From the retail floor to corporate offices, everybody has a story about something unbelievable that happened at work. Whether it’s a weird coworker, a crazy boss, or a customer who just doesn’t understand something simple, these stories from Reddit will make anyone grateful for the dull moments.
1. Literacy Is Important
A woman called in and insisted she was a customer of ours. She gave me an account number that was not in the same format that we used. I couldn't find any account for her. We tried her name, address, phone number, and her husband's name and contact info. I suggested that she may be a customer of our competitor, and she was rude.
She said she had one of our bills in her hand, and it did not have (name of competition) on it. Suddenly, I realized exactly what I had to do. I asked her to read me everything on this bill, starting with the top left corner. Within a minute, she read the name of the competition aloud. Then she hung up out of embarrassment.
2. She Wanted That $2
As soon as this customer walked in, I knew she'd be trouble. But this was a whole new level of Karen. We had started a loyalty program at my retail job where I used to work. This woman insisted she had a loyalty card with us and she made a “massive” purchase about a month back that should be on the card, so she should have points to use towards this purchase. However, the cashier could not find her under her last name or the phone number she was telling the cashier it was under.
The cashier called me over for assistance and I took the sale over to an unused register to not tie up the line. I asked the customer if there was perhaps another last name she would have given or another phone number. The customer insisted she only had one last name, and she would only ever write down her cell number for something like this.
I asked for her home number in case she had inadvertently written down that number and she flipped out on me. She was being so rude that I was really not in the mood to try and help her anymore. I finally asked her if she remembered what she bought last time, hoping that she would mention an item that had a unique SKU so I could at least search transactions by that SKU number. Then she told me we had delivered all the items last time.
Perfect, we have a unique delivery SKU code. I search all transactions with that SKU code and after going through about 80, finally find something I think might be her. At least the first name is the same as what she’s told me. I pull up the sale and confirm the address linked to the loyalty card. It is her! But the last name and the phone number are nowhere close to what she told me it should be under.
So I tell her that her loyalty card is under the last name “Jones” and she looks me in the face and goes “Yeah, that’s my maiden name.” At that point, I wanted to scream. I asked you almost half an hour ago if there were any other possible last names it would have been under and you told me absolutely not. All of that attitude and stress just so I could pull up her points to apply it to her purchase...for a whopping two dollars off.
3. Never Hurts To Check
I worked in customer service for a library system and was talking on the phone to a woman who swore up and down that she'd turned her books in. I was doing my usual spiel: “Have you looked under beds, have you looked here, have you looked there?” Then, I got to "Have you looked in the trunk of your car?" She lost it and started screaming at me: "I'm not an idiot!"
She must have been marching around looking though because she suddenly stopped. They were in the trunk of her car.
4. Did She Think She’d Get Away?
One of my employees didn’t show up three times, so I let her go. I thought that was the last I would see of her. I was very wrong. For several weeks previous to this, she was talking about getting permission to play with two mini ponies on the property. The day after she was fired, she showed up with a trailer, saying she was there to take "her" ponies.
The barn owners and I didn’t have any written proof from the ponies’ owner saying they could leave the property. She told me I was absolutely wrong and she had the proof, and she was going to sue me and the barn for not letting her take them. Then she also said she would call the authorities on us. I told her to just do it. By that point, I had barn owners call 9-1-1 for me and it was all settled by the time they got there. For a second, I thought we were going to get into a real fight.
5. Mamma Mia
My first job was as a dishwasher at an Italian restaurant and banquet hall. The shifts were from six in the evening to two or three in the morning, depending on how many events were going on. You were basically working like your hair was on fire in an extremely hot nook of the kitchen, covered in food and grease. It wasn't pleasant. Yet it could still get worse.
There was a back entrance to the bar from the kitchen, where we would go to get a soda a couple of times during our shifts. This was never an issue until one day, the original owner showed up. He asked me what I was doing, and I showed him my cup and said I was about to get a drink. He told me to go use the vending machine if I want something to drink. That was the last straw.
I walked away, clocked out, walked straight to my car, and left. The most rewarding part is that the place was packed that night and they didn't have enough dishwashers to keep up, so the 80-year-old man who caused me to walk out ended up washing dishes all night.
