When I was seventeen or eighteen, I worked full-time as a waitress at a very popular chain pizza restaurant. Around three months in, I was promoted to supervisor as I worked more hours than anyone else in the front of house and knew my way around the restaurant very well.

After about six months of working there, a new second supervisor was hired who had apparently worked there a few years prior. I had just gotten into work, a day after getting a new tattoo, and was showing it to an old friend from school who also worked there. [New Supervisor] walked up and interrupted our conversation. Let it be known that we had only ever said, “Hello,” to each other ONCE when she was hired and hadn’t spoken anything else to one another.

New Supervisor: “That’s hideous. Worst choice for a first tattoo, honestly.”

Coworker: “Wow, that’s rude. What the h***?”

Me: “Well, it’s a good thing it’s on me and not you, I guess.”

I walked away to avoid any other conversation, and she ended her shift shortly after, as I was taking over for the dinner shift. That night, when counting the till, we were under by about $50. We came to realize that [New Supervisor] had voided and refunded an order without punching it into the computer, so the system was displaying the total we should have had, instead of what we did have. The owner spent an hour sorting it out as we had already processed the sales for the day, and all was fine after that, albeit annoying.

About two weeks later, my coworker/friend approached me.

Coworker: “Hey, [My Name], did you see the schedule for next week? [New Supervisor] crossed off half your shifts and replaced them with her name, and vice versa. Apparently, you’re scheduled to work opening instead of closing on New Year’s Eve now.”

I walked to the office and saw that she had indeed swapped all our schedules. Being fresh out of high school, I definitely needed the tips that came with the dinner service, especially on New Year’s Eve. After that shift was our Christmas/New Year’s staff party, and as I lived forty minutes from the restaurant, I didn’t want to have to go all the way home mid-day just to have to come back that evening anyway. I spoke to the owner and he reprinted the original schedule, with a big note that said, “DO NOT CHANGE THE SCHEDULE WITHOUT MANAGEMENT’S PERMISSION.” Problem solved, right? Wrong.

New Year’s Eve rolled around, and I was greeted at 10:15 am with a phone call from panicking kitchen staff there to start up the store and turn on the ovens to open for 11:00 am, including preparing over a dozen multi-pizza pre-orders to be ready for noon. Apparently, [New Supervisor] no-showed for her shift and there was no supervisor on-site, meaning no key to get in and no voids, refunds, or anything could be processed without our special codes, nothing. Nobody could reach [New Supervisor] on the phone, so I agreed to work a double shift and headed in with my NYE outfit in my backpack.

The day went by without issue until 5:00 rolled around — my original scheduled time — and in walked [New Supervisor] in her work uniform. I didn’t actually see her come in as I was covering two sections due to the no-show, so I was too busy to see until I went into the back to print a receipt.

New Supervisor: “I’m here now, so you can clock out and leave.”

Me: “Uh, no? You no-showed so I picked up a double shift. [Owner] already okayed it. We’ve got this covered.”

New Supervisor: “Well, I’m here now and I need the money, so leave!”

Me: “I’m gonna go get [Owner].”

When I tell you the owner was not happy about being called away from setting up for our staff party at his other restaurant, I mean it. He walked in the back absolutely red in the face and stared at [New Supervisor].

Owner: “Let me get this straight. You no-call, no-show, and show up whenever you please afterward? I already told [My Name] she could have a double shift today. Go home.”

New Supervisor: “I changed the schedule! She said we could switch for today. It wasn’t my fault she was late.”

Me: “I never said we could switch. [Owner] changed the schedule back when I pointed it out.”

Owner: “[New Supervisor], leave now. You’re still on your probationary period, so I need to consider what to do with you going forward. This isn’t acceptable.”

I walked back out front to take care of my tables and customers. I saw [Owner] and [New Supervisor] emerge about ten minutes later. [Owner] pulled me aside and said [New Supervisor] was going to take over one of my two sections to help out. The restaurant was packed, the waiting line was out the door, and the phones were going nuts with delivery orders anyway, so it would have been a help.

A table of my regulars came in and I input their usual order: spaghetti and meatballs, and a large pepperoni pizza. Thirty minutes later, they asked how long it would be. I apologized profusely due to how busy we were and headed to the kitchen to check. The head cook told me that order had been voided two minutes after it was sent in, so they didn’t make it. Yep, you guessed it: only one other person could void orders with the special supervisors’ code only she and I had. I went onto the computer and saw that EVERY ORDER I had put in over the last thirty minutes had been voided only minutes after it had been put in, but I was running around too much and the kitchen was too busy for either of us to check in on one another.

