My husband was the non-commissioned officer in charge of a large truck dock at a major Air Force base for several years before he retired from the military. The truck dock hosted regular potluck lunch events. It was my job to coordinate and run these events.

The civilian boss who was over the truck dock had a policy that ANYONE who entered the truck dock during these events was encouraged to stay and eat with us because we always had more than enough food. We once even had a group from the Danish military eat with us because their tour passed through the truck dock right before we started eating at a potluck.

The following happens when I deal with a dreaded “dependa” — the name for an annoying military wife who likes to throw her husband’s rank around. This dependa is the wife of one of his new airmen, and my husband is four ranks above the dependa’s husband. I have just invited several truck drivers who entered the truck dock to come over and eat with us because there isn’t an airman available to unload their trucks immediately due to the potluck.

This woman, who I have never met, starts yelling at me.

Dependa: “What are you doing?! Why are you letting dirty truck drivers eat with military people?!”

Me: “Umm, who are you? My husband is Technical Sergeant [My Last Name] and I am running this event.”

Dependa: “I am airman [Last Name]’s wife! You have no authority to let truck drivers eat with us!”

Me: “Oh, yeah, you’re the new guy’s wife! The reason why I am letting the truck drivers eat with us is that [Civilian Boss] told me to! We let the truck drivers eat with us while they wait for their trucks to be unloaded. I also know all of these truck drivers personally because they all come almost every day at lunch, anyway. I come to base to bring Sergeant [Husband] lunch every day, so I talk to them all the time.”

Dependa: “But truck drivers shouldn’t be allowed to eat with us! You are a disgrace to military wives!”

Me: “Hold on, let me call my husband over. You are way out of line!”

I call my husband over.

Husband: *To the woman* “What are you thinking?! My wife has been running these events for years, and you think that you can just barge in here as the wife of an E-2 and tell her what to do?!”

Dependa: *To my husband* “You have no authority over my husband! He is going to take your job in less than a year because you obviously don’t know how to run a professional military operation!”

Husband: “Are you threatening my job? Your husband is literally fresh out of basic training and technical school, and there is no way that he is going to make rank fast enough to even make E-5 before I retire in two years!”

My husband calls the airman over to us.

Husband: *To the airman* “Your wife thinks that she can just barge into my operation and tell my wife what to do! Control your wife now, or I will permanently ban her from the operation! She is disrupting an official event.”

The airman starts sputtering about how his wife is just really proud to be a military wife and that she just got too excited.

Husband: *To the airman and his wife* “I don’t care how proud she is! This is my operation and I will run it as I see fit, including giving my wife authority to run events in the shop! Take your wife and leave now! I will discuss this with you in private when you come back to work on Monday!”

My husband ended up banning the dependa from any future events because her husband couldn’t promise that she wouldn’t pull that stunt again. That was the first and only time that he banned a dependent from shop events.

Related:
Absolutely Trucking Mad, Part 5
Absolutely Trucking Mad, Part 4
Absolutely Trucking Mad, Part 3
Absolutely Trucking Mad, Part 2
Absolutely Trucking Mad

I’m the manager of a pet grooming salon for a corporate chain. Our setup is annoying only because the outside wall (facing the parking lot) is all glass, as is the inside wall (facing the inside of the store). We also have both an internal and external door.

I have a pet parent with two dogs who’s a no-show. After ten minutes or so, we call to see if they are on the way. As it’s a packed day, we warn them that we might have to reschedule them.

We try to be understanding that we have three stores within fifteen minutes of each other and sometimes people go to the wrong store.

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name] from [Pet Chain]. I had Fluffy and Fido for a 10:00 am appointment. I was just wondering if you were still on the way and running late or needed to reschedule?”

Pet Parent: “Oh! I’m on the way! We went to [Location ten minutes from us]; that’s normally where we go, but they were booked out six weeks, so we forgot we booked with you!”

Me: “I understand; it happens. You should be only ten minutes away, so as long as you can get here by 10:30, I can still get your pups handled. It might take me a little longer, as they’re going to bump into my next appointment due to being late.”

Pet Parent: “That’s fine. We’ll be there in five to ten minutes at most. Thanks.” *Click*

I go about preparing for them to try to make sure I can keep my day on track. At 10:30, they still haven’t arrived. I call and get no reply.

At 10:35, the phone rings and it’s the pet parent.

Pet Parent: “Hi! We are almost there! You can still do my dogs, right? I’m not sure how you expected me to be there by 10:30 when I was coming from [Location thirty minutes away]! I’ll be there in two to three more minutes!”

Me: “I’m so sorry, but I was very clear about you needing to be here by 10:30. It’s now 10:35 and you’re not here. You said you were coming from [Closer Location]; otherwise, I would have warned you that you wouldn’t be here in time. I can do one dog still, but I can’t do both. I suggest that you reschedule a day that works better for you, or you can have me just do one today and the second tomorrow at [time].”

Pet Parent: “This is stupid! I went to the wrong store! There is no f****** way I could make it there! This is horrible! My dogs need this! They’re so bad they look homeless!”

