It’s a very busy lunch rush and I am taking a customer’s order over the drive-thru headset when he asks for a type of burger that has several different variations. He seems confused, so I explain the differences to him.

Customer: “Hold on. It’s not for me; it’s for someone else. Let me call them and check.”

This isn’t unusual, and it’s better than the customer calling later and accusing us of giving them the wrong burger. He spends so long on the phone, however, that I end up moving from order taker to cashier, handling the customers at the window instead, and another crew person finishes taking the order for me.

Finally, the customer gets to the pass-out window and hands me his card, and I notice he has his phone to his ear. We are required to read back the order at the window to confirm it is correct; however, as soon as I start speaking, the customer holds up his finger, shushes me, and rolls up his window. This means I am unable to confirm the order, give him his drinks, see if he wants a drink carrier, or ask if he needs additional condiments.

Aside from being rude, this slows us down, because we would be getting all this stuff ready while his order was being bagged. I run his card, but because his window is up, I’m not able to hand it back so I set it in front of my register with his receipt. His order comes up not too long after that and I start trying to flag him down and get him to roll his window down, so we can get his order to him.

He looks at me, makes eye contact, and then looks away. I’ve got other orders coming up and I’m pretty annoyed with this guy at this point. I hold up his bag and start waiving energetically. I’m seconds from leaning over and knocking on his window. Finally, he puts his phone down.

Customer: “Sorry about that. I was on an important phone call.”

If it was that important, he could have pulled around in front instead of holding up the drive-thru and wasting time on the lunch breaks of the people behind him. I give him his card back and try to get him his drinks and food handed out as quickly as possible to get the line moving again. At this point, we have all the food and drinks up for the next six cars. That’s all we can fit from the speaker to the window; we can’t take another order until this guy moves.

I hand the customer his bag of food.

Customer: “I just need to check and make sure you got this right.”

My manager, the other cashier, and I just stared in disbelief for a few seconds as this guy, who had already held up the drive-thru for nearly ten minutes, proceeded to pull out each and every sandwich and open and check them all, before I closed the window, walked away to get cookies, and started adding them to all the other car’s bags as a preemptive apology for the wait this guy had caused. 

Apparently, he was satisfied, because he FINALLY drove away. The cars directly behind him were pretty understanding. They could see me trying to give him food for a while and see him sitting there after getting it, but I did have to explain to the cars behind that they were held up because someone decided the drive-thru window was the place to take an “important” phone call.

In 1974, I go to see the new disaster movie Earthquake. The high-budget movie features famous actors and “Sensurround”! This involves specialized bass speakers that create a sound wave that is more felt than heard. The speakers make the theater rumble during the earthquake scenes.

The movie follows the typical disaster movie formula. Part One introduces characters pre-disaster. Part Two shows characters during the disaster. Part Three shows the characters after the disaster.

In the movie, before the big quake, there is a pre-quake, but there is no Sensurround, and I wonder why. (I learn later that Sensurround should have been felt during the pre-quake.)

Everyone in the theater can tell that the earthquake is going to happen very soon. And then… the movie skips from Part One directly to Part Three, leaving out the earthquake part. The entire audience is wondering, “What the f***?”

Three minutes into Part Three, the movie stops and the theater lights come on. The projectionist messed up. Ten minutes later, the movie finally resumes with Part Two. We finally get to feel Sensurround, but the climactic moment in the movie is lost.

After the movie, I get in the long line with all the others wanting a voucher refund ticket. The manager is sitting at a folding card table in the lobby to sign refund vouchers and he is not happy. After ten minutes in line, it is finally my turn. The manager looks at me and says, “So why do you think that you deserve a refund?”

Internally, I just thought, “Whatever the forty people in front of me told you.”

I’m at the amusement park with my family. My mom and a few of my family members decide to sit this ride out since they’re not a huge fan of water rides, so my two little sisters, my cousin, my best friend, and I decide to ride the Water Rapids. The line for the ride is around an hour or so long, and we think it won’t be too bad since wait times at amusement parks tend to be overestimated to give guests buffer time.

We get in line, and around five minutes in, one guy decides to go ahead of the line because a group of his friends went ahead and saved the spot in line for the rest of their group. As he passes by the family of four in front of us, the mom and dad immediately complain.

Dad: “Hey, you can’t do that, man. That’s unfair.”

