I recently won a good sum of money on the national lottery. It is just enough to settle my mortgage and car loan and some left over to help out a friend of mine and make a good donation to my favourite charity.

I accidentally let it slip that I won a “small amount” of money at work. The next day in the break room, two guys I don’t really know from another department approach.

Guy #1: “Hey, ain’t you the guy that won the lottery?”

Guy #2: “What are you still doing here?”

Me: “It was only a small amount, really.”

Guy #1: “Yeah, that’s what I would say, as well.”

Guy #2: “How are we celebrating? You got to bring something in.”

Me: “Well, actually, I—”

“I already did bring in a large selection of cakes,” is what I’d say if they would let me finish.

Guy #1: “Bring something in? No, we should go out. You can take us all out.”

Guy #2: “There’s that steak house.”

Guy #1: “Yeah! Our friend here can take us all out for steaks! Great idea.”

Me: “What’s my name?”

Guy #1: “What?”

He smirks at the other guy.

Me: “If we are such great friends, and you are not just a couple of guys who wanted to leech off of me… what’s my name?”

I left both of them dumbstruck trying to answer me. I am more than happy to share good times, but not with a couple of leeches that never acknowledged my existence before.

I work remotely; most of my interactions are done by email and phone. One day, I receive an email from HR saying that I have violated social media policies and they will be withholding my paycheck until I remove the offending post and reread the policy handbook. If I do not reply within three days, my employment will be terminated. I call the HR hotline immediately.

Human Resources Employee: “Human Resources, this is [Employee]. How can I help you?”

Me: “Hi, my name is [My Name]. Could I speak with [HR Manager who emailed me]?”

Human Resources: “Oh, sure. One moment.”

Cue annoying hold music.

HR Manager: “[My Name]?”

Me: “Yes, hi, um, you sent me an email about—”

HR Manager: “You need to take down your post about [Company].”

Me: “But I don’t—”

HR Manager: “We reserve the right to terminate your employment unless you remove it.”

Me: “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

HR Manager: *Long, dramatic sigh* “Please type this address into your web browser.”

He sends me to an Instagram account.

Me: “Okay…”

HR Manager: “There is a post on [date] that clearly violates our policy. You need to take it down or we will hold your paycheck until you do, and/or terminate your employment. The choice is yours.”

I’m annoyed that he is being so aggressive and threatening to fire me over something I didn’t do.

Me: “Um, no, you can’t.”

HR Manager: “Excuse me?”

Me: “This isn’t my page.”

HR Manager: “Are you sure?”

Does he know what a stupid question that is?

Me: “Yes.”

HR Manager: “But it’s—”

Me: “I don’t even have an Instagram. Look at my employee profile. Do I look like the woman in these pictures?”

HR Manager: “One moment.”

I hear his keyboard clicking for a few minutes.

HR Manager: “Thank you for your time, [My Name]. Consider the issue resolved.”

He hung up.

I checked my hiring contract and policy handbook and found nothing at all about social media. I never did find out why they thought it was my page, except that she had tagged the town we both live in and we’re both white women in our thirties. The post in question was a woman in her car wearing the company polo we are supposed to wear when we go out. Probably not the problem, but I’d imagine her giving the middle finger and the caption, “[Company] is making me come outside in this hot-a** weather,” may have had something to do with it.

I’m talking with a coworker during lunch. While she is Jewish and I am of Catholic denomination, we are both very liberal-minded and do not take religious matters very seriously. So, we are freely talking about the oddities of various religions and belief systems, presently about Pastafarianism.

Coworker: “What I do not understand about the Pastafaris is that when they have noodlemass, they basically consume their god? Isn’t that weird?”

Me: “You know that this is literally what they teach us Catholics? That the wafer and wine we are served at mass are physically transubstantiated into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus Christ for our consumption?”

Coworker: “Well, that doesn’t sound kosher to me.”

In 1951, my mother is a young bride living just off the Air Force Base with my dad. Because she has a background in office work, she is recruited for a job on base. The work is beyond tedious.

I don’t remember the exact nature of the job. Essentially, there is a table with bundles of about twenty-five financial forms that need to be checked against a master list to make sure all information is correct.

Mom is in an office with about five other women who are also doing the checking.

Mom finishes her first bundle of twenty-five and rechecks them, puts a notification that they have been checked and approved, puts them in the collection area, and picks up another bundle. The job is a seven-hour, five-days-a-week position, and by the end of the day, she has finished about half the bundles on the table. When she gets ready to leave, the other wives in the room do not return her “Goodnight” and will not speak with her at all.

The next day, one of the older women catches Mom as she goes to her desk.

Woman: *Bellowing* “YOU! YOU! Are you trying to show the rest of us up?”

Mom: “What do you mean?”

Woman: *Snapping* “You are only supposed to do one bundle a day! One! That’s all any of us are able to handle, so stop making a mess just to show us up. You do one bundle and that’s it!”

So Mom, who wanted to avoid trouble, tried to take all day to do one tiny bundle of forms. She described how she would sit with a single form and match each and every letter to the grand list, then do it again, spending maybe two or three full minutes on each form. She would take a breather between forms. But even doing this, she was still done within two hours.

Meanwhile, she said, the other women in the office were doing their nails, reading magazines, doing crossword puzzles, or just plain gossiping. At the end of the week, no one was talking to her yet and she was planning on quitting.

What saved her was the boss coming into the office and asking if anyone knew steno and touch typing. Mom practically jumped into his arms like an over-eager puppy.

That’s how Mom wound up being a general secretary for all the base big wigs and, happily, making a lot more money than checking financial forms against each other.

I assume that, sixty-plus years later, some of those ladies are still sitting there, checking forms and doing their nails.

I work with a notoriously lazy librarian. He does anything he can to avoid work. Apparently, his mother, a librarian, bullied him into being a librarian, too. He often tries to be there before me on the days I work. I have a habit of organizing the books between ones I know will be transfers and the ones owned by my branch, as I find that it makes check-in quicker. I start to notice on the days he’s here before me that suddenly a LOT of the book drop are items that are not checked out and all of them are holds for other branches.

Me: “Hey, [Librarian], are you pulling holds and putting them in the book drop?”

[Librarian] is suddenly very quiet and guilty-looking.

Me: “Look, I’m happy to process holds for you, if you ask me first. But you know I always organize the check-ins so I get a rhythm going to make it faster. When you mix the holds in with the book drop, you’re messing up my rhythm and making it take longer than it should.”

Librarian: “All right. Next time, I’ll ask.”

In fact, he never asked, but he also didn’t pull that trick ever again with me or any of the other staff. Instead, he started trapping the holds himself. It didn’t stop him from being lazy in other ways, however, such as hiding in the back and watching YouTube videos instead of working. If not for the union and the fact the manager at the time was his BFF, he’d probably be fired. We were all relieved when he was transferred.