(A coworker comes into the office and notices I am eating doughnuts.)

Coworker: “Oh, can I have one, please?”

Me: “Umm, I don’t think they’ll be to your liking.”

Coworker: “I love doughnuts, though!”

(She reaches for one.)

Me: “No, really. I don’t think you want one.”

Coworker: “Gosh, you’re always so rude. You greedy pig!”

(She puts half of one in her mouth and bites down hard. She then chews, looking satisfied, but after a couple of seconds she spits it out.)

Coworker: “That is disgusting! Oh, my God. Look, I’m bleeding!”

Me: “No, that’s just tomato sauce.”

Coworker: “Tomato sauce?! With doughnuts? That’s horrible. Why are you having that?”

Me: “I’m pregnant. I was craving it.”

(She scoffed at me about how ridiculous I was and how I was just milking my pregnancy for attention. Literally three people in the office work knew at that point, her being the third that I had just told. She then made it a point to criticise my pregnancy every time she saw me. It got to a point that I started having breakdowns from the constant harassment and she was reprimanded and suspended for a week. The worst part was, a year or so later she got pregnant, as well, and it was particularly difficult for her, or so she would have us believe. The second she set foot in the office everything had to be about her. I made the mistake of walking into the staff room while she was having her cravings — honey-roasted peanuts and pork scratchings in mayonnaise — and she demanded that I leave for judging her; I literally hadn’t said a word. She then spat her food at me, screeching that at least it wasn’t tomato sauce and chocolate. The entire office breathed a sigh of relief when she went on maternity leave.)

(Our offices are located in several converted houses built in the 18th century. Several people on our floor persist in leaving uncovered food like cake and biscuits out overnight, despite pleas from the cleaning staff. Inevitably, we have mice. On occasion, I’ve seen them scampering across our office floor! The company has traps put out regularly, but since winter’s coming the mice are naturally going to escape from the cold any way they can, particularly when their refuge is well-stocked. During a meeting with a coworker whose office is in the building next door:)

Coworker: “You guys have mice in your building, right?”

Me: “Very likely, although I haven’t seen any for a while.”

Coworker: “Yeah, so we have mice and rats.”

Me: “What?”

Coworker: “You know [Coworkers] had their leaving do last week? Well, they left such a big mess that apparently one of the cleaners had to come in on Saturday to finish tidying up. And when he got into the office, the first thing he saw was this big fat rat eating cake, right off the carpet! Because, of course, they left the food out overnight, and some of it fell to the floor. It was just stuffing its face; it wasn’t scared of him at all.”

Me: “Good grief.”

Coworker: “The guy was really angry; he said he hadn’t been hired to clean a rat-infested building!”

(I very much hope the company is going to step up with pest control, and that the people next door got rightly scolded for creating extra work for the poor cleaner and leaving food out. I’m tempted to tell people on my floor about the step up in pests, in the hope that they’ll tidy up after themselves. I now also try not to let my feet touch the floor when I’m sitting at my desk, in case something scurries past.)

(I start feeling sick one Sunday at work, but I muddle through my shift. My main symptom is a sore throat and congestion. When I get home, sure enough, I discover I now have a fever, as well. I feel bad about calling out the next day, since Mondays are notoriously busy and we have no one else who can cover, but I’d rather take off one day now than a week down the road. By Tuesday, I’m much better. My fever is gone, and my sore throat is mostly gone. I head into work.)

Me: “How awful was yesterday?”

Coworker: “Awful. I worked from seven to seven, and so did [Coworker #2], and we had [Coworker #3] come in at noon, but we couldn’t get ahead.”

Me: “Ouch. “

Coworker: “I can’t believe you called out.”

Me: “Well, I had a fever. There’s not much you can do about that.”

Coworker: “I mean, I’ve worked before when I had strep throat and a fever, so you could’ve come in.”

(I used to work at a preschool, and this really irks me, since so many parents would send their kid to school when they had a fever and were obviously sick, and the whole school would get sick as a result, teachers included. We had a 24-hour-fever-free rule for a reason.)

