people liking it, how well the business was doing, how Italian pizza was not that good, and so on. It was … intense.

(I never disparaged that brand or anyone who liked it, he just happened to hear me chitchatting with a colleague about ordering some pizza, and me suggesting a different brand.)

5. The semicolon

Back when the internet was still new, I worked at a newspaper. One day, a coworker and I had a conversation (I thought it was a conversation anyway) over whether or not we needed to use a colon or a semicolon for a particular headline. Our manager happened to be strolling by and I said “Hey, Eric, can you cast the deciding vote? Eddie and I can’t agree.” (I honestly don’t remember which position I took.)

The coworker did not speak to me again for the whole time I worked there (another 18 months). If I called the office and he answered, he’d say “Hang on” and put me on hold until someone else picked up. If I asked him a question, he’d just walk away. Emails to him went unanswered. When I mentioned this to my crappy manager, he shrugged and said “that’s just how Eddie is.”

I left that job for many many reasons.

6. The noise

One time we had an IT guy in our department doing some equipment swapping. It gets noisy because stuff needs to move off desks, setting down electronics, moving wires, etc. Not an every day thing and it was only for a few people. But one coworker thought the noise dragged on for so long and so loud she couldn’t stand it. (I’m super sensitive to sound myself, but seriously, it was actually pretty contained.) She put on her headphones while grumbling about the noise but we thought her whining would be done.

A couple minutes later she starts SINGING. Quiet at first, just mumbling, and then absolutely belting out what sounds like church hymns. The worst part is she wasn’t a good singer, at all. Horrified looks were shared and one brave soul went over to say, uh, could you maybe not? She pitched another fit saying she couldn’t concentrate, what else was she supposed to do? She wouldn’t listen to other people chiming in that her singing was actually way more distracting. Eventually she got so frustrated she went back to silently listening to her music, fuming. Amazingly, our manager never spoke to her about it but this coworker had a LOT of issues so it was the lowest priority.

7. The offensive email

I was part of the management team at a company along with multiple colleagues and there were natural crossover points for our work. Once, our Boss/Company Owner asked me to follow up with a colleague about a particular project that was mainly his area but did touch mine as well.

I was working from home so I emailed the guy.

The Boss called me an hour later and said that my colleague was over the top angry about my offensive email and he was going to quit. The Boss asked what I’d written so I sent it to him and read it to him out loud. Word for word I’d written, “How’s it going?”

8. The furniture

One time one of our office sections was being refurbished. There was a clearly marked zone of decommissioned furniture and office equipment that was to be removed. There was no possible doubt – everything to go had a special sticker on it, and everything with the sticker was going to be taken to landfill.

I found in this huge pile a pedestal fan and a small sofa. They had the stickers. There was no possible doubt that they were intended to be removed.

Over the weekend I took both items to my desk area where there was plenty of room for them. No-one’s space or passage was infringed upon. The magic stickers were removed.

Monday morning there was an uproar. Everyone near me demanded to know how I had been granted special furniture that no-one else had. Complaints were made to my boss, to my grand-boss, to my great-grand-boss. Two people were so upset they left work early. One person maintained the fortitude to remain at work – but threatened to resign unless either they were given the same furniture or mine was removed. I was summoned in front of four different managers (the three aforementioned plus the Facilities Manager) to explain where I had “stolen this unauthorised furniture from”. My explanation was flatly disbelieved.

The kicker for me was when I was told to get rid of them. I asked how should I do that? Answer: take them to the pile of furniture to be taken away and get two of the special stickers!

I again said that’s where I’d gotten them. Didn’t matter. People were so upset that I had them that the furniture had to go. I said I would engrave both items before returning them to the removal pile, and I wanted a guarantee in writing that if the items were found in use anywhere in the building, including the Board of Directors, the “thief” would be similarly reprimanded.

They (of course) refused, so I said in that case I would be keeping them. I did indeed keep both items, and kept my job as well.

9. The non-resignation

Paraprofessional quit her job (totally normal!) but then kept coming in just to do the parts of the job she liked, and had a MELTDOWN when she was told to stop because she doesn’t work there anymore.

Rants on facebook, rants on her personal blog (linked to from her FB) and on and on. The drama went on for months, if not years.

