I work in a gas station. Many times when our delivery truck arrives, it requires at least three people to unload it, check it, and sort it all out, all during business hours. This day is no different, but it is the first of the month, on a Friday, which means EVERYONE is at our store making purchases. It is an absolute nightmare. In the end, one of my supervisors and two of my coworkers have to go into the back to run the truck, leaving me alone to deal with a line of customers at the counter and a line of customers at the window.

This is a normal arrangement for us, as I am the quickest and most accurate worker. So, I’m running a line of cars wrapped around the building and a line of people out the door, and the phone rings. Caller ID says it’s the other half of the store, so I figure my other supervisor is either calling to check on me, to see if I need anything, to ask for the supervisor running the truck for something, or to see if we have something in stock now that has been sold out.

Me: “Hey, [Supervisor], I’ve got two lines. What do you need?”

Coworker: *Sounding extremely confused* “[My Name]?”

Me: “Yes, [Coworker], do you need something? Make it fast, please.”

Coworker: “Where are you right now?”

Me: “Well, I thought I was in the store, but now I’m not sure. Is this important?”

Coworker: “Did you just come out of the little casino?”

This seems unimportant and I’m very busy, so I just hang up on her and go back to waiting on my lines. Almost immediately after, my supervisor appears in the door from the back, and she looks as confused as my coworker sounded when she sees me.

Supervisor: “[My Name], did you just come in from the little casino?”

Me: *To the customers in line* “Hey, guys, I’ve been in here by myself for the past fifteen minutes at least, haven’t I?”

They all agree that I’ve not left the store for anything but to get items from the back and haven’t been gone long enough for anything else. My supervisor calls in my coworkers to come and take over and takes me into the back. She doesn’t look angry; she looks bewildered.

Supervisor: “[My Name], [Coworker] and I both saw you come out of the front restrooms, not in uniform, and go into the little casino. [Coworker] peeked in and confirmed you were in there, and we called to see where you were.”

For a couple of years now, I’ve had people periodically come up to me and talk to me as if they know me. As my mom is heavily into genealogy, I’ve always just assumed these are people she’s made connections with and played along because it kind of annoys people when I tell them I don’t know them. In fact, I had one at the start of my shift today, which is why I remember it now. I’m finally able to put two and two together.

Me: “I think I have a doppelganger wandering around.”

We go to the door to the cage of the little casino and ask the cashier if she’s seen a woman who looks like me.

Cashier: “Her? Yeah, she comes in a couple of times a month and plays the slots, is rude, and never tips. She looks just like you.”

From then on, when someone would start to speak as if they knew me, my first answer was to always tell them, “I’m [My Name]. You’re thinking of the other one.” And, for the record, I do not have a twin sister at all.

My coworker is fine in small doses, but the more time you spend with him, the less you want to. For example, he nearly lost his job after repeatedly stealing lunches from others, including the one with severe allergies that couldn’t buy food from normal shops, and he couldn’t understand why everyone was annoyed at him.

We are sitting around at lunch talking and eating when this coworker pipes up.

Annoying Coworker: “Do you want to go out for drinks tonight?”

Me: “I can’t; I’m flying out to [other office] in the morning.”

Annoying Coworker: “Oh, that’s great. You can drop us off.”

Me: “No, my flight is at 2:00 in the morning. I’m actually going home now to get an early night.”

Annoying Coworker: “Oh, you can pick us up, then.”

Me: *Laughing* “Yeah, right.”

Annoying Coworker: “Why not? It’s not like you will be doing anything!”

Other Coworker: “The nearest airport is what, two hours away? I doubt [My Name] will want to ferry your drunk a** around and then drive two hours and miss his flight.”

Annoying Coworker: “Well, why not? Come on, don’t be a d**k!”

I told him flatly no. He didn’t understand why, and he got very aggressive and verbally confrontational. In the end, I walked away. I found out the next week that no-one wanted to go drinking with him and he just went alone and called in sick the next day.

Because someone complained about his behaviour with me, Human Resources already knew that he was going out for drinks and put him on a written warning — instead of just a verbal — for his attitude. He lasted a few more months and then just ghosted the company and didn’t come back.