Me: “I’m glad you’re okay with starting epidemics. As for me, once we get a lull, I’m sanitizing that office.”

(It’s a slow day, so it’s not more than an hour or so before I can start wiping everything down. I only have a bottle of multipurpose cleaner and paper towels, but I make the most of it. My coworker comes in when I’m wiping down the communal pens.)

Coworker: “It smells in here. I don’t know what scent is in that cleaner, but it stinks.” *sees me* “Seriously?”

Me: “If there’s one thing I learned working at a preschool, it’s to clean everything that’s not nailed down. And even if it is nailed down, clean it anyway. Those kids get into every single thing. Besides, we’re heading into cold and flu season; we should start doing this more often.”

(They may make fun of me now, but if people would just look around, they would realize just how disgusting grocery stores actually are.)

(I work as a bagger at a supermarket but will often be given other jobs to do, such as helping customers out to their vehicles and collecting store baskets and putting them in the lobby. Often, I will be given a cart full of discarded groceries that need to go back on the proper shelves. Whenever I’m doing the latter, it only takes me thirty minutes to an hour to put the discarded items back on the shelves. When I’m done and head back up to the front of the store, a female coworker always makes a smart-a** remark about how I’m doing nothing but pushing an empty cart around all day. Thanks to her, a male coworker eventually begins making the same accusation. One day, after punching back in from my break, the male coworker pushes an empty cart in my direction.)

Male Coworker: “Here, [My Name], here’s an empty cart for you to push around all day.”

Me: “Yeah, but unlike your head, that cart won’t stay empty.”

(I work at a car dealership. Our online appointment system kind of sucks; in theory, we can set parameters, but it has so many bugs it still allows customers to make appointments for things they shouldn’t and in ways that set totally unfair expectations for our team. As such, we regularly go through the pre-scheduled appointments to call customers with those sorts of appointments and to clarify and reschedule their visits. A common situation is people scheduling the very last afternoon appointment of the day for intense diagnosis, something we only purposely schedule in the mornings to give our technicians the best shot at getting the customer an answer in the same day, and hopefully even leaving us enough time to fix the car without it having to stay over, possibly for multiple days if we miss the cut-off to order parts if we don’t have them in stock. Unless we notify them otherwise, those customers often expect to still get their car back the same day, even though the shop closes soon after they would be dropping the car off.)

Me: “Ugh, here’s another last Friday afternoon web appointment for multiple concern diagnosis. We need to call to reschedule.”

Coworker #1: “I don’t get why people do that. And it’s for Friday afternoon more than any other day, too!”

Coworker #2: “Yeah, what’s that about? Like, even if their problem ends up being something we might be able to get out quickly if no other cars showed up for their appointments and the techs really busted their butts, it’s Friday afternoon. People just want to go home. Their car is probably going to stay until Monday.”

Me: “I used to work with a tech who fully admitted that a Friday afternoon car doesn’t get as good an inspection as the rest of the week because he didn’t want to find anything that might make him stay late; he just wanted to start his weekend.”

Coworker #1: “I know! I don’t get why people don’t think about this stuff. Like, are they doing their best work on the very last thing they do Friday before they go home?”

Coworker #2: “I feel like it’s normal to be pretty checked out at that point.”

(This wouldn’t be too noteworthy… except that about twenty minutes later, I hear [Coworker #1] and [Coworker #2] talking about their nails. They regularly go together to get manicures and are complaining about the workmanship.)

Coworker #2: “It’s really frustrating. Like, look at this smudge! I totally felt like they were rushing.”

Coworker #1: “Tell me about it! And this keeps happening lately!”

Coworker #2: “Maybe we should switch nail places.”

Coworker #1: “Maybe we should. It’s just so annoying. Like, we purposely go in for the very last appointment on Friday evening so there are no other customers after us so they don’t feel like they have to rush!”

Coworker #2: “Seriously. Why are they in such a hurry, anyway?”

(I don’t think they knew I could hear their conversation as there was a cubicle wall between us, but as I listened to them I just shook my head wondering how they don’t see the parallels between their situation and our customers’.)