Like so many others, I was laid off because of the health crisis. I start filling out job applications. One application is for an office job writing bids at a security contractor in my old hometown. I’ve never heard of the company before, but they have a very distinctive name.

I don’t think anything of it, but lo and behold, I get a call back from a third-party Human Resources person on behalf of that company to vet me for the role. Everything goes okay, except the HR representative says that the job is at a company with a similar but obviously not the same name as the one I applied to. I pull up the company’s website — which, please note, is full of buzzwords like “honor,” “trust,” and, “integrity” — while I am talking to the HR representative, and it appears that both companies are subsidiaries of the same parent company. The parent company actually has roughly a half-dozen subsidiaries, all with similar names. We both figure that someone on their end made a mistake, and the HR representative says he’ll forward my resume to the company.

Fast forward a week. The company’s hiring manager calls me. The interview goes well… right up until I ask which company I’ll be working for.

Hiring Manager: “Oh, it’s all the same company. Those are just the different brands we operate as. See, most of our work is with the Federal Government, and according to the rules, if you’re awarded a government contract, once that contract expires, you can only re-bid on it once. In other words, if you win the contract twice in a row, you can’t bid on it again. So, when that happens, we re-bid for the contract under a different name. That way, we never actually lose the contract.”

The more he described the company and why it was structured the way it was, the more it became incredibly obvious that the whole thing had been deliberately and specifically set up in such a way as to enable them to cheat their way into government contracts. The office I’d be working in was actually a small satellite office with just the owner’s brother and maybe one other family member, not corporate HQ as indicated in the job listing; most of the workers were clear on the other side of the country. And the more he described the office and my actual responsibilities — I’d have basically been a glorified secretary for the owner’s brother — the less and less comfortable I became.

The interview FINALLY ended, and the hiring manager said he’d be in touch. Thankfully, I never heard back from them. First and only place I’ve ever interviewed where I’m glad they ghosted me. Forget the creepy work arrangement and their lying about what the actual job was; I have too much integrity — actual integrity, not just a buzzword on a website — to knowingly work for a bunch of admitted crooks. Plus, I don’t want to be within a mile of any of their offices when they finally get raided by the Feds. And let’s be real: if they’re dumb enough to out-and-out admit they’re fraudsters to a prospective employee, it’s only a matter of time before they get shut down and the execs get thrown in prison.

Years ago, I worked at a discount shoe store with a small woman in her fifties who was, frankly, miserable to work with. The entire front of our store was floor-to-ceiling windows. This coworker had a habit of trying to count the money on the counter in front of those windows before we were closed. We all told her to stop, and we told management multiple times, but nothing was ever done.

One night, closing is upon us. The protocol is that we are to vacuum the floor if we haven’t had a customer for a half an hour. Said coworker refuses to do any physical work, so I go get the vacuum, sweep the floor, prop the door open, and take the vacuum into the back. As I’m finishing cleaning up some odds and ends in the back, I hear the buzzer go off indicating we have a last-minute customer. Knowing this coworker will refuse to wait on them and try to chase them off because we are minutes from closing, I head out.

I get halfway down the aisle, only to see a masked man pointing a gun over the counter. My brain works quickly. I realize the buzzer went off after I stopped vacuuming and the door to the back room had been propped open, so he likely has no idea my coworker isn’t alone. I quietly retreat into the back so as to not spook him and potentially force him to use the gun. Before I can pick up the phone to call the police, the door buzzer goes off again.

Slowly, I creep out and find him gone, but both drawers from the registers are on the counter along with a deposit slip and the safe is open. I lock the door and call the police, who are there in minutes. My coworker admits that she decided to count the money in front of the large windows while we were open because she wanted to go home early.

She is subsequently taken in for questioning. The police cannot believe she was stupid enough to do this and they think she is involved. She is eventually cleared of all charges when the police determine we were robbed by an opportunist who saw her counting the money and took his chance.

