I work at a drive-in fast food restaurant where we serve — among other things — forty-four-ounce drinks and shakes. A customer comes in and orders two promotional mint-flavored shakes in the forty-four-ounce size. I take the order and run it out to him when it’s ready.

I have really small hands so I can barely hold the forty-four-ounce cups, and only near the bottom.

Me: “Hello, sir, that’ll be two [mint shakes] for [price].”

The customer gives me his payment and goes to grab the drinks by the top of the cups.

Me: “Sir, I wouldn’t grab there!”

That’s what I would’ve said, had the drinks not exploded in his hands due to the styrofoam bursting where he grabbed the cups. I start trying to clean the bright green goop that was a milkshake off of him, his truck, and myself. He is nice about it and recognizes his part in the mishap.

Me: “Let me get a manager and see what he can do.”

I take the torn-up cups inside and I yell, “Hey, I need these remade!” It’s loud inside and I need immediate assistance.

General Manager: “Okay, fine.”

He tries to take them from me. I hold them firmly and say:

Me: “No. These need to be remade.” *Explains what happened* “I need you to tell me what to do. A free replacement? Or should I charge him for two more? Maybe charge for some smaller ones since he paid for these? What do I do?”

The whole time, he keeps trying to take them, and I hold firm until he states that he will remake them for free, at which point I let go.

Drinks get remade, the customer is happy, and all is good. But later…

General Manager: “[My Name], I need to talk to you.”

Me: “Yeah, what’s up?”

General Manager: “Next time you have a mess up, you need to let someone know ASAP.”

That was my only mess up all night.

Me: “Uh, I did.”

General Manager: “No. You need to let someone know immediately so they can fix it as soon as possible.”

Me: “Uh… You’re talking about the shakes, right? Yeah, I did.”

General Manager: *Smirks* “Well then, who did you tell?”

Me: “I told you.”

General Manager: “Who fixed the shakes?”

Me: “You did.”

General Manager: “Wait, who did you tell?”

Me: “You. I told you immediately, and then you immediately fixed the shakes. Do you need to check the cameras to remember fixing that order yourself?”

General Manager: “Uh… No. Never mind. Just, uh… Carry on.” 

He was the main reason I quit that job.

My boss is in his sixties, he’s a workaholic, and he is the OG weeaboo with a love for all things Japanese. He has a part-business, part-pleasure trip scheduled before the illness outbreak becomes a thing for two weeks in early March.

As the situation evolves, his VP begs him not to go, but he continues to insist on going, even as events are cancelled and the VP warns him he will be self-quarantined for two weeks upon his return. It is also important to note that he is a university professor and they had already warned him explicitly of the same treatment.

He goes anyway and classes are officially cancelled in his absence while we are put on a work-at-home leave. This first text message comes as he is in customs at one of the opened international airports:

Boss: “Hi. I want to have a meeting tomorrow with [Intern #1] and [Intern #2]. Will they be in the office?

VP: “NO, [Boss]! You are quarantined for two weeks! Check your f****** email!”

The kicker is that he was told about five separate times that no one would be in the office for this exact reason.

Forty years ago, I worked for a small microfilm publishing company as a newspaper indexer. While the company filmed the paper, the indexers read the articles, choosing subject headings for the article and writing a short sentence describing the content.

I had recently been promoted to assistant editorial which basically meant that, yes, I got a raise, but it also meant I did a lot of leg work when the big bosses decided it was time to fix things that weren’t actually broken.

The bosses, upon looking at the index, felt that African-Americans reading the index would be offended if the words “race” and “racism” were in an alphabetical list with the words “race track” because it was disrespectful to black people. From then on, anything about racing, the sport, was under the name of the item being raced — cars, horses, greyhounds, jumping frogs, etc. We could not even put in a “see” reference from racing to the new terms because that would be so hurtful.

The discussion of race then put them in mind that using the phrase “African-American” didn’t sound right, either. It was going to sound offensive and they didn’t like it.

So, it became my job, the vice president decided, to call every black cultural group on every college campus in the county until I got some kind of consensus. 

In what was one of the strangest little projects, I called the three closest and largest colleges. The first two “African-American Cultural Centers” were, oddly, run by white people. They told me this up front. Number One said she had no clue as she wasn’t African-American and had no one to ask, but she felt sure that the term “Afro-American” was preferred over “Black” or “African-American” because it sounded “hip.”

Guy Two was some kind of didactic intellectual who went off on a long diatribe about how “Afro-American” and “African-American” were somehow insulting — he did not explain why — and it was much better to refer to them as “Black” which was descriptive and therefore preferable.  

Then, I hit Number Three. The gentleman who answered had a deep James Earl Jones voice and what seemed a sour and disinterested manner. I explained my dilemma and I finished with, “And so, I am embarrassed to ask this, but my boss insists I ask exactly this: do African Americans prefer to be called ‘African-American,’ ‘Afro-American,’ or ‘Black’?”

There was a long pause and then he said, “I prefer ‘Steve,’ actually,” before he burst out laughing. He went on to say, “Your bosses aren’t very bright. We are people of African background who were born and raised in the U.S. We are African-Americans. What the heck else would they call us?”

We talked for a bit and he assured me that as a professor of Black History, he was pretty sure he knew his terms.  

I went back to my boss with my findings and she took it to the big bosses.

And, despite what Steve said, they went with “Afro-American” because they agreed with the idea that it sounded hip, happening, and now.