10. The laser printer

I’ve shared the story of the wicked finance lady and her bread pudding issues, but that does not compare to the epic tantrum when they changed her from a dot matrix printer to a laser printer (this was a long, long time ago!). There were complaints, memos, union meetings, a special meeting with the Mayor and City Council. Several months later the purchase of the envelope printing attachment was approved and installed and her electric typewriter was retired/snuck out over a weekend. Then there was the WordPerfect mail merge training . . .

11. The software update

Last year, our software had a surprise update that significantly changed the appearance and made some minor changes to the functionality. Perhaps, because I had not been there long, it didn’t really bother me, and I liked some of the improvements.

Well, all hell broke loose. There were multiple hours long Teams meetings, and we are not a meeting heavy group. There was a sense of panic and more than one person said we’d never be able to do our jobs.

I pretty sure no one even remembered what the old version looked like a month out.

12. The bathroom lock code

About four years ago, we were experiencing, um … misuse of the restrooms. I frequently encountered toilet paper strewn across the floor (usually with waste-related adornments on it), clogged/overflowing toilets, missing hand soap (yes, people will steal a container of Mrs. Meyers hand soap if it’s not nailed down), paper towels on the floor *near* the trashcan (but God forbid, not in it), etc. It was amazing how many people would come to me (as the office manager) and alert me to issues in the ladies room … also amazing how many people misheard office manager as office janitor. No one in the office would cop to having contributed to the mess, so I decided it was due to the homeless population that sleep near our building. After several weeks of messiness and the potential for catching diphtheria from using the loo, I received approval from my boss to contact a locksmith and have coded locks put on the restroom doors.

OH. MY. GAWD. You would have thought I had murdered our CEO. There was mass hysteria in the office as people complained in our staff meetings for MONTHS about the horror of needing to memorize a four-digit code to use the facilities. Emails were sent around the office, and one person even went so far as to post the code ONTO THE BATHROOM DOOR to avoid the drudgery of remembering it.

After one of our directors had a damned meltdown in a staff meeting about it, one of our accountants spoke up, and said that since she frequently works evenings and weekends in the office by herself, the code helped her to feel safe when using the restroom. Just that one person’s remark quelled the protests from others.

Everyone shut up after that.

13. The label explosion

During a phase of remarkable passive aggression at our place, I picked up a llama medication one day and found that someone had stuck a label on it from the label maker: USE AT X DOSAGE. All of our llama groomers know the dose for this medication. Who stuck it there, and why? I’m sorry to say that I went a little nuts. I printed labels with “duh” type facts about almost every llama med we have, stuck them all to the bottles, and sent a photo with an all-team email with the subject line “Thank YOU, Captain Obvious.” In it I asked people to stop leaving passive aggressive notes everywhere. I did get gently spoken to about using all of that label material, but nobody ever copped to making the original label.

14. The yogurt thief

I worked at a job that had a Yogurt Thief. If your yogurt was visible in the fridge, there was maybe a 30% chance that someone would take it. Annoying, but most people just kept their yogurt hidden in a plastic bag. Then a new employee started and her yogurt was stolen. She went *ballistic* and started searching everyone’s garbage cans for signs of who took her yogurt. Then she pulled the boss’s assistant into her office and complained for over half an hour that she couldn’t believe someone would take her yogurt, she’d never worked in a place where someone would do something like that, what sort of monster place was this?

The assistant offered to go to the convenience store across the street and buy her a replacement yogurt. The new employee said it was fine, she’d … taken someone else’s yogurt from the fridge to replace the one that was stolen. The assistant explained to her that she had become the yogurt thief. Flustered, the new employee accidentally knocked over a full cup of coffee on her desk. She watched it pool out onto all of her papers, then turned to the assistant and said “clean that up” and left her office.

The new employee did not last very long.

15. The to-go boxes

With different orgs, I know holiday parties can be “a thing.” I’ve been at tiny places where we had no money and just did a dessert competition potluck (fun!) to giant places with cash up the ying yang and giant open bar (also fun!) And middle places with sad only one appetizer and sadder only one drink ticket (less fun).

At my new nonprofit job, I’m in a senior role so happy to spend some capital on upgrading the caterer and increasing the budget. Everyone rejoices!

We’re doing a walkthrough confirming all the final details such as the caterers bringing individually wrapped cookies at the end for everyone to take home. One of the members on the committee goes, “And don’t forget the to-go boxes.”

