A new store manager is going through staff scheduling with the floor managers. It’s his first time managing a store in a small town with just one high school where a lot of people know each other.

Store Manager: “Who is Milton? Why is he only ever scheduled to work the back?”

Checkout Manager: “Milton? Oh, you mean Milk. Yeah, he’s no good on checkout. We tried, but that didn’t work out.”

Store Manager: “Milk?”

Me: “Nickname.”

Store Manager: “Why is his nickname Milk?”

Me: “He got 2% on his final math test in high school, and since then, everyone’s called him Milk.”

Store Manager: “Okay, so no checkout. Got it.”

I work as a lecturer for an educational institution with branches all over the country. My branch is regarded as the finest in the whole organization, and this story is about the time I realized why.

Around five years after I started working there, the board of directors of our organization decided to gather all the lecturers at a conference hotel. The idea was to exchange experiences and generally have a nice time with our colleagues.

We were organized into groups based on subjects. All lecturers from different schools who taught the same subjects would be in the same groups. The day’s program would be decided by different groups: the program for [subject #1] lecturers would be set up by [City #1 School], the program for the [subject #2] lecturers would be set up by [City #2 School], etc.

My school happened to be responsible for setting up the program for my subject. We did some planning before the conference and decided that it would be a good idea to share experiences and resources and generally converse about how we went about doing our jobs. Our colleagues from the other cities thought so, too; we spent the day discussing all sorts of case studies and methods, generally learning a lot from each other.

During these talks, I realized the first reason why my branch is the best in the organization. We were discussing our methods when I showed one of my junior colleagues from another school some resources I had on my laptop. You know the sort of thing: PowerPoint presentations, written documents, spreadsheets, etc. She leaned in and studied my stuff eagerly, eventually muttering:

Colleague #1: “I don’t have anything like that.”

Me: “Well, they’re fairly easy to make, but the reason I have so much of this is that I’ve worked on it for five years.”

Colleague #1: “Well, I just started this fall, so I’ve only been working here for five months. It’s my first job, so…”

Me: “Do you want some of this?”

She looked at me, surprised.

Colleague #1: “Really?”

Me: “Uh… yeah? It’s not secret or anything.”

Colleague #1: “I can just… have it?”

Me: “Sure. What are you interested in?”

Colleague #1: “Well… all of it, but…”

Me: “Okay, I’ll set up a shared link for you. Hang on.”

I collected pretty much everything I had made for work over the past five years — PowerPoint presentations, syllabuses, and timetables; tests and evaluation criteria; collections of suitable literature complete with specific page numbers so they could easily be matched with subjects; lists of links to relevant web articles — a whole bunch of useful stuff.

Colleague #1: “Wow, this is great! This could save me a bunch of time. And it’s okay if I just reuse this?”

Me: “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

Colleague #1: “It’s just that we’re not really used to sharing resources like this. I’ve found some stuff online, but…”

Me: “Hold up. Hang on… You don’t share your ideas with the other lecturers? Why not?”

Colleague #1: “Well, it… Huh. I guess it just never really occurred to us.”

I looked around the table at the other people who taught the same subject as me. They seemed equally perplexed.

Me: “Do none of you share resources? Plans, timetables, lecture presentations, notes…?”

Colleague #2: “Hm… Not really, no…”

Colleague #3: “I guess we do sometimes… but no, we mostly just build our own stuff from the bottom up.”

Me: “Well, feel free to use my stuff. You can make changes, too, if you need to. There’s no copyright on this.”

Colleague #1: “This is awesome!”

It turned out that our branch had developed a culture for sharing information and discussing things freely while the other institutions had much less interaction between their lecturers. To me, the free exchange of ideas has always felt like a very natural thing (especially given that we are, you know, a freakin’ school), and my managers encourage it. My coworkers and I borrow stuff from each other all the time. Apparently, this wasn’t common practice everywhere in the organization.

After the conference, we heard that the other branches also seemed to have a completely different idea of what this kind of conference was about. One subject group decided to spend the day watching a stand-up comedian they had hired. A different group spent most of their time chatting and lunching. For them, this was a social event. The whole day was just spent hanging around in a hotel, socializing. In fairness, the people who attended did say that it was very nice, but it wasn’t exactly useful to their actual jobs.

I hear things are a bit better at the other branches now, some ten years later, but the board of directors still considers my workplace the “cherry on the cake”.

A few years ago, I received a phone call from a Human Resources person from a staffing agency I almost worked for at one point. I got through the greetings and small talk and got down to business.

HR: “I have a person you know applying for a job with one of our customers.”

Me: “I’m confused; no one gave me a heads up. Who are we talking about?”

HR: “Your friend, [Person’s First Name].”

Me: “Who?”

HR: “[Person’s Full Name] — he said he worked with you at [Email Company].”

