(I often go to a day camp in the summer. I am a very thin child. When my parents pack me a lunch for the day, I typically get a sandwich, a snack — usually strawberries or grapes — and money for either one or two drinks. All of these things, from the plastic baggies holding each item to the brown paper bag they were stored in, have my full name on them. One of the female counselors sees me stashing the remaining half of my sandwich.)

Counselor: “[My Name]! Don’t waste food!”

Me: “I’m not.”

Counselor: “I saw you throw that sandwich away!”

Me: “It’s in my backpack. I’m full now. I’ll eat it later.”

Counselor: “You’re just going to throw it in the trash!”

(She grabs my bag, rips it open, pulls outs the brown paper bag with my lunch, drops the plastic baggie with my sandwich in her hand, shreds the plastic, and hovers it over my mouth.)

Counselor: “EAT!”

Me: “I’m not hungry!”

(This loops a few times, and the other counselor is just as useless. With no one in my corner, I get worn down and start eating the sandwich. Surprise, surprise, “I’m full,” means, “Don’t put any more food in my belly right now or I’ll vomit!” The good news is I don’t see her for the rest of the day as she is too horrified by what I’ve done to her sneakers. The bad news is what she says as she leaves.)

Counselor: “Don’t let him do anything for the rest of the day! He made himself vomit just to be a jerk!”

(The following day, come lunch time, before I even have a chance to put the bag down and open my soda, she’s already on me and takes my lunch out of my hand. She tosses my sandwich onto my lap and then holds up my grapes.)

Counselor: “You can have the grapes back when the sandwich is gone!”

(Remember when I mentioned my brain always tells me “Stop eating!” in this circumstance? Yeah, that happens again here. So for the rest of the week, I don’t get my snack. At all. During the first activity after lunch each day, starting today, I get to see her pull my snack out of her bag and hear the same line.)

Counselor: “Since you didn’t want these at lunch, they’re my snack now.”

(I figure I need to talk to the director of the camp about this, but I am not allowed to directly approach him, so I devise a plan. After yet another day of this counselor’s lunch ritual, just as I start racking my brain for ideas, I see an odd bulge from the tree not too far from the lunch area that wasn’t there when I started camp this year. I go to examine it, and I notice it’s a hive. We have some fresh wasps! By itself, the hive isn’t a problem. At a lunch area, with sugary sodas lying all over, now we have some intruders. A splash of soda here, a few little cream filling there, and they are all over my area.)

Me: “OH, MY GOD!”

(I bolt from the table, my lunch in hand.)

Counselor: “It’s not going to hurt you! Go eat!”

Me: “NO! I’M ALLERGIC!”

(I’m not really.)

Counselor: *mumbling* “You big baby.”

(She takes me by the hand into the visitor’s center and directly into the director’s office.)

Counselor: “[Director], we have a nest of wasps near the lunch area. [My Full Name] is claiming he’s allergic to wasps. Could you pull his allergy warnings and get someone to clear the nest?”

(One scan of the cabinet later…)

Director: “Nothing about wasps. [My Name], are you sure you’re allergic?”

Me: “No, I just needed to talk to you, and this was the only way [Counselor] would let me do it.”

Director: “Oh?”

Me: “She’s been stealing parts of my lunch every day since I started here this year.”

Director: “Excuse me?”

Counselor: “He’s full of it! I’ve never even touched his food!”

Me: “Then empty your bag.”

Counselor: “NO! Why should I?”

Director: “Because I’m your boss and I told you to.”

(Amazingly, it never crossed her mind to take my snack out of the plastic baggie with my overtly male and distinctly not-hers name on it.)

Director: “[Counselor], wait here until I get back. [My Name], get your grapes and I’ll walk you back to lunch.”

(The following day, my group had two new counselors.)

(I work as a pharmacy technician at one a major pharmacy chains. Recently, store management has been pushing for the pharmacy employees to try and get customers to sign up for text message alerts when their prescription is ready for pick up.)

Me: *having gone through most of the transaction* “Do you get cell phone text alerts when your scripts are ready?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “Would you like to?”

Customer: “Sure!”

Me: “All right, what cell number should we have in our system for us to text to?”

Customer: “Oh, I don’t have a cell phone.”

Me: “Then… you can’t receive text messages.”

(Sadly, this exchange has happened at least five times!)

(I become a manager in a post office in the early 1980s, and quickly gain a reputation with the union workers. It is first earned when I am called in to handle an office that is delivering an incredibly low percentage of the mail, which has only worsens in the week before I go in. After the introductions, I start my observations, and nobody’s behavior or stations immediately stand out as unusual. However, just as I turn my back to go double check the numbers, I spy someone throwing a few items into the pile for the Dead Letter Office, the resting place of any mail that absolutely cannot be delivered no matter the circumstances. On a hunch, I inspect an item within the obscenely large pile awaiting shipment, and I find the answer. Since the addresses written on the envelopes don’t magically change by themselves, even if the intended recipients’ addresses do, the post office itself has to change it for them after the change of address is filed. Today, that’s not a big deal, since we have computers, but this is the 1980s; while I cannot conclusively say the post office hasn’t started implementing computers yet, I can say that we aren’t anywhere near ready to begin the transition. As a result, looking up the change of address means extra leg-work and going through overstuffed filing cabinets looking for a matching name with just eyes. When mail reaches the Dead Letter Office, the process is repeated in order to ensure the item actually cannot be delivered and isn’t a simple error. If the Dead Letter Office is able to find an address for any mail, the mail is returned with the new address written on. In order to minimize their own work, this office has been foisting their own job of looking up forwarding addresses onto the Dead Letter Office. Rather than taking the one to three days it would normally take for this process to be completed, it instead takes up to a week to find the address and deliver it. I am never able to confirm this, but I believe the further drop in numbers is the result of a silent rebellion from the Dead Letter Office; they have realized they are being forced to do someone else’s job and have stopped applying new addresses to the mail, but the mail is then quickly sent back to the Dead Letter Office, trapping it in perpetual transit between the two. Rather than own up to having the evidence immediately, I instead talk to the other managers and supervisors, and make them agree to abide by whatever I say. Then, I gather the whole team for a meeting, after wheeling in the mail for the Dead Letter Office.)

