In the early 2000s, I worked in real estate writing title policies. Each policy required a description of the property to be written into the policy. Some were as simple as, “See description in Plat x, Book y, Page z.” Some were multi-page descriptions that took up to an hour to type up.

To save time on typing up the property descriptions, my manager bought a document scanner. There were several problems, though. Scanners were still prohibitively expensive, so she could only buy one, which she kept in her office. Some of these descriptions were copied off of hundred-year-old documents or microfiche, so scanning them created text full of errors we then had to go back and correct. And I was the only one tech-savvy enough to troubleshoot the scanner when it got fussy, which was often. (Basically, it wasn’t built to do what the manager wanted and I told her so.)

At the time, I had a typing speed of around 100 wpm. In the time it took me to print off the document, wait for the scanner to free up, scan the description, and correct the spelling errors the scanner made, I could type the entire description directly into the policy and move on to the next one.

But my manager and team lead still insisted I use the scanner because it “saved time”.

There is a manager at the company who is… interesting… to say the least. At fifty-nine years old, she refuses to take accountability for ANY of her own actions. Instead, she blames anyone and everyone else or denies it completely. Unfortunately, because the owner of the company feels indebted to [Manager], she can practically get away with murder, so she has a mile-long list of ethics violations and complaints of unprofessionalism from employees, prospective new hires, and clients alike.

I file a complaint about [Manager] with our boss as she is repeatedly trying to get me to do her work while I am on vacation on top of sexually harassing me. While speaking to him about it, a lot of other sort of abuse at her hands ends up coming out, and I explain how she often will blame our boss for crossing boundaries if I attempt to set a boundary with her.

He agrees that we need to have a group conversation where we discuss how [Manager] is to respect my boundaries moving forward and promises to speak to her in the meantime.

[Manager] takes the “talking-to” in a completely different direction and to outer space. She decides to complain to another coworker about me. This coworker reaches out to me via text.

Coworker: “Hey. I heard that [Owner] said that you were being too sensitive about what [Manager] said?”

Me: “Wait… What?”

Yep, [Manager] decided that when [Owner] said, “Respect her boundaries,” and, “Stop making comments about her reproductive system,” he meant that I was just being “sensitive” and should be blown off. She also decided that it wasn’t my opinion, but [Owner]’s. Not only that, but she decided to gossip about it with another coworker, which is an interesting choice when your professionalism is being called into question.

To be this devoid of reality must be a treat.

It was a Friday night in our taco restaurant, and [Newbie], [Coworker], [My Ex], [Counter Guy], [Assistant Manager], and I were working. Another guy was supposed to work, but he had called off sick. He was the main line cook for the night, with [My Ex] and me as second and third. In our restaurant, you have the person who starts the taco, and another person who adds the cheese, lettuce, etc., and then the wrapper.

I was scheduled to come in at 3:00 pm and leave at 11:00 pm. Since the guy called in sick, [Assistant Manager] asked me to stay a little later. No big deal, more money in my pocket.

Well, no one realized that Friday night was prom night. It felt like every local high-schooler and their date decided to eat at our store before the big dance.

I was thrown to the front of the prep line, starting the orders. I had the most training at it, and at the same time, it wasn’t much; I could handle slow periods at best. [My Ex] was also still relatively new, so I had to tell him what went onto each and every single taco. We were slammed in the front and slammed in the drive-thru. I was doing my best to keep up, but we started to fall behind.

All of sudden, [Assistant Manager] disappeared, leaving me and [My Ex] alone on the line struggling. The drive-thru started to get backed up, so [Newbie] came over to try to help with the wrapping and pushing out orders while in between orders.

The next thing I knew, [Assistant Manager] was walking around, eating a bag of nachos, telling me to move faster, yet not doing a thing. I swear, if looks could kill, he would have dropped dead right then and there. I really wanted to yell at him to come help, but I thought he would fire me on the spot if I did.