She did not disclose that they were matted when asked when booking.

Pet Parent: “I’ll be right in!”

Me: “Ma’am, if they are matted, I will absolutely need to reschedule you. As advised when you booked, we need extra time so we can take the care and time needed for the safety of your dog.”

Pet Parent: “This f****** b**—” *Click*

I think this is the end of it, but no. At 10:45, she comes in with severely matted dogs. I feel insanely bad for them, and I would take care of them if it wouldn’t cause issues for me and my other clients who didn’t lie to me and showed up on time.

Pet Parent: “I spoke with someone on the phone. They know I went to the wrong store and said they could still—”

I cut her off. I’m not trying to be rude, but I see where she’s going already.

Me: “That was me; I’m the only one working today. And yes, I spoke with you and advised you that I could only do your dogs if they got here by 10:30, and when you called back, I advised you that I could no longer do them. I can reschedule them, but I am due for another client in fifteen minutes, and it would be unfair to them to take your dogs in now. Plus, you did not tell us when asked originally that the dogs are this matted; we have to reschedule them so we can take the time and care needed for their safety and health.”

This leads to her blowing up and stomping out after a short back and forth about going to the wrong store (not my fault) and about how there was no way to get to our store in time from that other store (still not my fault).

She calls back right at 11:00. She’s in the parking lot staring at me and clearly sees that no one else has come in yet.

Pet Parent: “Did they show up?”

I slowly turn to look at her in the parking lot. I lie.

Me: “Yes.”

She hung up without saying anything else. She then sat in the parking lot for the next hour, staring into the salon, at some point pulling out some fast-food French fries and feeding them to the dogs as she waited. She waited until she saw both my 11:00 (who came in at like 11:02) and 12:00 appointments show up before she tore out of the parking lot.

I felt horrible for her dogs, but giving in would have only led to her pulling that stunt again. For the sake of my staff, I had to stay firm on what I said so next time she hopefully respects her groomer better.

Where to start? There are two people I consider the worst I’ve worked with. Ironically, I was warned a few years before about working with one guy, and people I’ve spoken to since who know him either change the subject or discuss how awful he is. I saw him regularly berate people in the middle of the office, telling them he could do a better job, they were not up to it, and on and on.

The other guy was my first experience of working with someone bad. I was part of a manufacturing engineering and facilities management team. It was a good team — so good, in fact, that initial plans to outsource the facilities management aspect of our team would prove more expensive than keeping it in-house. It happened eventually, though, and we were split along the line of where we were working at the time. We rotated through responsibilities: six months in facilities management and six months in manufacturing engineering.

This was how [Manager] became our manager. [Manager] was one of the manufacturing engineers with whom we had little interaction other than seeing the outcome of his projects. As part of the wider team, he had come to nights out with us and seemed like an okay guy — chatty, friendly, and so forth. That didn’t translate into our team. First, he stood at 5’6” or thereabouts and suffered from “small-man syndrome”. It didn’t help that the shortest member of our team topped six feet tall, so he always had to look up to us.

And so we come to the things that made him a horrific person to work with.

The stories of [Manager] are endless. Suffice it to say, after he became our manager, a team that had worked well for almost eight years was bickering, arguing, and fighting amongst themselves any time he interacted with us.

[Manager] demanded respect, and if he felt you didn’t pay him the respect he was due, he’d remind you of his position. That said, he didn’t respect his team. Here are some instances.

1) A secure storage project went off the rails. The team had to work an entire weekend to resolve the problems he caused, while he had his son christened and had a big party. His boss was invited to the event, and when he found out what was happening with the project, he stopped the christening and ordered [Manager] back to work.

2) One of the team earned an innovation award and bonus; [Manager] “forgot” to approve it with payroll for six months. A meeting between the two in the workshop, while the rest of the team waited on the far side of the production floor, sounded like they were brawling and kicking the stuffing out of each other. [Manager] stormed out and we went back.

The Team: “Paddy! What happened? We told you to keep it cool.”

Paddy: “I was sitting on my hands the entire time and never left my seat. [Manager] was slamming cabinets and banging doors, yelling and screaming about how I made him look bad with my complaints.”

The award was paid soon after.

3) One day, I was stuck on my own due to illness and holidays. The machine that was the heart of each production line started acting up, so I had ten production lines with the same problem. Nothing I did fixed it, so I called for a service engineer. In the meantime, I was able to apply temporary fixes that would keep the lines running, but it meant I needed to cycle through each line making constant adjustments. [Manager] turned up and started shadowing me as I moved from line to line. As I turned to go back to the first line again, I saw that all the lines were shut down.

Manager: “You can’t handle this. Call a service engineer. I don’t understand this at all; the machines were working when I bought them.”

(Note: the most recent machine installed was five years old.)

I responded, raising my voice slightly to be heard over the hiss of compressed air from the machines.

Me: “I have; he’ll be here shortly.”

