I am one of three assistant directors at our company who report to our lead director. We have a team of about twenty employees who all four of us oversee. At the end of the day, each employee submits their production numbers and data which we report for our entire office. 

Today, my role is to take everyone’s numbers at the end of the shift. An employee on their first day has not been properly tracking their production. I turn to our lead to ask how to record that.

Me: “Hey, [Lead], [New Guy] didn’t record his info correctly. How do you want me to report his numbers?”

Lead: “Have you gone over the training with him again?”

It has been roughly ten seconds since the new guy has told me he did not properly record.

Me: “Um, no, I’m just trying to fill out tonight’s report and I need to know what I should put in for his numbers.”

Lead: “Why haven’t you done that yet? If someone isn’t doing their work properly, you need to make sure you go over the training with them again!”

Me: “I understand that, but right now I need to get this report filled out and sent in in the next few minutes so this issue is pressing.”

Lead: “What I don’t understand is why you haven’t gone over the training with him again?!”

It has now been roughly thirty seconds since I noticed this problem. Our training for new hires usually takes over an hour and even a quick refresher would take at least twenty minutes.

Me: “That’s not really what I’m asking. I need to know how—”

Lead: “You should know how to train new people. Stop being defensive and do your job.”

They stormed out of the room.

I ended up having to contact our project manager to figure out how to report the discrepancy in the numbers. Later, I checked with the other assistant directors to find out who had trained the new hires that morning. It was the lead director.

I am waiting by the printer having just refilled it with paper. My manager is at his desk not far from me.

Manager: “Don’t you hate those tan lines?” 

I turn and see him looking at me. 

Me: “What tan lines?” 

Manager: “Your bikini line.”

Me: “How the h*** are you even able to see that far up?”

Manager: “When you bent over to refill the paper tray.”

Me: “…”

Manager: “What? If you don’t want men looking, you should crouch more like a lady or stop wearing skirts!”

I was extremely uncomfortable and ran to the HR manager. She was quite furious about it and demanded he be suspended until an investigation took place. Senior management, though, just sent him on equal opportunity training; the HR manager resigned in protest.

It seemed to work on my manager, though, as now he refuses to lift his eyes up from his desk. I can’t stand to be in the same room as him, though, so I have requested to move departments. If I’m denied, I will be resigning also.

When I first got hired at [Sub Chain], I always heard complaints from the other employees bashing the owner of this particular one and calling her nasty names. I always thought that they were just exaggerating or being lazy because most of them were teens — despite being fresh out of high school myself.

About a year in, I realized they weren’t wrong when I was made to work with them. This is the thing that finally broke it for me and made me quit.

I only hear the manager’s half of the phone conversation. Her father was in the hospital prior to this for other health conditions and has had heart attacks before.

Manager: *Through tears* “I just found out my dad had another heart attack and he’s not doing well. They don’t think he’s going to make it. I’m leaving to go be with him. You need to find coverage or [My Name] will be here alone until twelve.”

Now she is angry, crying harder, and screaming into the phone.

Manager: “What?! No, I can’t ‘just finish my shift’! My father is in the hospital dying!”

The manager hangs up and leaves. After that, because the boss can’t find anyone to come in, she has to come in herself to “help” — all she does is ring out customers — and this is what she says.

Boss: “I can’t believe she just left like that! She’ll be lucky if I don’t fire her for walking out!”

Me: “Um… her dad is in the hospital; he could be dying. You seriously expect her to stay at work for what could be the last time she can see or even talk to her father?”

Boss: “I don’t care. She has a job to do. She should have finished her shift before going to see him. It would only have been six hours.”

I take off my gloves and start heading for the door because I seriously can’t work for someone THAT heartless.

Boss: “Where are you going?”

Me: “I’m leaving, you’re a heartless f****** c***.”

Boss: “How dare you talk to me like that?! I’m your boss!

Me: “No, you’re just a b****. I quit. Look in the mirror and you’ll see why all your stores are short-staffed.”

After a while, I did go back to that shop for some food and to see some of the coworkers I liked. I found out that the manager also quit, and the boss didn’t tell anyone else why she was there alone that day apart from “they both walked out.” My old coworkers were appalled to hear why we both walked that day.

In my store, we have a few different choices when it comes to what we wear. Today, my coworker and I wore the exact same thing. My coworker has also dyed her hair to barely a shade darker blonde than me. 

I notice the team lead walk by a few times and every time he does, he does a double-take at us. On one of the passes, he stops.

Team Lead: “You guys are throwing me for a loop today. You’re both wearing the same thing and you’re both blonde.”

I felt bad for him the rest of the day, even worse knowing in a few weeks I was planning to dye my hair red which would then confuse him all over again.

We have an all store meeting on a Sunday morning where they have multiple stations set up to have all employees working their opening and closing pitches to customers. It is some major push with corporate to better understand customers through pitching them products or some such nonsense.

As I work in the service department, it doesn’t apply to my direct coworkers or me, but we have to show up anyway. One of the stations, though, is actually with the customer service workers who are going over ways to avoid fraud. One of the store managers who is directly over customer service is there, too.

All the employees are put into groups. My group is the third group to go to this station, so two others have already gone. 

Representative #1: “We need to make sure that, on checks, the name on the check matches their driver’s ID as well as address. Standard operating procedure is to write the customer’s ID number on the check.”

Manager: “If the customer has stolen a debit card but has the PIN, there really isn’t much we can do since we never look at the debit card if they put in the PIN. With a credit card or a transaction going through as credit, though, we can stop fraud completely because we have to put in the CID number on the back of the card so we can match the card with the customer’s ID.”

Representative #2: “Honestly, it doesn’t matter if the name isn’t right because the whole thing would be between the person who had the card stolen and that person’s bank. So, we could technically stay out of it.”

Me: “So… when it comes to cards we don’t need to stop fraud or have no way of doing it?”

Manager: “With debits, not really, but with credit cards, you match the ID. Weren’t you listening?”

Me: “I was, but [Representative #2] just said that really the whole thing is between the person who lost the card and the bank. So, we can catch the fraud but honestly, there isn’t a point to if we still get paid and the person who lost the card isn’t technically on the hook for the charges applied to the card. Basically talking about cards at all is kind of useless.”

Manager: “Well… I mean, we can stop fraud by looking at the ID.”

Representative #2: *To me* “But it doesn’t matter since it’s between the bank and the person.”

Me: “Yep, we can stop fraud by looking at the ID of the person with the credit card, but if we were to skip that entirely and just take the card, the person who had the card stolen could call their bank and not be on the hook for those charges.”

Representative #1, Representative #2, and Manager: “Yes.”

Me: “We’re the third group through here, right?”