Nothing is worse than waking up and having to spend eight or more hours at a job you hate. And yet, as Britney tells us, if you want to get through life, you're probably gonna need to work, bish. We've all had to deal with nightmare bosses, horrible customers, and weird co-workers, but these stories take the cake when it comes to the phrase, "I don't get paid enough to deal with this".
1. Sir, I’m Afraid You Are Mistaken!
I used to waitress at our local Red Lobster. One night, someone once grabbed the "manager" to tell him that his shrimp was cold and that he wanted a free pint as compensation. He even went as far as to exclaim that he could get better fish by fishing. This "manager" was actually just my dad, who was there to pick me up from work, but apparently looked like an authority figure since he had a tie on.
My dad replied, "That's cocktail shrimp, you moron!" I hated that job, but that one moment almost made it all worth it.
2. Reasonable
I worked at Blockbuster in college for chump change. A bunch of dudes once shoplifted the heck out of us. My coworker and I noticed and confronted them about it, and they ran out the door. When the district manager asked why I didn't put myself between them and the door to protect the merchandise, I told him that for minimum wage, I'm not putting myself in danger to keep a giant corporation from losing some Twizzlers and copies of Friday and Armageddon.
3. Blood-Boiling
I used to run the financials and general management for an entire company at just $14 an hour. One day, I had a meeting with the owner, and I told him that I needed both a raise and to hire an assistant. His reply was nothing short of offensive. He told me I wasn’t "business-minded" and should be a stay at home mom. I quit the next day. Jerk.
4. See You, Motel 8-er
At my first job out of college, I was informed that it might involve some "light travel," which was fine. However, about two weeks into working there, this turned out to mean they wanted me to spend 6+ months in a cheap motel room with my slob of a boss in Arkansas. Now, I'm a young guy and can handle most types, but I couldn't handle have this.
I had to see my boss in nothing but his tighty-whities as he brings back trashy chicks from the latest dive bar. Worst of all was when he made me leave the hotel while he screwed them.
5. First Mistake Kit
I had been running the restaurant for weekend nights for three years. These were not easy shifts. They were from 5 PM–3 AM and the restaurant was always packed with inebriated college kids. Still, I was a night owl, and it was my pleasure. Or it was, until I took a few days off and went to a hot spring with my wife. On our way back, I noticed that my leg hurt.
Within 2 hours, I was in the hospital for a severe infection. It needed three antibiotics at once to treat. I called in sick three days in advance. My AGM told me to heal up and that they would cover my shift. They did not. For my "first infraction" they gave me a final warning. I was one step from being fired, after all my years of hard work. I put in my notice the next day.
6. When The CPU Room Became The ICUP Room
I’m a public librarian. I was helping a woman in the computer room, and I’d turned to tell someone watching an online video that he needed to keep his exclamations down. Just then, the woman I was helping leaped aside because the man I was shushing peed himself. It ran onto the jacket he had tied around his waist, down the chair, and onto the ground.
It turned out he’d snuck a bottle into the library and was now totally blackout. I told him he had to leave. He put the pee-covered jacket on and stumbled out. As I returned to the room with gloves and cleaning supplies, another patron decided that this would be a good time to complain to me about some kids who were making noise.
I took a deep breath and said to myself, "This is a good time for us all to appeal to our higher selves and do our best in the moment. Please just adapt for a minute". Then I thought about the student loans I took out for my master’s degree as I scrubbed up the urine.
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7. The New McManager
We had a younger manager at McDonald’s for my first 10 months. Then they decided to bring in a second manager from another store. The first week he was fine. Until one day, when one of the girls who usually worked drive-thru was put on the grill for no reason. She got grease on her shirt, and he told her that she looked like a pig.
Then he said to clean up or go home. She left crying. The next day another underage kid asked to just get a drink of water after a 3-hour non-stop rush. The kid looked like he was about to pass out. The manager told him no, so he said he'd drink from the sink in the back. He told him if he did that, he’d send him home.
I lost it when I heard that. I went off at him and then left. I never went back. I heard that he was fired a month later.
8. Too Close For Comfort
I was 19 and working my first job. My awful boss criticized my lipstick, saying that the color was ugly and recommending a bright red lipstick to match with my bright red uniform shirt. He also didn’t like my choice of all black shoes. And he didn’t like the way I mopped the floor. He would take the mop from me and show how to "properly" do it.
His condescension was insane. But here's when he officially went too far. One day he creepily told one of my coworkers that she couldn’t wear a sports bra under her uniform because it "flattens" certain things. Gross.
9. A Little Harsh
I worked as a waitress at a fancy bed-and-breakfast when I was 20. We hosted a date-night special and it was completely packed with couples. There was an older married couple that was in my section and the husband was super nice. He asked how my night was and even postponed his order so that I could clear a nearby table.
His wife had a permanently angry face and glared at everything I did. After their meals were cleared, it was time for dessert and champagne, as per the date night feature. She orders a brand that technically isn't champagne, it's a sparkling white vintage. I didn't want them to feel ripped off so I told her: "That's a great choice but just so you are aware, this is sparkling and not champagne. Is that okay?'
She looked at me for an uncomfortable amount of time. Her husband is looking at her with an expression of mild concern. Well, her brain must have been going into overdrive trying to think of something insulting, because after a long silence she says the meanest thing: "Sweetheart, I see how hard you're working. Have you considered getting some work done? You wouldn't have to work so hard if you were a little prettier. Just a thought..".
I could not even process what she said until I got to the kitchen. Her husband's face was what made me cry. I can take an insult but the mix of embarrassment and shame on his face just made me lose it. I comped his dessert and made her drink with mostly apple juice. I hope that $27 glass of 80% cheap apple juice was good.
10. Plummer Bummer
I work as a plumber. One day, the owners of a mobile home called and said they had a stinky yard. I came out to investigate, and sure enough, I could smell it as soon as I pulled up. The mobile home was newly constructed and built only eight months ago. But apparently, while setting it up, someone didn’t tighten the no-hub band for the toilet in the kids' bathroom.
As a result, there was eight months’ worth of flushed sewage all over the ground and under the home, and it had only just started getting noticed outside. I immediately told the homeowner to call the guys that worked on the bathroom to come to fix it. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but I wasn’t crawling under there.
11. Holey Bread
I’d been working at a popular deli chain restaurant for a few years and was working in the back one day when a new trainee came rushing over, absolutely bawling, so I immediately knew something was seriously wrong. I had her stay in the back to calm down and alerted the head manager so we could deal with the situation.
I went to the register and found a petite Korean lady shouting very loudly and demanding the trainee come back and saying she was trying to cheat her out of her money. She also kept shouting what I can only assume were crude Korean insults. The manager looked at her with a "lol nope" expression and took over the line.
I got the pleasure of dealing with Korean Karen. Somehow, I managed to keep a cool head and told her calmly to explain her problem. She was screaming, yelling, and rambling about how upset she was and said the cashier didn’t give her any change and that the bagels she wanted were too expensive. I redid her transaction.
The entire time I was packing up her bagels, she's still angrily waving her arms around in a fit—until she bumped a customer next to her. He very politely, but also very sternly said, "Excuse me!" She decided to take this opportunity and spat on him. While this was going on, the assistant manager had already made a call to the authorities.
An officer came in while I was finishing slicing this monster-lady's bagels and tried to ask her questions very calmly like what was the problem, what’s her name, things like that. When he asked to see ID, she went ballistic. I couldn't believe my eyes. She shoved him and then spat at him! The whole time he had kept his hands to himself. This, clearly, was the breaking point. The officer grabbed her wrists and started to cuff her.
He was ordering her to put her hands behind her back, and out of nowhere, she let out this howling scream and started trying to fight with the guy. His partner came in and saw the commotion. He immediately jumped in. She went so nuts that he had to tackle her onto the ground. They took her out to their car in cuffs and came back inside to pick up her personal items that were dropped in the fray and asked me if anything else was hers, and I gladly handed them her change and bagels.
12. Nepotism Will Get You Everywhere
Worked with the worst guy at a marketing company. Dude was completely disgusting. He had been let go a few years prior to when I started because a co-worker caught him watching adult stuff on his laptop while at work, and he had been re-hired about a year after I started. This guy ate gefilte fish for lunch at least three days a week.
Would get sushi and drink the remaining soy sauce. Pants to the floor when he was at the urinal. Just an all-around slob. The last straw was when he pulled out his phone and thought his headphones were plugged in. Lo and behold, he was blasting some nasty adult audio in an office full of people. My friend had to tell him to turn it off.
Nothing ever came of it, even though we filed tons of complaints. When I found out why, I saw red. Turns out this loser was the owner's son. He was never getting fired. I started looking for a new job then and there.
13. Time To Leave, Dude
I realized my job didn’t pay me enough when I went to sleep under my desk at work at 5 AM because I needed to be back at my desk for an 8 AM call. I had promised myself a long time ago that I would never sleep under my desk; I would either go home or just work straight through, but I wouldn't do that. I only lived a 12-minute walk home, but that night I realized that getting those extra 24 minutes of sleep was worth not going home. I was so sad about it.
I am a corporate lawyer, and we had been working literally around the clock for days on a deal that was going sideways. This happened on a Wednesday night to a Thursday morning. Until that point, I had been there until 3 AM on Sunday night, 5 AM on Monday night, and 6 AM on Tuesday night. Despite this, I was still back in the office by 9 AM every day. That's when I knew I needed to quit, but I'm still here a year and change later. Oops.
14. I Wash My Hands of You
I worked in a bookstore. We had a café, and the cafe manager was my worst co-worker ever. She was nice and all but sooooo unhygienic. We'd had to discuss more than once not using the dish sink in the café’s backroom to bathe (???) herself in. She always smelled slightly sour, just like all the freaking time. Oh, and she wasn’t homeless.