6. He Went That Way!
I take a lot of pride in the fact that I have a high set of morals and am always honest. A computer store I worked at in the mid-90s was super shady. One of our vendors accused me of trying to steal a 27-inch monitor. These were CRT monitors, which weighed over 50 pounds. The owner drove me back to the vendor while I got drilled by the vendor's managers and law enforcement.
The owner of where I worked kept telling me to "fess up" even though I didn't do anything. A few hours later, the person who saw me try to take the monitor came back. He swore it was me until he came into the room and said, "Oh, but it wasn't him.” We left, and I was silent on the hour and a half drive back to the shop. I knew exactly how this was going to go down.
When we got back, I told the owner how much money he owed me and that I would be back in a week to get my check, and I walked out. The owner begged me to come back for days but I stuck to my word.
7. Extra Crunch?
At a breakfast place, we usually used liquid eggs when we made scrambled eggs because we had to make so much of them. One day, I told a guy I needed six scrambled eggs. When he brought it out, I couldn't believe my eyes. Instead of thinking and just using shelled eggs and cracking them, this guy just crumbled the shells into the eggs. I lost my cool and most of my hope that day.
8. Saving Dough
While working as a server for a well-known buffet, a diner politely requested I do not place dinner rolls on his table because he would not eat them and does not want to waste the food. Thinking this a reasonable request, I oblige. My supervisor, upon seeing a table devoid of precious rolls, summons me to complete the task.
I informed my supervisor of the request. Her response made my blood boil: "Part of your job is to place rolls on the tables. Go put rolls on the table." Of course, upon placing these coveted balls of dough on the table and informing the diner of the managerial request, I am still lectured about all of the starving kids in Africa.
9. Off and On Again
My high school built a bunch of computers. I believe they were Intel Pentium 2. Anyway, to save money, we did a whole bunch of stuff, mainly using old computer equipment cases and monitors. I was a TA for the electronic class, so I did tech support. The teacher said her computer was broken and wouldn't start, so I got a replacement. I carried it over about 200 yards since she sounded pretty upset.
I took a look at her computer to see what was wrong. She just didn't turn the monitor on. Told my teacher about it. He told me, "Welcome to the wonderful world of IT."
10. Ensure Your Insurance
I work in a doctor’s office, and the worst patient I’ve dealt with was one who refused to pay us. She was insistent that her insurance would cover everything since her card mistakenly read “$0 copay.” We called the insurance company multiple times to verify that they would not cover her appointment charge, and we sent records from her insurance company directly to her in order to prove this.
She still refused to pay us after yelling at me for five minutes. All I could do was tell her to contact her insurance if she didn’t want to pay. She proceeded to call me unprofessional and inconsiderate after her outburst before she stormed out.
11. The Fine Print
We would prepare quarterly report packages for the senior-level employees. Now, these packets had 80+ reports in them at four or five pages a pop. I needed 15 packets for everyone. That’s about 3,000 pages double-sided total between all the packets. It was the analyst’s responsibility to complete the reports and the administrator’s job to print the packets.
Now, my admin was the most absent-minded collection of rocks for a brain that I had ever met. She literally could not do anything on her own without help. She spent all day printing out the packets. When I went to check them to make sure they were done right, I couldn't believe my eyes: They were MASSIVE. Not only did she not have the sense to print them double-sided, but she also didn’t do a test run before printing 6,000 pages.
It’s early afternoon at this point, so I tell her to reprint them and double-sided this time. It’s getting close to 4pm so I go to check on them again. They’re double-sided this time! THE WRONG WAY. She printed them where the front of the page is in the correct orientation and the back is upside down.
It’s literally a comedy sketch at this point. She tells me that she can’t stay late because she has to be at her son’s whatever sporting event it was. I had no other option but to just do it myself and ended up staying until 8 pm printing packets. I knew she was dumb already, but I guess I somehow overestimated her ability by trusting her to know how to print.
12. Delicious Revenge
A girl on my team was pregnant and the other girls threw a shower and never told me. They literally invited everyone on the team except me. I still have no idea why. Anyway, someone accidentally mentioned something about it and I overheard it. I called my mom and sister and asked if they were willing to make an adorable baked good for me to show up with.
I wish I could have gotten a picture of the looks on everyone's faces when I appeared at the door with a cute gift and a tray full of little baby carriage-decorated cookies. Like half shock, half surprise, half confusion, and half jealousy. Like what did you not invite me for? Were you worried I'd bring a really nice gift and treat for the group?
