In 2008, I was a young, intrepid stock person at a big box all-purpose store. I had a working knowledge of where pretty much everything was in the store because I was all over the place, but the grocery department had its own stock team specifically, so I wasn’t as knowledgeable there.

I am of Lebanese descent, and I was working in south Florida at the time. For those that don’t know, south Florida has a significant Cuban population, but not so much Middle Eastern folks. I got confused for Cuban all the time because I had the darker skin tone similar to a lot of Cuban folks. I also speak fluent English, Arabic, and French, but I was born and raised in the Midwest, so my accent gives no indication that I might be of Middle Eastern heritage.

On this fine afternoon, I was wheeling an empty tub back to the stock room after having emptied out one department over. Walking through the main aisle next to grocery, I heard an “EXCUSE ME!” It was not rude but definitely not polite, either. I turned to find a woman in a really fancy hijab and jewelry standing there with her husband.

Me: “How can I help you, miss?”

Customer: “I’m looking for [specific item] but I can’t find it.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not as familiar with the grocery section so I’m not sure where that is. Let me grab one of my colleagues for you. One moment.”

I could see one of the other customer service guys in the grocery section, so I radioed him to come over and help her out.

Me: “He’ll be with you shortly, miss.”

Customer: *Tersely* “Thank you, but I’m in a hurry. I thought you worked here and knew your store.”

Me: “I’m sorry, miss, I don’t really work in this section. [Colleague] is coming right down the aisle now.”

Customer: *To her husband, in Arabic* “They always get these stupid kids to work in these places, but they don’t know how to do their job. This fatso doesn’t know his head from his a**.”

The husband gave the woman a look, probably because he saw my expression turn from my customer service smile to a frown. I was having an internal debate about what to do next when her husband spoke.

Customer’s Husband: *In Arabic* “Stop talking. I think he understood what you said.”

Customer: *In Arabic* “Of course he didn’t. He’s an idiot. He doesn’t know his hands from his feet.”

It’s an Arabic idiom that doesn’t translate well.

Me: *In Arabic* “Actually, I understood every word you said. I don’t appreciate being called fat and stupid. An older lady like you should know better than to insult people trying to help you. Worse, you wear your hijab like a hypocrite, pretending to be devout, yet you abuse your perceived social lessers? You should have some respect for yourself.”

The woman looked like she had been hit by a truck. Her olive skin turned ghost white, and she sputtered at me.

Customer: “You… you speak Arabic?”

Me: *In Arabic* “Obviously, I do. Maybe next time you’ll think before you insult people who help you when you think they can’t understand.”

The woman grabbed her husband’s arm and dragged him out of the store, completely mortified. I could hear her husband yelling at her in Arabic that he’d warned her not to be a b**** all the time, especially when she doesn’t know who understands her. I wasn’t personally that offended, but I won’t deny that it was satisfying to scare some sense into her.

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A few years ago, I worked in a call centre for a major mobile phone provider in the UK in the incoming upgrades department. [Coworker] was an all right person for all of a month while working there. She asked me to cover her shift so she could “hold her father’s hand as he lay dying in hospital” and I agreed so I didn’t end up looking and feeling like a d**k. The day came where I covered her shift, and on my way to work, I got a text from her with her phone login details.

Each employee had a unique eight-number code to log in to the phones and computers to take calls and input customer data. I thought it was weird that she texted it to me but ignored it. I had a fantastic day that day for upgrades. I managed to sell sixteen upgrades, two accessories, and three new lines, which made me eligible for that month’s bonus. I was made up.

[Coworker] returned to work and asked me how the Sunday shift went — she never thanked me — so I told her I’d had a top day and gotten that month’s bonus in one day. She was extremely excited for me, or so I thought. The day that pay slips were released, [Coworker] came to my computer to ask why the bonus wasn’t showing up on her pay slip.

I told her it was on my pay slip because I was the one who earned it, and she said, “Oh, I thought you were using my phone because it was my shift. That’s all right. I’ll just take half. Do you want my bank details and you can transfer it?”

Wow, just wow. No, [Coworker], I’m not giving you s***.

She turned on me something awful, calling me a horrible b**** and cursing my family for keeping her money from her, so I took it to my team leader, and [Coworker] apologised.

And then, the next day, she asked for a quarter of the bonus for letting me cover her shift and have that great day. She got a firm no but decided that must mean I’d accept buying her dinner for a fortnight because it was the least I could do and the least she deserved — her words, not mine. She let me know this when she added s***loads of food to her order and got five drinks and told the lady that I’d pay. She even tried walking off with her tray. She got shouted back by at least five people, and I finally told her to f*** off or I’d go to Human Resources.