Well, one day while covering the cafe manager’s break, an employee discovered a pair of freshly stained underwear that she'd washed in the dish sink hanging off the counter in the café’s back room. She finally got fired for that one.
15. Can’t Do This Anymore
I’m currently trying to leave my job. If I worked any amount under 40 hours, my boss would dock my pay. If I worked over 40, I’d get my salary pay. I worked until Tuesday and then discovered that I’d been around a COVID positive person and developed symptoms. Work sent me home. I got a test. Work kept me home until I got the results: negative.
My paycheck showed up with hundreds of dollars less than normal. Of course, my boss didn’t bother to tell me it would be like that. Luckily, I went to HR who told her she couldn’t do that. She later called to apologize, saying she "didn’t know she had to pay me". This, amongst many other things, is why I’m trying to get out of there.
16. Don’t You Dare Be Good at Your Job
My first job out of college, I worked in an HR department. We hired a new VP of HR, so, technically, my boss's new boss. Before Day 1, I scheduled a flight of hers and forwarded her all the information along with a friendly email saying that I was very excited that she was starting at our company. I told her to let me know if she needed anything.
Very typical email for me to send, didn't matter your role at the company. Day 1, she walks in and asks for me specifically. I stood up and smiled and went to shake her hand warmly, because who asks for the lowest on the totem pole? She refused to shake my hand and showed me an email. The email I sent her with her flight information.
She asked what was wrong with it. I was alarmed and read through it again, then had to sheepishly admit I wasn't sure, but I'd love to know for next time. What she said next made my blood run cold. She told me, "You come across as SUCH a brown noser! I came to talk to you first so you could rub your face in my rear-end now and we could get it over with". Ummm.
I told her that's how I talk to everyone at the company, I see us all as a team and that's how I work. She guffawed and handed me a piece of paper she had shoved in her pocket. "Here, good to know you are for real! You can get started, then". My list of tasks included getting her computer set up (already done), her email up and running (already done), her new passwords (already done), and a few other things for comfort around her office, which I could complete in about five minutes.
I did so and returned promptly. She slapped the piece of paper out of my hand and called me a liar. I told her making sure that she was comfortable on her first day was part of my job and I accomplish many of the tasks before new employees arrive. She asked me to lead another employee into her office, so I went and got that employee and brought them down to the new VP's office.
That employee was promptly fired, no reason given, and the two had never spoken before…and I was asked to lead that employee out. It was at that moment I decided to start looking for new roles. The new VP basically made me her gofer for the next three months while I looked. I was denied any vacation requests, sick leave, breaks, whereas my peers in my department could do whatever, whenever.
About one month into her tenure, she pulled all of us into a room and made sure we were sitting down. She then told us that a department member of ours had taken their own life over the weekend. We were shocked and saddened and obviously emotional. VP then did two things: she didn’t let us go home to mourn in peace and we weren’t allowed to tell anyone that this employee had passed, only that they were no longer at the company.
I could only apologize when people asked, say I was not allowed to talk about it, and quietly suggest that they Google her and that they could come to me with any concerns. Her obituary was public and one of the first things you would see on a cursory Google search. VP went to the funeral on the company’s behalf and forbade us from going. We ended up putting a picture of her up and paying our respects that way in a corner of the office.
I finally got an offer and went to resign with my two weeks' notice. I told my direct boss first, who congratulated me, and he also said he'd tell the VP for me since he was so worried about her reaction. The new VP came in screaming about how working for her was the opportunity of a lifetime, how could I pass that up, I am an idiot, that's why nobody can be trusted. I was so glad to get out of there.
17. Unprompted Answer
I’ll never forget this nasty woman in NYC. Her party was so loud and obnoxious that other guests keep giving them dirty looks. I remember her friends trying to shush her and her laughing "What do I care? I'm rich!" Just a vile, vile woman. I was taking her order and she said something like "..makes my head feel like it's in a sieve" then glared at me and said: "Before you even ask, a sieve is a device used to drain fluids".
Please! That was the day I learned money can't buy class.
18. The Poop Bandit
In a building with three floors, I had this one awful co-worker who would use alternate men's rooms each day, never flushing the toilet when he was done. The guy thought it was hilarious to leave it there for all to see—including co-workers on other floors. Even when he was called out on it, the guy persisted in leaving his #2 in plain view and somehow felt "cocky" about it.
19. Fizzed Out
In high school, I worked at the concession stand at a movie theater. This guy ordered a popcorn and large diet Pepsi. He came back to the counter 10 minutes later complaining that his soda was carbonated. I explained to him that all of our sodas were carbonated, and he asked me if we had a microwave, which we did have.
It turns out that he wanted me to go into the back and microwave his soda. He condescendingly instructed me about how he wanted it warm, but not too warm. I went to the back and had to pour the soda into two different cups because the original wouldn't fit into the microwave. When I brought it out to him, he made me go back and adjust its temperature--twice. I made about eight bucks an hour.
20. The Dating Game
I worked as a barista for a while, and I had this one customer who came in a few times a week. He was awkward, not in a cute way, but I didn't think much of it. He'd try to start a conversation and I'd be polite but I wouldn't necessarily encourage him. He mentioned where he lived, and I noted that my chain had a coffee shop in his town, but he drove a couple of towns over to mine, which I thought was odd.
One day I'm at work and he orders a coffee. As I'm making it, he starts talking about how cool and pretty I am and asks if we could go out sometime. I was pretty annoyed and I politely declined, saying I had a boyfriend—which I did at the time—and he said "He's lucky, I wish I had a girl like you," which creeped me out.
That was on a Friday. I come in for my shift on Monday and my blood runs cold. He's behind the counter in a uniform. Excitedly tells me he got a job here. I didn't really know what to do. Not only did he continue to hit on me and constantly try to get my social media from me, he was absolutely incompetent, and a health hazard.
He came in with a disgusting rash on his arm once and he would scratch it and then handle people's food. I told the manager if she didn't fire him I'd quit—I was the longest working employee there by far, so I figured she'd fire him. She didn't, so I left.
21. What The Heck!?
On my first day working at the health department, I was left at the reception desk alone while literally everyone else in the office went out to a farewell lunch for the person I was replacing. As I was on a 90-day probation, I wasn’t yet licensed and badged, and my pay was $7.96 an hour. That’s when some redneck came in and dropped a leaking garbage bag on my desk. What I learned next was shocking.
The bag contained a newly severed javelina's head. The javelina had bitten his buddy, and it needed to be tested for rabies ASAP. I had no freaking clue what to do with it. He couldn’t wait for my coworkers to return, so he left a number and split. As it turned out, we don’t do that sort of thing at the health department. The guy refused to come back for the head.
22. The Office Predator
I did not get paid enough to deal with this one co-worker. He took from people, would "let himself in uninvited" to homes, groom and prey on teens (13-17), harassed a girl for years and pulled a blade out on her when she rejected him, and more. He didn't get the boot until years later because "he was such a good worker". The guy is in his mid- to late-30s and still does this stuff working not far from a middle school and his former workplace.
When any of the above happened, the higher-ups would say, "He never acted like that around me" and would ignore the situation.
23. Bottle Service
I was opening a bottle for this table when I started getting chest pains. I was scared because the last time that happened I had a seizure. The pain hit so quickly that I almost dropped the bottle, so I put the bottle down on the table. One lady said: "Honey are you okay?" because it was clear something was wrong. The man who ordered the bottle said "We aren't paying $50 a person for your life to end here".
After a couple of seconds—which felt like it lasted forever—the pain gradually went away and I apologized and explained what happened to me the last time. Then the man replied with the cruelest words: "At least you didn't drop the bottle—it costs more than your life". Tears started to well up in my eyes as I poured their drinks. I never went back to that table.
The lady who asked if I was okay came up to me later and apologized for the man and gave me a $100 tip. But still I remember feeling completely worthless at that moment. The bottle cost $300.
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24. Open For Business
I was a manager for a well-known lingerie store located in a failing suburban mall. The store was giant and shaped oddly. There were dressing rooms in hidden corners and a few blind spots. The store was located at the end of the mall next to other stores no one really went to, so there wasn’t much foot traffic. We were also always short-staffed because no one wanted to work over there. All of those factors made us a prime location for thieves and weirdos.
I would have to do laps around the store due to its layout, and I would regularly come across people doing some, shall we say, "raunchy" stuff in this one secluded little dressing room. The dressing room was in a sort of alcove and was the least visible spot in the store, so it was prime real estate for all kinds of shenanigans. The final straw was catching a man at closing time, pleasuring himself into a pile of cotton panties with the dressing room door wide open. I couldn’t take it anymore. I put in my notice the next day.
And what was crazy was that corporate always shrugged or laughed it off when I would call and complain that we needed a security guard. I was 21 at the time, and every woman who worked there was between 19 and 30 years old. It was a safety issue. They’d also blame us for all the merchandise theft, which we could not prevent because there weren’t enough bodies in that gigantic store to stop it.
I was also dating a guy who worked in the same mall, and he told me that they finally closed up that one dressing room not long after I left. He said many folks were angry because apparently, that particular dressing room was a well-known open secret spot for hooking up.
25. How Thoughtful
After taking a few days off work while my father was having a brain tumor removed and I was still checking emails and attending conference calls from the hospital, my boss gave me a new project. On a Thursday afternoon, she gave me a Monday morning deadline for a project that would take 6-8 days to complete. I worked 16 hours a day to get it done. When we met on Monday, she asked how my weekend was. I looked at her and said, "I worked all weekend".
Then she asked if I got to visit my dad in the hospital and then I told her, "No, I didn't get a chance because I worked all weekend". A couple of weeks later, she pulled me into a meeting and said, "I feel like you were resentful because you had to work and I feel like I was really good when your dad was sick, maybe you're just tired. Are you tired?"
I wanted to throttle her.
