(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’.)

(I work the third shift at one of my old jobs, so I am often out of the loop when stuff occurs in the office during the day. One night, ten minutes after I clock in, a first-shift employee in my department calls the support number, which rings through to me.)

Coworker: “[My Name], am I fired? 

Me: “Why would you think you were fired?” 

Coworker: “I just tried to log into the ticketing system from home to check a trouble ticket and can’t get in.” 

(I check his account and see it’s been disabled. I try to reactivate it but can’t because we have the same level of access. A higher-level admin or our manager has to do it.) 

Me: “Sorry, the system won’t let me. Let the boss know in the morning and she’ll get you set.” 

(Ten minutes later, the boss sent an email to me and the rest of the staff saying that the coworker had been let go and warning us not to reenable his account or reset his password. That may have been something important to know, don’t you think?!)

(I work in the invoicing group in my company. Typically, it works smoothly; the warehouse brings us the paperwork, we run the invoice, and, assuming all payments are correct, we give them the okay to ship it. The main issue is that we also sell software download bundles from some of our suppliers. So, instead of running an invoice in about ten seconds, we go through five to ten minutes per order, because every company has a different format and requirements for the downloads so we can’t just use a single generic “HERE’S YOUR CODE” email. Believe me, we’ve tried. However, one of the teams has some… issues getting the process down.)

Manager: “So, guys, who processed order [number]?”

All Of Us: *frantically trying to get to the right part of the program to keep up with her* “Looks like it was [Coworker #1].”

Manager: “Okay, why did you send this email to the customer?”

Coworker #1: “Because that’s what I was told to do!”

Manager: “Yes, you were supposed to send an email, but not this one.”

Coworker #1: “What do you mean? It’s an ESD order.”

Coworker #2: “Yeah, but it’s [Company #1]. You sent a [Company #2] email.”

Coworker #1: “We were told to send those emails out.”

Manager: “You need to send the right email for the right company.”

Coworker #1: “You said we just send these out!”

Me: “I… I went over this with you every day this week. I re-forwarded every email template to you. I specifically told you each time that you needed to match the right email template to the right vendor.”

Coworker #1: “Nooooo, this is the first time I’m hearing about it.”

(What’s more baffling is the fact that she had picked up on every other aspect of the job like a duck to water. But the idea of “more than one template” just escaped her!)