We were busy for five solid hours. By the time it was time to close down the dining room, no one had had a break, no one had used the bathroom, and we were all furious because of [Assistant Manager]. [Counter Guy] was scheduled to go home when the dining room closed, but we talked him into staying a little bit longer to cover all our breaks. I managed to talk [Assistant Manager] into running the line for fifteen minutes. I was supposed to go home at the time, so I took my break first since my ride was there to pick me up and I had to explain the schedule change.

I called my [Store Manager] and [Assistant Manager #2] and gave them the lowdown. I sucked down about five cigarettes in about ten minutes, scarfed some food down in three, and smoked again. Then, I returned back to the war zone.

[Newbie] and [Coworker] were both given their breaks and [Counter Guy] went home. Then, [Assistant Manager] did the dumbest thing in the history of stupid things. He sent [My Ex] home. Why? Because married [Assistant Manager] decided he didn’t like [My Ex] but had a thing for me. I had massive creeper vibes.

So now, it was just [Newbie] and [Coworker] scheduled to close, and [Assistant Manager] demanded that I stay, too. Out of the three of us, no one knew how to close the line.

At midnight, we got slammed again with drunk and hungry teenagers leaving Prom. [Assistant Manager] did nothing to help but sat in the office and read emails or fired off some creepy/sexually-harassing remarks to me now that [My Ex] was gone. [Newbie] was trying to help me as best as she could despite her inexperience, leaving [Coworker] to run the counter by himself and deal with the angry drunks.

Somehow, we managed until closing time, and then we had to figure out how to close. [Coworker] took over dishes, [Newbie] bagged up the leftovers, and I started on scrubbing the line. I think we did better than expected, considering that we had no clue what we were doing. By some miracle, we managed to do it all in an hour.

This was 3:00 am now, and I had been there for twelve hours, with only one break. However, [Assistant Manager] wasn’t happy with it and made us do it all over again! By the time he was happy with it, it was 4:45 am. He never once helped.

By this time, I was scheduled to be back in three hours for my next shift, which happened to be with [Assistant Manager #2].

[Assistant Manager #2] walked through the door, took one look at me, and said, “I’ll call in [Normal Weekday Opener] and you can cover one of his shifts this week.”

I basically fell into my bed, still in work clothes, and passed out. [Store Manager] called me later that day to ask what had happened and why I had overtime. (Oops!) She was, by far, the coolest manager ever because she just listened as I went into a full rant on the phone with her, swearing and name-calling and all (and started crying).

The end result? [Assistant Manager] got written up by the [District Manager] and was not allowed to close on weekends or to close with me anymore.

I thought that was all that was going to happen, but I got one more drop in my golden goblet; it turned out that [Store Manager]’s brother had come in that night during the insanity. He told [Store Manager] that there was “a [description of me] who looked like she was about to murder [Assistant Manager] cause he was eating nachos on the floor and not working when it was crazy busy.”

[Assistant Manager] was demoted to a shift manager and then transferred to another store that was less visited, popular, and successful than ours.

I’m a high school teacher. In my first year of teaching, I taught at a school where the principal was a major micro-manager. He expected teachers to be in their classroom at all times except our lunch break. This included our prep period, when we were supposed to be writing lesson plans, grading papers, and doing other teacher stuff. If we left our classroom for any reason — for example, to use the restroom or make copies in the workroom — we were supposed to lock the classroom door to prevent students from getting in and leave a note taped to the door saying where we were going. If the principal found an unlocked door or a door with no note, he would make vague threats about “consequences” and send us off with a warning to “be more careful”. None of these threats ever actually amounted to anything; they were purely a power trip for him.

One day, about a month into the school year, I needed to make copies, so I wrote a note saying I was going to the workroom and taped it to the outside of the door. Ten minutes later, the principal walked into the workroom.

Principal: “Ah, this is where you ran off to, [My Name].”

Me: “Yeah, I had to make some copies for [class].”

Principal: “Would have been nice to know that. I stopped by your room and you weren’t there.”

Me: “I taped up a note just like we’re supposed to.”

Principal: “I didn’t see a note anywhere.”

