This was my worst experience at a local takeout/eat-in grille. It’s the kind of place parents take their kids to get ice cream or where kids might go after soccer practice. I’ve been there before and had excellent service.

They’re not super busy this time, but there is a line of people waiting to place their orders. I order a chicken hoagie with basic toppings — nothing complicated — get my receipt, take a seat in the eat-in area, and wait for my order. All the while, I’m watching the line of people making their way to the counter, and I overhear people ordering ice cream, a burger, a hoagie, and so on.

I keep waiting for my order, and my number isn’t getting called. I wait for maybe fifteen minutes or so, and still nothing. I go back up to the register with my receipt.

Me: “How is my order doing?”

Cashier #1: “We’re still working on it. It’ll be a few more minutes.”

So, I sit back down. I’m a patient guy, and I understand that it’s a little busy, so it may take a while. I might be here for a bit. I get it.

After waiting for a while, I start to notice that people that ordered way after me are getting their orders called, so I’m starting to get a little bit annoyed. But I decide, “Hey, it’s cool. Maybe something happened. I’m sure it’ll get resolved. I don’t mind waiting. It’s all good.”

Forty-five more minutes go by, and I decide I’m done waiting. I go back up to the counter and talk to the cashier who took my order.

Me: “So… how’s my order doing?”

She takes my receipt and turns to her coworker.

Cashier #1: “Do you know anything about this order?”

Cashier #2: “No, I don’t.

[Cashier #1] gestures to someone in the kitchen to come over and asks him about my order.

Cook: “Nope, I don’t know about that.”

[Cashier #1] froze for a second, and I could see her mouth the words, “Oh, s***.” She took the cook and ran back into the kitchen for a minute, and then she came back out, obviously frantic, saying my order would be ready in a minute.

I waited right at the register until it came out. I got my hoagie five minutes later.

I never asked what happened. When my bag came out, the cashier never said anything, and neither did I, but the look she had gave it away. They forgot my order, completely. Maybe it was her, or maybe it was the cook. I don’t know, and honestly, I didn’t care. What did it for me was no one ever said, “I’m sorry for the wait,” or, “We apologize for the mix-up” — not even an excuse. I just got handed the bag.

The real kicker of the story is that the hoagie wasn’t even that good.

I work at a small company delivering potable water to people who don’t have access to either city water or a private well. We deliver to the same customers pretty much every week. Some customers are great and go out of their way to make deliveries easier or at least make sure that they don’t make them any more difficult than they have to be. A few customers just don’t give a crap and expect us to make deliveries no matter what they do to make things inconvenient.

One customer made several changes to their property over the last couple of years that made making deliveries significantly more difficult. I spoke to my boss about them, and he laid out the conditions that would need to be met before he would consider dropping a paying customer.

The customer was literally just barely within the limits. And to their credit, they did keep up with their bills.

I dreaded seeing their name on the delivery list every other week. Then, they changed to wanting deliveries every week because their children were moving into the house, as well. After that, payments started being more sporadic. The checks we got changed from the name of the homeowner to their daughter. My boss only takes cash or checks, not credit cards, as he feels no compulsion to give any money to credit card companies or to increase prices and pass the cost on to the customer.

One day while I was in the office doing some end-of-day tasks, the phone rang. The caller ID said it was this problem customer. [Boss] answered, and I eavesdropped. It was the daughter; she wanted to start paying by credit card. [Boss] said no. Then, she decided to drop her “threat” to change companies.

There was such hope in my heart as I saw [Boss]’s face turn red. He hates bullies and being bullied. [Boss] immediately agreed that that would be best and hung up on her. He walked over to the delivery schedule calendar and crossed their name off of the list.

Two days later, I got called into the office to hear a message left by the daughter. She was begging us to make deliveries again while she apologized for everything. She had discovered that we were by far the cheapest option for them.

One of the things that made them frustrating to deliver to was not just the physical difficulty of the delivery, but they only had a 350-gallon holding tank. It was a lot of work and time to deliver such a small amount of water, and we have the lowest minimum delivery rate in town.

While all the companies around town are at about the same price per gallon, most other companies have an 800-gallon minimum delivery rate, while our minimum at the time was only 500 gallons.

