My friend’s flatmate was working for a big advertising agency on a sponsored working visa. Apparently, if he lost his job, he couldn’t stay in the country. One day, he was called into the Creative Director’s office.

Creative Director: “Stand by the window and look at that window on the building across the way.”

Employee: “Why?”

Creative Director: “Just keep looking at it.”

He stood there for ten or fifteen minutes while the Creative Director went back to working on his computer. He went to move.

Employee: “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

Creative Director: “It’s really important to our next major campaign that you just stand there, keep looking, and don’t move.”

Eventually, the Creative Director said:

Creative Director: “Okay, I’m done. You can go now.”

He provided no explanation. As my mate’s flatmate left the room, he noticed that his shadow had been blocking the sun from the Creative Director’s monitor. 

He had spent over an hour staring out of a window so the Creative Director could finish writing a presentation without screen glare.

I work as a student worker in a half-office-half-on-site-type workplace. We have a whole team of student workers who do assistant work, fetching stuff for the rest of the office, doing a bit of customer service via email, helping out when on-site, etc. Our only “direct” boss is the boss, but pretty much anyone and everyone gives us orders because that’s just the kind of job this is. We don’t mind as long as it’s at least slightly related to our normal tasks.

Enter [Coworker].

[Coworker] is a nervous, stressed-out wreck, and one of her coping mechanisms is spreading it around as much as possible. If she is stressed, you will be stressed. If something bothers her, it has to be dealt with right this moment, and it doesn’t matter if it can wait or you have better things to do or you’re not even working that day — she will tell you alllllll about it.

The problem is that she doesn’t know enough about our tasks and workday to give concise, useful orders. She only works in the office and has no idea what we’re even doing when we’re on-site because she has only been there a couple of times. She still thinks that she can “solve” our “problems” (most of them imaginary) with her “instructions” that don’t make any sense on any level whatsoever.

She also doesn’t trust us. At all. So, she checks and double-checks, sometimes calling us ten times on a six-hour shift just to repeat the same instructions over and over again — after she’s already given them to us in writing, color-coded and using very simple language.

It probably doesn’t help that she doesn’t have a lot to do. Her normal tasks are done pretty easily and quickly, so sometimes it feels like she is even looking for something to be stressed about out of boredom.

One of these things is the dishwasher. She lives for this dishwasher. Oh, not in the sense that she takes care of it, loads it, or puts the dishes away afterward. No. Her main job seems to make sure that we do this — in a “walking past the dishwasher all the way to our office to tell us that we have to push the button to turn it on and then walking back to her office past the dishwasher again” kind of way.

The most mind-boggling instance of this happened when the dishwasher on our main floor was broken for a few days. We devised a system where certain people would bring the dirty dishes up to the dishwasher on the second floor at the end of our workday and certain other people would bring them back down at the beginning of the next.

This system led to [Coworker]’s weirdest “I have to tell other people how to deal with this machine” moment yet.

One day, we had a little office get-together around lunchtime which led to more dirty dishes than normal. [Coworker] saw this and immediately had to do something about it, so she walked from her office past the dishwasher and up to the second floor to tell one of the secretaries working there that they should go downstairs to our office and then tell us to bring the box with the dirty dishes up to the second floor again — where [Coworker] had just walked to. Past the dirty dishes.

I don’t know why she didn’t bring the dishes up herself. I don’t know why she didn’t just call us to tell us herself. I don’t know why she didn’t just walk to our office to tell us herself. I don’t know why she told the secretary that she had to walk down and tell us in person.

I just… I don’t know. But this is exactly how all her “problem-solving” works. So it’s not really surprising that we mostly ignore her ideas.

I’m checking out at a big box store. Since the customer ahead of me is taking a while, I have the time to load my items onto the belt in groups: frozen items together, toiletries together, etc. The cashier seems new, so I want to make it easier for her — and for me to unpack my bags.

It’s finally my turn. The cashier eyes my reusable bags nervously.

Cashier: “Did you… did you want everything in these bags?”

Me: “If it fits! Anything else, plastic is fine.”

She tosses my reusable bags down to the end and starts scanning… slowly. As my items accumulate in a heap, I pick up one of my bags and start packing it.

Cashier: “No… Wait… I was going to put these in that one.”

Me: “It’s fine, really. I don’t mind bagging my own stuff!”

Cashier: “NO!”

She grabs the bag and begins awkwardly shoving some frozen meals into it.

Cashier: *Looking nervous* “These will go in here.”

Me: “Okay, sure.”

I take the other bag and start putting some toiletries in it.

The cashier then takes those OUT of the bag and methodically stuffs them in the first one.

I’m a bit taken aback and too tired to argue. I figure she has a method to her madness. She’s looking around nervously, so I wonder if a manager has yelled at her for letting a customer bag their own items.

She continues scanning and bagging, but in the most bizarre order: reaching for items of various sizes to play Tetris with the bags. She completely ignores my item groups, putting cleaners in with frozen meals, canned goods in with random lemons or potatoes, cosmetics in with juice, etc.

And she does all of this very slowly… while the line behind me gets longer.

I try a couple of times to help pack things, but she glares at me and ends up rearranging things. Finally, she’s done.

Cashier: “There you go. Got it all in your bags.”

That’s not what I asked, but okay. I paid and lifted the (extremely heavy) bags into the cart.

I’ve never had a cashier fuss at me for trying to help bag. And when I got home, I regretted not insisting on bagging my own items as the bags were difficult to unpack!

I was working in a small fruit store inside a shopping centre when I found an abandoned trolley in the middle of the store. This would happen occasionally, but on this particular occasion, the trolley was full of groceries from a completely different store — at least $100 to $200 worth of stuff.

We held the groceries until the end of day, and then we had to throw out because there was no procedure for what the h*** to do with the stuff.

It is early at the grocery store where I work. A lady walks in, in a full rage.

Customer: “Get me the manager!”

Manager: *Coming over* “How can I help, ma’am?”

Customer: “The ATM isn’t giving out quarters anymore!”

Manager: “It’s never given out quarters — or any coins, for that matter.”

Customer: “It’s always given me quarters!”

They walk over to the ATM so she can show him exactly where the quarters are supposed to come from. She just stares at the ATM, blinking for a moment.

Customer: “You all changed it! Biden doesn’t want us to have quarters!”

She storms off while my manager comes up to me with a pained look on his face.

Manager: “And it’s not even 7:00 am.”