A few years ago, I took a role at a startup company as a secretary, working for a very nice woman. I was part-time, and we were closed on Fridays and the weekends. She had only been in business for a few months. She said she had been trying to run it all on her own. She got overwhelmed and decided to hire me.

She only went into the office on Fridays to do payroll, and my check would be in the bank on Mondays.

There were some things I didn’t know how to do, and I explained that to [Boss] in the interview. She said it was no problem and she would train me.

We got along great. We joked around and discussed our lives.

When I first got there, the office was a disaster, and my first task was getting everything organized. [Boss] trained me on some of the things I didn’t know how to do. I picked up on this quickly. She never complained about my performance.

Fast forward two months. Everything was going well, and we were still getting along. Christmas was approaching in about a month. [Boss] was suddenly different. She forgot to pay me for the previous week. I brought it to her attention, and she just said that she had a lot going on. Christmas was approaching, and she was stressed out about her family coming to visit. Understandable. She said that she’d do payroll on Friday, and I would get the check by Monday.

However, I didn’t get it. I mentioned it again. [Boss] said she had forgotten, and when she did payroll again, she would make sure I got it along with the hours I had worked that week. That didn’t happen. I politely mentioned it to her again, and she said it was the stress from Christmas. She said she would make sure I had it. She now owed me for two weeks plus whatever I had worked that week.

On Thursday, [Boss] said she’d made herself a note to do payroll Friday, and I would have my pay deposited by Monday. She also said she had other news. She said she was so stressed out about her family coming in that she was taking the whole week off for Christmas. She said I could do the same or work December 21 and 22 and be off until December 28 when she would reopen. I chose to work those two days.

[Boss] emailed me a list of tasks to work on for both days. I was only to work four hours each day and email her back what tasks I had completed and the hours I’d worked. I did so before I left for the day. She said not to call her or text her during the week at all unless it was something important.

When I returned on the 28th, [Boss] was upset with me. She claimed I didn’t come and work on those days because she didn’t get an email. I showed her from my computer where I had sent the email to her, and she checked hers, and they were there. She blamed the stress.

Then, she told me she had bad news for me. She had accepted another job working elsewhere, and she was laying me off. She said her business wasn’t doing so well, and she would probably close it down in a couple of months.

When people did call about doing business with her, she would get short with them and would curse them if they didn’t like what she was charging.

She advised me that the next day, Tuesday, would be my last day. On Tuesday, she thanked me for everything I had done for her and wished me luck in my job search. She said she would miss me. She added that she would do payroll on Friday as she always did, and I would get my check on Monday for the last two days I had worked.

I started looking for a new job, and I went ahead and filed for unemployment. I got a letter saying my unemployment had been approved because [Boss] never responded.

Then, I got another letter saying [Boss] was contesting it and a hearing was scheduled. I was confused as to why she was contesting it since she had laid me off.

For the hearing, I could upload any documents that may pertain to my case. I wasn’t sure what to upload, so I took a chance and uploaded the last paycheck for the two days I had worked the week she laid me off. I was concerned about the whole email confusion. When I sent those emails, I CC’d my own email address, just in case she needed to respond to me after work about something.

I was wondering if she was going to claim that I had never worked for her or something weird.

At the hearing, [Boss] claimed I was a terrible employee. The files that were a mess when I first started there were my fault, and I mailed things late. (I had everything ready to be mailed, but sometimes she took them late. She had told me she was the only one who would handle taking mail to the post office.)

Next, she claimed that my resume was all a lie — that I had never worked for any of the companies I listed on it. (She said she’d called them for a reference and that my supervisors, by name, spoke highly of me.)

Her next lie was that she had several other employees who worked for her at the business prior to me, and none of them required training. (She told me I was her very first employee there.)

The next lie: the week of Christmas, I didn’t work at all because I never emailed her to let her know I had.

The final lie: she said that she told me the last week I was there that she was laying me off, but I was to work all week. She claimed that, in good faith, she did the payroll on Tuesday and paid me for all week, and that I got my check on Wednesday. So, I robbed her of money.

When I told my side of the story, I challenged her lies. She kept changing her stories. I advised of some of the things I mentioned here. I told her that my last check stub was for two days, not all week like she claimed, and the check date was the following Monday, not the previous Wednesday. So, there was no money robbed from her. I also referenced the emails I had presented for evidence.

Then, [Boss] lied again and said she had never laid me off — that I had just quit showing up for work. At the beginning, she told the hearing officer that she had, in fact, laid me off because she was going to work somewhere else because the business was failing, and somehow, that was my fault.