I’m training a colleague to work in a lab for rapidly spreading diseases. The standard operating procedures are slightly different than for some of the other germs we usually work with, including wearing extra Personal Protective Equipment on top of the usual kit. As we are about to exit…

Colleague: “I want to watch you disrobe.”

Me: “I think the word for PPE is ‘doff.’ ‘Disrobe’ sounds like we’re about to have sex.”

When I am twenty and still in college, I work at a fast food restaurant over the summer. This branch has a lot of staff turnover, so much so that at any given time, around half my coworkers are either on their two-month new hire probation or working their two-week notice period. Anyone who has been there for a few months is called “senior staff” and they speak of things that happened earlier that very same year as “the old times.”

Of course, the place is dysfunctional. I have a lot of problems with my “senior” coworkers, many of whom have an attitude problem. Things come to a head one day when I am on register along with two coworkers: a shift supervisor and an entitled “senior” employee who has been there for like six months.

At this store, when things are quiet, people on register are also responsible for the fries — putting them into the fryer, taking them out, and bagging them — when their line dies down. There isn’t a particular rota system; if the other cashiers were busy but you don’t have a line when the fryer goes, “Beep!”, you are now in charge of taking out the fries and bagging them.

The “senior” employee claims that she is attending to the fries a lot more than I am. At one point, while she has no one in line and I am literally in the middle of a transaction, with cash in my hands, she turns to me and says:

“Senior” Employee: “[My Name]! Do you not hear the fryer?!”

Me: “And do you not see that I have cash in my hands?”

The supervisor sided with the “senior” employee and completely lost it. She went off at me in front of all customers and staff, shouting and screaming about how she couldn’t believe that newer staff would “disrespect” “senior” staff. The shift manager had to come in, order her to take five, and almost push her into the staff room when she wouldn’t shut up about me.

I was speechless. I had planned to ask to switch from full-time to weekend shifts once my classes restarted in the fall, but I decided I didn’t want to work someplace where fries were such a contentious issue, so I gave in my notice as soon as the head manager came in for her shift.

And that’s the story of the one job where I have not been able to pass my probation period.

At the pizza shop I work for, if a person calls in for delivery, we ask how they want to pay. If they want to pay with a card, we have to enter their card information into the system. After we confirm the authorization on the payment, we have no way to see the credit card number. If you were to print the ticket, it would only show the last four numbers of the card with the authorization number. 

One day, it’s just my general manager and me in the store. I walk out from the back and she’s on the phone.

Manager: “Again, I’m so sorry. I will definitely look into that ASAP. Tell the officers to come in and ask for [Manager] and we’ll do whatever we can.”

After she hangs up, she pulls a stack of credit card receipts out of the safe and begins going through them. She hands me a small slip of paper that she’d been writing on while on the phone.

Manager: “Do me a favor and look at last night’s transactions and try to find these three totals. A customer got delivery last night and was charged three different times on her card. I need to see if these totals are in the system and I’m going to see if the signatures match.”

This is easy, as you can organize tickets by their total, and I find and print a copy of all three orders.

Me: “Only one of these is delivery; the other two are from the counter… and have an employee discount added to them.”

She hands me the other receipts and asks me to help her look for those three tickets. She finds the delivery one and I find one of the counter ones and burst out laughing.

Me: “[Counter Person] is a f****** moron.”

It turns out that last night, our counter person wrote down this lady’s entire information, used it to buy two meals for herself, gave herself the employee discount, and then SIGNED HER OWN NAME TO THE RECEIPT. The police arrive and my manager shows them the receipts. She starts talking with them about how [Counter Person] also used this lady’s card to buy $500 worth of stuff online. While this is going on, the phone rings and I answer it.

Counter Person: “Hey, [My Name], can I place an order for delivery?”

She placed the order and, I kid you not, she TRIED TO USE THE STOLEN CREDIT CARD. It didn’t go through because the customer had already canceled it, so she said she’d just pay cash. I always wondered who got there first: the pizza or the cops.