I stare dumbly. “To go boxes? Like at a restaurant?” And she finishes “Yes for people to take all the leftovers home.” She leans in ominously. “And if you don’t do it, people will freak out.” Apparently the org has been underpaying people for so long and were really crappy about furloughs during the pandemic that people would “get theirs’ by taking every ounce of free food possible. Either the caterer would provide the boxes or people would BRING THEIR OWN. And then there was a race to who would be first in line at the buffet. It got so bad, with food being gone within 30 minutes of the event, they had to start implementing a system like in kindergarten “all J names can get in line.” And because the org had been so cheap too, there really wasn’t enough food for leftovers too so people got real mad.

Happy ending – because of the upgraded caterer and increased budget as well as deciding to treat everyone like adults – there was plenty of food at the holiday party AND for leftovers. So much that the caterer sent me home with four trays. My husband and I feasted on appetizers throughout the week.

Now I want to buy branded Tupperware as org swag to hand out at the next event! Might as well lean into the culture.

16. The pastries

I used to be an admin assistant and my main job was to arrange training courses. When we did training in a city which didn’t have one of our offices in, we would use a hotel chain. We changed the hotel chain we used after having too many issues with our original one. The new place was better in lots of ways, but it only offered pastries with tea and coffee during the morning break – in the afternoon it was just little packs of biscuits with the hot drinks.

I let all our trainers know about the changes and how it would affect them – I didn’t think to mention that they would be getting only one round of mini pains au raisin a day rather than two because it truly did not occur to me that it would be an issue – there were still two tea breaks.

One of the trainers emailed me 16 times in one afternoon, during training he was meant to be delivering, on realizing that he wouldn’t get his second pastry, and didn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards.

17. The emails

This is incredibly stupid on my part, however more than 10 years ago, I was LIVID that IT took away the ability to read/respond to work emails via cell phone.

How was I supposed to read emails over dinner? On vacation? While in meetings? I was angry I was losing the option to be plugged in ALL of the time. It took a co-worker to point that out to me that there goes the expectation of 100% availability.

It really was a blessing in disguise. My original reaction makes me laugh today but I was so angry. How dare they stop me from rolling over in the morning, reaching for my phone and start responding to work emails? What am I supposed to do now? Get up like a normal person and eat breakfast?

Today, I have a different job with a work designated phone that never stops. I guess I got what I wanted, but now I’d rather not!

Last week, I asked for stories about strangely dramatic reactions that you’ve seen people have to mundane changes at work. The comment section was full of fantastic stories — so many that I had to split my favorites up into two posts. Here’s part one, and part two is coming tomorrow.

1. The microwave

Tom has his food warming up in the microwave, and has walked off for a moment while it’s heating up. The timer goes off, Jerry immediately pulls Tom’s food out, and puts his own food in, starts the time, and also walks off. Tom comes back and finds that his food is not completely warm, stops Jerry’s food, takes it out, and put’s his food in. Jerry comes back, sees what has happened, and starts shouting at Tom for touching his food. Tom shouts back at Jerry for touching his food in the first place. This escalates into an all out screaming match between the two. Meanwhile, management is trying to get the two to stop shouting at each other. Tom screams that he can’t take this anymore, he quits, grabs his stuff, and walks out. Jerry then also says he’s done, grabs his stuff, and walks out.

CUT TO THE PARKING LOT. Tom is waiting for a ride to come and get him and has some of his stuff on the ground next to him. Jerry comes pulling out, swerves towards Tom, not hitting him, but running over his coffee mug that is sitting on the ground. Tom calls the police to file a destruction of property complaint over a $15 coffee cup. Police decline to report to the scene.

Jerry calls management later that day, and says that he does not quit, he just got worked up, and that he’ll be back in the morning. Management goes to HR, and HR begins the internal process to terminate an employee, but even in this situation, that requires some time (it would have completed before the end of the next day, but terminations require a few sign offs). Jerry reports to work the next morning, but reads the tea leaves, and leaves “for lunch” and never returns.

2. The toilet seat covers

We were changing over suppliers for things like toilet paper, entry mats, and such. There was some discussion between the few people arranging this about whether we needed to buy those mounted toilet seat cover dispensers or people could just grab them out of the cardboard container they came in.

