This was hands down the weirdest thing I’ve seen.

I do a lot of fieldwork at remote sites. “Remote” doesn’t really mean “inaccessible”, but it does mean it’s d*** hard to get to sometimes. I’m talking four to six miles into a wilderness, two miles from any established trail. Now, picture my coworker and me setting up a bark beetle trap in the middle of the forest in such a location. She squeaked a bit and pointed, whispering, “I think I see a bear!”

I turned my head and watched a fuzzy brown splotch moving through some thick undergrowth in the distance, kind of walking toward us, but it looked strange. It wasn’t really moving like a bear should.

A few minutes later, the shape popped out of the brush into a clearing, and I now knew why it looked weird. It was an extremely overweight man, I’m guessing in his mid-forties, buck-naked except for a bandana, eating… a KFC chicken sandwich, judging by the wrapper. He was just casually walking through the woods munching away, dangly bits and all flopping around like nothing was out of the ordinary.

I have no idea how he was even able to walk out there. I was wearing Vibram soles because of the random sharp rock pockets from the nearby lava fields and cinder cones.

We called it a day about six hours earlier than we should have and got the h*** out of there as fast as we could. My coworker refused to ever go back to that location, and I had to finish installing the trap by myself a week later.

I used to work at the front desk at a furniture store. This was a horrible job, and if I’d been thinking about it, I could have actually gotten a lovely Labor & Industries settlement when I left, but I was young enough that when I got a new job, I just left as fast as possible. It took me about a year and a half, but I finally managed to get that new job. 

Even though the furniture store was a nightmare and a half, I was also nice enough (or naive enough?) to still want to give them notice. So, I got the new job, signed all the paperwork, and asked them to give me some time so I could give my current job notice. I kind of liked the irony of the fact that I handed my resignation in on a day that was supposed to be my day off, but my manager was forcing me in to watch a demonstration of some new furniture.

This presentation was before the store was opened, so my manager thought it was fine to tell me to get up early on my day off and come in. She was willing to let me come in in whatever street clothes I wanted, but asking to be paid for it was like asking her to give me a kidney.

Anyway, I walked in and headed up to where she was waiting at the front desk.

Me: “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Manager: “Sure.”

We went back to the office, and I pulled out my letter.

Manager: “Oh, no.”

Me: “So, I got a new job. I leave in two weeks.”

Manager: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yep. [Date] is my last day.”

She gave a heavy, put-upon sigh because she wouldn’t be able to blame me for her not paying vendors anymore.

Manager: “Okay. Well, I guess if you’re leaving, you don’t have to stay for this demo, either.”

Me: “Great. See you Thursday.”

And I walked out. While I was upset at not being able to sleep in, by this point, I was awake enough that going home and back to bed was out of the question. So, I ended up swinging by my mom’s work, having lunch with her, and having a mini-celebration for breaking out of the store.

Sometimes I wonder if they’re even still in business, but I haven’t been bored enough to actually check.

I was working retail part-time in college. There was a back-to-school deal where the company would donate 5% of a sale to the school of the customer’s choice. To do so, we had to look up the school and find their number to input into the register. We were swamped, and I forgot. The lady and her kid left and then returned a few minutes later.

Customer: *Mad* “You didn’t ask which school!”

Me: “I’m so sorry!”

I had to return her whole purchase and rescan it. I was embarrassed and moved her to the front of the line. Her kid was impatient.

Customer’s Kid: *Whining* “Why can’t we leave?”

Customer: “We’d already be home if this high school dropout knew how to do his job. They must have some quota of [disabled slur] people they have to hire!”

I walked away from the register and left her standing there. I opened the next register and called the next customer over. My manager had heard everything.

He finished cashing her out and apologized like five times. She left in a huff.

He started to tell me I should have handled it better later in the break room, but I cut him off by turning around and walking away. He wasn’t happy, but it was that or saying something that would get me fired. 

Related:
Minimum Wage, Minimum Effort, Part 2
Minimum Wage, Minimum Effort

I was designing a brochure for a retirement home, and my client wanted it to have seniors’ photos. When I sent her the brochure for approval:

Client: “I don’t like these pictures.”

Me: “Why not?”

Client: “It’s just so sad. They all look so… old.”

When I was in high school, I worked at a restaurant where the dining room stations were assigned by seniority. The most senior waitress got the counter, and the most junior waitress got the back station which had one booth and four four-seat tables.

Every Wednesday night, at 7:30 sharp, a group from the Nazarene Church would come in and push the tables in the back station together so they could all sit together. They would order, and when their food came up, they would get angry if the waitress served them before they said their prayer. They would make her and me stand there, holding the trays of food while they said their “Praise the Lords”. The prayers were always excessively long, five or six minutes minimum — more if someone had recently died, gotten married, or given birth.

At about 8:30 pm, a group from the nearby Church of Christ would come in, and they would wait, standing along the wall because they wanted those tables in the back.

The Nazarenes would purposely linger over their coffee for thirty minutes or more to make the other church people wait. They would finally leave, and the tip would be in nickels and dimes that never added up to more than seventy-five cents.

The Church of Christ people would come over to the tables before I could finish cleaning them. They would sit down and repeat the performance.

I or the waitress, who were both making two bucks an hour plus tips, had most of our station taken up for two and a half or three hours by two very demanding and annoying groups for a tip that might be $1.50.

I couldn’t wait to get out of there. 

Related:
What Would Jesus Tip?, Part 2
What Would Jesus Tip?