(As the lead customer service associate, I am responsible for training new customer service associates as they are hired. One woman — not some airhead teen, but a woman in her 40s — seems to have the IQ of a bag of bricks. Everything I say goes in one ear and out the other. I ask my manager to speak with her, but shortly after every conversation, things go downhill again. About six months into her employment, I am sorting returns into their appropriate department bins when I come across an empty container of baby food with a competitor’s sticker on the lid.)

Me: “Hey, [Associate], what’s this?”

Associate: “Baby food.”

Me: “Okay. Um… We don’t take back open baby food.”

Associate: “Since when?”

Me: “Since… ever.”

Associate: “Why?”

Me: “There was a video about cutting drugs with baby food and other weird things addicts do with it. Do you remember that?”

Associate: “Oh, yeah! But it was empty. There couldn’t be drugs in it.” *laughs*

Me: “No, it wasn’t about leaving drugs in baby food. It was… okay. Regardless of why the customer purchased the baby food, they used all of it and you gave them their money back.”

Associate: “Oh.” *shrugs and walks away*

Me: “It also has a [Competitor] sticker on the lid.”

Associate: “Oh, yeah! I saw that.”

Me: *deep breath* “And you returned it because…?”

Associate: “Well, she said she took it to [Competitor] but they needed the receipt to give her her money back, but she already threw it away. I told her we didn’t need one!” *proud smile*

Me: “Any food product needs a receipt. We don’t take back open baby food. We don’t take back items with stickers from competitors, and we definitely don’t take back things customers admit they bought from other stores.”

Associate: “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Me: *trying not to yell at her* “Okay. That was all part of your initial training. Please be more careful with your returns.”

(I went to management and begged them to do something about her, but they basically told me that any person at the desk is better than no person at all. I quit the day we both applied for a loss prevention position and she got it.)

On busy days, my boss has me call in pizza for the entire office. That’s about 300 or so people. The pizza shops in the area are generally super considerate and work with me to get the pizza delivered and/or in stages, so even if I only have an hour’s notice, we can start serving on time. This round, we order cheese, pepperoni, and supreme, though the supreme is only ten pies — about a quarter of the numbers the other two have.

As we get serving, I’m called away briefly, and when I get back, my coworker says that none of the supreme pizzas were delivered. At this point, I’m too tired and frazzled to doubt him, especially when three other people back him up, so I take ten of the pizzas back and explain the situation to the employees there.

One employee says he’s absolutely sure he made those ten supremes and that I must be mistaken, which I deny and explain that all my coworkers who were serving confirmed. We go back and forth for a couple of minutes before the employee offers to call his manager. Once off the phone, he tells me his manager will be in tomorrow and will be able to process a partial refund, which was all I wanted since the other pizzas were fine.

The next day, as I’m walking to my desk, I notice something: a plate with pizza leftover from yesterday, and it’s definitely not just cheese or pepperoni. I ask my coworker about it, and she tells me one of the servers gave it to her yesterday. The same one who told me we didn’t get any supreme whatsoever.

I talk to the coworker who was serving the day before, and he explains that he and the others thought it would be funny to play a joke on me. I’m royally ticked off at this point because I had to make an extra trip out to the pizza place to return the pizza, I was going to have to make another that day for the refund, I was stressed about the order being wrong, I stressed out the poor employees who had been kind enough to get all these pizzas for us on an hour’s notice, and I undoubtedly sounded like one of those people NAR loves to make fun of.

In the end, I swallowed my pride and went back to the pizza shop to apologize and explain what happened instead of getting a refund. If I could’ve, I would have dragged every employee who lied to me by the ear to that shop to apologize, as well.

([Coworker #1] is new to our 40+ provider medical clinic. In my clinic, like most other places, we have people of varying levels of geekery.)

Coworker #1: “Which doctor is [Doctor]?”

Me: “You know… The one that looks like Clark Kent!”

Coworker #2: “Who’s Clark Kent?”

Coworker #3: “She means Superman.”

Me: “No, that would be silly! Superman doesn’t wear glasses!”

([Coworker #2] was lost while [Coworker #3] could only facepalm. [Coworker #1] eventually was able to figure out which doctor they needed based on my description.)

(I work in a bank. We have an annual mandatory training meeting, and this year it is scheduled on my day off, so I have to drive into work for an hour. Two days before the MANDATORY meeting:)

Coworker #1: “Hey, [My Name], you’re coming to the meeting, right?”

Me: “Yes, of course.”

Coworker #2: *twenty minutes later* “Are you going to come to the meeting on Saturday?”

Me: “Yes, I’m coming.”

Coworker #3: “What is your favorite flavor of cake? I’m thinking of making one for our potluck next week.”

Me: “I like chocolate cake, but you should ask our other coworkers because most of them don’t really care for chocolate.”

Coworker #3: “Okay, thanks, I’ll make chocolate. You are coming to the meeting on Saturday, right?”

Me: *super confused about why I keep getting asked about whether I will come to a mandatory meeting* “Yes.”

(Thirty minutes before the mandatory meeting starts:)

Supervisor: *texts me* “Hey, [My Name], are you going to come to the meeting today?”

Me: *wondering if the mandatory meeting suddenly became optional* “Yes, I am on my way.”

(When I got to the bank, I could see everybody in the lobby staring at me as I walked up. I started to panic, thinking I got the time wrong, and walked in. As soon as I got in the door, everybody started singing “Happy Birthday.” There was a chocolate cake on one of the desks. My birthday was a few days away, but I hadn’t really talked to anyone about it, so I was totally shocked. My coworkers said my face went completely purple, and they were so happy they’d surprised me. Then, we started the meeting. I have awesome coworkers.)

(I’m the only pregnant employee on staff currently but happen to have worked there for nearly seven years. I work in the grocery section of the store primarily but know a great deal about other departments especially involving maintenance. Defrosting the freezers takes an hour of defrosting plus the time for the removal of the food and shelving, getting a hose and hot water hooked up, and then cleaning it all up and putting it all back together. It’s a two-person job — one for the actual defrosting and one to run a shop vac to the drain and back to the freezer to remove the water as the hot water melts the ice. Each section of the freezer has to be done about once every five to eight months depending on how healthy the cooling units are.)

Me: “Hey, these frozen doors are getting warmer. You might want to defrost them before it gets critical.”

Freezer Department: “Yeah, I was gonna see how it looked tomorrow—” *Friday* “—and do it then.”

(Friday comes:)

Boss: “Hey! Can you come in and defrost the freezers? The freezer department started it but had to be someplace.”

Me: “If I don’t do it on my day off I’m gonna have to do it the morning of our busiest day of the week—” *Saturday* “—aren’t I?”

Boss: “Probably…”

Me: “I’ll be right in.”

(And that is why I make several dollars more than the entry-level employees.)