13. There’s a “Honk” Pun Somewhere In Here
One time, my boss saved a hurt goose, put it in a box, and made me take it to an animal hospital. Driving down the highway, the goose started flapping like crazy and got out of the box. I didn’t know what to do and I was too scared to grab the goose so I drove the whole way there with a goose riding in the passenger seat.
14. Waste Of Time
Part of my job is emailing bills to customers. Some companies have crazy requests on how they get their bill. One company won't pay their bill unless it's sent by mail. Another company will only allow one page scanned per attachment and only one attachment per email. If the bill is five pages, I need to scan each page individually and email them individually. Those are the days I question my life choices.
15. Justice for All
A group of four grown men snuck into a fitting room at a clothing store to smoke pot. This would already be really dumb, except the store they did it at was…Justice. For non-Americans and those outside the demographic, Justice was a clothing store for tween girls. They didn’t sell anything for men at all and it was literally impossible for them to blend in.
Moreover, the tops of their heads were visible over the child-sized stall curtains. We called security, they got escorted out, and we had to close to air out the store. I have no idea how they thought this was going to play out.
16. Is That Allowed?
I was working as a sign language interpreter in a classroom setting, and the teacher’s aide decided to stand between me and the student, blocking their view. I asked her to move and her response literally made my jaw drop: She told me that she was doing it on purpose so that the student didn’t rely on me too much. That’s just one example of the dumb things teachers do.
17. Just Why
I received an email from a frustrated woman who reached out to us weeks ago and hadn’t heard back. I was unable to find her name in the system, so I asked my boss who also couldn’t find her, who asked her boss who also couldn’t find her. So we go to our CRM manager, and they couldn’t find her either. When the truth came out, I almost LOST it.
The lady had changed both her first AND last names just a week before. She had changed her email as well. She neglected to mention either of those things in her angry email! I ended up having her former name on an attendance sheet from a few weeks ago, but man is it hard to help people sometimes.
18. Careful Who You Hire
Worked from home due to being sick and had a few guys I was managing at a warehouse. It was a slow day so I sent one home and just casually checked on the other via cameras. He had to run out with our box truck to pick up some vendor items and come back and pull orders for the distribution route. I saw he left at like 1 pm, and I checked in on cameras around 3 pm to see if he’s done, but the truck isn’t back yet.
I try calling him and nothing, and I can see all of the orders are not picked yet. I was starting to get suspicious. Calling and I cannot get ahold of him. I drive to the office and look around, nothing. Company vehicle and my employee is missing, at this time missing for four hours. I'm thinking he broke down and left his phone or something, right? So I drive the routes to see if I can find the truck.
Nothing. Now I'm fully expecting the worst. This is probably a good point in the story to say that this guy had a history of grand theft, just broke up with his girlfriend, and had no car. I'm thinking he stole the truck and was doing whatever with it. I call the owner and seek advice, but he tells me to wait some more before we report it stolen. I start doing his job and picking orders for the route, checking my phone every .0001 seconds to see if he calls.
I’m almost done when he calls and says, “Come pick me up.” After a back-and-forth about why he's missing, I don't get any details. I get to him, and he explains that he passed out, the truck ran out of gas, so no A/C, and with the summer heat he eventually woke up. I drive him back to the office so his ex could pick him up, and then he tried to fight me because I fired him.
19. Save the Date
Library employee here. One guy got ANGRY when I said he owed 30 cents for a late DVD. He insisted he turned it in. He left the desk, marched over to the DVD stacks, found said DVD, came back, put it on the counter, and said “See, I turned it in!” I took a deep breath and said, “Sir, that’s not the issue. We know you turned it in. You turned it in a day late.” He just paused and got his wallet out.
20. Some Assembly Required
I worked in returns at IKEA and had a customer complain that they accidentally ripped the instruction manual in half for the furniture piece they were assembling when they were cutting open the box. They thought this mean they couldn’t finish assembling it, so they took it back. I politely informed them that all our instruction manuals were available online.
This just made her mad and she wanted to speak to the manager. The manager gave her a few gift cards just to get her off my back. I will always find it so funny that this lady thinks accidentally ripping the instruction manual inhibited her from assembling furniture. She had both halves too so she could have just easily put them together to read the instructions.
