My friend and I work at the local waste management facility — the dump. They don’t treat us well or pay us what we’re worth, but the worst has been how my friend is treated.

Most people in our area are pickers/sorters; we stand at a conveyor belt grabbing paper, recyclables, hazardous material, etc., out of the garbage. It’s hard work, and some areas are fast-paced, but we can’t really fall behind because the belt doesn’t stop.

My friend has a different job, where he has to sort through all the cans and other random metal that gets picked up by a magnet, and also sort buckets of recyclables one of the picker groups grabs because their area goes too fast for them to sort them manually. If he finishes both of those tasks, he’s expected to join us in our areas and help until he’s needed again.

[Friend] is doing a two-person job, literally. When he takes a day off, they need one fully dedicated worker and one person who switches between picking and helping them. Everyone he’s trained who tried to do it alone has said that it’s a two-person job and nobody should be expected to do it alone, but [Friend] is because he’s capable of keeping up.

The guy who had the job before him couldn’t even keep up; he would dump half his buckets back on the conveyor belt if he got behind, which meant the pickers in other areas had to sort them and we’d get hit with a wave of stuff that made us rush. In the year since he started, [Friend] hasn’t dumped a bucket once. They even closed up the hole that the last guy used to do that.

We also have deep cleaning days once a month, where we don’t run anything and just clean everywhere. For months, [Friend] (and I, once I got hired) was the only one volunteering to do one of the hardest, most back-breaking, most boiling-hot-in-the-summer jobs, which was also super important because if it wasn’t done, the machines would break down.

Despite all of that, [Friend] hasn’t received any raises or bonuses. When he brought up that other people worked far less and made more, he was told, “They’ve been here longer,” and, “You’re young, so you can just do more than them,” and, “Everyone finds their own pace.” He didn’t mind the pace or amount of work — he likes going fast — he just wanted to be recognized and rewarded for it.

So, he tried to stop doing the extra work he’d been doing, going into our work areas to help us when he was done with his own tasks. Instead, he would use that time to watch movies on his phone; he had enough free time to watch an entire two-hour movie on most days. But the big bosses noticed it on the cameras, and he was told he wasn’t allowed to do that anymore. He also got reprimanded and had a performance bonus removed because he would wear an earbud while he worked, even though he was one of the only people without a radio to listen to.

During cleaning days, both of us started getting in trouble for not cleaning — after we spent three-quarters of the shift working our butts off, while other people swept the same pile of dirt for an hour or “supervised”, aka stood around in groups while one or two people actually cleaned. The two of us could finish a job in two hours which used to take twelve people four hours.

On one cleaning day, [Friend] got in trouble for goofing off by shooting a few people with a water gun. Sure, it wasn’t exactly professional, but it was all in good fun, and the only reason the incident was even noticed was that someone else sprayed a guy who [Friend] knew to avoid. That guy retaliated by spraying two people in the face with a bottle of concentrated sanitizer. Both of them got the same punishment.

So now, we’ve slowed down on cleaning days and get less done, and we find easier jobs to do to take up our time. And [Friend] no longer does the extra work because he’s too busy standing at his spot waiting for one can to drop every minute. He’s finally “found his pace”.

When I was in high school, I was once “asked” to babysit a neighbour’s kids. She worded it as, “Your mom said you could babysit for me,” but I later learned that my mom had only agreed to let her ask me. Being a literal child, and a timid one, I assumed I didn’t really have a choice and agreed. I had never babysat anyone before, not even someone near my own age, so I have no idea why they thought I was suited to watch their children.

When I got there, I learned there were four of them: two older girls and two young boys, one still in diapers. One of the boys was running around naked, and nobody seemed to care. I understand that this is normal for young kids, but even the parents didn’t say anything, and I had to ask one of the older kids to take him to get dressed. Their house was a mess, and the kids didn’t try to clean up after themselves at all, even the ones old enough to know better.

All that, I could have dealt with. The worst part was when I learned that instead of leaving to go to a bar or something, as I assumed, the mother wanted me to babysit while she and her friends locked themselves in a room and got high. I have no problem with that in general, but I really didn’t appreciate being in the same house as a bunch of strangers taking at-the-time illegal substances!

