I work in an office building owned by a moderately sized tech company. In our employee café, we have two vending machines that have some operational issues. The machine doesn’t seem capable of doing math properly and will commonly say you have “Insufficient Credits” after buying a single $1.00 drink, even though you are pre-authorized for $5 when you swipe your card. This makes it rather hard to get more than one drink if you are trying to get something for yourself and your coworkers.

One day, I walk in just in time to witness [Employee #1] at the vending machine.

Employee #1: “NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON!”

She slams her forehead into the machine, I assume not knowing how thick the glass is. This causes her to fall backward. She ends up hitting a low bench and falling backward over it, taking out the bench, several potted plants, a rather large Christmas decoration, and one of the table-and-chair sets. She sighs, lying in the results of the chaos, and I walk up. 

Me: “Are you using the machine?”

Employee #1: “Oh, no. Please, go ahead.”

Me: “Do you need help?”

Employee #1: “I’m good down here.”

Me: “Do you need… mental help?”

Employee #1: “Don’t we all?”

Me: “What did the machine do to you?”

Employee #1: “I swiped for $5 and got one bottle of water. Then, it said I had insufficient credits to get another one. Then, I swiped again, and it went into cash-only mode, so I put a dollar in it, but apparently, when you use cash, there’s a fifty-cent upcharge. And then, it wouldn’t give me my dollar back.”

Me: “Ah.”

Employee #1: “Yeah.”

Me: “How has the rest of your day been? Been okay?”

Employee #1: “Absolute bulls***.”

She proceeds to tell me about her day, project deadlines, a manager who needs a foot up his a**, bad clients, and unhelpful IT representatives, as we clean up the mess she made and I evaluate her for injuries. 

Apparently, her manager has been overloading her. Every time someone can’t finish something or he doesn’t trust them to do it, he forces it on her with no extension of deadlines and no increase in compensation. As a result, her work quality and speed have obviously dropped, and that same manager is now threatening to demote her, fire her, or cut her pay.

She says she demanded that everyone take back their work and that the load be redistributed, but the manager replied, “That’s not within the goals of the department,” and, “Your coworkers are comfortable where they are; it would be unfair to increase their workloads.” She says it’s possible that he is playing favorites, and when she called him out on it, he threatened to fire her again. 

Somewhere around the end of her story, another employee comes in and goes to the vending machine. 

Employee #2: “Hey! Free dollar!”

He takes a dollar out of the bill accepter. We have no idea when it was dispensed. 

Me: “Oh, that’s hers!” *Gesturing to [Employee #1]*

Employee #2: “Finders keepers!” *Laughs*

Employee #1: “Is that what [Secretary] said when she stole you from your wife?”

There is dead silence in the room. [Employee #2] is very much still happily married. He silently returns the dollar to [Employee #1] and leaves the room without even buying his drink. 

Me: “Who the h*** was that?”

Employee #1: “That was my manager.”

Me: “Oh. Oh, no.”

Employee #1: “God, that felt good. I’m going to go up there and quit. F*** this place.”

I have no idea what happened when [Employee #1] went upstairs, but she didn’t quit. Rumor has it that she went up to her office, decided, “F*** it,” and phoned the owner of the company. He was shocked to learn about her gripes.

The owner then went to [Employee #1]’s manager’s manager, and they looked into everything together. Whatever they found triggered an investigation that spread throughout the company and led to a restructuring.

[Employee #1] is now in her previous manager’s position, and ever since her promotion, the second-floor employees have all been much happier. The owner of the company is now also around more, switching from a nearly pure work-from-home schedule to being in the building four out of his five working days. 

The vending machines are still there, though. 

I never got to ask [Employee #1] why she shouted, “Neil deGrasse Tyson!” before headbutting the machine, but I have a meeting with her soon, so maybe it will come up.

Our store has just fully reopened after lockdowns, but management is mandating that customers be vaccinated. Of course, this goes down with certain groups of the population about as well as can be expected.

Customer: “You can’t force me to take a vaccine!” 

Manager: “No one is forcing you, ma’am, but we also don’t have to let you into the store.”

Customer: “It’s my right as an American to go where I please without being forced to be vaccinated!”

Manager: “This store is private property, ma’am, and we can exercise our right to deny you entry.”

Customer: “Freedom has been a right in this country since 1776! Vaccinations are an attack on those freedoms! George Washington is turning in his grave right now!”

Manager: “George Washington made Congress force all his troops in the Revolutionary War to be inoculated against smallpox, ma’am. Please try again.”

I went into the post office some years ago, needing stamps.

Me: “I’d like to buy half a dozen stamps, please.”

Clerk: “We don’t sell things in dozens or half-dozens. Your choices are six or twelve.”

Me: “…Six.”

The clerk gave me the requested stamps.

Clerk: “I don’t know why you people make weird and stupid requests like that.”

Me: “A dozen is twelve. Half a dozen is six.”

Clerk: “Now you’re just lying to seem smarter than me.”

Me: “No, ma’am, I would never try to seem smarter than you.”

I left, shaking my head and wondering if maybe, just maybe, we made one too many budget cuts to our education system.

I once had to drive to the airport to pick up my housemate. I had circled through the pick-up area a couple of times already and was making a third circuit when I had to stop because there was a crosswalk in front of me and pedestrians were using it.

One of the officers who controlled traffic there immediately started blowing their whistle and yelling at me.

Officer: “Keep moving! There’s no stopping unless you’re actively picking someone up.”

There were pedestrians literally DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MY CAR. And it’s not like I was driving some behemoth of a vehicle that was blocking his view; at the time, I drove a 1993 Volvo 940 turbo station wagon. He could clearly see the people in the crosswalk. I guess he just really wanted me to run them over.

For the record, I chose to wait until I WOULDN’T risk committing vehicular manslaughter before driving out of the pick-up area, going to the parking structure, and texting my housemate that I’d meet her on foot to help her carry her luggage to the car.

I work in the wine-tasting area of a vineyard that gets a lot of visitors and tourists. A group has just noticed that we also sell cigars.

Me: “Yes, some of our visitors like to buy cigars as well as wine.”

Visitor: “My future son-in-law Charles likes to smoke cigars, too. He’s also a burglar.”

They walked away like that was the most normal sentence in the world.