[New Supervisor] approached me, in front of HUNDREDS of customers, and started laughing loudly, saying how bad of a server I was and how I should just have gone home when she told me to, that this was a lesson for me, etc. By this time, the nearly deafeningly loud restaurant was dead silent and staring at us.

One by one, the customers got up and left while [New Supervisor] desperately tried to stop them. The waiting area cleared out, as well. By the time the commotion stopped, only around ten out of the 120-plus customers remained. I packed my stuff and started to walk out. Four cooks and two servers followed me out, quitting on the spot. 

Word traveled fast, and out of the fifteen total staff members the restaurant had, only five showed up to the Christmas/NYE party.

[Owner] called me up and asked what had happened. I explained, and he said, “I see,” and hung up.

I returned the next day first thing in the morning to hand in my keys and key card to the owner. All the dirty dishes were still on the tables and [Owner] was there with his sleeves rolled up, looking at a mountain of receipts. After our call, he had gone in and fired [New Supervisor] on the spot. After doing the math, he had lost over $1,500 in unpaid bills due to the customers walking out after [New Supervisor]’s scene. He also found over $700 was missing from the till over the time [New Supervisor] had been working there; she would void orders after they were delivered and pocket the cash for herself. 

I didn’t end up returning to that restaurant, although I felt really horrible about the situation, but my mental health had gone severely downhill and I would have been put on medical leave anyway.

Someone who knew [New Supervisor]’s family personally updated me a year later. She ended up being on drugs and stealing from both of her jobs to feed that habit. She also stole from her parents, and she got arrested not long after getting fired for drug trafficking and possession. Karma, I guess?

I work in a highly-specialized but rapidly growing field of engineering. My company specializes in niche design software for some of the most complex design questions. These are typically questions that four or five PhDs with a hundred years of experience between them couldn’t answer without our software.

Nevertheless, our marketing director has decided to be… willfully ignorant… about exactly what we do. She is smart and capable enough to LEARN, at the bare minimum, the basics. She just chooses not to. She is also the kind of person who likes the sound of her own voice and refuses to listen to anyone, especially if it is another woman, which — surprise! — I am.

We are in a meeting when, out of the blue, she asks a random question.

Marketing Director: “What is the status of the demo?”

Me: *Taken aback* “Uh, can I ask what the demo is pertaining to?”

Marketing Director: “The GUI demo! It is top priority.”

We have several Graphical User Interfaces in the works right now, and as the project lead, I am not aware of us being at any stage to create a demo. But maybe she means a previous GUI? Or even something other than a demo?

She has a habit of miscalling critical projects, no matter how many times I correct her. For example, we have a project called Baseball and another called Cube. She will frequently refer to both projects as Baseball despite them doing two very different things. It’s the same with the word “demo,” which can mean anything from an actual demo to a demo video, a tutorial, or training material.

Me: “I was unaware that this was a priority. Can I have a little more detail on it? Like what this demo hopes to accomplish?”

Marketing Director: “It always has been a priority!”

Me: “Well, I have no knowledge of it, so let’s talk about what you are looking for.”

Marketing Director: “Are you telling me I am going to have to wait three months to get this done?”

Ah. Well, that at least narrows “the GUI” down. I am able to pinpoint what GUI she is talking about based on the project completion date, so I can proceed.

Me: “The work on [Correct GUI] is optimization. It won’t affect the branding so we can work on a demo, but I am going to need a bit more information. For that, I would like [Owner] present to give his feedback.”

Marketing Director: “I want a demo of the capabilities! Are you telling me I cannot get a demo on the capabilities?”

Me: “What do you intend to do with this marketing-wise? Li—”

Marketing Director: *Cutting me off* “The capabilities! Like what it does! Can we do that?”

Me: *Pauses* “I don’t understand the question.”

Here she goes on a tirade that I just kind of space out on because, at this point, I know she doesn’t even know her marketing message or her target audience. She is expecting me to do this all for her.

Me: “As I have stated, I don’t understand the question. As I explained several times before, the GUI doesn’t have any new functionality or capabilities. It is a wrapper for our current command-line capabilities. We can make a demo, but we need to know who you want to market for, and [Owner] should provide feedback on what he wants to use it for so it is multi-functional.”

