All of our stories, starting with the newest!
I work as a casino dealer. I go out for a drink with a friend. We’re stopped by the guy at the entrance.
Guy At Entrance: “ID.”
Me: “Oh man, I don’t have it on me. But wait, you’re a regular at my table, right?”
Guy At Entrance: “Yeah, I know you perfectly well.”
He was not happy because two nights ago he lost a lot at my roulette table.
I had the immense pleasure to take some more of his money on his next visit.
My restaurant is mostly known as a breakfast and lunch spot and has been a local staple since the sixties. Day shifts can be brutal here because we get slammed more often than not.
By the time 1:00 pm rolls around, I’m starting to be over it, having been there since 8:00 am and going nonstop. That’s when I have a party of three seated in my section: a mom and two girls, probably about eight years old.
Mom: “[Girl #1], tell the server your order.”
She does so.
Mom: “Okay, [Girl #2], it’s your turn to order.”
It turns out that the little girl and I have the same name. I always give tables my name at the end of ordering because they seem to remember it better that way, so after Mom orders, I say:
Me: “My name is also [Girl #2]! Please let me know if you need anything at all.”
The little girls’ faces lit up. From that point on, every time I was at the table, they called me by my name and giggled with excitement. Mom let them do all the talking and make all the requests from then on since they were having so much fun. Any time I glanced over to keep an eye on the table, they were peeking over the top of the booth at me. It was so cute.
When they asked for boxes at the end, I wrote, “Stay awesome,” and, “Stay amazing,” with hearts on the tops of the boxes so that they would see it and be surprised as they closed the boxes. They loved it and jumped up and asked me for a hug.
On their way out of the restaurant, they stopped at the drink station and asked me for my autograph. I signed the boxes, and they were over the moon about it. They giggled and glanced back at me the whole way out of the restaurant.
It was truly one of my favorite experiences after working in restaurants for seven years and absolutely the best thing to help me get through a long shift.
Customer: “I want you to make my coffee for me.”
Me: “I’m just taking the orders for today, sir.”
Customer: “No. I want you to make it. I don’t trust those other guys. I was in Afghanistan, and I don’t trust Arabs to make my coffee.”
I try to ignore how wrong all of that was.
Me: “Well, they all make a decent cup of coffee, sir, I assure you.”
Customer: “Fine… but you’d better be making them tomorrow.”
Me: *Just trying to move this along* “I will try, sir.”
Customer: “It’s so bad in America these days. They’re everywhere. I saw online yesterday that they started teaching Arabic numbers in schools! That’s crazy!”
I work in an office building owned by a moderately sized tech company. In our employee café, we have two vending machines that have some operational issues. The machine doesn’t seem capable of doing math properly and will commonly say you have “Insufficient Credits” after buying a single $1.00 drink, even though you are pre-authorized for $5 when you swipe your card. This makes it rather hard to get more than one drink if you are trying to get something for yourself and your coworkers.
One day, I walk in just in time to witness [Employee #1] at the vending machine.
Employee #1: “NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON!”
She slams her forehead into the machine, I assume not knowing how thick the glass is. This causes her to fall backward. She ends up hitting a low bench and falling backward over it, taking out the bench, several potted plants, a rather large Christmas decoration, and one of the table-and-chair sets. She sighs, lying in the results of the chaos, and I walk up.
Me: “Are you using the machine?”
Employee #1: “Oh, no. Please, go ahead.”
Me: “Do you need help?”
Employee #1: “I’m good down here.”
Me: “Do you need… mental help?”
Employee #1: “Don’t we all?”
Me: “What did the machine do to you?”
Employee #1: “I swiped for $5 and got one bottle of water. Then, it said I had insufficient credits to get another one. Then, I swiped again, and it went into cash-only mode, so I put a dollar in it, but apparently, when you use cash, there’s a fifty-cent upcharge. And then, it wouldn’t give me my dollar back.”
Me: “Ah.”
Employee #1: “Yeah.”
Me: “How has the rest of your day been? Been okay?”
Employee #1: “Absolute bulls***.”
She proceeds to tell me about her day, project deadlines, a manager who needs a foot up his a**, bad clients, and unhelpful IT representatives, as we clean up the mess she made and I evaluate her for injuries.
Apparently, her manager has been overloading her. Every time someone can’t finish something or he doesn’t trust them to do it, he forces it on her with no extension of deadlines and no increase in compensation. As a result, her work quality and speed have obviously dropped, and that same manager is now threatening to demote her, fire her, or cut her pay.
She says she demanded that everyone take back their work and that the load be redistributed, but the manager replied, “That’s not within the goals of the department,” and, “Your coworkers are comfortable where they are; it would be unfair to increase their workloads.” She says it’s possible that he is playing favorites, and when she called him out on it, he threatened to fire her again.
Somewhere around the end of her story, another employee comes in and goes to the vending machine.
Employee #2: “Hey! Free dollar!”
He takes a dollar out of the bill accepter. We have no idea when it was dispensed.
Me: “Oh, that’s hers!” *Gesturing to [Employee #1]*
Employee #2: “Finders keepers!” *Laughs*
Employee #1: “Is that what [Secretary] said when she stole you from your wife?”
There is dead silence in the room. [Employee #2] is very much still happily married. He silently returns the dollar to [Employee #1] and leaves the room without even buying his drink.
Me: “Who the h*** was that?”
Employee #1: “That was my manager.”
Me: “Oh. Oh, no.”
Employee #1: “God, that felt good. I’m going to go up there and quit. F*** this place.”
I have no idea what happened when [Employee #1] went upstairs, but she didn’t quit. Rumor has it that she went up to her office, decided, “F*** it,” and phoned the owner of the company. He was shocked to learn about her gripes.
The owner then went to [Employee #1]’s manager’s manager, and they looked into everything together. Whatever they found triggered an investigation that spread throughout the company and led to a restructuring.
[Employee #1] is now in her previous manager’s position, and ever since her promotion, the second-floor employees have all been much happier. The owner of the company is now also around more, switching from a nearly pure work-from-home schedule to being in the building four out of his five working days.
The vending machines are still there, though.
I never got to ask [Employee #1] why she shouted, “Neil deGrasse Tyson!” before headbutting the machine, but I have a meeting with her soon, so maybe it will come up.
This story reminds me of a woman I heard about secondhand at my job. (I heard about it a few days after it happened.)
We had just installed those really nice Coca-Cola Freestyle machines that have like 100-plus options. Evidently, some woman came in, found out that the soda was now self-serve, and freaked out on my coworker, who was a sixteen-year-old girl. The woman screamed at her for several minutes until she cried.
And then, because that wasn’t enough, she went online and blasted us in a bunch of negative reviews for having the “audacity” to “make [her] fill [her] own soda”.
I Google searched the name (because these people almost always just use their full names on Google) and found her on Facebook. Of course, her profile was full of social-justice-y posts, including a whole lot of posts about supporting causes related to kids and adolescents — you know, like the one she screamed at until she cried.
Eye-rolls.
