A few years ago, I was the assistant front desk manager at a hotel. This story is one of the reasons I left that position after a year and went back to a front desk agent.

I had been watching a particular date on our forecast calendar nervously for a while; we were incredibly oversold. We had 200 rooms in the hotel, and on this day we had 250 rooms booked. Our sales team had booked in several groups on the same day, which was what caused the oversell. It was clearly a massive problem, but whenever I brought it up I was told not to worry about it and it would work out.

Well. It did not.

The day arrived, and while we had had a few cancellations, we were still oversold by somewhere around 20%. It was not going to be a fun day.

The logical thing to do would be to pick a group consisting of approximately the size we were oversold by, apologize profusely, and relocate them all to another hotel. The problem with that was that no one in sales was willing to authorize the front desk to relocate their group. They kept telling us to walk the transient guests — guests not connected to any group and arriving individually — and could not comprehend us when we told them that there were no transient guests because they had sold out the hotel so thoroughly and so far ahead of time that no transient bookings had been made.

As check-in time loomed, I finally put my foot down and told the sales lead that there were two options, and we had to pick one of them now.

Option A: We walk [Group #1]. They were regular business for us, but because they were regular business, they were also predictable. I knew they were laid back and really it didn’t matter to the actual guests that much precisely where they were staying, as they were factory workers there for training. They really just wanted a place to sleep, and since they all arrived together, it would only take one phone call and their coordinator would be able to redirect them all at once. They were also, coincidentally, nearly the exact number of reservations we were oversold by.

Option B: We walk [Group #2] and [Group #3]. While this option would get us the number of rooms we needed, it would be extremely inconvenient for the guests. Both groups were here for a conference in our hotel, so they would have to shuttle back and forth from wherever we moved them. They also were a disparate group all arriving separately, so we would have to call each and every guest, hope they picked up, and explain the issue to each one of them individually.

Obviously, I was campaigning hard for Option A. But the problem was… [Group #1] was the sales lead’s group. She told me, point-blank, that we were not going to walk her group and flounced out of my office. So, I got down to the very, very unpleasant task of relocating [Group #2] and [Group #3]. It sucked. I got screamed at, called every name in the book, told I was going to be personally sued, the whole shebang. Oh, and of course sales refused to call their group contacts, so those two phone calls were extra fun.

I got the whole mess taken care of. It took hours. I hated my entire life.

Then, well after check-in time had passed, the sales lead flounced back in and told me that, well, if we had to, she guessed we could walk [Group #1]. I am still shocked to this day that I didn’t strangle her.

I wish I had a satisfying close to this story, but not only did sales not face any repercussions for this, but when they heard from their groups that the front desk had told them that it was their department’s fault we were oversold, the sales lead called my manager to scream at him for having her contacts angry at her.

And the hotel was oversold in the exact same way a month later.

On my way into work, I stop at reception to show a friend a drawing I did over the weekend that is saved on my phone.

Receptionist: “Wow, that’s really good. You missed your calling. You should be an artist.”

Me: “I— I am. That’s literally my job here.”

She blushed so quickly I was worried she was going to pass out, but then we both laughed.

Gordon was a janitor, odd-job man, and general get-things-done man at a care facility for vulnerable adults and the elderly. He was happy, friendly, cheerful, and competent, kept the infrastructure running well, and kept the place spick and span. Basically, he was really good at his job and went above and beyond as the necessity presented itself.

Come the day when the place was computerised. The requirement was now that he book all his activities on a computerised timesheet, for which he had to have a computer of his own or a mobile phone. Gordon did not have a computer and didn’t have the most up-to-date phone; all he needed to do was to take phone calls, which he managed perfectly well with his old model.

This latest requirement gave him a lot of trouble. He managed to get around it by being allowed to use one of the computers in the office, which was not part of his domain, and he felt socially awkward in there. Not only was it a complicated, fiddly, and awkwardly buggy piece of software — it used to crash when you didn’t enter the operations in the correct order — but Gordon did not take easily to learning how to use a computer. Equally unfortunately, there was nobody in the facility who was skilled in training a technological newcomer, and he was getting shouted at plenty, so of course, he found himself shouting back.

It didn’t end well. He was given an ultimatum: shape up or ship out. He was close to retirement anyway, so he took that early retirement and shipped out before the facility had even begun to think about getting his replacement trained up. They were forced to rely completely on the agency staff who had been used on a temporary basis on the occasions when Gordon was on leave. While competent enough at general janitorial duties, such temporary staff were nowhere near familiar enough with the facility to know how to keep it running properly, and things started progressively breaking down and not getting properly repaired, and of course, it turned out that Gordon had contacts in the trade where he would call specific people to get various repairs done. Without Gordon’s happy smiling presence, coupled with the increasingly shabby and ill-maintained infrastructure, morale plummeted, and staff started to drift away. Hence, they started failing inspections, and in due course, the facility closed. I’m not sure what happened to the residents; I believe they were shunted off to other establishments.

I am a manager at a video game store. In my off time at home, I often play PC games with my wife. In particular, we both like RuneScape, a medieval-themed MMORPG. One of my coworkers is also into RuneScape; he often talks and brags about his achievements to customers, much to their — and my — irritation. He has also had a habit of showing up late from time to time, and in some cases not showing up at all. This story takes place on my day off. My wife and I are playing a minigame on RuneScape when an announcement appears in chat.

Announcement: “News: [Coworker’s Username] has just achieved level 99 in all skills!”

Wife: “Wow, he finally maxed!”

Me: “Indeed. Shame he felt it necessary to skip out the morning shift to get it though, am I right?”

Wife: “I guess.”

Me: “Ah, well. I’ll congratulate him tomorrow. Maxing is a big achievement, after all.”

When he came in to work the following day, I congratulated him on maxing his account… and then fired him for excessive lateness because he was already on his last chance. Ironically, his RuneScape account would get banned a month later for using an unauthorized third-party bot program.

We are a multinational company, with coworkers from the UK, Germany, and France. Everyone seems to get on really well and most of us socialise outside of work, as well. Part of this is sarcasm and banter. Some of the German guys struggled to understand, but after a few months, they are joining in with everyone.

We’re discussing our kids and families. One of my German coworkers is talking about how great his kids are. It’s all normal parenting stuff.

Me: “Well, you know what they say about German children?”

German Coworker: “No. What?”

Me: “They’re all kind-er.”

German Coworker: “I don’t get it.”

Me: “Kind-er, you know, like kinder. That’s German for ‘children,’ right?”

German Coworker: “Oh, yes, very good. English joke. I get it now.”

We laugh more at how bad my humor is and finish our break. I am dragged into Human Resources that afternoon.

HR: “There’ve been reports that you have been using racially insensitive and bullying language.”

Me: “News to me. What did I say?”

HR: “Err…” *Checking paperwork* “Something about berating one of the German workers about his children.”

Me: “I said German kids were kind-er. Did you actually speak to [German Coworker]?”

HR: “I, err… no. He is next.”

Me: “I suggest you do that, and maybe to the person making these allegations.”

I caught up with my coworker later that week to make sure that he wasn’t actually offended . Surprise, he wasn’t, and he said he felt more part of the team when we treated him like the English workers. The anonymous complainer was spoken to about exaggerating complaints. Hopefully, they got the hint.