26. Seeing Is Believing
This happened at Wendy's. I once had a woman come through the drive thru and try to order macaroni and cheese. I politely informed her that we didn’t have that. She insisted we did. I told her we definitely did not. She got angry and yelled that yes, we did. I said to her, "Ma'am, I have been working here for three years. We have never had macaroni and cheese. It’s not something we serve. Would you like to order something else?"
She swore and said, "Yes, you do! I can see it on the menu board! It’s right there right in front of me on the menu!" I told her I wasn’t sure what she was looking at but we definitely didn’t have mac and cheese. I told her that if it really did say mac and cheese on our menu board then that meant someone vandalized it. She disagreed and said that it was definitely part of the menu board, and it’s real and, we did have it, and she wasn’t leaving until she got her mac and cheese. It was almost ten minutes of this back and forth.
All the while, she was holding up the drive-thru line. I finally got the manager to come and deal with it. Even with my manager there, this lady absolutely refused to accept that we did not have mac and cheese. She also refused to order anything else and she wouldn’t move her car until we gave her the mac and cheese that we didn’t have. It was such a mess, but it wasn't over yet. Not by a long shot.
We had a line of cars wrapped around the building now, and everyone was annoyed. It’d been half an hour, and the line had not moved. The manager told her that if she didn’t leave, he'd have to call someone. Then she screamed at him, still going on about how she could clearly see mac and cheese on our menu board right in front of her. I decided enough was enough. I exited the building to go see the board.
I walked along the outside to the drive-thru order screen where this woman's car was. I asked her to please show me on the menu where it said the words "macaroni and cheese" anywhere. She pointed and confidently said, "right there," with all the conviction of someone who’s absolutely sure of themselves and being right. I looked to where she was pointing. I saw it. I sighed heavily as a bit more of me lost some hope for humanity.
I composed myself and told her as politely as possible that, "ma’am, that is a picture of the orange slices that come with the kid’s meal. We do not serve mac and cheese. Please drive away". She was confused. Then she looked at the menu board again. The realization finally dawned on her, and she drove off without another word. I went back inside and screamed in the walk-in freezer for ten minutes.
27. Fresh Air
I once worked at a country club in Texas for four months. I asked a customer, who I should mention was fairly tipsy, if needed anything else besides his next apple martini. Even though I'd dealt with smug business men for ages, his words made my jaw drop: "Some air that lacks the stink of welfare". I’d never heard that one before!
28. Neat Freak
I worked as a valet for about a year at a really classy hotel. We routinely had Mercedes, BMWs, Range Rovers, football players candy colored cars, Porsches... Think of pretty much any kind of high end car and I must have driven one at some point. One time, a guy pulled up in a decent Mercedes, not anything super high dollar. He seemed cool at first, but then he did the rudest thing I have ever seen.
After I gave him the valet claim ticket, he casually went to his back seat and retrieved a newspaper. I was still holding the driver's door open for me and he started disassembling the newspaper. Once he had 4-5 single sheets of newspaper, he began setting the newspaper on his driver's seat, as if to protect it from my apparently dirty self. He didn't even have to say anything, and it was still the rudest insult I had ever received
29. Home Is Where The Manager Isn’t
My manager had never been that great, but she completely lost it as soon as our company shifted to mostly work from home. She didn’t want to pay us overtime and had the mindset that working from home would always be less productive than in the office. Her entire opinion was based on the fact that because she got a quarter of her own work done when she was at home, the rest of us would too.
Because she was so set on getting back into the office, she volunteered our department as the pilot project to go back in first, even when cases were at an all-time high. Oh, but it gets worse. Everyone goes in, except one person: Her. She's a no show. We couldn't believe it. After that, everyone started looking for other jobs.
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30. Projecting Gossip
I worked at a restaurant and the hostess was convinced I was sleeping with the owner. I was not. She was convinced the money I was using to take a vacation must have come from him and that I was hooking up with him behind his family’s back. She made things really weird and horrible for a couple of days. She told the new hires I was saying nasty things about them and made up really bad rumors about me.
I walked out of a shift after she confronted me in the storage room demanding I admit I was banging this guy. This guy who I never interacted with outside of the occasional table transfer or inventory update was bald, fat, and married, and had hardly said more than a hundred words to me beyond work instructions. After I left, I found out the dark truth. It turned out they were sleeping together and she was crazy. I'm so glad I quit.
31. Personal Efforts Rewarded
I used to work at Comcast and had aspirations to move up into management. I was pretty green to the corporate world, so I thought that helping my supervisor with her job would help move me up. And by help, I mean my supervisor made me do her whole job. I ran her meetings, did scheduling, and went through her paperwork.
I did all this while working on the phone as she sat at her desk playing Candy Crush on her iPad. I did this for months until I was so stressed that I snapped at a customer. Now, I took full responsibility for what I did, but that wasn't good enough for her. Nope, she had to sit me down and humiliate me in front of the upper management.
For an hour and a half, she made me listen to the recording while pausing it every few minutes to say something like, "How could you?" I was in tears at the end, and she used that to show how bad of an employee I was and how good a boss she was for "helping" me learn from my mistake. She then pushed for a Final Notice.
If I went out of line one more time within a year, I'd lose my job. She wasn’t going to fire me. I would have to do that for her. HR was predictably useless as were my friends in management. Now that I had become a pariah, people didn't care about me at all, except for my supervisor who, of course, still expected me to do her job.
My next few days were filled with a lot of crying. What followed was rage: Endless, white hot rage. I didn't quit. I didn't give up. Instead, I went back to school to finish my degree. After a while, I was offered an internship at 20 hours a week, which I took while fighting an uphill battle at Comcast 40 hours a week.
I was also a full-time student. And I let my supervisor know this. "Sorry, boss," I'd say, "I can't do this report for you. I have a final to study for," or, "Want me to stay late? No can do. My internship is working me hard, so I want to spend my night off at home doing nothing". I kept ignoring her whenever possible.
If she emailed me a question relating to my job, I'd respond, but if she sent out a group email about an incentive plan, I’d put it in the trash. At one point, she pulled me into a meeting, which was just me and her where she antagonized me and repeatedly told me, "You don't know me". The whole thing was really cringey and awkward.
This went on for the year that I was on probation. During that time, I always kept my sales numbers just high enough not to get fired, but good enough so it looked like I was still "trying". This affected my commission, but it was so worth it. Before my probation was over, I had the option to switch to another supervisor, which I did.
I upped my effort those last few months, and my sales numbers skyrocketed. I had intentionally done this so my old boss would look bad. The upper management saw how my new supervisor succeeded in one month where my older supervisor failed in nine, and it pleased me to no end that I had played the long game and humiliated her like how she humiliated me.
On the one-year anniversary of my probation, I put in my two weeks’ notice. I let them know in my exit interview what I did with my life, omitting the undercutting part, and that had I had spent the last year becoming a better person just to spite Comcast. But even without spelling it out, that exit interview was one of the most satisfying moments of my life.
32. Mind Games
Back when I was a server, there was a woman with a group of friends at one of my tables who asked for a can of Coke. When I brought their drinks and gave the woman her Coke, she looked at me and said, in that typical rich-girl voice,"Excuse me, honey? I asked for Fanta, not Coke". I apologized, wrote it onto my notepad, and went back to get her a can of Fanta.
I brought the drink to her but again she turned to me and said: "I didn't ask for Fanta, I asked for Cream Soda". By this time, I was getting a bit annoyed, but I went back and got her a Cream Soda anyway. Sure enough, when I returned to her table, she did the same thing again. "I asked for Sprite. Should I call the manager?" Oh, honey. She should have stopped testing me when she had the chance.
So, for the last time, I smiled and I went back to the kitchen and packed cans of Coke, Cream Soda, Fanta, Sprite, Pepsi and Sparberry Soda, into a small plastic box and took it all to her and said: "Here you go, miss, take your pick". She looked offended and almost made a scene. She started lecturing me about how I'm incapable of getting the simplest order right and that she wants to talk to the restaurant's manager.
I told her that I can call him, and that I'll show him all the soda types I wrote on my notepad that she asked for, and we can get his opinion on the matter. She turned and took her Sprite out of the plastic box and said "Just leave it". None of them gave me any issues after that!
33. Ahem!
I was a sous-chef at a fancy country club and it was 10 minutes before we opened for the Easter buffet. Needless to say, it was going to be a very busy day. I was walking through the dining room and checking all the final details when suddenly a little girl of about two years old ran into the room. She had escaped from her mom who was at the front desk.
She comes to a stop about six feet in front of us and looks up with her eyes wide. I must have been quite a sight, I was wearing my tall white hat and white apron down to my toes. Her mom appears in a heartbeat, turns her daughter by the shoulder, and whisks her away saying: "Don't talk to them, that’s the help, dear".
34. Following Up
My insufferable manager followed me after work to my second job because she didn't believe I had one and was just using it as an excuse to get out early. My manager at my second job said, "There's some crazy lady banging on the doors yelling your name". So, I grabbed my uniform from my bag, opened the door, threw it in her face, and told her to shove off.
35. The Runs
When I was 18 and working at a retail store, a baby in his mother's arms made such a massive poop that his diaper couldn’t contain it all. A bunch ended up leaking out onto the floor, and instead of apologizing or helping to clean it up, the mother just ran away. I literally did not get paid enough to deal with that mess.
36. Yikes!
I used to work in a "high-end" tea room, and we had this regular who was absolutely awful. I was on my knees cleaning up a drink that another customer had spilled and the woman needed to get past me. I said "Sorry, I'm almost done!" and she said, in the most condescending way possible, "That's quite alright, I like having people at my feet". It took all my self-control not to trip her.
37. Ridiculously Inappropriate
I worked three different jobs when I was 20. I worked as a bank teller from 8 AM to 4 PM, I worked as a closing shift manager at a coffee shop from 5 PM to 10 PM, then as an overnight janitor from 11 PM to 2 AM. This wasn’t my schedule every day, but it was enough that it equated to about 80 hours a week between the three jobs, and yes, as you can imagine, this quickly led to burnout.
