Many years ago, I worked in a large international chain of building supply stores. Company culture was mostly okay. However, our higher-ups did not like to handle any problem that did not involve the police. We were left to our own devices, and most of the time, things worked themselves out.

Then, we had one floor manager who would be very familiar to any reader of Not Always Working. He was totally incompetent in everything, besides making everybody around him miserable. He used every shred of his power to make every situation worse, mess up our schedules, and cut our bonuses.

One day, my shift decided to retaliate. Our chain took much pride in a store-brand glue, used mainly for tiling, but capable of gluing almost any materials together. You might see where this is going.

On their lunch break, the guys took a forklift to the parking lot. Carefully, so as to not damage anything, they lifted [Floor Manager]’s car and glued all four wheels to the concrete with [Glue]. Four hours later, we all left for home… except for [Floor Manager], who, despite having a gigantic warehouse full of tools and supplies at hand, spent a good part of the evening dislodging his car from the parking lot.

Well, he cried up a storm. I do not know how [Floor Manager] managed it, but the country branch CEO, by far the biggest boss I ever met, came to our store to investigate. He called the whole shift into the conference room, greeted us very civilly, and first asked to hear everything from [Floor Manager]. [Floor Manager] told him everything.

Then, [CEO] turned to us.

CEO: “Gentlemen, is this all true?”

We said yes.

CEO: “You really used [Glue] to completely immobilize a car?”

We, being of a somewhat 47-Ronin mindset, again affirmed. CEO nodded and pulled out his phone.

CEO: “[Personal Assistant]? Send somebody from Public Relations to [Our Store]. Local guys just figured out a perfect plot for a [Glue] TV ad.”

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I was a project manager, and my not-so-bright boss dumped a do-nothing and know-nothing employee onto my team. Why, I have no clue, but despite my objections, I was stuck with him. He had no idea what our project was even about, but I tried to find something important for him to do — like documenting our processes and procedures — that wouldn’t cause our project to fail. But he failed at that simple task, too. 

Then came annual evaluations for all members of my team. After writing them, I met with my boss for review and approval. My recommendation, complete with a list of all the screw-ups and mistakes this jerk had made, was to put him on probation for ninety days, and if he didn’t improve, he was to be let go. And he would receive no raise that year.  

Instead of my boss accepting my recommendation for this guy, he told me to promote him to a Senior Analyst position! I could not justify that, and I told my boss so.

Boss: “Do it, or you might be reporting to that guy.”

I got the drift and somehow managed to write a half-decent reason for promoting this guy.

But, I did two things: along with my promotion request, I sent all communications explaining to my boss why I didn’t want to promote him and his responses to “do it”. And in the minutia of the request for promotion, I wrote, “[Employee] is being promoted only because I was told to do it. He is not worthy of this promotion.” My boss never saw or read the negative comments; he just signed off on it, and this guy was promoted.

Thankfully, our project was over in a couple of months and my staff was reassigned, as was I, to other projects. [Employee] was assigned to a different project manager that reported to a different boss. His new project manager quickly learned just how bad this employee was and read his employee file, including the “review” I had written.  

The project manager and his boss came to talk to me about it, and I told them the entire story, complete with copies of the emails between my boss and me, where I constantly wrote and provided examples that this employee was incompetent and did not deserve a promotion, and the responses telling me to “do it”.

Then, the three of us went to the Vice President of the division and explained what happened. [Employee] and my boss were asked to resign or be fired. They resigned.

Good riddance.

My boss is a good boss. His personal life is off the rails (and he tends to overshare that), and he may not be a great teacher, but he’s a good boss. I had an unexpected medical event that meant I could not drive or work until the cause of it was found. My boss told me not to stress about it and that I’d still have a job when I was able to work again.

There was only one neurologist in my area of the state that took my insurance, and he was a two-hour drive away. He also only worked a couple of days a week. As you can imagine, it was a long time before I was able to be seen. A couple of days before my scheduled EEG (brain scan), about five months since I’d last worked, my boss called me.

Boss: “So, are you able to come back to work yet?”

Me: “Unfortunately not. I have an EEG scheduled for [date], and then it’ll be at least another month before we get results from that. But that puts us right around Christmas, so I probably won’t actually get results back until January.”

Boss: “Okay, well, keep me updated. I was calling to let you know you got another raise; you’ll be making $17.50 an hour when you come back.”

I had been told he was very diligent about giving raises regularly, but I hadn’t imagined he’d continue counting my time while I was unable to work! There were unfortunately some other delays before I was finally cleared and able to drive again, making my total time out of work ten and a half months. This put me at another raise point, so I actually came back to $18 an hour.

CONTENT WARNING: Gross

During the Black Friday rush, I was helping a customer and his girlfriend. During the transaction, I noticed his girlfriend looking more and more ill, and she soon sat on the ground.

The customer noticed something and quickly asked me for a bag, which I readily handed over. Of course, things couldn’t be simple as the girlfriend said, “No,” and promptly vomited on the floor. Great.

Now, I did hope she felt better, but I had a problem now. No one in my department was trained for biohazards, and vomit was in that category, so I called for a manager to clean it up because only team leads and higher could do that. The only team lead at the time said:

Team Lead: “Hey, can you just clean that up?”

Me: “No, I cannot. I am not trained in that.”

And of course, said team lead refused to come clean it up. So here I was, trying to help customers while my teammate kept an eye on the… spill… and kept other customers away from it. Someone helpfully donated their cart to put over it after they had finished, but it took a good hour for another team lead to take pity and help clean it up. And that was with us doing calls for assistance for it every five minutes or so. Because who wants to step in vomit?

Related:
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 34
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 33
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 32
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 31
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 30

CONTENT WARNING: Fatal Car Accident

I am never late for anything unless something way out of my control happens. My coworkers laugh about the time I was going to be on time instead of my usual twenty minutes early and I panicked so much I called ahead to tell them I would be… on time. For weeks, they would call me to tell me they would be on time for their shift. It’s all in good fun; I don’t mind at all that being punctual is what I’m known for.

One day, honestly, everything goes wrong for me. We lose power overnight, which means my phone goes flat, which means my alarm doesn’t go off. I am working an earlier shift than normal, so my body clock is no help. When I get into the car, it beeps that it is on E, so I have to go get fuel in order to even make it to work.

All told, it’s seventeen minutes after my shift starts by the time my frazzled self makes it through the door. I’ve resigned myself to being made fun of when I walk in.

Manager #1: “[MY NAME]! Oh, my God! Thank God. Are you okay?!”

Me: “Hey, [Manager #1], sorry I’m late. I—”

Another manager scurries over.

Manager #2: “Oh, my God, [My Name], I’m so relieved you’re here! Are you all right?”

I once again start answering only for another coworker to come running over with a worried look on his face.

Coworker: “[My Name], holy s***. Can I give you a hug?”

I hug my coworker. It’s not that unusual — I’m a big hugger if people are comfortable with it and I’ve known him for years — but I notice that everyone looks like they’ve been crying or just incredibly upset and are stunned to see me standing there.

Me: “Okay, guys, I get that I’m late and that’s weird, but what the heck is happening?”

My manager very somberly told me that they were all joking around about me not being there super early when someone told them that a few blocks from the store a young woman driving a red sedan — the same colour and size as my car — had been hit and killed by a truck running a red light during the time I would have been driving to work. When they tried calling me, my phone was turned off and no one could reach me. They tried my girlfriend’s phone, but hers had also run flat overnight so it too was turned off.

So, that’s the story about how my being less than twenty minutes late to work had an entire store of people convinced that I was quite literally dead.