21. Not-So-Happy Hour
During one of the company’s happy hours, things got a bit too wild and someone threw up on half of the office. No one wanted to handle it, so I and one of the HR interns had to explain the whole situation to upper management, while both of us weren’t even there. From that day, both of us became responsible for not letting things get out of hand.
22. Turn the Brightness Down
The office lights were very bright, so some coworkers complained and asked them to lower the brightness. After days of nothing, one of my coworkers took a used pizza box and pinned it to his desk using push pins so one-half of the pizza box was like an umbrella. I was busy so I didn't realize what he had done.
The branch manager was giving a customer representative an office tour. When the representative left, our branch manager came back to our area absolutely furious. He was looking directly at me while dismantling the pizza box in a rage.
23. Someone’s Salty
I worked in a sports bar. We had giant pretzels as an appetizer. Each one came with its own packet of salt. The amount in each one was overkill for a single pretzel, so we would just open a few, put the salt in a pan, and sprinkle on as necessary. One packet of salt was easily enough to salt five or six pretzels, no joke.
Me and my coworker were the openers, and each morning we’d come in, the salt pan was empty and back on the rack. She and I are like, “What keeps happening to the salt every night!?” After a week of this, we ask one of the closers. They ask around and the culprit comes forward. We ask, lightheartedly, why they’re throwing it away. With a straight face, she says, “Because the salt goes bad and it’s a safety hazard.”
24. The Importance of Childcare
I had to babysit a coworker's kid. I was the only woman on the management team, so when one of our employees had to bring her daughter to work because of trouble at home, my boss pulled me out of running my area and had me sit in the office with her. It was absolutely heartbreaking. We worked at night. The girl’s dad had taken off and the mom didn't have any PTO time or money for childcare.
The little girl said she didn't want to sleep and wanted to wait for her mom. I went out to my car and got a blanket I keep in my trunk, bought her a snack, and let her watch YouTube. She fell asleep in about an hour. It was ridiculous that the mother wasn't paid enough for childcare, that I was the first choice to watch her, and that my bosses didn't just excuse the mother's absence.
25. Need for Speed
My story is just every interaction I have with accounts payable. Today’s highlight: “If his flight was on June 21st, why was his Uber on June 22nd?” Well, ma’am. His flight landed at 11:58pm, and typically people cannot just directly teleport from the plane to their Uber. But what do I know, I’m just a mere budget manager.
26. Should’ve Canceled
I had to massage a woman who had about five too many at the spa I used to work at. She had an appointment for a facial and massage but wanted to cancel because she was tipsy. She didn't want to pay the cancellation fees for both so she only canceled the facial. Anyway, long story short, she peed on the table. I didn't notice the smell until she left.
I also had to knock on the door several times because she kept falling asleep instead of getting dressed. It was my last appointment of the day, too. Management didn't care as long as she paid.
27. Not What It Looks Like
I think it was my second week working, and I was opening one of our sister stores solo. It turned out that the guy closing didn’t lock the front door. He just set the alarm and went out the back. Around eight hours later, a family comes in to buy some stuff, but walks into a dark building with a beeping alarm. They walk back out.
Then, nine hours later I come in and start counting the till like we do at every opening shift. Then the authorities show up because the alarm was tripped and they find me with a fistful of money. That was fun trying to get worked out.
28. Charge the Rich
My boss used to approve of ghost charges. These are fees that will be so hard to spot in your invoice, that they will go unnoticed 99.9% of the time. It wasn’t against the rules, but I felt so disappointed. He’s a nice dude, but dealing with very wealthy customers sometimes makes you feel like you can give them extra charges and get away with it.
29. That’s How Deliveries Work
A woman called up the call center I was working for and yelled at me because she had to sign for a package she ordered. There were literally no issues: the package was delivered on time, it was her package, and it was what she ordered. She was just so livid that she'd had to answer the door and sign for it that she decided to yell at me.
30. Take the Stairs
I install flooring and was working on the third story of a house newly under construction. Long story short, while I was installing some flooring in some upstairs bathrooms, some framers were scheduled to repair the stairs from ground level to the second story. There was no communication. I went downstairs to grab something and found the surprise of my life: There was no downstairs!
The framers had completely torn out the entire staircase without checking if anyone else was upstairs. I ended up trapped on the second story for a little while until someone brought a ladder.
