We are doing a downsizing of several of our departments, which has caused some stress among the members of those departments. The CEO comes into the office to speak to everyone.

CEO: “We will use metrics to decide who gets cut. You all are clearly qualified to be here, so I don’t want you all to be essentially reapplying for your jobs.”

One hour later, we all get an email from the department director.

Department Director: “I want you all to submit a report — a resume, if you will — detailing your qualifications to stay in your position. Everyone must do this except for positions I’ve exempted due to their unique expertise.”

The exempted positions? Coincidentally, these include everyone the director golfs with or has had a very obvious affair with.

At least I get to work on my resume — I mean “report” — on company time.

I used to work with this guy who clearly had a crush on me. He would go out of his way to bring little presents to my desk or make trips across the office that were absolutely unnecessary except to pass by me. I was upfront with him and told him nothing would happen and that he should stop going out of his way for me. He agreed and reassured me that he wasn’t doing these things because of me; they just happened to involve me because he saw these things and knew I liked them.

Right. I almost believed him until he cornered me near the coffee at work one day. 

Guy: “Hey, I’m going on a trip to New York City next week. You wanna go along? We can see a musical or something.”

Me: “No, thanks. [Husband] can’t take off that soon, and neither can I.”

Guy: “No, I mean you and me.”

Me: “Uh… no. I’m not taking any solo trips with you.”

Guy: “Why? It could be fun!”

Me: “Because I’m married?”

I tried to step by him but he stepped in my way

Guy: “So? Just tell him you’re going on a work trip. It’s not a lie.”

Me: *Stunned* “It definitely is.”

Guy: “No, it’s not. It’s just not your work trip.”

Me: “I’m not going.”

I pushed past him.

Guy: “You’re missing out!”

Me: *Sarcastic tone* “How will I live?!”

I went to Human Resources and his manager about his behavior. The manager confirmed that [Guy] did not have a work trip to New York City. My guess is that he just wanted to take a little vacation with an uninterested, married woman and see where it went. I don’t know what HR said to him, but he was transferred to another branch shortly after my complaint.

I was driving home from work when I made the mistake of cutting another car off. Or, more precisely, I made the mistake of merging over into the lane ahead of another car, with a good four or five car lengths separating us, which led to them suddenly speeding up after I’d completely merged over, moving up to tailgate me, and pounding on their horn.

They carried on like that up until we reached the next intersection, where the light had just turned red. They then jumped over into the left lane that I’d just merged over from, moving up alongside me. I glanced over and saw that the girl in the passenger seat and a guy in the backseat both had their phones out and pointed at me.

Great, someone’s hoping for a new TikTok or something.

I stared up at the light, listening to my music, while peripherally aware of the passenger in the car shouting things that I couldn’t quite make out over my music. As the red light continued to be red, I gave in to my morbid curiosity and turned the volume down on my music just a tad until I could make out what she was saying.

Passenger: “—see you glancing. We can see you look at us. What? You like my t*ts? Huh? You like to—”

Aaand back up goes the volume.

Right as the turn lanes got the green light, I spotted a sudden motion out of the corner of my eye. I foolishly looked over on instinct and spotted the passenger swinging her arm to apparently try and hit my window. She’d evidently underestimated just how far apart our vehicles were, and so she’d missed, but as I watched, she hauled herself up like a lunging seal, shoving herself up onto the edge of the window, still clutching her phone in one hand while balling up her fist in the other to try and give my window a punch.

Before she actually could, however, the light turned green. I immediately stepped on the gas, accelerating forward, and as I did, I heard a short scream from her, audible over a lull in my music.

Passenger: “MY PHONE!”

A glance in my side mirror showed her now jackknifed over the edge of the car window, trying to reach something on the ground. I’m guessing that my sudden movement startled her enough to lose her grip on her phone, or maybe her contortions to try and wiggle out of the window loosened her grip.

Either way, I don’t think they were going to be able to post whatever “viral hits video” they were hoping for.

I work in pizza delivery. We often get deliveries to our local hotels since we have like four within a couple of kms. The good news is that majority will tip, and many tip very well.