I believe the hearing officer saw through her lies and concluded the call. [Boss] tried to keep the call going, saying I didn’t deserve unemployment.

Thirty minutes later, I got an email saying my unemployment had been approved. [Boss] didn’t try to appeal it, either.

A year later, I saw that [Boss] had been arrested for embezzling money from a company. (Probably the new one she went to work for.)

I did get all the pay she owed me.

Many years ago, I was hired as a receptionist for an attorney’s office. I was still young then — in my early twenties — and this was my first office job. 

The attorney I worked for was a very nice man, and the law office was his father’s. His father had started the firm several years earlier, and [Attorney] had joined the firm about ten years earlier. His father ended up retiring due to health issues, so [Attorney] had taken over. 

I was made aware that emotions run high and I may have a few angry clients calling in. If any got abusive, cursed, or threatened me, I could transfer them to [Attorney] and he would deal with them, but I was told I had to get their name first. 

I had been at the firm for a little less than two weeks, and so far, the majority of the clients who called or came in were fairly nice to me. Some were rude or distraught but never abusive. 

Then, I got a call from a hysterical woman. She demanded to speak to the attorney.

Me: “I can see if [Attorney] is available. May I tell him who is calling?”

Woman: “No. You may not. Just put him on the d*** phone.”

Me: “Hold for just a moment and I will check.”

Woman: “Stop talking, you idiot, and get him on the phone!”

I told [Attorney] about the caller on the line and what she had said. He rolled his eyes and said to put her through, which I did. 

Toward the end of the day, [Attorney] approached me and said he needed to talk to me about the call from the hysterical woman.

At first, I thought I had done something wrong. I went back to his office, and he sat me down to talk.

Attorney: “For the lack of a better word, the insane woman you took the call from was not one of my clients. She is actually the ex-wife of a client whose divorce my father handled.”

He continued while I listened. 

Attorney: “About ten years ago my father handled this divorce case for a man he knew. It was a very bad divorce, and I am aware of it because he told me about it. The man filed for a divorce from his wife because she was abusive. She kicked him, punched him, and even bit him. He had proof of all of this, and the wife had been arrested a few times, but when she went to court, she got a suspended sentence and was ordered to attend anger management classes. And it gets better. Do you want to hear the rest of it?”

I nodded.

Attorney: “The wife fought the divorce as she didn’t want it. She tried and tried, but the husband was not budging. Her family encouraged her and told her she needed to go through with it. Well, you would think that would have been the end of it. The husband was filing for sole custody of the two children, and she agreed to sign away her rights; she didn’t want the children). When she came in to sign the divorce papers, as she was reading them, something in them caught her eye, and she was livid. What do you think it was?”

Me: “She was going to have to pay child support anyway, or maybe she changed her mind?”

Attorney: “Neither. There was language in the divorce papers that said both parties would have the right to remarry, and she was furious. She said, ‘H*** no, he can’t remarry,’ and she threw the papers on the floor.”

Me: “Wow! So, what happened?”

Attorney: “We went to court, and she told the judge she wanted the language changed so that the husband would have no right to remarry.”

Me: “That’s crazy.”

Attorney: “Indeed, it is. She had a couple of outbursts in court and was threatened with contempt of court if she didn’t settle down. She told the judge her soon-to-be ex shouldn’t get to remarry ever because he still belonged to her.”

Me: “What did the judge say?”

Attorney: “He laughed at her and told her that both parties had the right, she couldn’t dictate that he couldn’t remarry, and it would stay in the agreement. So, she had another outburst and was in contempt of court. Anyway, her parents convinced her that there was nothing she could do and she needed to let it go. So, the husband got the divorce, and the language was left in there that both parties had the right to remarry.”

Me: “Is that what she was calling about? Was she trying to have it changed?”

Attorney: “There’s a little more I want to tell you first, so you can see how crazy this woman is. About five years ago, she contacted our firm saying she wanted to sue her ex-husband for dating again. My father got that call, and when she told him who she was, he realized it was part of that case. He told her she couldn’t do that, and he couldn’t help her or refer her to anyone else who could. He said it would be a conflict of interest. She got mad and accused my father of being in a conspiracy with her ex-husband to make her life miserable.”

Me: “Wow, that’s messed up. What was she calling about today?”

Attorney: *Sigh* “Well. When I asked her for her name, she gave her first name and maiden name, probably hoping to throw me off. She said that I had handled her divorce, and she wanted to sue her ex-husband for getting married again! I couldn’t find her in the files, so I asked if it was under a different name, and she gave me her ex-husband’s name. I remembered the case then. She said her ex had no right to remarry and he needed her permission. She just kept repeating that over and over.