31. That’s Fishy
At a restaurant, I had a new kid who brought a salad to a table in the middle of a dinner rush, and he forgot the salmon that goes on top of it. So I ask him to go get it, apologize to the customer, and he eventually he comes back. The lady kind of just gestures at the salad. Then I found out what the kid did with her fish. He fully just picked up the salmon with his hand and put it on the salad.
It flopped a little bit, he held it for a solid few seconds, and continued to put it on this horrified woman’s salad. We all kind of just looked at each other. I took the salad away, and the lady laughed when my manager made him apologize. I guess it was so shocking that she just found it funny, and he got a good tip too.
32. Came Back to Life
I asked for time off on a Friday to go to my wife's grandmother's funeral. I knew we were in a big deadline crunch, but my wife was really broken up by the loss, and I felt I needed to be there for her. I had been averaging over 50 hours per week at this firm (salaried, so no overtime), with many weekends and holidays spent in the office.
Anyway, I realized that one task still had to be done Friday morning, and I was really the only person who could do it. I asked my wife if it was okay that I ran into the office for a couple of hours in the morning to get it done. She was fine with it. So I run in, and there I am, sitting at my computer, early, on the day I asked to have off, wearing my funeral suit.
My boss sees me, so he sidles up and says, sarcastically, "So, I guess they canceled that funeral, huh?"
33. Anything For Cash
I work in film and television. We were shooting in a pretty upper-class neighborhood and the woman living beside the house we were filming in decided that she hasn't been paid enough. Only, she was a diabolical witch. A few hours into our day she starts playing opera music as loud as she can with all her windows open. After an hour or two of that, she ramps it up and starts mowing her lawn.
Once that was done, she just sits right on her property line with the mower going full blast until a producer went over and kindly asked her to stop. I'm not high enough in the production to know how much she was asking for, but apparently, it was too much because he walked away shaking his head and told the sound guys there was nothing he could do.
Once night rolled around, my boss decided to annoy her right back, so we got some bright lights and pointed them directly into her windows. It was basically midday sunlight blasting into her house at 10 pm. That's when she called the authorities saying that we weren't allowed to be filming (it was a full union show with permits, and on-duty enforcement was also there).
An officer pulls up, sees the others already around for blocking traffic, goes to the craft table, gets a snack, and leaves. We turned off the lights to her house around one in the morning because we're not animals.
34. ‘Tis But A Scratch
I work in EMS and my least favorite thing is to be used as a literal taxi to the hospital. It happens more than you think. People will call us and claim to have a medical emergency, and when we get there they refuse to answer any of our questions outside of saying they are having general abdominal pain or chest pain.
They won't let us take their vitals or perform any real assessment. We are not allowed to refuse someone transport to the hospital, so we drive them to the hospital, and they leave the hospital less than two minutes later. Those types of people are the scum of the Earth who take up an ambulance for someone who may actually need it.
35. Daddy’s Money
I worked for a popular As Seen On TV brand a couple of years ago. The owner was the spokesperson and CEO, which should have been enough to show me what I was getting into. After building two entire departments, growing sales by a lot, and paving the way for them to get into a big retail chain, the owner hired his 25-year-old son to be my boss.
His son doesn't even have a resume because he has zero working experience other than trying to start his own company with his dad's money and failing at that. In less than a year, I quit, as did most of my team.
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36. An Outlet for His Anger
At a call center, a man chewed me out because the shorts he ordered had come from an outlet store. They were clearance online, but he was so mad knowing they came from an outlet store that he kept me on the phone for five minutes to explain that the quality was degraded or something. I felt sorry for the outlet store he was driving to where he was planning on returning the shorts.
37. Not a Doctor
I guided ecological tours in Colorado. A little girl from NYC got bit by a few bugs and had a mild allergic reaction with three mosquito bite-sized bumps on her leg. She was fine. Her mom, on the other hand, went nuts. This woman started screaming at me to inject her with an EpiPen, which I explained was not a safe option. She began physically attacking me trying to get to my med kit and threatened to sue me for malpractice. I welcomed her to.
The poor girl was more scared by her mom's reaction than anything else. It was on that hike that I realized why my dad, who’s a doctor, told me not to go into medicine.
38. It Adds Up
I worked at a call center for a big box store. The customer was upset because a pack of three dozen paper towels advertised so many towels per roll. They got mad because the last paper towel of each roll was glued to the cardboard, rendering it unusable. The company ended up sending a $0.18 gift card in the mail. Postage cost $0.40 at the time.
