I never had any leadership training, so I will not claim that my conduct in this story was in any way perfect. I did what felt correct at the time.

I was working as supervisor of our production area. We’re a company for document management, so people’s main tasks were to take documents out of folders, remove staples, form neat piles of paper for the scanner feeding trays, and stuff like that.

During that particular time, we had one job that required more complicated prep. I don’t remember the details (this was ten years ago), but it involved sorting the documents by various criteria and thus was more demanding and time-consuming. The task could probably have been done more efficiently, but the CEO of the company himself had decreed how that particular job was to be done, and thus, we pretty much had no choice.

We had put one specific coworker on that task, and he was clearly unhappy with it; he was muttering complaints under his breath, and his head grew redder and redder. Then, when I happened to pass his workplace, he called out to me:

Coworker: “Who decided to do this task in this stupid way?”

I was in the middle of three different things, so I was admittedly somewhat curt when I replied over my shoulder.

Me: “[CEO] told us to do it that way.”

Then, suddenly, [Coworker] sprang up, got in my way, shoved my chest, and shouted:

Coworker: “That’s not how you talk to me! Don’t talk to me like that!”

I am male, but I’m neither big nor strong; [Coworker] was a head bigger and had at least 30 kg (about 66 pounds) on me. Even if I had wanted to fight him, I would have stood no chance. So, my only option was to remain calm.

Me: “[Coworker], please sit back down and continue your work.”

He kept shoving me.

Coworker: “I’m not doing that! What are you going to do? Huh? Huh?”

This went on for what felt like a long time but was probably just a minute or two. Then, another coworker got up and tried to get in between us and de-escalate. At this point, I got scared, because [Coworker #2] was pregnant at that time, and who knew what would happen if [Coworker] actually took a swing and hit her instead of me?

Me: “[Coworker], I can’t work with you like that. I want you to go home for today.”

Coworker: “I’m not going! You can’t send me home!”

Me: “All right, if you won’t take it from me, I’ll let [Boss] tell you.”

I walked over to my desk and called [Boss], who was the branch manager for our location. I told her that [Coworker] had attacked me and I would like to send him home for the day. She told me to send him over to her office. To my surprise, he did go there without any complaints.

About half an hour later, he returned, sat down at his desk, and continued work without any words.

[Boss] then called me over to tell her my side of the story. I gave an account of what had happened and told her that I really thought he should go home for the day because I didn’t know what he would do.

Boss: “Yeah, when he got over here, he told me that if you said another word to him, he would hit you in the face. I can’t send him home; that’s what he wants. But I will write him up.” 

I was flabbergasted. [Coworker] had outright told her he was seconds away from hitting me, and she had sent him back to me? Also, if all he wanted was to go home, he would have gone the moment I tried to send him home; that reasoning was bulls***. Unfortunately, I was too timid to be assertive at that time in my life, so I just accepted it and went back to work, trying to avoid [Coworker] for the rest of the day.

The next morning, I was called into [Boss]’s office. [Coworker] was already there, and [Boss] told me that he wanted to apologize. [Coworker] mumbled some stuff about both of us being men, and that’s how we behave, after all. (Note: that’s not an apology.) I asked what guarantees I had that something like that wouldn’t happen again, and he told me, “This will never happen again.”

The way [Boss] sniffed at my question clearly told me she thought I was the unreasonable one for not just accepting the non-apology. It was obvious that I wouldn’t get anything else out of either of them, so I just accepted it and went on with my day.

I later learned that while [Boss] did give [Coworker] a write-up, she did not hand it to Human Resources, thus not making it official — deliberately so, as she did not want it to reflect badly on her leadership.

Unfortunately, this is not where this story ends.

A few months went by. I tried to avoid any confrontations and let [Boss] handle [Coworker]’s assignments as much as possible.

[Boss] then decided she wanted [Coworker] to learn one of our more complicated data entry jobs. It would fall to our head of data entry (DE) to teach him said job. [Head of DE] already had some misgivings about him; they both came from the same Eastern European country, and he reminded her of gang members she had known there. But she needed the help and so agreed to teach him.

I only know what followed second-hand, as I was not present. [Boss] and [Head of DE] called [Coworker] into the data entry room to start teaching him. However, he had none of it. He shoved [Head of DE] away from him, shouting:

Coworker: “No! You’re not teaching me! I want [My Name] to teach me!”

By all accounts, [Boss] went white as a sheet when that happened.

[Boss] later called me into her office (I had heard about the incident by that time) and told me that I would not have to teach [Coworker]. In fact, he was on a limited contract that would run out in about six weeks. She would just not renew his contract, and then he would be gone.

Obviously, no one, especially not [Head of DE], was happy to hear that they would have to work with this guy for another six weeks, but unfortunately, that’s what we ended up doing. Since [Boss] hadn’t filed his attack on me officially, I suspect she didn’t even have the legal handle to fire him directly.

I did get a small comeuppance, however. About two weeks before [Coworker]’s contract ran out, he came to me and asked whether I had already scheduled time to teach him that data entry job. I told him in no uncertain terms that I would not and would never train him in that job. I would not reward him for the way he had treated [Head of DE]. I was not willing to take time out of my schedule at his whim. If he had wanted to learn that job, [Head of DE] would have been the person to ask, but he had squandered that chance.

He left without another word after that.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m eating dinner at a steakhouse. The waitress brings around a bunch of pink carnations and hands one out to each female diner. 

The man at the next table says something I can’t make out. His date replies: 

Woman: “No. You still have to. This flower isn’t from you; it’s from [Steakhouse]!”

I live in a rural area, and while I’ve never had my mailbox smashed, I did have a very lazy postal worker. I’m 99.9% positive she’d open our Netflix DVDs and watch them before we got them back when we first moved in. She’d bend people’s mailboxes back so she could more easily put in the mail from her car, but it would also let rain get in.

A few years ago, someone stole our mailbox. It was one of those plastic Rubbermaid ones,  and they pried it up and made off with it, leaving nails just sticking up from the base. For the new mailbox, we put rebar a good foot or so into the ground and whatever else my husband did. The end result was it gave the mailbox a nice recoil.

The postal worker tried bending back our mailbox, and it bounced right back — WHAMMO! — right into her car. She tried complaining, but our box was totally compliant with PO standards.

No more soaking wet mail.

Once at work, a jerk customer hid the ground beef they’d picked up in the diaper aisle of all places. It was almost literally as far away from the meat department as you could get, on the opposite side of the store, and it was stuffed all the way onto the back of the shelf.

Even worse? There was a freaking bite taken out of it!

I can’t even begin to think why someone would do either of those two things.

Me: “Hey, I’m trying to get your logo set up for embroidery, but I am missing some information. The notes say that the emblem should be hunter green and gold, but I need to know what color ‘gold’ you are referring to. We can do a metallic gold thread — which is not microwave-safe — or we can do a gold-colored thread — which looks gold and is microwave-safe, but it is not a metallic thread — or athletic gold thread — which is the golden rod color that sports teams use. Just let us know if you want metallic gold, gold-colored, or athletic gold. Thanks!”

Client: “Gold thread is fine.”