During some informal polling, there was apparently a misunderstanding that the question was whether there would be toilet seat covers at all. One guy lost his mind over it, another went all White Knight because this was an “attack” on his direct report, and that’s how I ended up with two grown adults in my office yelling at each other about thin pieces of tissue paper. The phrase “You don’t get to tell me where to put my bare ass!” was bellowed. The fact that they didn’t know they were in violent agreement on what should actually happen was just the icing on the cake.

3. The table

I worked an internship for only four weeks because of this outsized reaction.

A rectangular cafeteria table was rotated. That’s it. It went from being perpendicular to the cabinets to parallel.

Holy mother of breakdowns, batman. A team lead came in and saw it and completely lost his mind. I’m talking screaming, ranting, mugs thrown against the wall, holes punched into the wall, all the tables flipped over, just absolute violent meltdown. All because the one table rotated was his favorite table and now the flow of the room was permanently ruined.

We were not allowed to evacuate the office during this, nor were we allowed to call the police. The company issued no statement afterwards, and the team lead was back at work the next day. I quit two days later.

4. The bagel club

Old job had a once-a-month bagel club. Members contributed to the cost and then took turns buying the bagels. This involved my dept and a smaller dept across the hall; about 35 people total.

One designated Friday, a manager from the other department forgot to pick up the bagels on his way in and couldn’t get away from the office until almost ten o’clock. By then the bakery at the local supermarket was almost out of bagels so he ended up with a miscellaneous assortment of mostly rolls, muffins, even a couple donuts. He brought it back along with the usual cream cheese & butter.

Oh, the outrage, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth that ensued! This was unacceptable, an outright failure, a major topic for (prolonged) discussion & analysis, critique & condemnation.

It ended with said manager dramatically quitting the bagel club via an overwrought email sent copy all to both depts, both bagel club & non-bagel club members. Hurt feelings lingered for months!

A few years later, we moved to a new building. My manager quietly ended the bagel club.

5. The venue change

Fairly recently I had two no-shows at a mandatory training course, and when I chased up the participants afterwards I discovered that one was off sick that day (fine) but the other had (according to her manager) refused to attend the course because she “did not appreciate the short notice venue change.”

The “short notice venue change” in question was our training admin updating the calendar invite a few days in advance of the session to let people know that the course was being held in Training Room 2 not Training Room 1, because Training Room 1 was having some IT equipment fixes. There was also a sign on the door of Room 1 saying “IT cabling in progress; for [course] please go to Room 2 next door.”

The rooms are identical, and next door to one another – both on the ground floor, with no access differences. They have the same chairs, the same tables, the same projector … it’s just that the door to Room 2 is about seven steps further along that Room 1.

6. The revenge

Years ago, I worked in fundraising at a small university. The job was very standard 8:30-4:30 every day; but the expectation was one day a year (literally one) all staff had to plan to work 8:30 to 7:30 for the school’s annual gala, which was on campus and always on a Friday. The date was chosen a full year out and we got nine thousand reminders about it. We had one employee, D, who requested that day off the week of the event because she wanted to “try her hand at bartending” at her boyfriend’s bar. Our boss told her no, but he was willing to let her leave at 5pm. Instead she quit on the spot, then while we were at the gala, she came back to our office (as seen on security cameras) and destroyed every potted plant in the office and stole every stapler and all of the paper out of the printer. Still the weirdest over-reaction to be asked to work 30 minutes of overtime I’ve ever seen.

7. The cheese wheel

Our organization holds an annual event where the summer interns make presentations on their projects. It’s always a nice event and people from the colleges and the community are invited. The interns’ supervisors are expected to give pretty detailed feedback on the presentations and the interns’ overall performance. One year a new administrative assistant ordered appetizers from a different vendor and there was no cheese tray. A supervisor who had worked with multiple interns came in as the event was starting, looked at the food, loudly exclaimed, “WHERE IS THE CHEESE WHEEL?” and then stormed out and refused to participate when he was told there was no cheese. We had to scramble to keep the interns calm and get them the paperwork they needed to satisfy their internship requirements.

A few of us still use “cheese wheel” as a code word for “I’d like to leave this meeting.”

8. The water fountain war

We installed some new water fountains about five years back–ones with filtered cold and hot water, for cups/bottles instead of the drinking fountains we had before. They have a small tray beneath where you fill your cup/bottle but it says on the machine, “No drain”. The tray is just to catch small drips or whatever. Fine, we were good with that.