39. Why 10 Smoothies?
Someone put in a huge online order: multiple food items and about 10 smoothies. Usually, people pick up their orders really fast, so we put all the food and smoothies out in the cubbies for the customer to easily grab. About 20 minutes go by and the order is still sitting there, so we decide to put all the smoothies in the fridge.
About an hour and a half after this, a guy walks in and explains how he ran just a little late and that we wanted us to remake the entire order. This was all in the middle of a huge rush. So we remade the order, and obviously it took a while because we prioritized the customers who were already there. He ended up asking for the manager because of the horrible service.
40. Manage Your Expectations
English as a Second Language teacher here. An angry mom came to my coordinator to complain about the grades I was giving to her daughter. Thing is, I gave her an A+ because she was super responsible, got everything right in her monthly exam, and participated a lot. Apparently, I was not doing a good job because she expected her kid not to be an amazing student. But she was.
41. Anger Management
I had a co-worker with a bad temper. I never directly worked with him, so he always seemed OK to me—until the day I learned about his temper the hard way. We had to store some text in a database. It was a trivial task, but we managed to argue about how to proceed. It escalated because he did not accept that someone was contradicting him. It resulted in him yelling at me and slamming doors.
The building is a single long corridor with multiple small offices on each side. Even though the doors were closed, everybody heard him yelling, which was around 30 people. Since that day and until my resignation, we never talked again, said hello nor crossed eyes. Our paths crossed multiple times each day, yet we still kept this up.
42. What Did She Think Would Happen?
Years ago, I was working at a gas station. A woman's credit card had a signature that was smudged (not unusual), so I asked for her ID. After the transaction was over, she said I was rude to her as she walked away. I was confused. Later, a woman's credit card also had a signature that was smudged, so I asked for her ID.
After the transaction was over, she asked me for my name. Why? Because I was "rude" to her, apparently. It was the same idiot as before. To this day I can't think of a single thing I said or did that was rude.
43. Credit Card Wars
At my restaurant, I had a table that was a large family. The son said he wanted to pay, but the father had already given me his card to pay for the meal. When the son found out the dad had paid already, he got mad. I've had that happen before, but then the son threatened to shoot me in the chest because of it. I just stood there for a second in shock. Then I laughed and got the manager to kick them out.
44. If It Ain’t Broke…
In the Armed Forces, the paper towel dispenser was hanging off of the wall, so I took my multi-tool and screwed it back in. The chief demanded to know who fixed it without filling out the proper paperwork. I spoke up. He made me unscrew it from the wall and fill out paperwork for the “proper people” to fix it. Looking back, he was a weak and ineffective leader, and he’s probably failing at life.
45. Time Is Money
I used to be a volunteer organizer, and we were expected to have a minimum number of one-on-one meetings with potential volunteers for recruitment every week. I had a week with only a single one-on-one scheduled. My boss decided I needed to meet with her to discuss how I can bring the number up...and proceeded to schedule that meeting during the only meeting I had scheduled.
46. Don’t Look Back
My manager, while I was still being trained, yelled at me asking why I couldn't complete a task I had yet to be trained on. He then continued to bring me into the office a yell at me on a weekly basis about something dumb. I almost left in the middle of my shift. It triggered my anxiety so much I couldn't go in anymore.
He yelled at me one Friday and I had so much anxiety by the time Monday came around I didn't show up. I sent an email saying I quit and why. Funnily enough, about a year later, the HR lady emailed me offering for me to come back since the manager had left.
47. Murphy Python
I worked at Petco for a summer. We used to have any number of pets on our person while working. Sometimes a chameleon, or sometimes a gecko, or maybe even a small bird. It was really any animal that was content just chilling on your shoulder or arm. My best snake buddy, Murphy (albino ball python), was just chilling around my forearm while I worked the register.
I suddenly heard the most ear-piercing scream from across the store. Apparently, a snake-phobic person walked in and lost his marbles. I couldn't understand why you'd walk into a store that sells snakes if you're that afraid of them. Regardless, corporate changed their policy so that no animals could be out of their "homes" unless an interested customer requested it.
48. Problem-Solving Skills
The deli I worked for mispriced a package of deli cheese to something that was obviously wrong. It was like 50 dollars or something. The customer thought the appropriate response was to throw it at me as the cashier, never mind the fact someone could have easily gone over and gotten it relabeled. The customer hadn’t paid yet or anything. This situation was what finally drove me to leave retail.