This past week, this cheap guy has been staying at one of the hotels near us for (what seemed to be forever) a week or so. He orders $100 worth of food every night requesting to be delivered to his hotel room. But get this, not only does the guy never tip even a nickel — because what do you know, he prepays every time — but he is never in his room! He is usually swimming to avoid showing his face for being a cheap jerk.

We get to his door, and since it’s prepaid, it should be a quicker transaction, but we waste our time during the busy times knocking several times on his door and then calling him only for him to never pick up. So, we leave his food at the hotel front desk each night.

Thankfully, I’ve only gotten him once, but my partner got him four nights in a row. My partner was pissed because not only is this a** not tipping, but he makes us waste our time, walk all the way into the hotel, take the elevator up to the fifth floor, knock on his door, and then try to call him, for nothing! All the while, he’s in the swimming pool hiding from us for being such a lowlife d****ebag.

We been in and out in ten seconds each time if we knew he wasn’t around and just leave his food at the front desk. But he purposely doesn’t let us know not to bother so he can waste fifteen minutes of our time each visit trying to hunt him down.

He buys $500 worth of food over five nights and does not leave a single dime for a tip to any driver! Some people just make me seriously sick. He’d better have already left town, and I hope he never comes back.

Soon after I turned fifteen, I had a job at a local grocery store. I had worked there for a little over a year. I had three friends that worked there, along with twelve other students from the local high school. The fifteen of us made up a majority of the floor, register, and bagging staff.

Payday came every other Friday, and that’s how it had been for the fourteen-plus months I had worked there. The upcoming Friday was payday, and as a teenager, making about $300 every other week was awesome. It paid for my car insurance, gas money, and whatever else I had to put my money toward.

Friday came along and paychecks were handed out. I opened my check and it was short over $100. I flipped the check over and looked at the check stub and saw a $100-something deduction for Union Dues.

My friend approached me, and he had the same deduction on his check, along with all the other teenagers that worked there.

Union? This place is part of a union? None of us were ever told it was part of a union and they had union dues. Out of the fourteen-plus months I had been working there, there were never, not once, any other Union Dues deducted from my paycheck. This was news to me.

We asked the store manager about it, and he said it was mandatory for deduction for dues to be taken from payments for the past couple of months that were missed, and that dues would be taken out of future paychecks. After that, he just kind of brushed us off.

That was the last straw for me. I was tired of the store manager always working the high school students for fifteen minutes shy of full shifts so he didn’t have to give us breaks.

He was always looking to work his staff as much as possible and give us as little in return for breaks. Now, we had union dues we need to pay into, and no one was ever informed the place was part of a union or that we had dues to pay? Screw that. I was done.

I told my friends that I was looking for a new job, and once I found one, I was putting my two weeks. They agreed and spread the word among all the high schoolers working at the grocery store that we’d do a mass exiting.

About a week later, I told them I’d found a new job and would start it in two weeks. I wanted to start it on the spot, but my mom told me to do the decent thing and put in my two-week notice. So, I told my friends at work that I was putting in my two-week notice the next day, and they told all the other high schoolers.

I got to work the next day and I found out that I was the ninth person to put in their two-week notice that day. By the end of the day, out of the fifteen high schoolers working there, thirteen of us had put in our two-week notice.

The store manager was panicking. He pulled me to the side and asked why we were all leaving at once. He said he could change the hours I worked and he’d work with us to keep us on staff. I had to explain to him that the surprise union dues were the last straw. The union was worthless to part-time teenagers, and having to pay dues for something we wouldn’t get anything in return from was stupid. I also told him the shifts he scheduled for the teenagers are appalling, especially the five-hour-and-forty-five-minute shifts where we only got one fifteen-minute break in nearly sixteen hours of working on our feet.

Two weeks came and went, and the grocery store found no one new to replace us. Rumor was that the news had spread throughout the high school about things the management did and how they snuck union dues into our paychecks without telling us, so no high schooler wanted to work there. It took some months, but the grocery store did fill some of the positions, but it wasn’t with any high school students.

I went to work at a large pharmacy chain just across the road, made an extra dollar an hour, had better hours, and worked with some really cool managers that always had our backs. Also, there were no union dues; that was an added bonus.