I used to work for a now-defunct bookstore, and this is a story describing Inventory Nights from h***. The bookstore always hired an outside company to do the Inventory. Managers would stay all night and even bought the equivalent of a pizza party to feed the poor Inventory Workers who would stay all night to do their work.

Inventory took place starting at 5:00 pm and ran until 6:00 am — thirteen-hour shifts! Even with an hour of unpaid lunch break, that’s pretty miserable. Insult to injury? From 5:00 pm until 11:00 pm, the STORE WAS OPEN TO CUSTOMERS! The store should have closed early, and for whatever reason, it wasn’t.

So, you’ve got:

1) customers meandering around in the store, pulling books off shelves that were in the middle of being scanned;

2) customers wandering off with stacks of books that may or may not have been scanned into the system yet;

3) cranky customers snarling at the poor Inventory Workers who are “in the way”;

4) customers obliviously tripping over or kicking the Inventory Workers sitting on the hard floor and scanning books on the very bottom shelf;

5) Retail Workers doing the do-si-do with Inventory Workers, who have to creep behind the already cramped registers to scan books that are on hold;

6) announcements every fifteen minutes, for six hours, asking customers to “Please forgive the inconvenience: our store is going through Inventory right now,” which got old really fast to have to listen to;

7) absolutely no sane way to clean up the store before closing.

The entire evening was a kind of slow-motion scene of chaos. Can we put the cartloads of go-backs away? Nope! Not until the Inventory Workers have scanned them. Oops! Somebody found a pile of books hidden behind a chair. Better find a place for those to be scanned. Hey, has anybody scanned this cart of go-backs from the registers yet? No? I’d better leave this pile somewhere else for it to be scanned because the go-back cart is overloaded. Some Inventory Worker is currently scanning the shelf where these scanned go-backs need to go, so now we have to wait for the Inventory Worker to pass the spot where this is usually shelved so we don’t mess up the scanning.

I know it’s not the Inventory Workers’ fault that they got dragged in to do work at the same time as the Retail Workers. In fact, they had the grace to be apologetic to the Retail Workers as they tried to huddle in the smallest space they can physically curl into to avoid bumping butts with us.

Our Inventory numbers weren’t great, but what could we do? You can’t constantly shuffle the inventory while it is being inventoried.

I worked for that company for five years, and every inventory shift was basically the same song and dance.

My girlfriend works in a nursery in a not-great part of the city, so I pick her up as much as I can. Annoyingly, she is never finished on time, mainly due to certain parents not picking up their kids. It’s always the same ones who get special treatment from the owner, never have to pay late fees, forget to put sunscreen on their children, and just throw their kids through the door without a word.

I’m waiting (again) for a child to be picked up. Several phone calls go to voicemail. We wait and wait. Eventually, it goes past an hour. How both parents haven’t realised their four-year-old is missing is beyond me.

Eventually, the owner does something and leaves a message saying, “Pick up your children or we call social services and the police.”

Finally, a child appears at the nursery, appearing to be no more than twelve.

Twelve-Year-Old: “I’m here pick up [Smaller Child].”

Girlfriend: “You need to be an adult for us to release a child into your care. Wait, are you at home alone?”

Twelve-Year-Old: “No, Mum’s home.”

Girlfriend: “Well, go and tell her to collect her child, now.”

He shrugged and went home. Eventually, his mum showed up, acting like this was a massive inconvenience that everyone but her had caused. No apology, not a word.

She took her child (who by now was upset) and put him in the car.

The worst part is that the owner did nothing and expected my girlfriend to work for free every time, as “it wasn’t part of her hours”.

It wasn’t long before she quit; most of her coworkers did, too. Apparently, the place is still going, but it’s staffed with friends and family of the owner. They’re barely trained, and it shows in their plummeting Ofsted rating.

My brother is a very young lawyer; he just graduated from law school and passed the bar exam this year. He works for a much older lawyer. Unfortunately, his boss has decided that, A) since he doesn’t understand technology, it must be magic; B) since it’s magic, it must be able to do anything; and C) since my brother is young, he must understand how to make the magic work.

Boss: “We need a [legal form]. [Brother], go get one from the Internet.”

Brother: “I looked earlier and couldn’t find it. I don’t think it’s available.”

Boss: “No, no! It’s out there, just go get it!”

Paralegal: “[Boss], [Brother] has searched for the form and it’s not available online. Why don’t we call around and see if anyone has a copy they can share with us?”

Boss: “No! This is easy! You should be able to find it online!”

Brother: “Fine, then! If it’s so easy, you do it!”

Boss: “All right, I will!”

The boss storms off, presumably to sit down at a computer and remember that he doesn’t even know how to perform a Google search. Five minutes later…

Boss: “Hey, [Brother], [Paralegal] had a great idea. I think I’m going to call [Other Lawyer] and ask for a copy of that form.”

I have a manager who, to put it frankly, is eviler than a Disney villain, and with far fewer redeeming qualities. She takes advantage of employees straight out of college and will often resort to manipulation and gaslighting them. She will often act like she is the only one who can save you from being fired by the “unreasonable” owner and then expect you to return the favor by giving her ideas to make her look good. And you can never actually call her out on her crap because she is vague enough about it that if you do, she will act offended and make you feel malicious.

