In my mid-twenties, I worked in a grocery store which was the absolute worst job I ever had. And one of the people who made it so miserable was [Rude Coworker].
[Rude Coworker] claimed to have some flavor of mental disability. I never actually found out what specifically he claimed to have, but it manifested in him striking up random conversations with people to share fun facts that were ALWAYS something either insulting or upsetting to the person he was telling them to. They were never anything that they would actually find “fun”.
We would complain, but management didn’t want to rock the boat with his disability claims, and they just generally told us to suck it up and deal with it.
On my particular final straw incident, I came into work having just gotten some terrible news about my family a few hours before. On top of that, I had spent my entire previous shift the weekend before with [Rude Coworker], dealing with him popping up randomly to share “fun facts” about all the ways I’d have been tortured and punished for speaking back to a man back in the Middle Ages. This “somehow” became his topic of focus after I asked him to be more careful when he knocked over two displays I was working on near the start of that shift. It had, in fact, “somehow” become his topic of focus with me in particular two times before this one, and all three times, management’s response to my complaints was, “Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it.”
So, suffice it to say, my tolerance for [Rude Coworker] was at an all-time low.
Rude Coworker: “Oh, hey, [My Name]! You know, you might not like to hear it, but—”
The last strand of my temper snapped.
Me: “THEN WHY ARE YOU GOING TO SAY IT?!”
There was dead silence as [Rude Coworker] stepped back, looking shocked, and a few other coworkers and customers turned to look toward us. Maybe I could have pulled back at that point, but everything just came spilling out.
Me: “WHY?! You just said that you know that I won’t like what you are about to say, so WHY ARE YOU PLANNING TO STILL SAY IT?! Why open your mouth? Why?!”
Rude Coworker: “I don’t—”
Me: “Oh, oh, let me guess! You don’t get social cues? Is that it? That’s what you always smirk after you insult everyone, isn’t it? Well, guess what? Knowing that someone won’t like what you say is a social cue, and you obviously do get it, because you just said as much right now!”
Of course, [Rude Coworker] fled to [Assistant Manager] to cry about me being rude to him, and I got pulled in to be scolded for not being more “understanding” and “kind” and more of a doormat — though that last bit was only implied, not stated. They told me to just go home, and that they’d be discussing my continued employment with [Store Manager]. After so many times of absolutely nothing happening to punish [Rude Coworker] and after my big blowup, I was just emotionally drained and didn’t have the will to try and fight it.
I went home and called up my family to get more information on the bad news, and I spent the time until my next scheduled shift focusing on that and doubling down on the job searching I’d already been doing.
When I came into my next shift, however, I found out that [Rude Coworker] had been fired. It seems that maybe getting me “sent home” for standing up to him emboldened him or something because he had apparently told a customer, in graphic detail, exactly what sort of sexual acts he’d like to do with her. And it turns out that sexual harassment of actual customers is a hard line — even for that store’s terrible management — that no number of disability claims would get them to overlook.
So, he was gone, and absolutely no mention was made of my blow-up or any “discussions about my continued employment”. I still ended up leaving that job the very moment that I found another job a few months down the road because, while [Rude Coworker] was one of the most terrible things about that job, it still had plenty of others to make it a terrible place to work.
