I am the night audit worker at a fancy hotel that does accept pets for a $75 fee. Honestly, if you just tell us you have a dog and it’s too big of an issue to pay the fee, I waive it at check-in.

According to my second shift, calls started rolling in around 9:00 pm about a dog barking on the second floor. No big deal, though, right? Call the owner and have them take care of the issue. Well, the phone number we were provided is out of service. Great, time to call the room. No answer. All right, let’s email them, I guess? No answer.

I arrive at around 11:00 pm, and calls are coming in nonstop from the second floor. People are very mad and this dog is still going. I end up moving three rooms to higher floors with complimentary upgrades to the rooms, and I fully compensate the night for two other rooms.

At around 11:45, my swing shifter who stays until midnight calls animal control because we have no way to contact the guest. As luck would have it, though, come midnight — and coincidentally, as a few of these other guests who are upset are at the desk talking with us — someone comes up to me asking about these odd charges found on their card. The moment they say what room it is, I realize I don’t have to look this up; it’s the dog room.

Me: “The fees are for the dog that you didn’t inform us about. The dog has been barking for multiple hours, and we’ve lost revenue from multiple rooms because of it. I’ve had to compensate multiple rooms for the disturbance.”

They go full defensive.

Guest: “I’ve only been gone for an hour at most! It’s not my fault you compensated all those people!”

You know, all those people who are trying to sleep at midnight but are being kept up by YOUR dog.

Before I could respond, though, my swing shifter — who’d been dealing with this for half his shift — stepped in and berated them over the neglect of their dog and how close they were to having it removed by animal control. He really went off on them, and I applauded how well he did it without all the expletives I knew he was dying to scream at them.

If I had been able to legally make them pay for those rooms I had to comp, I would have done it in a heartbeat. We did get positive reviews from the guests who stayed and were comped or moved; they appreciated everything we did to help resolve the issue.

I was working at a toy store chain that was closing for renovation. We’d done liquidation sales for two weeks in addition to shipping products to other stores. Once it was empty of product, we got to work tearing down the shelving, walls, register lanes, etc. You could literally see through the front windows all the way to the sunlight streaming into the back dock.

An older man with his young grandchild came up to the doors and started banging on them.

Man: “Let us in so we can shop!”

When they were told that we were closed, that there was literally nothing in the store to sell them, they both threw tantrums. The little boy kicked the door.

They left before police could be called.

A few years ago, we decided to bite the bullet and start paying a mortgage instead of someone else’s mortgage. We contacted a few reputable estate companies with a long list of our requirements. This would be our first time buying and we’d been planning what we wanted our dream house to look like.

One company’s agent requested we send her a text message and supplied her number, and then she told me I should resend our list of requirements as a WhatsApp message since it was so long.

The next communication I received from her was being added to a group with a few hundred other people, and she started spamming the group with several MLM pitches. She was involved with everything from Tupperware to Avon.

I was pissed off. I am very conscious of my privacy. I absolutely hate bulk emails where my email address was being shared with that person’s entire phonebook, as I know a lot of data mining happens and these details get sold off to spammers and less reputable companies.

I was considering simply leaving the group and blocking the estate agent, but the longer I thought about it, the more I thought about how it reflected badly on the company. She was creating the impression that being an estate agent for this company obviously didn’t pay enough to survive on, but she was also abusing the information given to her by people assumed to be financially secure enough to want to buy a house. I sent an email to head office explaining how she poisoned my perception of their company, but I didn’t expect a reply.

Instead, I received a call from the manager, not of that branch, but the top of the management chain, who apologised and said this wasn’t the image they wanted to create. The manager told me the estate agent would be reprimanded.

Soon after that, I was suddenly removed from the MLM shilling group and blocked by the agent. I received a lackluster not-even-an-apology email from her manager who just said they didn’t know how they could find us a home without any requirements.

I was done with this by then and just never responded.

I used to work doing customer service for one of the biggest UK banks. Despite presenting themselves as an equal-opportunity bank where there were promotion opportunities aplenty, favouritism was rampant. Even though I had been there for over three years, I was still stuck on the phones in one of the lowest positions. I kept seeing people with way less experience getting new jobs or promotions because they were friends or drinking buddies with the right people.

My manager was particularly bad. Any time I would have a secondment or a new opportunity, she would inevitably get it cancelled or find a way to get me back on the phones because we needed “all hands on deck.” I kept getting a spiel about how vital I was to the team and what a great employee I was. In other words, she wanted me to be her lackey with no pay raise.

At this point, I was seriously thinking of leaving. One day, I noticed my pay was massively lower than usual with a HUGE amount of tax taken out, so I immediately called our payroll department.

Advisor: “Hello, payroll, [Advisor] speaking. How may I help?”

Me: “Oh, hi. I think there’s been an error with my paycheque this month. Can you take a look, please?”

Advisor: “Can I take your employee ID, please?”

Me: “It’s [employee number].”

Advisor: “Oh, yes.” *Laughs* “I remember this one. We put you on the wrong tax code and we had to change it, so now you are taxed more each paycheque.”

Me: “Sorry… What? That’s not possible. I gave you all the correct information when I started!”

Advisor: “Well, we accidentally put you on a code where you earn very little tax, but now we’ve changed it back. Just to advise, as well… you might have a little tax bill coming, too!”

Me: “WHAT?! HOW THE H*** DID THIS HAPPEN? THIS WAS YOUR MISTAKE! WHY I AM BEING PUNISHED FOR THIS?!”

Advisor: “Look, I’m sorry, but you paid too little tax. You should have paid attention to your pay each month. I’m sorry, but this one isn’t our fault! You’ll need to speak to the Inland Revenue!”

Me: “You just told me you ‘accidentally’ put me on the wrong code! So, doesn’t that mean this is your department’s fault?”

There was a long silence and the guy seemed to realize he’d put his foot in it! 

Advisor: “There’s nothing more we can do here. Call the tax people. Goodbye!”

He hurriedly put the phone down and ended the call. I called the tax people to find out that I owed over 700 POUNDS! I had just moved into a new apartment and needed the money, so this was immensely stressful and meant that I would have almost zero money to spend for months! Naturally, I was furious, but when I spoke to my manager and asked how to file a complaint about this, she just brushed it off and said, “Tough luck,” and that I “should’ve paid more attention.”

This was the last straw. I stepped up my job search and thankfully was able to find a new position soon after. My manager was very disappointed that I was leaving because she realized that she had lost her servant and now she’d have to actually do her own work. In my exit interview, I was quick to point out the issue I had and that there might be other employees that payroll had done the same thing to. The Human Resources person didn’t look amused to hear this and said they would keep an eye out. 

Thankfully, now, I have found a better career where I am appreciated. However, I did have tax issues for several months afterward which took numerous phone calls to solve!

In the store where I work, customers need to walk by an emergency exit in the stockroom in order to access the restrooms. One day, the alarm goes off, and, being a keyholder, I run back to see what happened. There’s an older man and his old-enough-to-know-better adult son.

Son: “It’s okay. He just got confused and thought that was the men’s room.”

Me: “That’s okay—” *that’s a lie* “—but please don’t open that door again unless there’s an emergency requiring immediate evacuation. We strongly believe in customer safety and employee safety and, as you can see, we take alarms very seriously.”

I point to the large, brightly-colored, clearly-written “Emergency Exit Only” signs on the door AND the crash bar, and then I go back to work.

Five minutes later, the alarm goes off again. Same door, same two clowns.

Son: “He got lost again.” *Laughs*

Guess who was politely told to get lost until they learned how to read?