On Tuesday, she gives me one of these vague threats toward my job. Unfortunately for her, after four years, I recognize the tactic and am indifferent. Armed with the knowledge that if they were to fire me, they would be royally screwed, I just stare blankly at her as she backtracks and tells me how she will “protect” me. She then launches into the next topic at hand: finding tasks for her intern who starts on Monday.

I shrug my shoulders.

Me: “What were you planning on doing, anyway?”

Manager: “I don’t know.”

Me: “I suggest that you talk to [Coworker] about it as she might have tasks for the intern to work on.”

My Villain never does and spends Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday asking me to come up with ideas for her. Obviously, I continue to ask her why this intern was hired and what sort of plans she had for them because, again, you don’t get to threaten a person’s livelihood and expect them to be a wealth of ideas and resources.

By Thursday, she knows she has messed up and sends me a nice note telling me how much she appreciates me and wants me to know I am a “valuable” team member. I ignore it, so Friday, she comes into my office and out of the blue says:

Manager: “I just want you to know I mean every word.”

I feign a smile.

Me: “I appreciate that.”

I go back to work until she leaves, annoyed that I didn’t give her something more heartfelt in response to her insincerity.

Friday afternoon, my coworker I told her to talk to is complaining about how she is working on an intern task, so I tell her to email [Manager] with the idea. She is hesitant as [Manager] is also known to be volatile to new ideas, so I do it. 

The response I get back at 5:07 pm is absolute gold.

Manager: “Hello, all. I will let [Intern] and the team know that there are other tasks on the development team that need expertise. Let us know how critical or time-sensitive this becomes, as I don’t see [Intern] with downtime. But happy to contribute to the needs of the team. Thanks, [Manager].”

At this point, I was absolutely rolling at the audacity of this woman. She also copied her boss on it to show what a team player she is. I sent her back a note telling her it was all good; I’d only mentioned it since she’d asked for ideas. Again, I made sure her boss is copied.

Then, Monday rolled around. The intern came in at 9:00 am, and lo and behold, she had nothing for the intern! So, she texted me asking me to show them how to perform that task I mentioned on Friday. 

With great satisfaction, I told her I couldn’t do it today as I had nothing prepared; she had told me it was unnecessary. She wasn’t too happy about that. I cannot wait until she threatens to have me fired again!

During the last recession, I took a job at a company that makes special washers, springs, etc. I previously worked in high-accuracy, high-tech companies, and this is some of the most basic engineering I have worked with, but I am genuinely happy to have a job.

It is clear straight away that the team I am working with has been there forever, they’re all set in their ways, and they don’t like change. None of them speak to me and they all complain constantly. 

The current winge is about their office; it has shrunk slightly because the business needed the space. The office is still 40% bigger than it needs to be, but they complain anyway. 

This carries on for months until I’ve had enough. I suggest some ways we could make the space work better — new equipment that takes up less space and is easier to use, changing an empty desk into a work area, etc. It’s all stuff that I have seen working before and will make their lives easier.

The team hates every idea I give and responds with nonsense excuses or just refusing to listen. Knowing this is a dead-end, I shut up and get on with the work. They seem happy being miserable.

Months later, the same original gripes and complaints keep on coming. What is worse is that some of these old ways of working are affecting the customers, and now I am getting complaints from my boss, expecting me to stop them.

My boss brings me into a meeting room to discuss it.

Manager: “We are getting a lot of complaints about missing parts.”

Me: “Yes, they are being counted by hand, and mistakes will happen as long as we do this.”

Manager: “So, how do we improve?”

Me: “Stop the problem at its source; change from manual counting to a machine. It is inexpensive and will pay the company back in costs within a few years. It is simple to use and implement.”

Manager: “Great. So, why haven’t you said this before?”

Me: “Every suggestion is shot down by the team. When I try to encourage improvement, I get complaints. Then you discipline me for not working together with them and tell me to ‘toe the line’.”

Manager: “Ah, okay. Well, the next issue, then? Marks and damages. Lots of complaints here.”

Me: “I believe we have discussed this one, too. I wanted to test out some new worktops. But—”

Manager: “Oh, yes, there were some complaints from the team and we dropped it.”

Me: “I don’t know what to tell you. You employ me to fix these issues. I have given you multiple cost-effective options to do so, all proven with little to no risk. But the operator is telling you that he doesn’t want to even try, so we just don’t?! And the problems stay here forever. I have tried reason, I have tried demonstrating the savings and benefits, and I have tried bringing the team with me and hearing their ideas, but they don’t want to change. They are actively stopping progress and improvement.”

Manager: “Yes, a tricky one… Okay, so, the next issue.”

We went through the list and it was all the same. I’d make a suggestion, but the team wouldn’t like it or would refuse to try. The manager would like the idea but refuse to help.

I knew then that I was wasting my time in this job; nothing I would do could change anything. The company would rather lose thousands a month, and potentially customers, than ask the guy whose job it was to put parts in a bag to try something slightly different. I quit that month.