So, at my overnight janitor gig, my "boss" walks over and asks me to come to the office for a review. This was weird; all I did was mop floors on a production line that made train air brakes. But whatever. I go into his office, and he closes the door behind me and pulls out a very vulgar magazine. He then starts asking me about what he’s looking at, and he put his hand on my shoulder.
Given the situation, I was surprisingly calm; I just said I didn’t like that stuff and went back to work. Then it hit me what happened. I called in sick for the rest of the week and picked up my final paycheck while he wasn’t there. It was a hard enough job without being harassed for $8.50 an hour.
38. Bit Of A DIY
Back when I was in fast food, I had someone who wanted me to remove all the sesame seeds from the top of a bun. My manager made me do it.
39. Childish Dad
I was working a catering job for a 4th of July party at an exclusive yacht club. I went about my business and was clearing used plates from tables. After stacking as many plates as humanly possible, I turn and start walking back to the kitchen. Next thing I know I feel something hit me in the back of the head. It was a chicken bone.
A grown man had been watching me the entire time, with his four-year-old son at his side. Apparently, he decided he didn't want to wait the five minutes it would take for someone else to come by and clear his table, so he chucked his garbage at my head. And then he pointed at me and cracked up. I calmly set down my tray and just walked out of the restaurant without saying a word.
40. I Didn’t Order A #2
I worked nights at McDonald's and was at the drive thru. I was taking an order for a bunch of plastered girls when I overheard one of the girls say that she seriously needed to poop. Her friends apparently did not care and told her to go outside. So, she stepped out of the car and knelt down in the bushes next to the car.
The bushes were in plain view of the security camera. Everybody inside the place saw her, and it was a full-blown mess. So, I told her through the service window that everyone could see her. The look of sheer horror the girl made through the security feed made everyone burst in laughter including her friends. Poor kid.
41. Selective Memory
My manager claimed to have called me to change my schedule, but my phone didn't show any missed calls from his number so he was lying. Then the same day, he scheduled me to work a shift that afternoon without confirming that I was free or willing to pick up the extra shift. When I came into my next shift, he asked why I didn't come in for my scheduled shifts showing me my work schedule that he'd printed out.
I told him I hadn't been scheduled for that shift, showed him the screenshot of my original posted schedule from two days after it had been officially posted that showed I hadn't been scheduled for that day. He said it was fine, smiled and nodded, and sent me back to my shift. Next week's schedule comes out, I have no shifts. I ask what's up, and my manager's response makes me LIVID.
He says that since I missed a shift and didn't call in to say I'd be missing, I had to lose two weeks of hours. I again asked why that would be happening if I had come in for my scheduled hours, reminding him we had talked about it, he had said it was fine. He pretended that he didn't remember that conversation. He was absolutely shocked when I quit before the two weeks were over. I got a voice mail three days later asking why I didn't show up to my scheduled shifts that week.
When I called him back asking what about "I got a new job and will not be back" was unclear, he claimed that he had never called me or left a voicemail and I must have just been confused! Yeah, sure, some guy with your voice took your phone, called my number, claimed to be you, and used my name in the voicemail, mentioning my new job and confusion over my new schedule, to benefit who? To accomplish what?
That manager got let go a few weeks later. Found out he had been pulling the same thing with other employees. They erased his name from the front of the building and everything.
42. Barf Buffet
I used to work at Old Country Buffet, and there were kids who would eat until they threw up—like all the time. This one case that’s seared into my mind occurred while I was fixing up the salad bar. Out of nowhere, I heard an horrible parent screaming, "Billy, run!" I then see this 12ish-year-old boy running to the bathroom. Only, he didn’t make it.
An unholy amount of undigested red Jell-O exploded out of him like a volcano all over the caesar salad, the floor next to the cash register, and on about five or six diners waiting in line. It looked like he had literally vomited his guts out in an arc about 10-feet in diameter. I had to sweep up the chunks with a broom until a dishwasher with a mop could take care of the rest.
43. Friendly Fire
My best friend and I worked at the same small company for a horrific boss with early-onset dementia. My friend got a new job and gave notice. In an effort to get her to stay, our boss offered her my job. I don't know why she thought my friend would accept. She knew we were friends; we had even booked time off together so we could go on trips with each other.
Of course, my friend said no, and I handed in my notice the very next week. And I let her know why. There were many reasons, but I told her that was the straw that broke the camel's back. She had no idea until then that I knew what she had done. I watched as she tried to figure out a way to deny it. The look on her face was priceless.
44. We Don’t Provide That Service
This woman, probably in her 50's, came to the front counter. I said my greeting script of, "Welcome to McDonald's, how can I help you?" She straight-faced stared into my soul asked me a question I wish I could forget. Hand to God, she outright asked if I would sleep with her. I was astounded at the confidence and sheer bluntness about her request as well as at how inappropriate it was.
I stammered out something about me being 16 and that's not allowed. She then got all sad and started on about a divorce, and she was having a rough time with it. I managed to chime in with, "How about a tasty burger for some comfort food?" And then she ordered one. I never saw her again after that incident, thankfully.
45. Say Cheese!
A few years back, I worked at a pretty fancy Thai restaurant. Two girls with Hermes bags came in and ordered a bottle of Riesling. I went to their table to check on them and they wanted me to take their picture. As I was about to grab her phone, one of the girls said: "That LV iphone case is worth more than what you make in a month, so be careful". I hated that job.
46. Not Under My Watch
I used to work for Regal Cinemas throughout high school. Having been one of the most reliable employees for a while, a management position opened up and I figured that I would apply for it because it would be more pay. Unfortunately, I didn't get it because I was planning to go to college and wouldn't be there during the semester and only be around for holidays and whatnot. I understood their decision, but the person they hired instead was incompetent.
Fast forward about a month, I'm in charge of our theater cleaning team responsible for 22 theaters on a busy as heck weekend. We pretty much have a set schedule of when theaters are supposed to let out, and thinking that everyone should be responsible enough, I would help out one team do one wing because we had several large kid movies, which always get really dirty, finishing at the same time.
After cleaning all of those kid movies, I find out that one of the male restrooms is flooded. I, being the only one over 18 at the time, don some rubber gloves, plunger, and a mop and go to battle with a poop-filled flooding toilet. Having successfully defeated the poop monster, I am greeted with the woman that was hired as a manager instead of me.
She starts going off on me because the other team I had set up to clean the other half of the theater apparently didn't do anything and couldn't be found. She also yelled at me for not being where I was supposed to be even though I was still doing my job and wrote me up for "being insubordinate" when I defended myself in a reasonable matter.
I later found those kids by the trash compacter stoned as heck and gave them a piece of my mind. I finished my shift, went to the head manager on staff, told him everything, and told him that I was giving him my two weeks' notice. He offered me more pay, telling me how much of a valued employee I was, how much I was respected among the management for putting up with all of the garbage I had to do before and always being available. It turns out that the manager who chewed me out still works there several years later, while I have moved onto an actual career.
47. Jackpot
I had a job bagging groceries at a major supermarket. The manager came over to tell me that I needed to clean up the bathroom. An elderly gentleman fell off the toilet while pooping, and it was a literal pooptastrophe. Apparently, I was the most qualified because I was 16. I was handed a broom and a dustpan. My reward for going above and beyond the call of duty?
Five dollars worth of store coupons. Sometimes dreams really do come true.
48. Awkward
I delivered flowers as a part-time job. One time, the bouquet came in a huge vase, so the lady who received them let me in to put it down on her hallway table. As I walked in, I said "Wow, nice place!" And she said, "If you went to college you could get one like it". I told her I was and she said "Community college doesn't count". A few months later she showed up with her son for orientation day at the fancy school I went to. Her face turned bright red when I said I was a student mentor.
49. Mourning Event Staff
A friend of mine took their own life nearly a decade ago. When I requested the day off for his funeral, my request was denied. I had to go to work after going to the funeral of my 21-year-old friend. I was an event captain, so I had to be the face of the staff for the contact of the event, I tried my hardest to put on a happy face, but I failed. My mood was terrible and the event contact complained to my boss after the event.
The next week I was scheduled as an event server for my whole schedule with less hourly pay, less tip percentage. When I asked my boss, I was told that I had been demoted because of the complaint from the prior event. I quit on the spot, I should not have been forced to work that day, and I should not have been demoted for being in a bad mood after burying one of my closest friends. Screw that place.
50. Something to Say
I was a cashier at Walmart. I was finishing the checkout of one woman’s order when another older woman came up behind her on a motorized cart. The first woman said some kind of pleasant greeting like, "Oh hi, how are you?" to the second woman, which somehow developed within the space of two to three minutes into a full-blown monologue.
She went on about how she was really mistreated by her mother as a child, but her mother was now gone, and she still missed her even though she also severely neglected her, which brought on the plethora of health problems she’d suffered starting in her teens with abnormal puberty and after that, life only got worse from there because of various awful men.
The first woman looked at me like, "Uh oh". She quickly finished paying, picked up her order, invented an excuse, and got the heck out of there, abandoning me to listen to the rest of the second woman’s woes. Turns out she also had children who were all ungrateful and just never wanted to have anything to do with her even during the throes of her worst illnesses and health issues.
Some of them completely cut her off, and it’s all her former husbands’ fault because she was too nice of a person, too loving, too giving, and she loved her children too much and gave them too much. She sat on her motorized cart just continuing her speech about her life of torment looong after I was done preparing her order. At this point, I was standing there waiting for her to pay, but she just wouldn’t shut up.
She couldn’t take a clue. The line was backing up behind her. She still wouldn’t shut up. She was talking about how her husbands made her work when she shouldn’t have had and her kids hurt her. Her son threw her out of his house for just no good reason. She was just trying to help. I wasn’t even saying anything to her. Like, what exactly was I supposed to say? "I’d diagnose you with a latent case of narcissistic personality disorder, intelligence-lacking type, perhaps histrionic personality disorder except I can’t because I’m a Walmart cashier and not a psychiatrist".