I stayed there for three hours, and I had to tell the mother that my time was up and I was leaving because she wasn’t paying attention to the clock. Seeming barely aware of her surroundings, she got up, brought her youngest kid to her bed, and fell asleep with him while the rest of her kids were still awake.

For those three hours, I got a total of $35, delivered to me over a week later — after my mother hounded her — and the woman took it out of her sweaty bra to hand it to me.

There were two further incidents with this woman before we finally got her to stop speaking to our family, including one where she got drunk and threw trash all over our yard in the middle of the night!

Last year, I was lucky enough to get some money, which meant I could buy myself an electric scooter. As I don’t drive, being able to get around town on my own was quite the experience.

One day, I decided to take my scooter out to a fast food place so I wouldn’t have to pay for delivery. I ordered on my phone, drove over, and went inside to get my food. It was in the middle of the health crisis, so there was nobody else inside.

I told the cashier that I was there to pick up an order. Without any more information, she went to the back and put some stuff into a bag. Maybe I was their only pickup? Then, while I watched, she put the bag on a counter and left.

Thinking she was just getting something from a part of the kitchen I couldn’t see, I waited… and waited… and waited. During this time nobody else came in, and it didn’t sound like they were busy. Finally, she came back out, grabbed the bag — without adding anything to it — and put it on the counter in front of me. Then, she tried to hand me a piece of paper.

Employee: “Here’s the address.”

Suddenly, I realized what happened. I’d taken my helmet in with me so it wouldn’t be stolen. 

Apparently, she saw it and assumed that anyone coming in on a scooter or bike must be a third-party delivery person. Why she made me wait so long if I was meant to be delivering, I’ll never know.

After I shyly pointed out the issue, she was very apologetic and got me my proper food. Thanking her, I went back out to my bike and checked that I had everything… and realized she didn’t give me any of my dips.

I am in a city with a fair amount of tourists-in-motorhomes summer traffic. The following conversation, with minor variations, happens more often than I care to think about.

Customer: “Can you help me? I’m looking for a 5/8-inch by four-inch dingus, but all I can find is metric ones.”

I accompany the customer to the dingus aisle and go directly to the bin in question.

Me: “Here you go, sir. 5/8-inch diameter, four-inch-long dinguses.”

Note that sizes are given in both metric and SAE; however, our labelling system uses decimal, not fractional notation, so “5/8” is given as “0.625.”

Customer: “No, those are metric!”

Me: “Oh, sorry, no. Both the SAE and metric sizes are given, but in decimals. 0.625-inch or 15.8-mm.”

Customer: “I don’t want 0.625-inch, I want 5/8-inch!”

Me: “Sir… 0.625 inch is 5/8-inch.”

Customer: “No, it isn’t! It’s in decimals, and decimals are metric!”

Related:
Dumb By Any Metric, Part 3
Dumb By Any Metric, Part 2
Dumb By Any Metric

I work for an orthopaedic surgeon and the number of patients who don’t know their medications or allergies is staggering! This patient just called in and we’re concerned about an infection after her surgery.

Me: “The doctor wants to get you on a general antibiotic to be safe. Can you tell me if you have any allergies?”

Patient: “I think I have a few, but I’m not sure. I will give you a call back.”

This isn’t a problem, and the patient calls back to give me a list of five or so allergies. The medication that the doctor wanted to give her is a derivative of one of her allergies, so we need to know what happens.

Me: “Can you tell me what happens when you take that antibiotic, please?” 

Patient: “I can’t recall anything happening. I don’t think I’m even allergic. Let me ask my husband.”

I wait. The patient’s husband says he doesn’t know, so the patient is going to call a friend and get back to me. This is now the third time we’ve gone over this.

Patient: “I think you can go ahead and send that prescription. I don’t think I’m even allergic to it.”

Me: “So, just to be perfectly clear, you really don’t remember what happened the last time you took this medication?”

Patient: “Well, you know, I think the issue was that my throat started to close up.”

Cue me hitting my head on my desk.