When the problem was resolved a few hours later, [Manager] cornered me in the workshop.

Manager: “If you ever talk to me like that again, I’ll fire you on the spot!” 

Me: “Like what?” 

Manager: “You raised your voice at me. Respect me or leave. You wouldn’t talk to [Vice President] like that.”

Me: “Yes, I would, so they would be able to hear me.”

Manager: “Well, you don’t talk to me like that; I’m your manager.

There were other stories — far too many — so I found a new job. Two weeks into my four-week notice, Paddy quit with no notice. He emailed Human Resources, explained why, and left. Speaking with him a few months later, he said the company had contacted him immediately to find out why and he explained. [Manager] had seen a copy of what was said and told us it was all lies.

At my exit interview, which [Manager] forgot to arrange with Human Resources, I told them everything that had happened. In less than eighteen months, [Manager] had destroyed the team.

The week after I left, there was a first round of redundancies. Guess who was the first marched to the door? [Manager].

I am a woman, and unfortunately, I am well-endowed in the chest area. By that, I mean that my breasts are disproportionately large to my body.

I have been struggling for some time with the complications that come with them. Constant back pain has been “normal” since my teenhood, and it soon started affecting my sciatic nerve. Medical care in the USA being what it is, I wasn’t able to get the option for breast reduction surgery until very recently. An appointment with a neurosurgeon finally switched the argument from “cosmetic and unnecessary” to “medically necessary” with my insurance.

The next problem came from, of all things, my boyfriend at the time.

Boyfriend: “Why are you talking about getting your breasts reduced? They’re fine.”

Me: “Unfortunately, they’re not, hun. They’re too big and too heavy for me.”

Boyfriend: “But they’re beautiful! Why are you being vain and trying to use a knife to change your appearance?”

Me: “Because it’s not about appearances; it’s affecting my health! Do you remember the doctor’s appointment I had the other day?”

Boyfriend: “Yeah, what about it?”

Me: “I got that appointment because the pain got so bad I couldn’t function. The doctor is a neurologist. She said I now have spinal damage and that I need to get them reduced.”

Boyfriend: “Can’t you, like, wear a custom back brace or something?”

Me: *Coldly* “No.”

Boyfriend: “Well, I don’t support you going under the knife to ruin your [rude word for breasts].”

That sparked one h*** of an argument, which ended with me saying:

Me: “If all you care about me for is my boobs, then you lose access to them, whether I get surgery or not! You’re a single man-child now!”

Then, I kicked him out and cried angry tears.

My surgery was a success, though the recovery was long due to complications with my back.

My ex-boyfriend went around all our social circles, saying:

Ex-Boyfriend: “I didn’t support it, and she did it anyway! I should have an equal say in our relationship, and she didn’t respect that!”

He expected everyone to have his back but got a nasty surprise when all of them clapped back, called him a d****e, and stopped hanging out with him. Luckily, I lost nearly 200 pounds, PLUS whatever weight I lost from the breast reduction, and I’m happy as can be.

In my last year of high school, I worked at a popular drive-in restaurant. I had my fair share of crazy coworkers, including a manager who cheated on his girlfriend with another coworker (who was seventeen) and a guy who insisted on making as many offensive “jokes” as possible and calling people snowflakes if they called him out on it.

But the craziest one I ever had was hired about a month and a half before I left for college. She didn’t seem all that bad at first. She didn’t pick things up quickly, and she spent ages in the bathroom, but not everyone in a fast food restaurant is there to work with efficiency, right?

It got worse.

During one shift I worked with her, she ordered something on the app for her break, which was something lots of us did. Immediately after her break, she grabbed her bag and left. That wasn’t uncommon; sometimes it would be slow and the manager on duty would send us home, so I assumed that was what was going on… until the manager asked me if I knew where [Coworker] was. It turned out that she had ordered something with onions in it and had an allergic reaction, and rather than telling anyone, she just left. She got written up and her shifts were reduced.

She never got better at her job. It wasn’t difficult; we just made drinks and ice cream and took food to the customers. It got to the point where she was getting called off her shifts even if we needed her because she just made it harder to keep up.

On my second to last shift, [Coworker] showed up in uniform right as my manager was having me count down. She was not on the schedule, so everyone was confused. She kept insisting she should get to work since she had been sent home the day before.

Eventually, she ended up ordering like three full meals for her family. There was a write-up in the back with her name on it, so my manager made her come back to sign it while she was waiting, and she threw a fit.

Coworker: *Yelling* “This isn’t fair! I never get to work any shifts! I might as well quit!”

I finished counting my money and handed it off to my manager. She counted and put the cash in the safe and the coins in the cup on the counter and closed my till so I could leave. I thought that was the end.

My manager texted me on Snapchat two days later and told me everything.

[Coworker] was caught stealing all of the change from the cup on the counter while the manager was closing my till. Apparently, some deposits had been coming up $7 to $16 short for the last several weeks, and no one could figure out why.

[Coworker] was fired, and none of us understood why she would steal from the company right in front of a manager.