Marketing Director: *Beaten but annoyed* “Well, do you have any questions for me?”

Me: “Do you have a statement of work for this demo so we can work it in?”

She didn’t answer and instead opted to change the subject before leaving shortly after. We will see if we get that Statement of Work or if she is going to keep acting like it is done until someone gives in.

The company where I work has opening hours from 9:30 am to 10:00 pm. The emergency exit is to be unlocked until we close. Then, it is to be locked.

One morning, [Boss] arrives to open up and discovers that the emergency exit is unlocked.

As [Coworker] was working last night’s late shift and is working today’s early shift, [Boss] approaches [Coworker].

Boss: “Who forgot to lock the emergency exit yesterday?”

Coworker: “All of us, I suppose.”

I had been working at a factory for about a year when they hired another new guy. The new guy immediately singled me out as some sort of enemy after being told that I was also fairly new, and he was always running off to our supervisor trying to get me in trouble. Our supervisor always “investigated” just to appease him, but he never even pretended to discipline me because he knew what the new guy was up to.

One day, I got done using a specific machine, cleaned everything up, and headed out for a short break. This machine has a lot of different settings, so every time you use it, you have to make sure the settings are correct before you start. If you don’t, the best-case scenario is that the parts come out wrong and fail inspection. Worst-case scenario, the entire machine breaks, and the factory basically has to shut down until a new machine can be bought and installed. The new guy had been trained on this machine and knew that he needed to check the settings, but he never did.

I got back from my break, and the new guy was running parts on the machine that I just finished using. The machine was making some bad noises, and I realized that he had forgotten to adjust the settings. I tried to warn him to stop the machine, but he brushed me off, so I hit the machine’s Emergency Stop button to stop him from doing any more damage than he might have already done. Obviously, this enraged the new guy, and he stormed off, returning a few minutes later with our supervisor.

Supervisor: “Hey, [My Name], [New Guy] tells me you were screaming at him for using the machine?”

Me: “I was using it before my break, running different parts than he’s trying to run. The machine was making all sorts of sounds when he was using it like he hadn’t adjusted the settings for his parts, but he refused to stop when I told him the settings were wrong, so I hit the Emergency Stop.”

Supervisor: “[New Guy], did you check the settings?”

New Guy: “I was just using this machine yesterday, and it was running fine. If anything is wrong with it, it’s [My Name]’s fault for messing with the settings.”

Supervisor: “[My Name], what parts were you running this morning?”

I tell him, and [Supervisor] checks the settings on the machine and confirms that they are correct for those parts.

Supervisor: “What parts are you trying to run now, [New Guy]?”

The new guy tells him.

Supervisor: “Then it’s pretty obvious what happened. [My Name] adjusted the settings correctly to run his parts, but your parts need different settings. [New Guy], are you sure you checked the settings before starting these parts?”

New Guy: “Well, [My Name] should have put the settings back to normal after he went and changed them!”

Supervisor: “There is no ‘normal’ setting for this machine, [New Guy]. That’s why you need to check before every job.”

Our supervisor told me to head on to my next job and ended up training the new guy on the machine AGAIN.

A few weeks after this happened, the new guy forgot to check the settings on the machine again and completely broke the machine. He tried to blame me for “messing with the settings again,” but our supervisor obviously didn’t believe him. The new guy was fired for negligence, and the factory lost a lot of time and money waiting for the new machine to be installed.

My retired father has a friend whose cousin is an olive oil producer. My father placed an order for his former colleagues. On Saturday, the day his old job is closed, he receives a text message from his friend saying he has the order, but my father can’t pick it up that day.

On Monday, he calls his old job.

Father: “The olive oil order has arrived. When can I come?”

Receptionist: “You can today! We are open until 6:00 pm.”

Father: “No problem. I’ll come in the early afternoon.”

He calls his friend.

Father: “I can come at the end of the morning to pick up the olive oils.”

Friend: “I am not at home today. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Father: “But you sent me the text message on Saturday.”

Friend: “I was at home on Saturday.”

Father: “And I promised my colleagues that they would get their order today.”

The order is now scheduled for Wednesday. Let’s hope my father understands that before promising things, you have to be sure that the other people involved can be seen in time.