We must have had someone new start or something about a year and a half ago or so because we started coming into the tray FILLED with coffee creamer. It was gross looking and I’m not sure how it was emptied (if facilities dealt with it or what), but every morning we would come in to more. I’m one of the first in the office, and I didn’t really start noticing until a couple of my coworkers absolutely lost their minds.

Coworker A took it personally, and we came in to a sign taped on the water fountain in all caps, “CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF. YOU’RE AN ADULT. THIS HAS NO DRAIN.” Kind of aggressive, but whatever. We weren’t surprised that it was this particular coworker. But it had no effect. Every morning there was still dumped coffee and creamer in it.

But then, one of the people in my department, Coworker B, took it beyond personally. Like it was THEIR PERSONAL water cooler or something. They started putting signs up ALL OVER the cooler. To the point where it covered up the buttons where you pressed for water. They were all to the effect of, “YOUR MOTHER DOESN’T WORK HERE” in 72 pt font followed by “THERE IS NO DRAIN IN THIS UNIT. STOP DUMPING YOUR GROSS COFFEE.” And of course, it was still ignored.

So then Coworker B cut out foot prints out of printer paper and TAPED THEM TO THE FLOOR leading up to the cooler, and in front of the cooler as if to tell you where to stand. There was also a foot press from COVID times when we didn’t want to touch things other people touched with their hands. A foot print was taped to that too. And, still ignored! There was still creamer and coffee.

It came to a head where Coworker B brought in one of those cameras you mount to your porch to check for porch thieves. Incidentally, I was the one who had actually given it to them, when they were having issues with their neighbor harassing them about their dog (that’s actually an entire OTHER story of bizarreness). So they put the camera on the water fountain. They didn’t actually connect it to anything, but they put it on there as . . . some sort of warning? I don’t even know. But when I saw it I KNEW that IT was going to have a problem (we’re a large enough company with our own security systems and servers and all sort of proprietary stuff).

Sure enough, the camera disappeared. And Coworker B was ranting about how the person who was dumping the coffee had stolen it, and was saying, “They stole [my name]’s camera! That’s so messed up.” I didn’t care because I had given it to them with no intention of receiving it back. I knew it was in IT’s office because they’re the only ones who would have done that. And, surprise surprise, IT returned the camera to Coworker B and told them to knock it off, that it was a security issue, regardless of if the camera was turned on.

At this point, I think enough people had complained to our boss (including me) that all of the signs disappeared, and so did the foot prints, and all that was left was a sign saying “No Drain.” And then, another person was like, “Oh our sister company used to have this problem. Just put some paper towels in the non-drain and people will realize there’s no drain.” And we did that. And voila, the issue was gone.

This went on for weeks. It was insane. I like to think the culprit knew who was losing their mind and just kept doing it to piss Coworker B off, because they’re not super well liked in the office. Exactly for this reason. I never did learn who was doing it, but it’s never been an issue again.

9. The chips

20-cough years ago, my summer college job was working the overnight shift at a manufacturing plant. The break room was a small room smack in the middle of the assembly line floor. Rumor had it that one time the vending machine didn’t dispense someone’s chips and they were so incensed that they got in their forklift and drove it straight through the vending machine. This lore was passed to all of us wide-eyed, temporary college workers like a warning: not all of your coworkers are ok, beware!

10. The revenge, part 2

We had a young (fresh from college) employee who was let go. He went out to the parking lot, threw down his company logo jacket, and then drove his car back and forth over it a few times before skidding off. The windows to the parking lot are visible to a large section of the office, so several employees and managers got to watch this fit of pique live.

11. The Brita filter

I worked in a small office (less than 10 people) and we had a very small kitchenette – mini-fridge, coffee maker, microwave, sink, and a cupboard for storing mugs. In the mini-fridge we had a Brita pitcher for drinking water. People were pretty good about refilling it throughout the day, so it was rarely empty.

A new hire thought this was absolutely barbaric. He regularly ranted about how unhygienic Brita filters are, how they stop working if the filter ever gets dry, and we needed a proper water cooler. He created a petition (again, in an office of less than 10 people!) to get us all on his side. I think this was happening as I had one foot out the door so I went ahead and signed on, but had no idea if the petition was every brought to the person who could actually make that decision. But right after my last day they moved to a slightly larger office. I went back to return some equipment and the first thing this (now former) co-worker showed me was the new water cooler.