Our manager doesn’t fire her. I give my notice. I refuse to continue to work with a coworker that could have gotten us both killed because she thought it bright to count money in front of windows of an open store.

There’s a family that always comes into the small mom & pop place where I work and never tip.

One day after they’ve left I notice there’s $2 on the table! Not a great tip, but they had finally left one. I pocket the money, wipe the table, go to reset it, and then I realize: the salt & pepper shakers are gone.

They hadn’t tipped, they’d gone shopping!

I work in a hotel and handle the night auditing. I recently had a rather irritating situation, though that has thankfully resolved itself.

I have only been working at this particular hotel for approximately three months, and since I work from 11:00 pm to 7:00 am, I am on shift when the [Breakfast Bar Girl] arrives. 

It’s 1:00 am when the phone rings, which is a little unusual.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Hotel], this is [My Name]. How may I help you?”

Breakfast Bar Girl: *Slurring* “Hey, it’s [Breakfast Bar Girl].” *Giggles* “I’m really sick and won’t be in in the morning, but you should be able to cover the breakfast, right?” *Giggles some more*

Me: “No, I can’t. You’re supposed to notify the manager. Do you have a pen so you can take down her number?”

Breakfast Bar Girl: “Nooooo.” *Laughs and then pauses for a long time* “Why do I have to call her?”

Me: “Uh, because she has to come in and cover your shift or approve the overtime for me to wait until another manager comes in.”

Breakfast Bar Girl: “Well, can’t you call her? I can’t call her. You have to.”

She giggled again and hung up.

I was ready to jump through the phone and shake her. Her shift started at 5:30, and she was clearly drunk, and, by the sounds of it, having a good time with someone. I messaged the manager about her calling out, and he confirmed it.

Well, apparently, after calling out with the giggle illness, she came in to work anyway. The poor guy at the desk who had to replace me also reported to the manager that she was swaying and falling over a lot. 

The breakfast food was 90% gone before he realized he hadn’t seen her restock in a while and went to check. She had swayed her way into the pantry, shut the door behind her, and promptly passed out on the floor, where the front desk guy found her.

She mumbled refusals to wake up and slapped drunkenly at people who tried to shake her, and it took a glass of ice water to the face to bring her shrieking to awareness. She found herself looking at the front desk guy and a scowling manager with the empty glass in hand.

She slurred, “I kwuh… I quite… I, um, I quit,” and walked out.

An anonymous call to the police was made about a drunken driver on the road the instant her car started moving.

As an American expat who isn’t white, hostility from locals (in any country!) toward foreigners is something you will encounter from time to time. My remedy is to simply give them a bored and uninterested look, or to say in German, “Sorry you don’t have a job, but that’s really not my fault!”

I was standing in a train station, and this man walked by and flipped me off, his hand so close to my face his finger almost touched my nose. Not wanting to spoil a clean criminal record, I let it slide and continued waiting for my train.

I turned to the side and noticed that he was yelling in my direction. I happened to be wearing some rather large headphones, so all I could see was his mouth moving with an enraged expression on his face, with people around him giggling and laughing. I pointed to my headphones, mouthed, “What?” in German, and turned back in the other direction.

Moments later, he got into my face while visibly screaming something, at which point I removed my headphones to hear him screaming:

Man: “Get out of my country! If you aren’t German, you don’t belong here! Go home!”

Giving no reaction, I simply put my headphones back on, and he jammed his finger into my chest while continuing to yell. Immediately, I shoved him, causing him to topple over backward while surrounding people rushed in between us to de-escalate the situation.

Understandably, security was summoned, which was immediately followed by the police. After everyone’s information and statements were taken and it was determined that the schmuck was the perpetrator at fault, one of the officers informed me of some very interesting facts concerning this genius:

1. He wasn’t even German. He was Russian.
2. The officer said he spoke the worst German he’d heard from a foreigner in a while.
3. His residence permit had been revoked two years earlier and he had been ordered to leave Germany under threat of deportation; he simply disappeared off their radar.

Gute Heimreis, bud!

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