But I was a pretty scared kid at that time and felt really awkward and on-the-spot to say anything. I couldn’t even manage a peep of, "Ma’am, could you please pay?" It only ended when the guy behind her loudly said something like, "What’s the hold-up? This isn’t the place, lady," that she finally switched to grumbling. She quietly mumbled about how rude he was while she begrudgingly got her wallet out. The second-hand embarrassment I experienced that day...no pay check could ever be worth it.
51. Big Babies
I worked at a large hotel chain as a setup person. Once, we had a group of people book the entire seventh floor for their weekend-long event. Eventually, we came to find out that these guests had a penchant for dressing up as "babies" and roleplaying as kids. As if that wasn’t weird enough, this little fixation apparently also included peeing and defecating on themselves.
We were not allowed to clean the rooms while the guests were still occupying them, but you can imagine the stains and the odor that was left on the carpet once they’d all checked out. It was so bad that a professional cleaning company had to come in to decontaminate and clean all of the rooms on that floor.
I couldn’t believe a group of adults did this; it was disgusting, and the fact that there were so many of them surprised me. I definitely thought getting paid minimum wage wasn’t enough to deal with that mess in any way. Now, those guys are forever known as "the diaper people" to me.
52. All This For What
I had the pleasure of dealing with a boss who was both a micromanager and a complete idiot. We tried so hard to preempt all the ways he'd screw up the budget. To my surprise, we managed to go from the least productive team to the most productive. But when review time came, my raise was so tiny that our simultaneous change in health insurance benefits meant I actually got lower weekly paychecks for me. That was my last straw. I left.
53. Money Hungry
I was working as general manager in a struggling restaurant—struggling despite excellent business because the owners would do stupid stuff like take trips to Italy to source the "perfect" panini press. They also wouldn't staff properly, I was the only FOH staff open to close, six days a week, on top of ordering, inventory, other managerial duties. I was wildly overworked, but I sucked it up because the base pay was good, plus tips.
However, to fund their lavish "business" trips, costs had to be cut at the store. They decided to do this by bumping me down to minimum wage for tipped employees—effectively cutting my salary to 1/10 of its previous level. They were also too chicken to tell me until I got my new teeny paycheck and questioned the mistake. Their response was to play dumb and said, "Oh yeah haha, forgot to mention that blah blah cost-cutting blah valued team member please work with us through this difficult time". I had worked for two weeks at this new lower rate without my knowledge. Pretty sure that's against the law, but hey, a lot of bad things go on in the restaurant industry. That's not when I rage quit, though...
A couple of hours later, I'm fuming and have decided I can't work for the lower rate just waiting for the chance to give my notice. They called in a delivery guy who was fired a few weeks before and start talking about hiring him to do our Facebook posts and handing out flyers around town. Whatever. Then they offer him close to my old salary as "Promotions Manager". What!? I was running the place for $2.13 an hour and you're offering this dude almost $20 an hour to walk up and down the street saying "Eat at (Name)?" And yet, it gets worse.
They bring up our negative Yelp reviews and the flyer guy suggests asking friends to post positive ones. Then jerk boss starts laughing and says, "Hurdur better not ask her (me) to post one, it'll be boohoo don't eat there, I can't pay my rent this month because they cut my pay without telling wahhhh". I wasn't supposed to hear it I think, but I was five feet away, of course, I did. I RAGED at them, quit, and wished them good luck keeping the place open without me.
They quickly realized I was right, neither of them knew how to do more than pick up the takings once a week, and begged me not to quit. They were so desperate that they allowed me to tell them exactly what giant idiots they were for the half-hour my rage burned and just listened nodding and apologizing. Once I had cursed myself back into calmness, I walked out 30 minutes before dinner rush leaving them with an unstaffed floor and no clue how to even open the register. The store closed down about 18 months later, surprised it made it that long.
54. Excuse Me!
Once I had a job as a cocktail waitress at a bar in Hollywood. It was very "A-List". We served movie stars and celebrities there all the time. It was a very busy Thursday night and I was running drinks back and forth from the bar to the tables. One of my tables had about five glammed up women that looked like they were on a girls' night out.
They were probably in their late 20s and they obviously had money, I could tell by the purses, shoes, and snotty attitudes. I put their order in for their second round of drinks and I'm rushing by their table holding a tray full of drinks including martinis going to another table. The one girl decides she wants to change her drink order so as I pass by her, she turns and grabs the back of my dress to stop me so she can change her order.
Of course my tray tips over when I'm jerked back and the drinks crash all over me and onto the floor. I turn and give her a withering look but she barely makes eye contact and says: "Instead of a cosmo I want a grey goose on ice" and turns back to her friends as if nothing happened. I was very tempted to spill some drinks on them next!
55. Not Worth The Risk
I worked at a retail store. Occasionally, weirdos would come in looking to swipe things, and the worst we could do legally was to ask them to leave. Unfortunately, my boss insisted that we get physical with them, to which I obviously told her, "Heck no". I watched her chase a thief out of the store one day, and she screamed at me, "TACKLE HIM," since I was standing by the door. I was like, "Uh, no".
56. Tight Schedule
I was 20 and engaged. My work as a book store manager was not letting me have any time off. I missed my fiancée's prom and other important events. I asked to have part of Christmas off, and I got denied. Then I was told because I didn't take vacation that year, I'd just lose it next year. The final straw came when my boss made a surprise audit of my store on a Saturday evening after I had left to go home.
He did not like my calendar display—and his reaction was truly disturbing. He came to my house to yell at me. He didn't just knock on the door and ask, he came into my house, past my roommates, and into my bedroom where I was in bed, reading. He then proceeded to berate me nonstop for five minutes about my display while I sat in bed. I did not get paid enough to deal with that jerk.
57. No Class
My ex-husband worked as an artist for really rich people. He had a client who paid him in cash, but good god, the way he paid him was beyond awful. He'd scrunch up the bills and throw them at my ex one-by-one as he spoke disparagingly to him. The guy's home won some awards so clearly my husband did a really good job with his work. But this guy still treated him with so much disrespect.
I can't even imagine what is going on inside that guy's head.
58. Clean Up Your Act
I used to clean for a gym. One night, a bunch of patrons utterly destroyed the locker room and showers. There was literal poop smeared on the walls of the showers and messes everywhere. It was like an awful poop explosion blew throughout the place.
When we saw what we had to deal with, we nearly screamed. But we had a job to do, so we immediately grabbed every free person we could to help us deal with the mess. With seven people, it took us three hours to get that locker room clean again. It smelled so strongly of Comet that two people almost passed out. All the while, the manager on duty was strolling around eating his ice cream and using his phone.
The whole crew worked crazy hard to finish as efficiently and thoroughly as we could. By the time we finished, it looked almost perfect as if whoever unleashed their bowels on our facilities had never set foot in the room. The lot of us were very satisfied even though it was an extremely hard night. When we finally finished, we all gathered at the front desk for the closing shift sign-out.
The manager previously mentioned called me and my partner over and began tearing into us saying that the locker room looked like an absolute disaster. He said that we were only getting out now was because it was two and a half hours past when we were supposed to be finished. Then he stood there insulting us for ten minutes holding up everyone from leaving for the night.
As soon as I got home, I typed up a resignation letter effective immediately. The next day, my actual manager called me and gave me attitude for giving one day's notice. I told him what had happened and ended the conversation there. Never went back.
59. Anchors Away
This story happened while I was working on a yacht in South America. A lady had helicoptered in a bunch of stuff for a party, and I guess her helicopter violated someone's air space. The coast guard followed the helicopter to the yacht and boarded the vessel looking to arrest someone. She tossed her checkbook at them and as she walked away she said: "Fill it out, then go pass and be forgotten".
60. So Sick Of You
My evil boss Jerry wouldn't let me go to the emergency room after the heavy vaginal bleeding I had been experiencing suddenly got way worse. I went over his head and got permission. I called my mom and told her to meet me in the ER. The ER nurse said he'd never seen so much blood. I was admitted for badly needed blood transfusions.
My mom called Jerry who then told her that it's just stress and I had to get back to work. By then, I couldn't even lift my own head up, but sure, I can take a bus across town and go back to work. I ended up needing another hospital stay later. They found a large growth. Jerry kept insisting that it couldn't be cancer.
He said that if it was cancer then I would be exhausted and losing weight. I had lost eight pounds in one week and ran to bed the minute I was home. I was still recovering from the procedure when Jerry called me to let me know I was fired for taking too much time off. Then, five days later, I was diagnosed with cancer.
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61. Toe-tally Gross
I worked as a lifeguard when I was in high school. One day, I witnessed an incident that still haunts me to this day. A little girl got her toe stuck in the crevice of our water slide, and it basically ripped off from the knuckle down. I got the task of climbing into the slide to find the dang toe so we could send it to the hospital. That was definitely not in the job description.
62. Keep Your Hands to Yourself
The worst insult I ever received wasn’t in words. I used to work in an expensive seafood place. I had a long ponytail and an older gentleman decided that instead of getting my attention by talking to me like a human being, it would be easier for him to pull on my hair like a five-year-old child. As he smugly ordered another drink, I just smiled and opened my eyes very wide, practically twitching from trying to keep calm.
63. Pics or It Didn’t Happen
Had a serial pooper co-worker I had to deal with for a good two years. He always took a dump midday and would always take a picture of his masterpiece. He would find creative ways to show us his art. No pay check could ever be enough to deal with him.
64. We All Scream for Ice Cream
I was working as an ice cream vendor at an amusement park. It was the kind of ice cream that comes in tiny little flash-frozen pellets. One time I was selling my tiny overpriced cups of frozen ice cream balls and had a line of a half dozen people. A manager came over and said he saw someone walk by with a cup that hadn't been leveled off. I acknowledge his comment and then continue preparing the ice cream cup for the next customer.