Consequently, an entire year’s work had to be redone because a bunch of people who were so not equipped for their big important jobs needed to meddle in the work of their employees who knew what they were doing and how to do it.

This happened a few years ago when I was still in college. I was working at a fast food joint that was… an interesting place to work, to say the least. I had also been dating this guy for a few months when both of his parents died. The funeral was scheduled for Saturday of that week when I was scheduled to work. It was an all-day event two hours away. However, I wanted to pay my respects, so I asked my manager what my options were. 

My manager told me I could just switch with someone else. I talked with another coworker who was scheduled for Sunday but not Saturday and we agreed to switch. My manager cleared it, and I thought all was well and good.

Cut to Saturday. As soon as I turned my phone back on after the service, I saw a few missed calls from work. Yes, they had tried calling during the service itself. I called back and it was my shift lead asking where I was. Initially, I thought my coworker had no-showed, but no, she was there. 

Puzzled, I asked what the problem was since she was covering my shift. Apparently , they had wanted us both to come in, but hadn’t mentioned it until now, but could I come in today? I told them no, it wasn’t possible, and that I’d see them tomorrow.

The next day, I came in for the Sunday morning shift to see that my coworker I’d switched with was in, as well. Apparently, they told her she was still expected to work it. Not even an hour later, she was sent home because it wasn’t busy enough to warrant having that much staff. I left that job a few months later and can’t say I was too disappointed about that.

I used to work for a mental health charity. My first location was amazing, but after moving home, I had to move to a store closer. Unfortunately, the manager there and her way of managing the store made my life h***, along with the customers and the lack of volunteers. Here’s just a few of the choicest things said to me during my almost-year working with her. 

After telling her I needed a Wellness Action Plan with regards to how to deal with my mental health at work, she said, “What’s that?” All managers are trained to know what a WAP is. Then, every time I brought it up, she would brush it off as she was “too busy” and say that we’d do it the next time we worked together. 

I usually wear dark, comfy clothing. When I told her I wasn’t feeling mentally great, she said, “Maybe if you wore brighter colours you’d feel better?”

She also later said something similar: “If you smile, you won’t be so depressed.”

She and her favourite volunteer — who didn’t like me very much — made constant comments about my weight and appearance, and it got so bad I would actually fake being sick on days that I worked with her so I could go home early because I simply couldn’t face working with her. 

However, I mostly worked alone. I would still have panic attacks on my way to work, though. Working alone, with a skeleton crew of volunteers, some of whom couldn’t operate the till, I had to start making the choice to close the shop for lunch or not take my break at all. After a week of this, I decided for my mental and physical wellbeing I simply could not go without my break anymore and would close for exactly one hour. People made complaints about me closing the shop; one customer, referring to my short hair and rather butch attire, called me a “ladyboy”. 

Working alone also meant that I couldn’t follow health and safety procedures as much as we were supposed to. Policy clearly stated that a person must stay on the shop floor at all times. However, when donations kept coming in, I would have to make the choice between working in the back and getting them sorted — risking shoplifters and customers’ ire — or staying on the till and letting the piles of bags get to dangerous standards.

For one day only, I made the executive decision to stop donations coming through the door at around three in the afternoon, after I faced a pile of them almost as tall as myself. It got so bad that I would almost start crying with stress every time the door opened, just in case it was someone with more donations. Of course, we all know what customers are like, and several people complained about refusing donations. Of course, charity shops rely on donations, but when it came to a fire and/or trip hazard, I felt I made the right call. 

That’s when things got even worse if you can believe it.

I was summoned, very unexpectedly, to a hearing. Put against me were accusations of closing the shop and refusing donations. I was so panicked that I didn’t make a very good defense for myself, and I spent almost three months in a state of high-strung anxiety where I was afraid I would be fired. I even contemplated suicide. I would like to remind you that this was a mental health charity shop. 

My manager, who had brought this concerns against me to the regional manager, kept acting in a sickly sweet manner, and one friend who volunteered there on a day I wasn’t in told me she overheard the manager’s favourite volunteer say, “I’d run [My Name] over if I could get her job.” 

Nice.

Eventually, the second hearing came around, a friend coming with me for support. This time, I had time to prepare, and I explained my side of things: that I was working in unsafe conditions and my mental and physical health suffered when I was unable to take my break. Legally, we’re allowed twenty minutes of uninterrupted break if we work for more than six hours, and by working through my break, not only was there some sort of legal problem involved, but I also wasn’t getting paid for it. I guess they realised they could get in some trouble if they fired me on such a basis? Either way, I was given a final warning. 

However, despite a Wellness Action Plan being devised for me, my manager and her favourite volunteer — who was then hired as a Sunday manager, and was incredibly incompetent, but that’s another story! — kept making remarks about my brush with being fired.

Eventually, in November, I handed in my resignation.

I still get petty glee over leaving that job just before Christmas; my manager had planned to take holiday from mid-December until mid-January. This left the incompetent manager in charge of the shop over Christmas. “You’ve really left us in a bit of trouble here; it’s not really fair,” he said. All I said was, “Yup,” and I got back to work.

The day I left, I headed straight to the pub with friends and, even with the current health crisis making it hard to find a new job, I really, really, really, don’t regret leaving. I made some great friends from my first location and a great friend with the same mental health problem that I have at the second, and it’s also taught me that, in the future, I will not take any s*** anymore!