A couple of decades ago (maybe more than a couple), I used to work for a car rental company.

Manager: “[Coworker] is going to be late coming back.”

Me: “Didn’t he go pick up a customer who was dropping off their car at [Autobody Shop]? What happened?”

Manager: “He picked up the customer standing out front and made it halfway back to the office before… uh… he realized it wasn’t the customer.”

Me: “Oh, wow. So, some random person just got into the car with him?”

Manager: “Not random. Let’s just say he figured out she wasn’t the customer when she started giving him her… uh… hourly rate.”

[Coworker] finally got back to the office, late, embarrassed, and with a story we would never let him live down.

Some fairly important backups were stuck on a way-too-old server in our server room. The guy in charge is a coworker at some faraway location and is more of a software kind of guy, less the operating system guy, yet I thought he was sort of tech literate.

The operating system on that machine failed and refused all efforts to boot (recovery, rescue, whatever). I was able to recover most of the data, but most of the drives were almost toast.

I got the guy access and told him to urgently get his backups off this machine, as most disks in there are almost done for.

Two months later, I get a phone call.

Me: “So is that server ready to be scrapped?”

Him: “Oh, not yet, the server just needs to hold up until the end of next year, just in case I need those backups, then it can be scrapped. Just wait until then.”

Me: “You do know that you rely on a way-too-old machine with broken hard drives as your backup storage solution running a rescue operating system, right? And that I told you two months ago to urgently get those backups off that server like years before?”

Him: “Getting that much storage somewhere else sounded like a lot of effort, so I just left it like that.”

Me: *Eyes twitching.* “How much data are we even talking about?”

Him: “About one TB.”

I don’t even…

In the end, I just plugged a USB drive into it to transfer the backups into our regular backup system.

I’m a flight attendant. I’ve been called to cover a last-minute shift. I’m going over the shift with the purser. I learn that the reason I’ve been called in is that a veteran flight attendant who has been in the industry for over thirty years is no longer available.

Me: “So I see that [Veteran Flight Attendant] worked the inbound. Why aren’t they available for the outbound?”

Purser: “They’ve been… uh… removed from rotation.”

Me: “Are they sick?”

Purser: “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you this, but they’ve been removed from the rotation for a while because they… well, they snapped at a passenger.”

Me: “What happened?”

Purser: “A passenger got upset that we’d run out of her meal choice. She was all the way down in Economy, and I could hear her from Business. [Veteran Flight Attendant] said to her, “Ma’am, I said we’ve run out of chicken, not fuel. Calm the f*** down.””

I laughed out loud at the line and then felt sad that a veteran flight attendant had finally snapped after thirty years. Happens to a lot of us.

I work at the front desk of a personal income tax office, but soon we’ll have to handle multiple roles (handling reception, accounting, tax assessment, amicable collection, and enforced collection), so we’re getting training. 

Today we’re attending a training class that covers the basics of tax assessment. The trainer explains to everyone that charitable donations can only be refunded as a tax reduction if you’re paying tax.

Amicable Collection Coworker: “So, if you’re not taxable, there’s no point in making donations?”

Trainer: “If it’s to get a refund, then yes, it’s pointless.”

Amicable Collection Coworker: “Are there other reasons to make donations?”

Enforced Collection Coworker: “Well, to support the cause.”

Amicable Collection Coworker: “Yeah, but it’s still stupid if it’s not tax-deductible.”

Hmm, maybe some people support causes without necessarily looking for a benefit?

A supervisor walks over to me in the breakroom. He’s kinda new and eager to conform to the whole “we’re a family” vibe at the workplace.

Supervisor: “I heard that you and [Coworker] don’t really get along.”

Me: “It’s not that we don’t get along, it’s that we have nothing to talk about. We argued once, and then I realized quickly it was a waste of time to get her to see my point, so now we don’t talk.”

Supervisor: “Well, you’re both cashiers working the same shifts, so it’s good to try to maintain a healthy dialogue with our coworkers. I was told you don’t even say good morning to each other, and it’s creating some tension with other employees.”

Me: “It’s for the best. We disagree on a lot of things.”

Supervisor: “There must be some common ground for you two?”

Me: “She’s a flat-earther anti-vaccinator who believes hurricanes are caused by Hilary Clinton.”

Supervisor: “…never mind, then.”

[Supervisor]’s solution? We have seven cashier lanes. Even though [Coworker] and I are the only ones on opening shift, she gets lane one, and I get lane seven. We all agreed that it was for the best, and our supervisor said:

Supervisor: “See! I got you both to agree on something!”