After filling the cup, I use the scoop to scrape across the top of the cup and level off the excess pellets because God forbid people almost get their money's worth. The manager said I didn't level it off well enough and snatched it from my hand, dumped it back into the bin, and made me do it again while standing over me. The customer and I were both now silent and uncomfortable. I filled the cup and leveled it off again the same way because that's the only way to do it. This time he apparently approved and said, "That's how you should have been doing it the whole time. It isn't hard!" Then he stormed away.
Well, the previous day I had worked my entire shift without a break because the manager forgot to send relief to cover my stall while I took lunch, so I was already annoyed at the company. But being yelled at and belittled in front of customers was over the line in my book. So, I hand the customer back his money and then similarly handed out free ice cream to the other people in line.
Then I simply left. I didn't lock the ice cream freezer or empty/power down the register, I didn't let anyone know I was leaving, I didn't stop to turn in my nametag or polo shirt, I just left. And I've never regretted that for a second.
65. Prepare According To Me
I had a boss who refused to let me take an "unplanned vacation" to see my very sick grandma. I quit on the spot. It was strange because she was usually really cool and laid back. I asked for the weekend off to visit my ailing grandmother, and she snapped and lectured me about how I needed to "plan my vacations" better.
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66. In Bed With the Enemy
Oh my god. Back at my old office job, I had to deal with this insane 24-year-old co-workers. At first, she seemed nice until she took the liberty of informing me that she had previously been detained in Korea—for a truly insane reason. She literally tried to end someone. Apparently, she went at a woman with the end of her stiletto heel. Obviously, I tried to be extremely nice to her even though she was an incompetent fool because I didn't want a repeat of her incident to happen to me.
She began dating our boss (who was well into his 50s) and, unsolicited, shared vulgar details of their bedroom life with me. All the time. She couldn't properly work our computer system, and whenever she'd fill out paperwork, she'd mess it up...and everyone else somehow got blamed for her errors. Thankfully, after she and my boss broke up, she was fired.
67. Nightmare Fuel
I have a mildly irrational fear of spiders. I was asked to help clean out an old storage building. It was covered in dust and had a ton of these giant, black spiders. It was a big enough space that I felt fine…that is, I felt fine until my supervisor handed me a leaf blower and asked me to go through a back hallway with it.
I opened the door to the hallway, and it was cramped—just tall enough to be a little over my height and just wide enough for me to walk through it. It was also pitch black until I held up my phone flashlight. What I saw next was horrifying. The hallway was a large mess of tangled webs filled to the absolute brim with thousands of giant black spiders.
I straight up refused to walk down that thing, especially with a leaf blower. Like, no thanks, I don’t want to create a spider tornado. My supervisor was irritated that I refused to do this, but I would rather be fired than walk through the arachnid nightmare-hallway for 10 dollars an hour.
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68. Newbie
I’m a server now, but I started off as a server assistant and food-runner at a real ritzy steakhouse. I was super nervous when I first started and one time I asked to clear a guy's plate. His plate was empty so clearly, he was done. I said, "May I clear your plate, sir?" The guy looks up at me and says, "You got any other bright ideas?"
I took his plate and smiled. Then I went to the first aid kit in the back for my burn wounds.
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69. What’s Your Problem?
I work at a museum. The board president basically cussed me out on the phone before a big seasonal event, saying that she heard from other people that I was not giving 100% dedication to my job and that I needed to get my game up or face some serious consequences. Everyone was stressed due to the event, and I was upset.
I emailed her after that conversation because it had come completely out of left field. I had never had anyone complain about how I did my job – tourists, the executive director, or the president and the rest of the executive board. No one had complained before. So, I asked her to tell me who it was that had a problem.
Her response shocked me. Apparently, no one had said anything. She hadn't "heard" from anyone. She just listed a bunch of her own grievances about what I was doing, which were basically all trivial. I told her that she could just tell me that she was unhappy with things as they happened especially since I was never told not to do these things.
I lost a lot of respect for her that day, but I was still employed. So, I counted my blessings. Also, I found out that the executive director and the president were paying me $1.25 less than they originally agreed. When I first got the job two years prior, they gave me a job description that had the original pay on it.
Naively, I didn't make a copy. When I’d started, my paycheck was much less than I thought it would be, and I was given another job description with the lower pay on it. I didn't make a fuss because I was hard up for money, and I needed the job. Plus, the museum was kind of doing something shady. I also had no backbone.
My boss and the entire executive board stepped down from their positions, and I found my original job description with the original pay. I'm now getting paid what I was supposed to plus back pay. Working here used to be a nightmare. But the new executive board is pretty nice.
70. College Dropout
I worked for a small college. The president's secretary thought that most things were above her paygrade. At one of the busiest times of the year for my office, she decided I should put in 80+ hours to clean her computer data and get something she needed done. After getting it finished, she then decided that she wanted the whole thing changed. It was at that moment that I broke down.
I went to the doctor in the midst of a full-blown panic attack and was given a note for two weeks off work, which meant that my coworkers either had to use what I already did or they could redo it all again themselves. I came back to work and resigned.
71. Not A Boss Move
I had a boss who nobody liked. He was the one-upper. Everything he had anything to do with was better than everyone else’s. His kids, his wife, his dog, his car...We've all dealt with them. He would also tell these outlandish lies and stories all the time, even if he wasn't trying to one-up you! He didn't think twice about throwing people under the bus when it came to problems in the office, either.
He was pretty much universally unliked and unrespected. Well, one night he started acting a little squirrelly at work. Kind of vacant, not much to say. The next day, the authorities show up looking for him, but he was out to lunch. They tell us if he shows back up to call them, but he never made it back.
The next morning, he comes back to work, but the officers were waiting for him. He sees them from the parking lot, takes off running back to his car and drives off. The men leave, but call back a few hours later and give us a dire warning. They tell us if he shows up, he's probably armed and we should give him a WIDE berth by leaving the building.
But, the dude never showed...Three days later, I see him on the news. In a mugshot. He had burned his wife's business down, then he offed her. Waited outside their house, and when she walked out? Point blank shot, two to the head, five to the chest. Apparently she was about to divorce him and had kicked him out a few days previous.
It doesn't get much weirder than seeing your boss on the nightly news like that.
72. I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me
I worked at an office supply store, and one day I saw that one of my co-workers had a picture of me. In the picture, I was standing at the register, so it was taken at work. I asked why he had it, and he just tried laughing it off like it was funny. Later on, he tells me he's been putting his own memory card in the store display cameras and taking pictures of me.
But it gets worse. Then he goes on to inform me he has more pictures of me saved on his computer at home. He was such a creep.
73. Time For A Coffee Break
I had a tough time finding my first job out of university. My friend ended up getting me a gig with a promo company to help me pay my bills. The job sounded simple enough; I was to hand out coffee samples for a specific brand while being stationed at various grocery stores across the state. Later in the job description, I learned that I would also have to bring the sampling booth with me.
I thought it would just be a small, plastic cart, but nope: it was a huge full-on wooden coffee service station. Not to mention that I also had to bring in the coffee machine, sugar, milk, water, and even a garbage can. The first time I did it, I struggled to put it all into a shopping cart and only barely succeeded by using two. The next few times weren’t all that much easier, but I did get better at doing it. That is, until my final day.
I think it was the sixth, or maybe seventh time. It had already been a horrible day; customers had hated the coffee, the store manager had been rude and unaccommodating, and my back was starting to hurt real bad. One guy even hated the coffee so much that he poured the cup into my garbage can, waterfall-style, before flicking the empty cup towards me. It crushed me badly, but I needed the money, so I forged ahead and finished the day off.
After I’d finished, I loaded up my grocery carts again and pushed out of the sliding doors to find complete darkness and pouring rain. It had also been a busy day at this particular store, so I’d parked my car on the other side of the parking lot. I was angry, but I just said to myself, "Screw it, let’s get this done," and I started pushing. Sadly, the horrible day wasn’t over yet.
Three-quarters of the way to my car, the front wheel of one of the carts gave out. I lost my balance, and my supplies came flying out: coffee machine, sugar packets, and all. It was almost comical. I knelt in the downpour, picking up my stuff, only to find the coffee pot heavily cracked. That was enough to push me over the edge.
I crumpled into a heap on the ground and quietly cried. When I had finally regained my composure, I grabbed the rest of the supplies and haphazardly threw them into my car. Drenched and sitting in the driver’s seat, I called my manager and told her I quit and that she could pick up the supplies whenever—that job 100% did not pay enough for all that trouble.
74. Eww
I sold phones at Sprint. I decided my job didn’t pay enough the day that a thick stream of sweat drained out of this girl's cell phone case. I had to explain to her that her phone had water damage and that she shouldn’t work out with her phone in her bra, all while trying to be professional and not gag as I cleaned the mess.
75. Furious Felon
I used to be a counselor at a clinic. I had a client who was going to be locked up for getting rid of his ex-wife's beloved rottweilers because "I couldn’t end her, and it was the best way to hurt her". The day he was supposed to go, he showed up at the clinic, after dosing hours, demanding his dose. He was no longer a patient at the clinic, so, there was no way to do this.
I stood behind the counter and tried to explain the situation to him. He grew more and more irate and then called his lawyer and put me on the phone with him. I wish he hadn’t. His lawyer explained that this dude didn’t show up for lock-up, was now a fugitive, and had pulled a blade on his own sister in her car just outside my clinic. So, the guy was armed. The lawyer warned me not to anger him. He was violent, and I should call for help.
By this point, every other therapist and office worker had already gotten out of Dodge. So, I told the lawyer thanks, hung up the phone, moseyed the heck out of the front office, and called for law enforcement from the break room. The dude hopped over the counter and trashed the clinic, and left. The bosses asked why I didn’t stay and make sure he didn’t trash the place.
