Our store’s policy is to rotate managers every few years. The current manager allegedly pulled some strings to get promoted.

Among all kinds of new rules that she makes up out of nowhere, and implemented immediately, is that all cardboard from stocking has to go on these 2×1-meter-long orange flatbed carts instead of in regular shopping carts.

We start at 4 am and I am stocking the liquor section on the other side of the warehouse from the cardboard hole. All my cardboard is small and doesn’t stack. This rule doesn’t work for me and I just am not having it.

I start my tasks and start chucking my cardboard in a cart anyway. The manager comes by to remind me to use a flatbed. I calmly and rationally explain and demonstrate why it doesn’t work for me. She says to do it anyway.

So, I pick up the cartful of cardboard and place it on the flatbed sideways and absolutely FILL that thing until it’s taller than I am by wedging huge sheets of cardboard in the sides and filling the middle with the small stuff.

Skip forward two hours: I’ve left this absolute monstrosity out during lunch and I am coming back. The manager is yelling into her walkie-talkie for my supervisor to come back and “look at what [My Name] has done.”

I’m in the next aisle straightening something and trying not to laugh out loud. My supervisor comes back and he’s visibly trying not to laugh while the manager screams about writing me up.

He calls me over and I just calmly say, “Well, it’s on the flatbed; I don’t see the problem.”

The manager stormed off and my supervisor didn’t write me up.

I have been offered a new full-time role working overnight at another location run by my boss. I have a regular Monday-to-Friday roster, starting at midnight each night. It’s the start of my second week when I arrive at work at 11:30 on Sunday night, only to have the store manager ask me why I am there.

Me: “I’m rostered to start work at midnight.”

Store Manager: “No, you’re not rostered. I had to bring someone else in because you weren’t rostered on tonight.”

Me: “I am on the roster to start at midnight.”

Store Manager: “No, you are rostered to start at midnight Monday night.”

Me: “Can I check on the roster?” 

Store Manager: “No, I can’t get online to access it at the moment.”

I leave, confused because I was told by the franchisee that I would be working Monday to Friday. I check the roster when I get back home and see that I am rostered from 00:00 am to 8:00 am Monday. I call the store manager to let him know.

Store Manager: “Yes, I know you are working from midnight on Monday, but that’s tomorrow; it’s Sunday tonight.”

Me: “But it’s Monday from midnight tonight.”

Store Manager: “No, it’s Sunday night.”

All I could do was call my boss in the morning to ask him to explain to the store manager how days work.

A few years ago, I suffered a concussion at work. I had clipped the lid of a plastic recycling bin on a door handle and, due to the force I was shoving it with, managed to have the lid flip back on my head with enough force that it broke my glasses.

The first problem occurred four hours after the incident. I was still at work because we always had staffing issues and didn’t want to screw them up. I talked to my manager.

Me: “Hey, my head is still pounding and I am dizzy. I need to go home.”

He proceeded to SLAM his clipboard down and walk away. I went home.

A few days later, I got my concussion diagnosis and proceeded to take a few months off. Eventually, I managed to get into a concussion clinic where they started helping me through dealing with the pain. 

I had a pair of friends working there. The second issue I had was that they let me know that management and other staff members didn’t believe me because, “You can’t get a concussion from plastic.” I was pretty upset about that and was considering whether it was worth going back if they didn’t believe I had been injured over the last few months.

The third issue occurred one day when I lost a filling. I skipped my shift so I could get it fixed instead. Where I live, when you get injured at work, you are given a caseworker and they review your case, make sure you are doing what you need to do, etc. He called me and said that I was under review for not being injured; they had gotten calls that I was okay, and me missing my shift that day was a red flag. I burst into tears.

That was the last straw. After I finished my next shift, I handed my resignation in to that job. Just because you can’t see an injury doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and the workers essentially bullied me out of there.

I found out a year later that my replacement had a heck of a time trying to do my job because, apparently, I did more stuff than they realized, and then they bullied her out, too. I’m unsurprised that the building still has a high turnover.

I have a manager who is a pathological liar; therefore, everyone else must be a pathological liar. Due to the health crisis, I spend a lot of the time in the office alone, but even prior to the crisis, my manager came in infrequently and only when she thought her boss would be there or when it would make her look good. It is worth noting that I don’t technically have to go into the office and can work from home, but I like how quiet it is with no one there.

On a day I know no one else is coming in, I take my car up the street to get its oil change. It is a five-minute walk so I drop it off before 8:00 am and go about my business.

Around 1:00 pm, my car is ready for pickup. No one else is in the parking lot at this time. I go to pick it up, and when I come back I see that my manager’s car is there, fifteen minutes later. Since she works upstairs while I work downstairs, I think nothing of it and go about my business.

Around 3:00 pm, my manager calls me.

Manager: “Are you in the office?”

Me: “Yes.”

Manager: “Oh. I’m not.”

The call lasts until 3:30 pm and she is gone by 3:45 pm when I go for an “air break.”

A few days later, my manager’s boss approaches me about this with my manager smirking in the background.

I reply calmly.

Me: “Oh, yeah. I went to [Car Shop] across the street to get my oil changed. That is why my car wasn’t there from 8:00 am to 1:30 pm. You can check the footage if you like?”

My manager’s face just dropped to the floor. I wish I could say that would teach her to stop trying to get others in trouble, but I doubt it.

Many years ago, the water supply system in my hometown was privately owned. The city had granted a license to operate to a man who already owned a suitable reservoir built for a long-gone sawmill, and he operated the water system rather than everyone having to have a well.

While the streets were mostly paved, there were no sidewalks, and the water pipes ran under the unpaved areas to make it easier to work on the lines. Naturally, there were only a few places that had handholes to reach the valves. Also, there were few maps of the system, and it mostly relied on memory and local knowledge of where everything was.

Some years later, the system passes to another man, who has been assisting the owner for several years. [Owner] is getting on in years and is rather obstreperous. We joke that if you looked up “curmudgeon,” you’d find his picture.

It’s late summer and the reservoir is down lower than it should be, so the town is on watering restriction, and some of the industrial users are pumping from the river for their process water to reduce the load on the reservoir.

[Owner] drives down one of the streets, and finds a local resident watering his garden on a day when he shouldn’t be.

Owner: “Turn that sprinkler off!”

Resident: “Nope.”

Owner: “You turn it off or I will!”

Resident: “No, you won’t.”

So, [Owner] digs up the shutoff for [Resident]’s property and turns the valve off. And the sprinkler keeps going. [Owner] goes up to the head of the street, digs up the valve there, and turns the street off. The sprinkler’s still going. [Owner] figures this might be one of the strange places that are fed from the street behind, so he digs up that valve and turns that street off, too.

The spinkler’s still going.

Owner: “[Resident]! You got a well?!”

Resident: “A-yep.”

Owner: “Why didn’t you say so?!”

Resident: “You didn’t ask.”

The shutoff for [Resident]’s property did turn off the system’s supply… which fed only one faucet in the middle of the yard.

A few years later, the city got a loan from the federal government to buy the water system, which let [Owner] retire.