I create designs for a print shop and have a very frustrating boss. Here are a few examples of how she manages our department.

I was tasked with creating a sign to mark the Employees Only area of our shop. I made a simple design with a red circle with a line through it next to the words, “Employees Only.” My boss made me change it to a text-only design because:

Boss: “The circle with the red line through it is hostile. It’s like we’re saying our clients aren’t welcome here. You should make the sign more welcoming. I went to college for this. I got my degree on this matter.”

It’s true my degree isn’t in Marketing; it’s in Business… but so is hers! I also feel it’s ridiculous, as the red circle with a line through it is a universally recognized symbol, and I feel that maybe, just maybe, the people who don’t read signs would recognize the symbol and stop before entering. Regardless, her version must have been “welcoming” as people did keep barging through the back door.

In a different case, I was tasked with designing a business card for a client. I came up with a design that met all of the specifications and showed it to my boss for final approval. She suggested one change, which I implemented immediately, and then she approved it without further comment. The job was sent to the printers. Before it was shipped out two days later, I happened to pass by the printer area and see it. The graphic I chose had been completely removed, leaving the card as just plain text. I asked the boss about this.

Boss: “The graphic made it hard to read the text.”

I disagreed — I wear glasses and had taken my glasses off to proofread the business card and could read everything just fine — but since she’s the boss, if she wants no graphic, then there’s no graphic. This client had no strong feelings about that particular design choice. I just couldn’t understand why my manager wouldn’t tell me when we were going through the approval process so I could correct it. I can’t understand why she felt the need to go behind my back to remove the graphic herself without even telling me at any point in time!

Speaking of “hard to see,” she claimed that a lot; I know for a fact, though, that my vision is worse than hers. I would look at the things she would nitpick over, claiming that the position of words and graphics were “hard to read.” I never had the problem reading what she said was impossible to read. If anything, it boiled down to stylistic differences. I preferred one strong graphic to interact with the text. She preferred repeating the same graphic in a tile pattern, which resulted in a series of smaller graphics and a lot of white space. I also felt that I was her least favorite designer, as she perpetually commented on my use of fonts — which were always on the list of approved fonts for any given job — while she never commented on my coworkers’ designs. One such coworker went as far as to use a bubble letter font with googly eyes — not requested by the client — and the boss said nothing and didn’t go behind that coworker’s back to change anything.

But through it all, I just swallowed my thoughts with, “I’m being paid regardless and she’s the boss.” However, the most recent incident caused me to post here. 

I worked for half a day on a new job: a series of advertising fliers for a local client. I had a pile of photos the client wanted to use, and this client had spoken to me about which images were the best of the bunch. I worked hard, laying out everything with the approved colors and fonts. I kept everything to no more than three graphics per flyer so that they would all be large enough to see at a distance. Most flyers only have a single client-given photo; a few have two. My boss approved my designs.

The next day, I went through our shared folder looking for an unrelated assignment when I noticed the “recently edited” date on my flyer project was only a couple hours ago. I opened it and, sure enough, my boss had again gone behind my back, except this time, she had absolutely and completely and totally butchered everything. She crammed upward of six graphics on a single flyer, choosing the busiest graphics and putting frames around each image, so each image would be all the smaller when printed. The frames even had the original creators’ watermarks on them, so she just took images from the Internet! She ignored the client’s preferred photos, and she associated photos together on the same flyers that were supposed to be on different flyers. She also butchered a couple of the layouts, resulting in one flyer with the images literally stacked on top of each other like a deck of cards and a different flyer cut in half, size-wise. She didn’t even make a copy of all the work I had done initially. She overwrote everything, leaving behind nothing but her versions with her edits. This meant I had to take another half-day remaking the flyers up to the client’s actual specifications.

The thing is, if she wanted edits, she could have simply not approved my initial designs and given me feedback on what to change. She didn’t have to lie about approving things and then go behind my back to butcher everything.

I had just bought a drink at the movie theater. I have a thing about bugs, so it seemed perfectly logical to smack a fly that had landed on the lid of my drink. The drink flew into the garbage can where it luckily made no mess. I couldn’t help myself, so I looked at the man (an older fella) manning concessions.