Me: “As I said earlier, I’m here today because your numbers are down and we all want that problem fixed. After walking around, I noticed your mail for the Dead Letter Office is considerably higher than average. I can’t help but wonder if the mail in here is actually dead, something you’re supposed to be confirming yourself before it’s added to this pile. So, here’s what’s going to happen from now on. At the close of business every day, the other managers and I are going to review every item in this pile. If one item — just one item — could have been delivered, we’re calling in the inspectors, launching a formal investigation, and anyone it declares responsible for wilfully misdirecting mail will be fired.”

(I walk away and motion the rest of management to follow. No sooner than my back is turned, I hear the pile being deconstructed. I settle into my office afterwards. Not even five minutes after I close the meeting I receive a phone call.)

Me: “[Location] Post Office. This is [My Name]; how can I…”

Caller: “Who the f*** do you think you are?”

Me: “Who is this?”

Caller: “What are you, an a**hole?”

Me: *hangs up*

(The phone rings again almost instantly.)

Caller: “Did you just hang up on me?”

Me: “Who is this?”

Caller: “Answer the f****** question!”

Me: *hangs up*

(The cycle repeated for a bit until he finally figured out I wasn’t going to let some random person talk to me like that. I later found out from another manager that he was the union rep, and was not very pleased when he found out what I said during the meeting. And for those curious, I didn’t have to stay late that night looking up forwarding addresses, or any other night, because there was almost no mail being sent to the Dead Letter Office after that.)

At the time of this story, cell phones were only just booming; Bluetooth was incredibly rare, speaker mode was not a standard feature, and legislation concerning driving with a cell phone was virtually non-existent.

I was driving down the highway in my SUV to meet with some friends at a diner we like. Simultaneously, I was on the phone with my girlfriend. It was a warm spring day, so I had my windows rolled down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car that I believed was hugging the lane divider a little too closely. Wary this might be a scammer and given that my exit was still much further, I changed lanes to get away from him. I overshot it and wound up on a collision course with a second vehicle that was hiding in my blind spot, so I sharply turned the wheel the other way to correct it.

Big mistake.

The sudden jerk sent me rolling. I was wearing my seat belt, so all I did while rolling was appreciate my absolute stupidity. Thankfully, everyone stopped when they saw me flip, so I missed every other vehicle during my roll. I then started cursing when I noticed I dropped my phone, having not ended the call with my girlfriend, who thus no doubt heard every sound of the accident.

The moment the SUV stopped, I was out of my seat rummaging around the inside of the car. I had people getting out of their cars coming to check on me, and all I yelled was, “FIND MY PHONE! IT MIGHT HAVE FLOWN OUT THE WINDOW!”

Understandably, that confused everyone.

“I WAS TALKING TO MY GIRLFRIEND! I NEED TO TELL HER I’M NOT DEAD!”

Thankfully, it was under my seat. Once I had sent the message and calmed down, I realized the SUV had come to a stop right-side-up. The damage didn’t look like much since all the doors and hoods opened and closed normally, and the engine was still flawless. However, I later found out that due to the damage done to the frame, which required tearing apart to fix, it was considered totaled.

Even so, I drove down to meet my friends in my totaled SUV and recounted the whole story. The cherry on top came when we walked out and were assessing the damage. One of my friends yelled, in absolute seriousness, “YOU ROLLED IN A PARKING SPOT?!”

I used to work in the credit department for a regional department store. My job was attached to the collections department, but I wasn’t a collector. We had a dress code, which was ignored by the collectors. Since we weren’t the only business in the building, we had a code of conduct to prevent swearing in the elevator or the lobby. That was also ignored, also without consequence.

The high point came with the paper-recycling bin. Each group had a large rolling bin to put paper in for recycling, which was picked up weekly by an outside company. One group of collectors used theirs for garbage, including fruit remnants and packaging, and the recyclers refused to touch it. Since it wasn’t in the trash bins located at each desk, the janitorial staff wouldn’t touch it, either.

It sat there and rotted until complaints got to the VP. I was told to take it down three floors on the elevator, wheel it across the street and over a block to the store, dump it in the compact, and bring it back. I tried making the point that this wasn’t my job, that I’d had no part in creating the problem, and that it should be fixed by the people that did create it, but that didn’t fly.

I did as instructed, and then I parked the stinking bin — rancid juices streaking the sides, flies orbiting around it — in front of that supervisor’s desk, and told her she could clean it.

This story is part of our Recycling roundup!

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