I explained they paid me $10.50 an hour and refused my raise. I was the only man in the building and was left alone with a violent armed felon. Screw that.
76. Grandfather's Wisdom
I was cater-waitering a very elite wedding in Manhattan. A young boy asks his grandfather why someone might choose to be a waiter as a job. The old man's reply was horrendous. He calmly explains that some people choose not to get an education beyond high school and so they can only get jobs like these. They were both fully staring at me like I was too dumb to understand them. I was less than five feet away.
77. I Left You a "Present"
There was a fellow sales associate at my work who was a bad employee in general—taking items and cash from us repeatedly, not respecting our boss, not showing up for shifts, etc. All that stuff. If she had worked anywhere else, she would have been fired. But I will never, ever forgive her for what she did last month.
Our store is only open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday right now. On Saturday night, she took a McPoop in the bathroom and didn't flush it. It sat in the HEAT of the store with the bathroom door open all weekend. When my boss and I walked into the store on Tuesday morning, I literally threw up in my mouth.
78. Cut Off Time
I'm a bartender and I was working in some terrible Mexican restaurant downtown. The tips were bad because the food was bad so we were barely ever busy. So already I'm living in NYC making barely $400 a week when I'm used to making more than double. At this point, I've been there for two months and I hate it more and more every day.
Around this time my mother gets really bad pneumonia and due to complications, it degraded her heart. So, she had to have open-heart surgery to repair a valve. It's a difficult procedure and my mother is touching 65. When she gives me a date for her surgery I go to my manager and give her a basic breakdown of the situation and tell her I need four days off from X to Y so I can be with my family.
Now, let me state that staff turnover was incredibly high because in addition to us making horrible money the manager was a complete and utter moron, most staff left after a month. But she says no problem, and just to play it safe I send emails and texts to her confirming that I indeed do have these days off. She agrees. I think cool, no problem.
Well, I was completely wrong. Three days before the surgery the schedule for the week comes out and I'm scheduled throughout the entire week. I immediately go to my manager and ask what is up because I'm not wasting away behind this moldy, rat-infested bar in the West Village while my mom has surgery. No kidding, this woman has the nerve to say I didn't request off at all!
When I show her my paper trail stating that yes, I did put in a request she says "What difference does it make if you're there? The surgery is going to have an outcome whether you're there or not". And starts to rattle off how I need to be a team player and I'm messing things up by requesting off and yadda ya. Her voice fades off and I literally see red. I say nothing and go back to work.
This is at 5 PM. Happy hour and our rush starts at 8 PM. I'm the only bartender on. Fast forward to 8:30, my bar is slammed, I have a bunch of drink tickets from the servers and it's a mess. My manager comes behind the bar and instead of offering any assistance she tells me to not bring "home drama to work". I stare at her in disbelief for a moment, truly stunned that such a tone-deaf moron could possibly be in charge of anything.
That's when I knew there was no way I was getting paid enough for this. I laughed in her stupid face and walked right out the door and went to go see my mom.
79. Can You Fix That?
I used to work as a valet at the Fashion Show Mall on the Las Vegas strip. I remember accompanying this old lady (who was wearing one of those stereotypical "old woman with old money" hats) to her Lexus. The wind was gusting a bit and she looked at me and said: "This wind is unacceptable". I nod in agreement and then she just stands there and gives me this look like "Well?"
So I say "Well, unfortunately, there's nothing I can do..". She glares at me and repeats: "UN-ACCEPTABLE" and then gets in her car and drives off.
80. Down In The Dumps
I worked at a grocery store in my teens, and it wasn’t a great experience. My old manager refused to pay the waste management bill for several months. By the time they finally came and emptied the dumpster, there were still mounds of trash lying around the area. So, guess what my manager’s solution was? He had me go out and clean all of it up alone.
I didn’t have any protective gear or supplies whatsoever, and I was out in 100+ degree weather. I only had a bunch of trash bags to put it all into, and when I went in to ask for help, he just gave me a shovel. After that, I worked one more day, where I was given more work to do without so much as a "good job" or "thanks". I never went back.
81. One Problem Too Nanny
As a nanny, it’s weird when your boss is a mom with no actual experience being a boss. I worked for this mom who was my worst boss. She wasn’t that bad when I first started working for her. Over the course of the year, she kept adding more and more things for me to do. Eventually, I wasn’t just taking care of the baby. I became their maid.
If you think I got a pay increase, think again. And then, things got even worse. Eventually, I was basically this woman's personal assistant. She got a taste of power and took advantage of it. As a young 19-year-old, it was hard for me to see how bad it was. But I knew one thing: my boss was a nut job. One day, she got mad and fired me. The very next morning, she called me asking where I was. It was so confusing.
But I was broke and young, so I went back. At that point, I did everything from taking care of the baby to hand washing her delicates. She gave me a "uniform" and reprimanded me if it and my hair and makeup were not well kept. When she got pregnant with baby #2 and suggested I become a "wet nurse" I just flat out said no. So she fired me. Then, a few weeks later, she showed up at my house begging me to come back!
Saying "no way" and slamming the door in her face was so, so satisfying.
82. Job Offer
Just a couple of days ago I was serving a very important business meeting, important enough that one of the gentlemen flew in from Hong Kong. I guess they left some documents on the table that got thrown away and they came back in a couple of hours later and was frantically looking for them. He pulled me aside and said the most entitled thing I have ever heard: "Look, I make more in a week than you do in a year. Find me those papers or I'll have you shining my shoes just to make a little extra".
83. Deserving More Credit
The client let slip how much they were paying for me. I was stunned. In one month, they paid more than my annual salary. I asked my boss for a pay raise and was told there was just no money available. I said I'd give them six weeks to look for it, and she laughed at me as I wasn't, "the type to give ultimatums". That was the last straw.
I secured a better offer from another company and handed in my notice. That was when my boss's boss offered me a 50% raise to stay.
84. She Wanted To Bare It All Out
I’m a female, and I was 19 years old when I worked in a psychiatric hospital. One of the patients—an extremely psychotic young woman pregnant with twins—would only talk to me, known to her as the "girl in the cactus scrub top". Naive me wanted to help this woman. She said that she would only cooperate if we were behind closed doors, which would obviously NOT happen, but we did our best to make her comfortable within protocols. The woman also had not a stich of clothing on.
Anyway, with security at the door and two staff members standing outside, I was alone in the room trying to console this psychotic woman who LOVED my cactus scrub top. The woman finally decided she wanted to get dressed, but with my shirt. So, she pushed me up against the wall and tried to take it off me. Security jumped on her quickly, and I escaped out the door.
It was a $15 an hour entry-level job, and I was pretty much fresh out of high school. This experience was just one of my many stories.
85. The Job Ended On A Bad Note
I once worked at an architect's office for two months, and it was a miserable experience. I got laid off in October following 9/11; I also had a kid on the way, and my partner and I had just bought a house. I was desperate for a job. So, I took the first one available, and I didn’t think to question why there was an opening at this office when no one else was hiring. I got the job, and it turned out that it would be just my boss and me alone in the office.
The first day, he began playing "New York City Boys" by the Pet Shop Boys. Okay, cool. Then he repeated it several times. I mentioned it to my boss, and he said it was fine. The next day it was the same thing, and he still didn’t want to change it. So I brought headphones in, only to be told that headphones were not allowed.
For two straight months, I heard that dang song every day, all freakin’ day. I quit because my boss would play this song on repeat, and he wouldn’t allow any changes or let me listen to my own music. I told him this when I gave him my two weeks. He just said "Okay" with no reaction. I bolted as soon as someone else would hire me. I think it was some kind of evil experiment.
86. Woof!
My family is pretty well-off, and we lived in a really snooty area. My dad grew up poor and got incredibly successful through hard work. He didn't want his kids to be lazy, rich brats so he raised us to never be snobs. I worked as a dog walker in high school because he encouraged it (and because I just love dogs). One day I walked into one of my new client's house and she commented: "I'm sure someone like you has never even been in such a big house!"
When I said I actually had she laughed and told me that "Walmart isn't a house!" I was so baffled at her rudeness, I thought everyone who was well-off was as classy and humble like my father. Nope.
87. Assault And Batteries Not Included
I used to work at a gadget shop. It had loads of random items, such as silly squeaky things, things that flew about, novelty gadgets, etc. You get the picture. My coworkers and I always had to wear something from the novelty clothing range. I’m a female, and one day I wore an apron that depicted a buff guy, while my male coworker wore the female version.
The customers severely tormented me that day. It got so bad that I asked my manager if I could change into something else, but she said no because she considered my outfit a talking point. I had people call me all sorts of vitriolic things, ranging from calling me fat and an idiot to questioning my true gender. Some teenage boys even pushed me into some shelves and then made me fall into one of the central box tub things that held lucky dip products. Still, my manager wouldn't let me change. So I got my revenge.
I quit on the spot. If she had said that I could change after the first few incidents, I would have been okay. But after seeing that the torment was reducing me to tears and still deciding not to do anything about it? It wasn't worth the paycheque.
88. Excrement Excitement
I was working at the public city pool as one of the lifeguards. After hours, we were also the janitors, and a team of three of us would tackle cleaning the locker rooms and the main area. One summer, on the last day, we had a literal poopalooza: someone committed the cardinal sin of pooping in the pool. Literally, those logs were adult-sized, and they had distance. Meaning whoever did it was moving around our entire pool as they pooped themselves.
We shut down early, partly due to the discovery that we would be swimming in 5-foot deep water to go floater-fishing and partly because we learned that there were not one but two piles of poop, inches from the toilet, on the boys' locker room floor. As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, some mother of a mother left a poop-filled swim diaper on top of one of the showers, where it proceeded to leak down the wall and spray outwards onto the floor. All this occurred within 15 minutes of each other.