Me: “Probably not the stupidest thing you’ve seen in your life, but did I make the top ten?”

Concessions Worker: “It’s not even a contender.”

The look on his face said it all…

After almost two years of encouragement from people I’ve met through this website, I have finally moved out. Getting here has been an ordeal, but here’s a snippet of what went on.

First, my dad and his girlfriend found a house they wanted to move into together. Since the house we lived in was council housing, I could not remain living there without him. So on the 30th of August, I was given official notice that I needed to move out by the 30th of September. Weird as it sounds, I probably would not have moved out without this deadline.

However, actually finding somewhere that, one, accepted pets, and two, I could afford, was still really fricking difficult. With the help of my social worker, I was able to negotiate with the housing council people that I could stay until the 2nd of November. On the 16th of October, I found a house share that didn’t hate Betty. It took a couple of days to go see it and stuff, but I got it. Hooray!

When my dad moved, he left a load of stuff in the house. He spent September moving some stuff to his new place, and he told me to let him know when I’d found somewhere so he could get a skip [dumpster]. Once we had the skip, “we” (meaning my sister and me) could get the rubbish out of the house, and my dad could get rid of the furniture he wasn’t keeping. And something about the carpets. I never really understood why my dad needed to remove the carpets, but it had to wait until I’d moved out.

There was a lot of confusion around this skip. My social worker and a woman I’ll call my helper lady (because her official title is too unique for anonymity) kept asking about it and getting confused when I told them my dad said he needed to know when I was moving out before we could have one. We eventually were able to figure out that the housing council was happy to send a skip whenever, but my dad kept blocking it. He didn’t want us to have a skip too early in case other people used it.

I was also stressing about being expected to clear the house. I had assumed that if my dad moved out before I did, then everything he left would become my responsibility. However, my social worker, helper lady, and a lady from the housing council all reassured me that it would still be my dad’s responsibility and that I just needed to focus on my stuff.

So, October came around, and I was the only person living at home. My sister’s old moldy bookcases were in the living room, alongside the sofa no one used due to the holes the dogs had torn out of it. My dad left his bed and other furniture in his room in case I wanted to take it with me. My sister had several black bags on top of the bunk bed of rubbish and old toys she didn’t want to keep. I kept finding things belonging to my middle sister, stuck pregnant and in a university several hours away and unable to come to collect them. I had a bag of my dad’s dog’s toys, which I was only holding onto because my middle sister might someday take them to him and lecture my dad about trying to throw away his favourites. The kitchen still had my littlest sister’s dirty dishes piled up from the couple of days before she left. The grass in the garden was taller than I am.

Basically, everything was a mess. I didn’t have the energy to sort it all out, and I still had to pack the rest of my room. Now that nobody else was living here, I could put moving boxes in my dad’s unused room without him sulking at me (not that he’d been sleeping there since he’d found his place). But my room was also a tip. There was a lot of rubbish shoved under my bed, and the one black bin emptied once every two weeks really wasn’t enough. I started putting bags of rubbish in my sister’s old room, planning to put them in the skip whenever that got here.

On the 21st of October, I texted my dad to let him know I’d found a place to live. He responded with a “congrats”. This should have given him a week and a half to get the skip and get rid of all his s***, and I’d arranged for my stuff to move on the 30th so he had a couple days before the 2nd.

He phoned me on the 26th. He was not impressed.

He complained that I hadn’t given him enough time to empty the house or order a skip. He complained that my social worker had told him he didn’t need to order a skip. He complained that I’m bad at communicating because I never responded to his “congrats”. He told me how inconvenient it was for him that he’d let me stay an extra month. He told me he was working every day until Wednesday and he couldn’t do Wednesday because it was going to rain. He told me he was starting to feel like he’d just pay the fine instead of emptying the house.

I let my dad know that my new place was too small for me to take any of the furniture he’d left, and he got upset because I hadn’t told him that earlier — how did I expect him to sort all that out? He told me — for the first time — that I never actually had all of the 2nd because the keys needed to be handed back at 10:00 on that morning. And he wanted me to hand them over because he didn’t want to make a three-hour round trip on his day off just to hand in some keys. (My sister was dropping by on the 1st to collect an ornament she’d forgotten, so he had her take them to me.)