12. The last stand

My mother works in academia and she has Seen Things. Some 10 years ago they relocated one of the departments to a new building. To be clear, this new building was very similar in size and layout to the old one, and just around the corner. Well, one random admin decided that this WOULD NOT DO and she WOULD NOT LEAVE the old building.

On the day the movers were supposed to take all the department stuff to the new building, she barricaded herself into the office and refused to let them in. They moved everyone else’s stuff into the new building, except for this lady’s stuff. I guess everyone expected her to give up once she saw the rest of the building was literally deserted? She did not.

She started to come into the old building, go into her old office and lock herself in (she had all the keys). Everyone else was working in the new building, and the old building was just deserted aside from this one rogue admin. I asked my mother why they couldn’t just force her to give up the old office. She said the university had already fired her once for some other egregious behaviour, but rogue admin had sued and won and been reinstated with backpay. So now she was basically untouchable.

I think they got her to take early retirement eventually. But I have to consider the possibility that, 10 years later, she’s still going into that deserted building every day to lock herself into her office to do who knows what kind of work for the entire day…

13. The phone directory

Many years ago, the administrative assistant made up the yearly phone directory. She had been doing this for years, with few changes in staff in my department. The directory was set up by department and then alphabetically by last name within that department. This particular year, my department got a new member with a “B” last name. The directories were printed and distributed. One person, who had been at the top of the list because their last name started with a “C” lost their damn mind. Apparently, they had been under the impression that the list was in order of seniority/importance (which still wouldn’t have put them at the top of the list but whatever) and had never noticed the alphabetical nature of the list. Someone suggested maybe the list should be in numerical order by extension. That was no good because that would put this person even further down the list! So, directories were reprinted with every other department in alphabetical order but our department had this person at the top and then alphabetical. Also, we had to rearrange our phone extensions so this person had the first one, numerically. This person retired 3 months later.

14. The movie poll

My boss sent out a poll in Teams about Movies You Liked. We could vote for other peoples’ entries and/or add our own.

People campaigned for their choices like it was an election for the sanitation commissioner.
People made judgments about the movies that had the most votes and the ones that didn’t have any. Votes were changed willy-nilly. Work was put aside as people sat in their chairs debating what made their movie better than the others’. Some conversations fell just short of a screaming match.

After the three-day period, the vote closed and … that’s it. There was no point to the poll. My boss was “just interested” in what people watched. :/

15. The empty coffee pot

Years ago, an employee came to work, noticed an issue (I’m intentionally being vague here because the reason is even better after you know all the reactions) started yelling, dramatically cleaned off her desk (think sweeping all the items off of it into a box) and declared she couldn’t work in these conditions any longer.

Her issue?

The coffee pot was empty … and currently in the process of making new coffee … so her wait was minutes at best.

To this day I refuse to believe that was her only reason for quitting. But we never saw her again and she did quit to HR, but they never shared if she had another reason.

16. The parking garage

I work in higher ed which is the land of Strangely Dramatic Responses. One of my favorites happened many years ago when the parking company decided, after many years, that they would no longer reserve an entire floor of the parkade for us as not enough people had purchased parking passes to justify it. Mind you we could still purchase passes and could still park in the parkade. One faculty member sent an all-staff email complaining bitterly about this decision and while I wish I could remember it in its entirety, it did contain the phrase “this is the greatest threat to education that we have ever faced” (because maybe it would take you an extra minute to find a spot when you got to work).

17. The bigger monitor

One night after work, my coworker swapped her computer monitor for another coworker’s monitor that was much, much bigger (this second coworker had a graphics-centric job that required a larger monitor, whereas the “thief” did not). When confronted, this coworker denied taking it at first, but as it was VERY obvious that she had taken it she eventually said she had permission from our boss to make the swap. Our boss insisted this was not the case, and said coworker was ordered repeatedly to give back the stolen monitor. And she just refused.

HR got involved and still she wouldn’t budge. The HR process was moving slowly (weeks at this point), so one night a couple people stayed late and just swapped the monitors back (my coworker locked her door each evening so getting in to do this was not easy or else I suspect this would have been done earlier).

When coworker came in and saw what had happened she was furious. Screaming. Crying. Bad mouthing all of us to anyone who would listen. Ultimately she quit and spread tales of her “unfair mistreatment” throughout our shared professional circles. It’s been years since this happened and sometimes I still encounter people who know her (wildly inaccurate) side of the story and she’s managed to convince people that we’re monsters.