I work at a liquor store. This guy comes in and tries to buy a $10 bottle of beer. This dude never has enough when he comes in, and the first couple of times, I’d throw in the extra bit he needed, but, dude… you gotta have the money to pay for things.

Me: “I need $4 more or I can’t sell to you.”

This dude picked up my tip jar, dumped out the money in there, and tried to give it to me as payment.

I was flabbergasted. I haven’t seen him since but I still think about that on a daily basis.

This happened over ten years ago. I worked in a call centre. We had a coworker whose son used to be the Operations Manager at our call centre. Why is he no longer the Ops Manager, and in fact no longer employed there at all?

[Son] was not liked at all. He was smug, superior, and dismissive of everyone at or below his level in the call centre. His mother used the fact that her son was the Ops Manager to bully people. If you scored well when you were having a call monitored, you could earn a bonus. She scared all the supervisors into always giving her the bonus, even on days when she didn’t really deserve it.

One day, [Son] needed to speak to one of our supervisors. He called out to her, “[Supervisor #1].” She ignored him. He called out again, “[SUPERVISOR #1].” She continued to ignore him.

[Supervisor #1] had an ample chest, and when she crossed her arms, they tended to rest on top of her chest, so seeing her arms crossed, [Son] took his pencil and turned it around with the eraser end out and poked [Supervisor #1] in the side of her chest just under her arms. “[SUPERVISOR #1]!” 

Up until that point, the company had never made us watch anti-workplace harassment videos, which included a segment on how to recognize sexual harassment and what to do if there’s sexual harassment in your workplace. Because of what [Son] did to [Supervisor #1], we all then had to spend one day watching that series of videos and signing forms stating we understood what we just watched and agreeing to abide by the anti-harassment rules. [Son] was, of course, fired for sexual harassment.

Since her son was fired, [Coworker #1] had far less power, but she was still d***ed intimidating and some supervisors remained afraid of her and gave her high marks anyway, whether she earned them or not. She was bitter about [Son] being fired like that and made it clear all the time.

One day in my phone cubicle section, where a group of people on the phones would be managed under one supervisor, I got to sit with a really lovely lady we’ll call [Coworker #2]. She was funny, intelligent, and really nice. She had brought a bag of hard candies to work and went up and down our cubicle section, laying a piece of sanitary, individually-wrapped candy at every station so that every person would start their shift with a little bit of happiness. She made sure to give a piece of candy to our supervisor, [Supervisor #2], too. She then went to her locker to go put the candy away and get ready for work.

It was just me and [Supervisor #2] when [Coworker #1] walked up, and I saw she would be in our section. I secretly groaned. [Coworker #1] picked up the piece of candy at her desk and her eyes grew wide. She then suddenly barked out, “Who did this?!” waving the candy menacingly. I gave her an “I don’t know” face and looked away. There was no one else at our section yet and [Coworker #2] was still back at her locker, so [Coworker #1] marched up to [Supervisor #2].

Coworker #1: “Who did this?!”

Supervisor #2: “Who did what, [Coworker #1]?”

Coworker #1: “Who put candy at my desk?!”

Supervisor #2: “I don’t know, [Coworker #1]. I wasn’t here when it happened.”

He knew better than to say anything or [Coworker #1] would go on a rampage after [Coworker #2].

Me: “There’s a piece of candy at every desk. I don’t think someone was trying to bother you.”

[Coworker #1] narrowed her eyes at me and then ignored me.

Coworker #1: *To [Supervisor #2]* “This had better not happen again! Do you hear me?!”

She then threw the candy away in the trashcan under [Supervisor #2]’s desk and went off to the bathroom, out of sight. In that time, [Coworker #2] came back to the section and my face was nearly splitting in half from trying to hide my laughter. She asked what was so funny and I filled her in entirely on [Coworker #1]’s reaction. [Coworker #2] got this evil, Grinch-like smile on her face, took the piece of candy she meant to keep for herself, placed it on [Coworker #1]’s desk where the original piece had been placed, and waited, schooling her expression to be everyday-bored like most of us had while working there.

More people had begun to show up in our section, so it wasn’t really obvious who put the candy back on [Coworker #1]’s desk. When [Coworker #1] came back, her eyes popped out of her head so widely I’m surprised they didn’t push her glasses off of her face. She picked up the new candy piece, SHAKING WITH RAGE. She marched right up to [Supervisor #2] and began barking at him louder while waving the candy right in his face.

Coworker #1: “You know what this is, [Supervisor #2]? Do you know. What. This. Is?!”

Supervisor #2: “No, [Coworker #1]. What is it?”

Coworker #1: “This!” *Shakes it more violently* “This is sexual harassment!”

[Coworker #2] and I were about to DIE but we kept our faces straight as best we could. [Coworker #1] had so focused her anger on [Supervisor #2] that she didn’t even notice us anyway.

Supervisor #2: “No, [Coworker #1], this is not sexual harassment; it’s a piece of candy.”

Coworker #1: “No! It is sexual harassment!”

[Supervisor #2] had had enough by this point.

Supervisor #2: “You either need to sit down, [Coworker #1], or you can go home and we will mark you as a no-show, but this stops now.”

She finally shut up, sat down, and got ready to work, but she grumbled the whole rest of the day.

[Coworker #2] and I had the best break time ever that day, secretly snickering about all that.

Years ago, I worked in a meat processing factory. Although I was employed as one of the admin staff, I still had to go through the same company induction as everyone else. So, I turned up at 7:30 am on the day of induction and sat through all the usual guff one might expect in a company induction: Health and Safety, Terms and Conditions, and so on. Just before lunch break, one of the training team gave us a very detailed talk about the company’s drugs and alcohol policy. The short version: don’t drink or take drugs on the job, and if you must drink or take drugs on an evening or weekend, at least make sure you’re sober/clean by the time you arrive on site for shift. We were also told that the company does conduct random, voluntary, and for-cause drug tests.