We’ve elected not to give our eleven-year-old daughter a cell phone because we’d rather not have her join the bandwagon of having her face glued to it every waking hour of the day. With that said, we’ve let her know that her friends are welcome to call the house phone as long as they use proper general phone etiquette. For the most part, all of them have… except one particular girl.

To say this girl is a poster child for phone addicts would be a vast understatement. She rings the house as many as ten times a day, to the point where I have to change the ringtone on the phone after getting tired of hearing it. If my daughter isn’t at home, this girl calls literally every ten or fifteen minutes asking again for her. The calls are never anything important: “I’m at the shoe shop with my mom. Is [Brand A] or [Brand B] better?” “Some girl likes this boy.” “Some girl said this and that at cheerleader practice.”

I’ve tried patiently asking the girl to limit her calls to once a day, but she has blatantly disregarded the request, and she’ll say, “Okay, this is the last call for the day, okay?” and then call later and say, “Just ten seconds! I have to tell her something real quick!”

Our family leaves for two weeks during the Christmas holiday season, and when we return, I discover 227 missed calls on the phone and our voicemail completely full; each and every message is from that little brat. After spending a solid twenty minutes manually deleting them all, I call and inform her that she is permanently banned from calling our house.

Only two hours later, the phone rings with her number, and I am near speechless.

Girl: “Is [Daughter] there?”

Me: “Did you not understand what I said to you earlier?”

Girl: “I know, I know, but this is really important. I promise!”

Me: “What is it?”

Girl: “It’s kind of private… but I promise, it’s an emergency. I really have to talk to her. Two minutes, tops!”

Me: “Last call, understand?”

I hand my daughter the phone long enough for her to say, “Hello?” and then put the phone back to my ear to see what it is.

Girl: “Oh, my God, [Daughter], you are not going to believe this! I was at [place] and spotted [Boy] and [Other Girl] holding hands! I swear on the Holy Bible, I saw it!”

Me: “GOODBYE, [GIRL]!”

I hung up. And, astonishingly enough, it took three more intercepted calls over the following week before she finally got the message. It’s just a shame some parents won’t teach their kids phone etiquette.

I’m on my way back from my lunch when I notice a guest I checked into our hotel sitting at a slot machine with her child in her lap. I stop to tell her she cannot have a child on the gaming floor while she is gambling.

Guest: “That’s a bunch of BS! I asked specifically before we made our reservations and they said it was okay!”

Me: “Ma’am, no one would have told you that.”

Guest: “Then y’all need to get your act together, because I did not pay hundreds of dollars on an upgraded room to not be able to gamble! I will speak to your manager about this.”

I gave up at that point and went back to my desk to call security. I’m sure they told her to take the kid off the floor. I’m gonna find out from one of my security buddies, but man, you would think you wouldn’t want your kid to grow up with your same addictions!

I work at a small department store. Our company has a rewards program that has been around for years. This year, however, the company is pushing us hard to get people to sign up. As such, they have put out a new policy; all employees have to get a certain percentage of customers to sign up for the program or they risk disciplinary action or even potential termination. These quotas are set by the company, though store managers can make them higher if they want to.

Our store manager, unfortunately, is one of those people with ridiculously high standards. For a while, she sets the bar at 35%, already a good amount above the company standard, and most of us are just barely able to reach it. After a week, she decides to double the quota to 70%. Considering how negatively received the program is and the very low sign-up rate, this new quota seems absolutely asinine, but our store manager nevertheless enforces it. Four employees at our store get fired and many others get written up because they miss the absurdly high quota.

But it doesn’t stop there. After those firings, the store manager decides that even 70% isn’t enough. Nope. She now wants us to sign up every single customer we check out and tells us that there will be no more write-ups for missing the quota, only firings. The only problem? Many of our regulars either are already members or are just plain uninterested, making it literally impossible to fulfill a 100% signup rate. Even when we point this out to her, she just tells us to figure it out. Our assistant store manager walks out on her.

Predictably, nobody in the store is able to meet the goal of getting every customer to sign up. And how does the store manager respond? By firing the store’s entire staff for not meeting her literally impossible standard.

This attracts the attention of the regional manager, who is very curious about the store’s staff roster suddenly going from over twenty employees down to just the store manager. I don’t know what exactly transpires between the two of them in that meeting, but I do know that it ends with most of us being reinstated with all benefits –aside from the few who found different jobs — the quota-based policy being permanently scrapped in favor of a more intuitive, incentive-based policy, and our now ex-store manager out of a job.