“I told her I couldn’t help her and that, per her divorce decree, her ex had every right to remarry, and he didn’t need her permission. She said he should have at least asked her for permission, and she would’ve told him no. She asked, ‘What about me?’ So I told her to move on with her life.

“She asked, ‘What about me?’ again, insisted that he was still ‘hers’, and said she needed me to sue him. I told her that was not going to happen. I told her to answer her ‘What about me?’ question, she needed professional mental help, not a lawyer, and the conversation was over. 

“She accused me and her ex of being in some conspiracy to make her life miserable. I told her she was doing that all on her own. Then, I told her not to call here again and hung up on her.”

Me: “That is completely the craziest thing I have ever heard.”

Attorney: “Well, this might do it: the ex-wife worked as a nurse at the hospital before getting fired after she abused her ex.”

Me: “That’s terrible. I wouldn’t want someone like that as my nurse.”

Attorney: “I agree. She is insane. Anyway, if you get any more calls from anyone else being abusive, send them to me right away. I don’t care if I am on a call. If I’m not here, you have my permission to hang up on them. I will not allow my staff to be mistreated.”

I stayed at the firm for about a year and then got another job. Luckily, while I was there, the crazy ex-wife didn’t call back, and I only had a handful of abusive callers whom [Attorney] had to deal with. I did have maybe two whom I had to hang up on. 

Wow, those poor children. I’m glad the ex-husband got custody, and hopefully, the ex-wife got mental help. If not, she could be working at another hospital, which is scary to think about.

About twenty years ago, I was working at a mall store for clothing, accessories, and novelty items of a goth, punk, and indie nature. We had this kid named Frankie who would come in often. He was about eleven or twelve and was just starting to get into punk music. He and his mom would come in all the time, and they were just the best kind of customers — polite, friendly, and not a**holes like most of our clientele.

He’s been coming in for a few months, and Christmas was nearing. A coworker and I decided that we wanted to get Frankie some small gifts since he was such a cool kid. We bought a bunch of punk band patches and pins online that the store didn’t carry. We tucked the present away and waited for Frankie to come in again.

A week or so later, in walked Frankie and his mom. We pulled her to the side and let her know what we’d gotten him and gave her a chance to approve the presents. Seeing his little face light up when we gave him the stuff was just so awesome. I think he was sort of intimidated by us, as I was borderline goth and the other guy was punk all the way (huge mohawk, etc). It was nice to be able to show him and his mom that “counter-culture” people weren’t all bad.

As I am walking to the store entrance to lock it, in comes a mom and a daughter. It’s my last day, so I have been looking forward to my final closing.

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, we’re closed.”

Mom: “Oh, please, we just need to grab one top!”

I let them in. Fifteen minutes later after shopping for the top, shoes, hair accessories, and jewelry, the mom smiles at me.

Mom: “Oh, I guess you want to go home?”

Me: “No, b****, I want to spend the night here!”

She was so startled that she actually hurried out without buying anything.

I’m standing at the store doors five minutes before closing time, making sure everyone gets out since the doors aren’t automatic this close to closing. A couple walks up.

Customer: “Hey, you’re in the way.”

Me: “The store is actually closed now.”

Customer: “Shut up! I’ve got five minutes.”

With that, he actually pushes right past me!

All just to buy a pair of tights. They could have just said, “Oh, I just wanted to get one thing,” but no. Why would they show any kind of respect?

When they get to the registers, oh, look at that: all the registers need to be rebooted at the same time? That might take five minutes, or it might take more depending on your commitment.

Me: “The registers are rebooting since it’s so late.”

Customer: “Whatever, we’ll wait.”

Me: “It might take a while.”

Customer: “We’ll… wait.”

We continue our closing up and cleaning duties around them. The manager comes by and asks why there are customers still in the store just waiting around. I explain that they’re waiting for the system to reboot.

Manager: “You f****** with me?”

Me: “No, I’m f****** with them, actually.”

My manager rolls his eyes and storms over to the customers.

Manager: “We’re closed! Get out! The registers are closed! Come back tomorrow!”

Customer: “We’re waiting for them to reboot!”

Manager: “Reboot took too long! They’re closed forever! Come back tomorrow! Shoo! Shoo!”

My manager aggressively (but without touching) gets them out the door. They scowl and make angry grunts the entire way.

Manager: *To me* “Cute. Did they deserve it?”

Me: “They did.”

Manager: “Fine.”