I got the luck of cleaning the women's locker room, which beat out deuce-diving, in my opinion, but not by much. Fun fact: after the mandatory 30-minute wait, we taught swimming lessons in that same water. I never wanted a shower more badly than I did that day.
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89. Ouch
I worked at McDonald's when I was 16, and some awful woman complained that her fries were too cold. So, I made her a fresh batch, which she proceeded to throw at the upper part of my chest and neck and gave me grease burns. She then spat at me and left. My manager told me to get over it. I'm 20 now and can still see the burns in the right lighting.
90. Not a Minute More
I worked for a boss who micromanaged everything and was just a jerk about everything in general. I came into work at 6:56 AM and the clock in time was at 7:00 AM. Instead of clocking in then going to the bathroom, I went to the bathroom first instead of using company time. I clocked in at 7:01 AM and he went off on me for being one minute late. He saw me sit my stuff down and go to the restroom so he knew I wasn’t truly late.
This wasn’t the first time he yelled about something so small, but that day was the last. I said, "Screw you, I quit!" I reported him to Human Resources two days later for the ridiculous behavior. I come to find out this was not the first time he had been reported for creating a bad work environment. My friend in that department told me he was fired that next week.
91. Beware The Hangry Karen
I worked at a fast food place about 13 years ago. This lady in the drive-thru claimed she was missing a sandwich. Our policy was to ask for the bags back to verify. She had made a decent-sized order of three or four bags worth of food, and I asked for them back to check for the missing item. But instead of handing them over like a civilized human being, she instantly started raging and throwing the food into the window while cussing me out!
Guess what one of the items she threw at me was? Yep, said missing sandwich.
92. Tick Tock
After my boss told me to follow my subordinates—including a pregnant woman—to the bathroom to time their breaks in there, I left my job. Honestly, I made up the numbers 99% of the time because they worked their full hours and could prove it, and their performances were the best in the office because an overbearing dictator wasn't crushing them.
When I objected, the highest manage responded—and what they said was bone-chilling. I was told that I was immature and not a team player and that I had to do exactly everything they told me to do, no questions asked. No exaggeration, those are direct quotes. I made sure my folks were covered, and I handed in my resignation.
After I left, my friends there told me that a bunch of other people walked out too. It was a great place to work for my first two years, but the manager had never held that position before; she was stubborn and hated millennials. So, she went out of her way to be horrible to her own staff. No regrets, yo.
93. He Who Smelt It, Dealt It
I had to deal with this disgusting co-worker who just wouldn’t stop breaking wind the entire time we worked together. To make matters worse, we worked in close proximity, and it was absolutely horrible. Silent toots, but so deadly. Once he did it in front of someone else and looked at me, trying to make it seem as if I was the one who did it. I hated that guy so much.
94. Nope Nope Nope
Back when I did plumbing, I went out to a job that required me to duck into the crawl space of a roughly 200-year-old mill house. I opened up the crawl space and shined my light to look inside, only to see my worst nightmare come to life. All of the rafters and pipes were draped in snakeskins, and I saw live snakes slithering away into the darkness. I noped right out of that one. I’d rather crawl through excrement than snakes.
95. Mutiny
I worked for a computer company that had me train my replacements but told me I was eventually getting my own sales team to train. I was one of their top salespeople for the year way back in 1999-2000. Halfway through the two-week training, I found out they laid off my entire team and that I was going to be laid off after training.
I told my manager he could go screw himself and quit that day, but not before I told all the new hires and many of them quit too.
96. Price Check Karen
I’m a grocery store cashier. My customer was angry and insisted that her cereal had rung up wrong. I called a price check, and this lady berated me the whole time. I recall that she accused me of trying to scam her. She also said she was going to get me fired. It was at this point that I couldn’t take her attitude anymore.
I looked at her and retorted, "I make $7.25 per hour no matter how much you pay for this cereal, so I do not care how this situation turns out". She stared at me in shock. The price check came back, and lo and behold, the price scanned correctly. Silence. I asked, "So do you want the cereal or not?" She said, "Yes". And that was that. She did not complain to the manager.
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97. Shift in Tragedy
I quit my first job when I was 15. It was the summer, and I was a lifeguard at a pool where one of the best club swimming teams in the US practiced daily. I was good friends with one of the better swimmers on the team, but it was more of a relationship where I looked up to him in a major way. He was really kind and smart and funny, anyone you asked would have nothing but good things to say about him.
One day I was woken up by my mom who was good friends with the kid's parents and she told me that he had passed on in a car accident the night before. I was extremely distraught because he was one of the best people I had ever met, but I still went to work that day. At work, I couldn't focus, I would randomly break out in tears and start hyperventilating, I lost my faith in God, and it was overall a really terrible day.
About halfway through my shift, I went to my boss and asked him if I could go home because I was really upset. He told me, "No, you can't. Going home isn't going to bring back your friend, and your job should be your primary focus during the day". I replied with something along the lines of, "You can shove it. I quit," and stormed out. I didn't have any regrets after doing that, I felt like it was the right thing to do, and no one thought any less of me for it.
98. Mic Drop
I worked in a bar with an awful boss. He would always flirt with the young female bar staff and make us all uncomfortable, even though he was 50 years old. We all knew his wife and two young children, but about six months into me working there he began to "date" a 22-year-old customer. By date, I mean he used to go downstairs to his office and sleep with her—all while he was on shift.
No one was allowed to talk about it but we all knew. He knocked her up quite quickly and ended up breaking up with his wife, but he still flirted with his staff relentlessly even when his new baby was born. He once told a male employee that he liked asking female bar staff to pick up things from low shelves so we would bend over and he could check out our rear-ends.
He always broke health and safety rules if he could get out of doing a task he didn’t want to. He was prolific at asking bar staff to clean human waste—vomit/poop customers had done on the floor—even though legally anyone cleaning that stuff needed to have passed a certain health and safety qualification. I spoke to my assistant manager about this and she confirmed that only management can do it, and I should refuse next time.
One day he demanded I cleaned up vomit in the male toilets, and I refused, repeating what the assistant manager told me. My boss went absolutely mad—he wasn’t used to people standing up to him. He told me to come downstairs to his office to speak about it. At that moment I knew I wanted to quit, so I told him I won’t be going downstairs with him. He asked me why, and I replied: "The last girl who went down there with you ended up getting pregnant".
Lost my job instantly but it was totally worth it.
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99. All Out of Spite
I worked very briefly with a woman who showed herself to be both an idiot and a jerk. Her grandmother passed and she and her relatives discovered that the man she'd known as her step-grandfather had never even been married to her grandmother. She bragged about the family throwing him out of the only home he'd known for three decades because, "If he wasn't good enough for my grandma to marry, he's not good enough for us".
He was an elderly man who lived as this woman's husband and had everything taken from him out of pettiness and spite. It showed me how stupid she was, and I was right. She was fired a week later.
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100. Company Transformers
At my last job, they told us "Under no circumstances are you even to look at what's going on in the other half of the plant". Obviously, I decided to peek, but when I saw what was going on, my stomach dropped. All of us were doomed. They were building an automated side of the factory. I got replaced by a robot a year later.
NASA
101. Helping Hand
I once got screamed at for not opening a jar of mustard. I work in a relatively posh place, and the mustard comes in this little individual glass dish. Because I hadn't opened the mustard for a fully grown man, he lost his mind and yelled, "I work for the local paper and they will be hearing about this! I've never been so offended! Disgusting behavior!"I just stood there aghast and finally said "Did you want me to open the mustard... now?" More yelling.
102. No Interest In Small Talk
I had a customer come in and compliment me on my cheerful smile and demeanor. I thanked him, but his next reply was so devastating I nearly burst into tears on the spot. He told me that I was only happy and smiling because I wasn't old enough yet to realize that life is nothing but pain, suffering, and waiting to pass. That definitely brightened up my day!
103. Cutting You Down To Size
I think everybody who works customer service knows this kind of customer. The customer that wants to take their displeasure about the company's rules out on you. I work as a waitress and the other day, I had this lady complain about the portion size for our mac and cheese. She asked me if I felt like the portion size was enough for an adult. I thought it was, but I didn't tell her that.
Instead I offered to bring her a second side of it free of charge. She cut me off and said "No! If you think this is an acceptable portion size for an adult, then I will eat it!" She spent the entire rest of the meal visibly upset and giving me really curt one word answers every time I checked on her. When I asked her if everything was all right, she would say things like "I guess" or "sure".
I offered her the extra side of mac and cheese again, but she still didn't want it. I later dropped the check and she left cash on the table, looked at me smugly, and walked out. When I went to the table to pick up the cash this witch made sure to pay exact cash right down to the cents and wrote "nope" in the tip box on the receipt. She wanted to make sure I didn't even make so much as a cent from her. Lady, I have absolutely no control over the darn portion sizes!!
104. Disappear This Miss, Please
I may or may not have carried a heavily tipsy girlfriend and a large amount of substances out of my boss's house (CEO of a very large company) while she was covered in her own filth so his wife wouldn't catch him as she arrived home from her sister's house a day early. How did this happen, you ask?
My old boss regularly cheated on his wife with any number of women. Well, he calls me one day, because we are friends away from work, and asks me to come to his apartment ASAP. I drive over there, and he's blitzed, and this chick is laying unclothed in her own filth mumbling about something. He says he has to shower and clean up because his wife is ten minutes away so please "Get that out of here".
I grab the girl and help her to her feet and cover her up with a t-shirt. As I'm walking her out, he yells for me to grab the party bag. The only bag is a Dopp kit. I grab it, jump in my car and drive off. This girl is blasted! She doesn't know where she lives and is sure she's having a heart attack. So, I calm her down somewhat and reach in her purse and find her ID.
Luckily, she has her current address on it, and I take her home. I drive back to my house and pull into the driveway and remember the Dopp kit. I open it up and there's a LOT of illicit substances in there. I got a steak dinner and a few pints later that week from the boss. Needless to say, I no longer work there.