Guy #1: “Oh, no, my friends went ahead of the line for me, so I’m just meeting them.”

And he proceeds to bolt past them.

The mom and dad shake their heads and go back to talking to their kids. Two minutes later, another guy comes past everyone behind us and past us before being stopped by the mom and dad.

Mom: “Hey. No. This is not okay. You need to go to the back of the line.”

Guy #2: “My friends are at the front of the line. We got split up because I needed to use the restroom, so they said they’d go to save me a spot and I could meet up with them.”

Dad: “That’s not fair.”

Mom: “This is not okay. You’re making everyone wait longer now, and my daughter looks like she’s about to pass out from the heat.”

Daughter: *Embarrassed* “Mom, I’m fine.”

The guy tries to get through, and the mom begins to block him like it’s defense in basketball, so he doesn’t go past them in the line. His friend then calls him on his phone.

Guy #2: “Yeah, I’m still in the back of the line. Mr. and Mrs. Jerk here aren’t letting me through.”

My whole family starts laughing, and others around us even let out a laugh, as well.

He ends up standing with us.

Guy #2: “I’m sorry for cutting in front of you.”

Me: “No worries, it’s not a big deal.”

My sisters and everyone else agree with me since we really don’t think it’s something to argue about.

Me: “It’s really fine. I feel like everyone saves a spot in line when you have a big group at the amusement parks.”

The mom then turns around and looks at me.

Mom: “Oh, so you think it’s okay to cut people in line?”

I get heated because it wasn’t a conversation I was trying to have with her.

Me: “One, I wasn’t talking to you, and two, don’t tell me you’ve never cut anyone else in line in your entire life.”

Mom: “See, this is what’s wrong with this generation; they don’t know right from wrong.”

My sisters, who are seventeen and sixteen, jump in.

Sister #1: “Okay, I’m sorry, but when did this become a generational issue?”

Sister #2: “If you want to talk about generations, let’s mention how your generation basically left all the f***** up things to our generation to fix.”

Sister #1: “We can keep going if you’d like, because I would love to know who you voted for.”

The mom has no response to what we say, and the guy in line with us just keeps laughing and agreeing with the words we are throwing at her.

Sister #2: “This is about someone that is ‘cutting the line,’ and even if he was cutting, THIS WILL NOT MATTER IN THREE HOURS, LADY.”

The couple stays quiet for the time being.

Five minutes later, we see another group of people cutting the line, and, still heated over all of this, I yell out:

Me: “Oh, my gosh! Look at those people! They’re cutting the line and making it wayyyyy longer for you guys to get to the ride. Are you going to stop them?”

We get no response from the mom and dad, and we just sigh, finding it ridiculous how they handled an unnecessary situation.

We finally get to the front of the line, and everyone is able to go with their groups and ride the ride. At the end of the ride, the family’s boat is next to ours, and my little sister ends the whole ride experience with:

Sister #2: “SO, DID YOU GUYS ENJOY THE RIDE?”

I’m the submitter of this story and I thought some folks might enjoy a couple more examples of how lazy this librarian was.

He didn’t like fiction or religious books and would do anything to avoid adding them unless forced. He only liked to add books on subjects he enjoyed, even if they didn’t circulate well. He especially hated romance novels. I kept telling him that, as a public library, we can’t just stock what we like and it has to be well-rounded, but he wouldn’t listen. I complained to the manager at the time and she tried to say that he doesn’t have as much control over the collection as he claims.

Patrons would complain about how we weren’t adding a lot of new fiction — only what headquarters would send, nothing extra like other libraries do — and especially how we didn’t have any new romance novels. I’d tell them to tell the librarian as I wasn’t in charge of purchasing, but he’d pretend to not get these requests, even if he was standing next to me as they complained and begged for new fiction books. His excuse was always, “Well, they didn’t tell ME!”

Finally, I went behind his back and contacted someone I knew at HQ who was an expert in romance novels and which ones to buy, especially when we got multiple requests for ones that had main characters that weren’t white. She sent five bags of romance novels to our branch.

The librarian intercepted these bags and stuck them in what we came to call “the closet of no return.” It’s where he’d stick anything he didn’t want to put out until it was in there so long he could secretly discard it — mostly donations, even if the item was brand new and in demand.