During the spiel about the drug tests, I raised my hand and asked, “Ever caught anyone during these tests?”

The trainer started to chuckle. He told us that several years previously, he’d been standing in the exact same room, giving the exact same talk about drug testing. He’d dismissed the inductees for lunch and gone off to get his own lunch. A little while later, he’d gone off to use the toilet, and when he walked in, he found one of the inductees sitting in the cubicle, puffing away on a joint!

The inductee was swiftly fired, just a few hours into his induction, and without even having made it as far as the factory floor to meet his colleagues!

We all got a good laugh out of that story.

My friend and I are both about nineteen or twenty years old in the early 1980s. [Friend] is blind — she had ocular melanoma — so she has an advocate who goes everywhere with her on the university campus. They make sure she makes it safely to and from each of her classes and assist her with test-taking, etc. We meet when [Friend] walks by my table in the Student Union Hall, bumps my coffee, and spills it all over both of us. We’ve been friends ever since.

Because my friend lives off-campus with her parents and I live in an off-campus apartment a few blocks away, I drive every day to school. We coordinate our class schedules so that I can drop her off with her advocate in the morning and in the afternoon, the advocate brings her to me and I take her home.

One semester, [Friend]’s last class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday ends an hour before mine. Normally, her advocate hangs out with her in the Student Union Hall to wait for me. Some Fridays, [Friend] insists that the advocate bring her to the building where I have class to wait for me there — closer to where I parked the car — and the advocate can go home a little early. I always take the same route out of the building and know to be on the lookout for her.

Today, [Friend] is in her usual spot in the lobby. She is sitting on the floor — there are no seats — with her back against the wall, her cane folded beside her, tinted glasses on, and appearing to stare straight ahead. To her left are the lobby doors, about thirty feet away.

She’s been sitting there for maybe fifty or fifty-five minutes when she hears what sounds like squeaky wheels rolling over the floor. She doesn’t bother to call out and just thinks it’s maybe the janitorial staff with those mop buckets on wheels getting an early start on mopping. Then, she hears someone push the panic bar on one of the lobby’s double doors and the wheels banging over the metal threshold. A moment later, a woman’s voice fills the empty lobby.

Woman: “What the h*** is wrong with you young people? Never in my life have I seen so many inconsiderate brats.”

Friend: “I’m sorry?”

Woman: “And you should be, young lady. You could see that I needed help with this hand truck, but you just sat there and did absolutely nothing. Didn’t anyone teach you manners?”

Friend: “I didn’t see you.”

Woman: “How could you not see me? I’m the only other person here.”

Friend: “I’m sorry, but I didn’t see you. I’m blind.”

Woman: “You really expect me to believe that? Blind people can’t go to college. You’re just too lazy to get off the floor.”

My friend pulls her cane around, unfolds it, and gets to her feet.

Friend: “Yes, ma’am, I am blind, and I can go to college.”

Classes start letting out and students start beginning to leave or change classes. I come around the corner.

Me: “What’s going on?”

Woman: “This girl expects me to believe she’s blind.”

Me: “She is.”

Woman: “That’s a load of crap. Prove it.”

The woman walks up to [Friend] and takes the tinted glasses from her face.

Woman: “See?”

She directs this to the students who are hanging around to watch the drama as if she expects them to agree with her or take her side.

Woman: “She can see. There is nothing wrong with her eyes. She’s not really blind.”

As I stated earlier, my friend had ocular melanoma. As a result, her eyes were surgically removed, and she was fitted with prostheses that look real at a quick glance but don’t “move” like normal eyes and are a bit flat in their color. It’s kind of like looking into the eyes of a very old doll.

However, the best part of [Friend]’s eyes: they are removable! She reaches up, pops one eyeball out, and holds it out to the woman

Friend: “Here, look through this and tell me if you can see anything.”

The woman starts backing away, screeching loudly.

Woman: “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

The woman backs away from us so fast that she trips over her own feet, lands on her butt, and continues to scoot away. When she gets to the door, she pulls herself up, grabs her hand truck, and leaves. [Friend] maneuvers the eye back into the socket. The small crowd of students starts clapping and laughing and a few give [Friend] a pat on the back.

Friend: *Sighing dramatically* “So much for that lady seeing things through my eyes, huh?”

Geez, I love her humor!

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A guy in my apartment complex decided that he wanted to take his door off so that he could fit some furniture through his doorway. Rather than doing the smart thing and either A) contacting the supervisor about getting the door taken off properly, or B) getting a screwdriver and unscrewing the hinges himself, he decided that it would be a wonderful idea to open the door, jump up onto it, and yank and pull until he literally ripped the hinges out of the doorframe, tearing out part of the door frame, as well.

He then moved the furniture in and then tried to put the door back up, only to discover that ripping out the hinges makes it very difficult to get the door to stay back in place. So, at that point, he called the supervisor to complain about his door being broken. The supervisor misunderstood, thought the guy was reporting a break-in, and advised him to wait outside while he called the police.

The stupidity didn’t end there, however. Apparently, at that point, the idea that he might get in trouble for ripping down his door made its way into his brain, so he decided that it would be best to wait just inside his apartment, with a baseball bat, until the police arrived. So, they entered to see a man crouching down with a baseball bat.

Lucky for him, they didn’t have itchy trigger fingers, but he did end up being forced to pay for the replacement of the door and the door frame. Even after that, he had the audacity to try calling and demanding to be moved into a different apartment, as well as trying to wiggle out of paying by claiming he was never warned about not “removing” his door.