With that, the principal said some stuff about “consequences” and “be more careful,” and headed out. When I got back to my classroom, there was no note on the door. I suspected the principal had taken the note down himself, but with no proof, there was nothing I could do about it.

A few weeks later, I left the classroom again to make some copies. Once again, I left a note on the door, but this time I took a picture of the note with the date and time to prove that I had taped it up. But once again, the principal “found me” in the workroom, talked to me about “not leaving a note,” and so on. I showed the principal the picture of the note, which caught him off guard, but he recovered by claiming, “Oh, well, it wasn’t there when I stopped by.” Again, not having proof that it was the principal himself who took the note down and not some random student messing around, there was nothing I could do about it.

The next time I had to leave my classroom, I hatched a plan. All classrooms at the school had small windows set into the doors, so instead of taping the note to the outside of the door, I taped the note to the INSIDE of the window and then locked the door closed. The note was still clearly visible through the window, but now the only way to take the note down was to unlock the door. I took a picture of the note and went down to the workroom.

Sure enough, the principal once again “found me” in the workroom and started his spiel about “no note”. I cut him off.

Me: “Stop. I have proof that I left a note on the door exactly as you require.”

I showed him the picture, which clearly showed the note in the window.

Principal: “Well, it wasn’t there—”

Me: “Then where did it go?”

Principal: “What do you mean?”

Me: “This note is on the inside of the window, which you can clearly see in the picture, and the door is locked. So, where do you think the note went?”

Principal: “Maybe the tape just let go and it fell off.”

Me: “Okay, let’s go look in my classroom. If it just fell off, then it should be lying on the floor just inside the door.”

By this point, the principal was starting to look guilty, but he put on a brave face and walked to my classroom with me. I opened my still-locked classroom door, turned on the lights, and pointedly studied the floor around the door.

Me: “I don’t see a fallen note anywhere, [Principal]. Do you see one?”

Principal: “I suppose maybe some kid tore it down as a prank.”

Me: “You just saw that the door was still locked. If someone took the note down, they had to have a key to my classroom. Do you know any students who have those keys?”

The principal stammered for a few moments and then promised to “look into this matter” and walked off down the hallway. Again, not having actual proof that it was the principal himself who unlocked my door and took down my note, I couldn’t do anything but privately enjoy what I knew to be a victory against the principal.

The next day, I told my fellow teachers about the whole series of incidents during lunch. Nearly every teacher said that they had experienced the same thing in their first years, but everybody just tolerated it because the threat of “consequences” never amounted to anything. Nobody had ever thought of the window trick, but every teacher started doing it after I told them.

The principal continued to find ways to indulge his ego throughout the rest of the year, but because he never actually disciplined anyone, we all ignored him and went about our business. I resigned at the end of the year and directly cited the principal’s harassment as the primary reason. As far as I know, he is still the principal at that school, but I have since found a job at a school with a much more friendly principal.

Some years ago, I was a beginner tattoo artist, very happy to get a job in a shop. The boss was kind of moody and very passive-aggressive, but I managed to work with her and was okay with most of her fits.

One day, the coffee maker wouldn’t work, just like that; it happens with cheap material. My boss was clearly angry but didn’t yell. She just took the coffee maker and said:

Boss: “Okay, I’ll keep it in the closet, then. You will soon know why.”

I thought nothing about it because maybe it was for an art project or something.

Some months passed and I totally forgot the coffee maker.

One day, the boss was on the phone with one of her friends. I didn’t know what was going on but she was clearly pissed. She was shouting on the phone outside her shop, and I kind of thought that wasn’t great advertising for her, but I didn’t say a word.

She then came back into the shop, way too calm.

Boss: “Now you’ll know why I kept the coffee machine.”

She took the coffee machine out of the closet with a HAMMER, put it on the floor of her shop, and SLAMMED IT with rage, screaming, shattering it into numerous small parts. It was a huge mess.

Then, she looked up at me.

Boss: *Very calmly* “THAT’S WHY.”

I was not so happy to work here after that.