The manager at the time finally started catching onto what he was doing. When he didn’t add the romance novels, despite being asked about it repeatedly, she waited until he was on vacation. Then, she grabbed all the bags and we all worked together to get them into the computers and on the shelves before he returned. When he saw all those brand new romances where there had just been a few tattered ones before, his face became white and tight with barely-suppressed rage. But he couldn’t say anything.

After that manager retired and we got the one he became BFFs with, he got worse with his laziness. He and the manager would stay all day in the office together with the door shut, doing no real work. Neither would come out except for bathroom breaks and lunch until the manager’s husband came to pick her up.

One time when the manager wasn’t there and he was in charge, he tried to force me to throw out a woman with a service dog. I kept telling him that, since he was in charge, he needed to go up and ask her, “What is your dog trained to do?” as that’s all you’re legally allowed to ask. He refused, so I went to do it, reported that it was a service dog and that we couldn’t throw her out just because he didn’t like dogs. Later, the manager told me I should’ve thrown her out, anyway, “because he told you to.”

He would give his work to the library assistant without telling her what it was he wanted her to do, i.e. handing her a list of books checked out to repair that were massively overdue by several months and just saying, “Look for these.” Instead of looking on the repair shelf to see if they were there, she was looking on the shelves. I was the one who had to inform her what the list was for, and I ended up being yelled at by my supervisor at the time for “telling someone higher up than you what to do,” though she calmed down when I told her what had really happened.

He also didn’t want to evaluate books for possible discard. At the time, I wasn’t allowed to discard a book, even if it was sopping wet and growing mold. I had to check it out to repair, write a note as to what was wrong, and hand it to him. Books that had split down the middle, pages falling out, torn-out pages, etc. — he would just check them back in and stick them on the shelf without even looking at them because he didn’t want to be bothered. I finally had to start getting tricky with him. I’d take the falling-out pages and rubberband them to the outside of the book, put the checkout slips into the split spine in such a way that they curled and tucked behind where the pages were supposed to be attached to the spine, etc. It was the only way I could get him to take the two seconds it would take to just discard the darn things.

As the lead adult librarian, he was supposed to arrange for programs for adults. For a while, he would just bring in the same old guitar player all the time until patrons started to complain. The guy wasn’t that good of a singer and it was boring having the same program over and over again. So, he finally started doing other programs, except he wouldn’t advertise them properly such as having them put into the website calendar, making fliers on time, etc. Each program he did he just advertised less and less until he was basically not advertising them at all. Then, because he had several programs in a row fail due to his lack of work, he claimed that “No adults want programming” and used his laziness as an excuse to stop having adult programs. Even when people begged him to do something, his excuse was, “No one ever shows up for them.” He never would admit it was his fault for not advertising them. 

Again, we all would’ve loved to see him get fired because his laziness made work harder on the rest of us, from having to pick up his slack to patrons complaining to us because of choices he made. But the manager at that time before his transfer was, like I said, his BFF, and again, our union sucks. They pretty much are only about raising our dues so they can give themselves raises and not about protecting workers. Going to Human Resources wouldn’t get any results, either, so we just had to put up with it until he was transferred.

Related:
Hold Onto Those Books, And Your Job

My spouse and I are traveling in San Francisco. We decide to use a car rental service that lets people rent out their personal or spare car. Since I’m most familiar with a particular kind of car, we pick that kind to rent. We buy the optional extra insurance on our vehicle, just in case. One of the things I’ve noticed with [Car]s is that there’s a tendency for the back latch to fall off.

So, we use the app and rent someone’s old used [Car]. The back latch is loose, and I know it’s going to fall off. I warn my spouse and mark it in the damages. No problem.

Sure enough, the latch falls off partway through the trip.

This story, though, isn’t actually about the latch. It’s about what we discover when we are cleaning up the car to return it. In the driver’s side pocket, there is a glass tube with brown residue in it, wrapped in tin foil. And underneath the driver’s seat is a mysterious triangular hole cut in the floor of the car for no readily apparent reason.

My spouse and I figure that it is probably a crack pipe and that the car is probably used in some sort of drug smuggling, hence the triangular hole in the floor.

We debate reporting it to the cops. Ultimately, we decide not to because we are on vacation and we are afraid of what would happen if they got involved.

When we get home, they don’t charge us for the latch… but we charge the insurance we got for the hole in the floor.