49. But Was The Lunch Tasty?
I used to intern at a drug discovery lab where everyone was from the Soviet Union, either present-day Ukraine or Eastern Russia, and all had PhDs. Super nice friendly people, but there was a language barrier we had to work with. One other new thing to me was that they would carry on a tradition from the USSR where they would make lunch for all seven of us.
Everything, including raw meatballs, was made in the microwave daily. One scientist in particular, who I will call Mila, was responsible for growing the E. coli that we needed for our research. I mainly worked with analyzing the bacteria via a computer program with occasional lab work. The staff often reused their gloves by flipping them inside out and then blowing them back out to put them back on.
Mila had a planned vacation, so she was showing me how to grow the bacteria so we could continue the experiments in her absence. Ever since I knew Mila, every day around lunch, she would be very loud in the bathroom, conveniently located next to the lunchroom. As a 20-year-old guy, I had to sit there with this group and fight laughing at the sounds of this woman.
What the most ridiculous thing to me is the E. coli ended up getting contaminated, and of course since I’m the new guy I get blamed. I tried to make the case that reusing the gloves was more likely the factor. Needless to say with my unfinished bachelor’s degree and their PhDs, I lost that fight. Looking back, putting my mouth on those gloves to reuse them was insane.
50. No Supervision
I worked at Rogers Communications for a while as a phone drone, which meant I was paid minimum wage to listen to people yell and scream at me for things I had no control over. They kept telling us over and over that we could move up through the company, but that was a lie. We had a supervisor who would actually sit at a blank computer and try to make it look like he was doing something.
One day, I got a particularly nasty call. The supervisor told me to "stop wasting his time" when I asked for help. I went on lunch and then called in to say I wasn't coming back.
51. He Learned His Lesson
Someone was eating my food. I couldn't figure out who, so I came up with a devious plan. I put laxatives in my food for a few days with no intention of eating it. When the dude spent two hours in the bathroom one day, he came out demanding to speak with me. He tried saying he could sue me. It took too long for him to understand that HE was the one taking MY food. He skipped the part where I didn't give it to him.
Naturally, I said, "Why are you eating my food?" He tried saying he didn't know it was mine. “Then why are you saying you'll sue me? How do you know it was mine, and also not know it was mine? My name was on the lunchbox.” The kid just straight up cried and went to the boss. The boss never said if he got fired or quit. But he never came back.
52. Not All Influencers Are Stupid, But…
I work in influencer marketing, and we hired an Instagram influencer to work on a yogurt brand campaign. As part of the activation, we also sent a tie-dye kit and branded swag for them to make tie-dye shirts, hats, etc, with their friends or family. It seemed so simple. Yet it still went so wrong. One of the influencers pulled the tie-dye ink out of the t-shirt kit and used it to tie-dye her yogurt bowl.
She took a video of herself eating it, then shared the video with her followers, who ultimately alerted her that you can't eat tie-dye ink. This was, of course, our fault (the agency) for not being more clear that the tie-dye kit was not edible.
53. At Least She Tipped Well
I work at a pet resort/spa. I’m checking in this lady’s dog at like seven in the morning. Real sweet lady, she has an Australian shepherd. But before I take the dog inside to his kennel for the groomers, she makes the most bizarre request I've ever heard: She asks me to tell the groomers to separate whatever hair they shave off him into separate bags based on color and texture.
Turns out, she makes jewelry out of her dog’s fur. Later in the day, I bring out the dog along with probably seven little baggies of hair, and the lady was very excited. She gave me a fat tip so I didn’t complain, but that’s by far the weirdest request I’ve gotten in all my time working there.
54. Not Enough Compensation
As a teenager, while working as a cashier at a store, I was held up by two dudes with Glocks pointed inches from my face. The store manager and someone from corporate showed up shortly after the authorities came to show support. After they left, both the manager and corporate rep tried to convince me and my other coworkers to keep the store open for the remainder of the shift. I was so shocked, I was speechless.
I was literally still shaking from the ordeal, and somehow they felt that I was good to work until midnight as a teenager. I asked to go home, as did everyone else. Management decided to compensate us for the trauma by paying us for the remainder of our shift but said that we still had to work our next shifts. It's amazing how insensitive some people in management can be.
Sources: Reddit,
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