[Boss] and I shared a chuckle over the call; I don’t believe he bothered with calling her back.

I’m a senior electrical engineer in the industrial sector. I started work at a huge firm a few weeks ago, and right off, my superior detailed what was expected of me every quarter. Among the requirements was one safety violation report a month.

I thought, “Okay, I can keep myself from f****** up more than once a month. This is a large factory with everything from spinning grinders to steaming corrosives, so obviously OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is a big issue here, but this isn’t my first rodeo, so to speak. I generally know what I’m doing.”

My first month went by, and I kept everything nice and safe. My end-of-month one-on-one rolled around. [Boss] made it clear, to my surprise, that the requirement was for me to file AT LEAST one safety violation a month.

Me: “How does one go about controlling safety violations, as they are inherently accidents? If I had any way to influence their appearance, I would prevent them in the first place.”

Boss: “You just need to keep your eyes open; the violations will appear.”

Fine. I kept my eyes open, but honestly, everything seemed perfectly in order. Everyone else in my department was ticking off safety violations one after another, and I was nearing the end of month two with nothing. I would go on walks looking for safety infringements instead of working.

Something seemed off, so I looked into the safety violations report Excel, and I was just stupefied. This was a list of the most unbelievably inane infractions I’d ever set my eyes upon.

Here’s one example:

Report: “Infraction: cabinet door was left open in a room. Someone could hit their head. Immediate mitigation: cabinet door closed. Future mitigation: add magnets to cabinet doors.”

There were countless other esoteric reports like “unexplained puddle next to electrical cabinet” or “stack of cables on floor”. I couldn’t believe it. These well-educated grown men and women just writing nonsensical safety violations on absolutely anything. I tried approaching one of the guys about it, but he just said:

Coworker: “Keep your eyes open; the violations will appear.”

They keep repeating it like it was a mantra and then changing the subject.

I thought this was ridiculous enough, but then, one day, a report came in about a ladder missing one of the plastic caps on its legs. “Immediate mitigation: plastic cap found elsewhere and secured in its place.” I had been the last one to use this ladder the day before and it was perfectly fine, which led me to my conclusion that this man was purposely SABOTAGING company equipment just so he could fix it and then write a safety violation report.

I felt like I’m in an episode of “The Office”. Everyone I approached about this just brushed it off. Maybe it was because I was the new guy?

Anyway, I couldn’t show up to my second monthly evaluation sans safety report, so I went to a random grounding cable, slightly unfastened the bolt, took a picture, and then fastened it back in place. I wrote a report about it, and the OSHA guy commended me in person for my vigilance.

Is this a department-wide grift? Are the managers unaware of this farce, or are they playing along? Usually, this would be a huge red flag but everyone is otherwise really nice and the pay is great. I wonder what I should sabotage next month…

Customer: “Why does your vending machine not work when I press D3?”

Me: “Sir, there are no credits on the machine.”

Customer: “Yes, I haven’t put the money in yet.”

Me: “You’ll have to put the money in first.”

Customer: “I’m sure that’s not how it works…”

Me: “I assure you that it is.”

Customer: “Can’t I put the money in after? What if I don’t like it?”

Me: “What’s stopping you from walking away with the unpaid-for item if you’ve gotten it without putting the money in?”

Customer: “Well, wouldn’t the machine stop me?”

Me: “It’s a vending machine, not RoboCop.”

Related:
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 26
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 25
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 24
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 23
Doesn’t Understand The Custom Part Of Customer, Part 22

I work for a tankless water heater company. I talk to plumbers all day long. I get a lot of calls from people who have hooked up the very clearly marked COLD water pipe to the HOT connection on the unit and the HOT pipe to the COLD connection. This causes the heater to not work.

I am suggesting this to a plumber.

Plumber: “I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and you don’t know s***!

Me: *Calmly* “The problem must be with the unit. I would advise you to shut off the cold water valve going to the unit—” *thus no water pressure to the unit* “—and remove the part to inspect it.”

I then heard the plumber drop his phone in a garbled mess of water spraying him and everything around him, something that could only happen if he had mixed up the pipes. I then giggled and waited for him to pick back up, make an excuse instead of admitting that he was wrong, and hang up.