Me: “Ohhh, okay. I remember him. But I’m not sure why he’d put my name down. We didn’t work all that closely. I interacted with his team only peripherally because we had equipment in his office. I don’t really feel comfortable providing a reference.”

HR: “That’s sort of our fault; we sort of pressured him to cough up references on the fly.”

Me: “I don’t feel comfortable providing a reference.”

HR: “Come on, [My Name]. We know each other. Help me out.”

Me: “Well, not being his manager, I can’t discuss his performance.”

HR: “Okay. Can I ask you about his technical skills? Can you comment on those?”

Me: “Fine, ask away.”

HR: “How is [Person] with [Software Package]?”

Me: “Okay, I guess. Maybe 2.5 out of five.”

A five out of five is extremely rare for this software. I might be at 4.7, and I’ve used the software for over twenty years, and I’ve even flown to the vendor’s headquarters to work on technology issues and help design future versions of products with them.

HR: “Great! How is he with [Hardware Platform]?”

Me: “Well, in the time he was at [Email Company], he never touched the platform. If he gained knowledge from elsewhere, I can’t comment.”

HR: “Wait, that can’t be right. He said he led the [Hardware Platform] refresh project.”

Me: “That’s not true.”

HR: “[Email Company] is huge. Is it possible you weren’t aware of the project?”

Me: “No. I’m very aware of the project, and he wasn’t leading it.”

HR: “How can you be so sure?”

Me: “Because I led that project.”

HR: *Very uncomfortably* “Oh.”

Me: “I think it’s best for everyone that we end the call here. I think you have a phone call to make.”

HR: “Yeah, that’s probably best.”

I didn’t necessarily bash him but just set the record straight.

This was seven or eight years ago before I quit smoking. The place I worked at had an outdoor smoking area where most people gathered to socialize. At the time I, a woman in my late twenties, had my bag with a bunch of geeky pins, including several Marvel pins. A new guy came up to me, looked at my bag, and scoffed.

New Guy: “Are you even a real fan?”

Any girl into geeky stuff knows where this is going.

He started quizzing me on Marvel but in a weird, obscure way. Like, “In which issue of ‘X-Men’ was Kitty Pride first introduced?” kind of obscure — pedantic statistic kind of questions. When I didn’t know, he rolled his eyes.

New Guy: “I knew you were just another fake fan.”

My turn. I put on my best “clueless girly-girl” voice.

Me: *Faking confusion* “Aren’t you going to answer some questions, too? You know, to really root out any fake fans, since you seem so concerned about the concept.”

The guy was wearing a Deadpool shirt.

Me: “What’s Deadpool’s full name?”

New Guy: “Wade Wilson.”

Me: “No, his full name. What’s his middle name?”

He didn’t know. I asked if Deadpool had any kids. He didn’t know. A few more (actually) basic Deadpool questions later, he hadn’t gotten any right.

Really upping the girly-girl voice, I said:

Me: “Huh. You asked me all those weird questions, and I just asked for the name of the guy on your shirt and whether he had kids or not. I guess both of us are fake fans, then?”

And then, I just beamed at the guy. His face turned red, and he stormed out. He didn’t even finish his cigarette.

He never talked to me again. There’s no “…and then everyone clapped,” but I did get a high-five and a smirk from another smoker who had been watching.

Pulling an Uno Reverse while ramping up the girliness has become my go-to move against gatekeeping a**holes, and it is AMAZINGLY effective. I highly recommend it!

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

I am a relatively new air steward, and I have just finished responding to a customer who has been abusing the call button.

Me: “The guy in 45A has had about four gin and tonics. I think I’m going to cut him off as he’s looking a little woozy. I don’t think I could handle it if he threw up.” 

Coworker #1: “Oh, a little vomit is nothing. We get that all the time.” 

Me: “Oh, I know, they drill that into you in training, but I don’t want to contribute to it if I can help it.” 

Coworker #1: “One time, we had this guy who took a s*** in one of the sick bags so that he didn’t have to go down to the bathroom. We couldn’t find what was causing the smell and even almost considered landing the plane early as it got so bad, but the pilot noted that we were less than an hour from the destination, and landing, unboarding, and all would take longer, so we had to endure it.”

Coworker #2: “I remember that flight! We found the bag after everyone got up and left. There was some splatter on the seat, floor, and wall, too. We had to use a different plane and hazmat that one.”

Another coworker, who has been silently mixing a drink in the corner, joins in.

Coworker #3: “Oh, that’s nothing. I once had to stop one of our passengers from breastfeeding her cat.”

My eyes go wide.

Coworker #3: “I mean, I know they like milk and everything… but… yeah… That image stays with you…” 

Coworker #1: “Anyway, welcome to the airline industry!”