Then, toward the end of the phone call, I had to explain to my dad that I’d decided I wasn’t telling him my new address, and I’d also gotten myself my own phone under my own contract, so he could cancel the one on his, and I wasn’t going to give him the number.

Dad: “Good luck, with… everything, if I never hear from you again. I’ll always love you.”

I started to tear up, said, “Bye,” and hung up because my voice had cracked. I didn’t want him to hear me crying over him — which I then proceeded to do, with Betty very concerned about why her human was sad.

So, on the 2nd, the housing council lady came, and I gave her the keys. I showed her around the house and the tip it was in. I explained that the washing machine was still there because the water valve had broken and couldn’t turn off, that I’d left bags of rubbish in my sister’s room, and that my dad had told me he’d rather pay the fine than sort it out. While she was clearly very not impressed, she was very reassuring that it was not my responsibility and that I’d done well to sort my s*** out.

Now I’m here, still getting used to living with strangers. But my aunt is listed as my next of kin, and my dad doesn’t know where I am, and that’s reassuring.

CONTENT WARNING: Cancer

I am a young Black man working at the checkout. My hair was tied into cornrows in a complicated design last weekend for a wedding, and since it took a lot of time, pain, and money, I am keeping it in for as long as I can allow.

An older white woman and her daughter are checking out, and the older woman can’t NOT comment on my hair.

Older Woman: “Your hair looks stupid.”

Young Woman: “Mom! You can’t just say that!”

Me: “It’s okay. I happen to like it!”

Older Woman: “Boys of your type should just shave it all off. It looks neater than that wild and crazy hair you grow.”

The younger woman slams her hand onto my counter, making me look at her — really look at her — for the first time. She doesn’t look like she’s in the best of health, and she has no eyebrows.

Young Woman: “I’ve got chemo later today, but it won’t be as painful as an hour’s shopping with you!”

Mom was silent for the rest of her time there. I hope her daughter is healthier and happier!

I work at a restaurant in the downtown area. For the last couple of days, a homeless guy has been coming in. I haven’t been working when he has, but apparently, they’ve given him coffee and some rice and beans for free.

He’s come back in today during the evening rush, and my manager sees it.

Manager: “[Homeless Guy] is back. He started coming by at lunchtime but now he’s back three times a day. [Spanish Manager] told him to only come by for lunch but now he’s back all the time. He only speaks Spanish, so can you explain to him that we can’t help him tonight?”

Me: “You want me to say those exact words?”

Manager: “Just tell him what you’d tell any person who is loitering but not ordering anything.”

I go up to the guy and tell him this, and he smiles and heads out without any problems.

I am serving a table that was right next to this exchange so they must have overheard, as at the end of the night they stiff me on the tip, and left a note on the check saying:

Note: “It costs nothing to be kind. A hot meal can make all the difference. Do better.”

I worked a double today and I only made $60… so thanks?

I told the manager this and he asked me to confirm the table.

Manager: “They come in here all the time. Let me know next time they’re in the restaurant.”

The next week they’re back so I let my manager know. He heads over to the table.

Manager: “[Customer’s Names], so good to see you again! I just wanted to let you know that your feedback has been heard.”

Customer: “What feedback?”

Manager: “Last week, when you decided to make a point about us sending a homeless gentleman away by not tipping my waiter, who was just doing what he was told. Since you care so much about the disadvantaged people of our community we’ve started a scheme. You can pay for a whole hot meal tonight, and we will serve it to the homeless community. I’m sure you’re just as excited as we are about this amazing scheme.”

Customer: “Uh… well…”

Manager: “Because we simply can’t have any more misunderstandings like last week, where our poor waitstaff lose out on tips because of your strong desire to help the homeless, right?”

Customer: “Uh… right.”

Manager: “Excellent! I am so glad you see eye to eye with me on this. I’ll add $25 to your bill to pay for a hot appetizer and entrée for any disadvantaged person that comes by looking for a meal.”

The table stewed there in embarrassed silence the whole meal. They ate and left quickly, again not leaving a tip, but also never coming back. The homeless gentleman continued to come by every lunchtime for a free plate, but was surprised to get a hot takeout box on top of it for the next few days!