Some German dialects are insanely difficult to understand for a non-native speaker; they’re basically incomprehensible, especially if the people speaking them don’t want you to understand. I’m originally from Vienna, but this happens in the US. I’m browsing for merchandise in a store when I overhear someone in the aisle next to mine talking quite loudly, in the broadest, deepest Vienna vernacular possible.

Man #1: “Yeah, it’s clear. Pocket it.”

Man #2: “You sure?”

Man #1: “Yeah, nobody ’round. Stuff it.”

When I heard “our” vernacular, I was kind of already listening for that lovely sound of “home”.

I casually walk around the aisle because I want to meet my former compatriots, and there are two guys perusing the computer games, amiably chatting in Viennese German about what games to steal. I smile at them while I pass, and one of them smiles back.

Man #1: “Hello, f****** Ami dolt. We’re gonna rob you blind!”

I nod and continue smiling as I walk by, telling them (in English) that I’m happy to see them, welcoming them to the US, and all that.

Man #2: “Yeah, you Americans are just too stupid to understand when you’re being robbed, ain’t you?”

They’re both laughing and smiling. I keep nodding and grinning, and I wish them a great stay.

I go to the front of the store and inform the person at the counter that I just listened to two guys talking about stealing merchandise. I explain that they think they’re safe because they use a foreign language, but I understood them. The employee asks me if I would be willing to stick around and point them out, which I do.

When the two men get to the checkout, I do point them out. Loss prevention gets involved and they start to complain.

Man #1: *In English* “What? What’s that? This is an outrage! You’re doing this just because I’m a foreigner, right?”

I yell across the floor in broadest vernacular Viennese.

Me: “No, this is because you’re a g**d*** thief. I hope they lock you up here for good and we don’t have to deal with the likes of you [expletives] back at home ever again! They’ll lock you up for life, and you won’t see the light of day! Now, you’d better shut the f*** up and get a lawyer if you don’t wanna make it worse, you [expletive] idiot!”

He turns white, and the clerk turns to me.

Clerk: “What did you say?”

Me: “Oh, I just told him his Miranda rights.”

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A local craft store is having a sale that I’ve been looking forward to. Since I’m an early bird anyway, I arrive a few minutes before the doors open and hang out outside until an employee unlocks the doors for the day. There’s a small scattering of fellow early birds out here with me, so I am not the awkward loner stalking the store. Nine o’clock hits and the doors open.

As I’m going in, the manager is clearly finishing up a morning huddle. I’m only barely aware that people are being sent to do some tasks by name as I snag a cart to raid the sale section.

Manager: “[Employee], you’re late. Come to my office once you clock in.”

Not me, not my business, so I keep on. I put my purse in a shopping cart and clear the way for the other early shoppers while I get situated. In minutes, I’m browsing and have a few coveted items in my cart.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see an employee with a weirdly spiteful grin on her face.

Spiteful Employee: “The boss said he wanted to see you in his office.”

Me: “I think you have me confused with somebody else, ma’am. I don’t work here.”

Spiteful Employee: “If I was you, I wouldn’t play stupid little games, [Employee]. Get in the office.”

Me: “One, I don’t take orders from you. Two, I’m not playing games. You have me confused with somebody else; that’s not even my name. Three, you are about to royally piss off a customer. Go away.”

I spin on my heel and walk a few feet down the aisle to something else that caught my eye.

The next thing I know, my arm is grabbed, hard, and I am aggressively pulled down the aisle by the manager, who is hissing through his teeth that he’s sick of my antics and that I need to learn to do what I’m told.

Welp, that was his last mistake. I have said for years that my dad’s greatest act of love was making sure his little girl could protect herself.

I stumble off balance for all of two steps before I manage to brace my feet and yank backward. The manager’s grip is so painfully tight that I don’t free my arm so much as yank him unexpectedly backward off his balance.

As he’s stumbling back, I bellow in a drill sergeant’s voice.

Me: “GET YOUR MOTHERF****** HANDS OFF ME!”

Then, I kicked his feet out from under him. Since he was off balance anyway, he went down on the tiled floor. Blessedly, he lost his grip on me as he reflexively let go to try to catch himself.

I bolted to the front and told one of the cashiers to call the police, as their manager had just put his hands on me. My arm was throbbing from his grip, and it later developed a hand-shaped bruise that seemed to take forever to heal up.

I whipped out my keys, which had a canister of pepper spray attached, and stood near the front of the store where I’d have witnesses.

The cops arrived on the scene to find me in a defensive stance, the manager barely being held at bay by the threat of getting pepper spray in the eyes, and people literally yelling at the manager to back off. The manager had both fists clenched, and he was yelling at me all sorts of nonsense, including threats of physical violence, and, “You wouldn’t be so tough without that pepper spray!” (That’s hilarious to me in retrospect considering I had just dumped a 200-plus-pound man on his a** a few minutes before.) I was just repeating over and over that I didn’t work there and that he had no right to touch me even if I did.

The cops separated us — no easy feat on the manager’s end — and got the stories while also checking the security cameras.

So that no one has to ask, yes, charges were pressed, and the court date is pending.

I came out of the incident shaken and craving a metric ton of greasy and comforting food, but d*** proud of myself for taking out an attacker. The store was practically hysterical in their apologies to me, and I advised them to investigate how a violent person like that was able to get a management position in the first place.

I’m not sure about the employee I was mistaken for; I was too wound up to focus on anything but trying to gear myself down. All fighty, no flighty. So, of course, I don’t even know if someone looking like me came skidding in sideways, late to work, or if they had just quit the night before with no notice. What I do know is that, apparently, the manager had severe anger issues — no surprise — and had only held his job due to nepotism until the police got involved.

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This happened a few years ago. I was working the last shift at a gas station along a major highway. The manager shouldn’t have put me on the last shift, which went very late, as I was only eighteen years old and studying for college, especially considering that the gas station was a short drive out of town, but he did.

Twenty minutes before closing time, I am behind the counter when I see a smartly-dressed woman in her forties come inside followed by two younger women a few years older than me. They are both scruffily dressed and their clothes do not fit. One of them is wearing a T-shirt and trousers that are about two sizes too small. Both are carrying those cloth bags that you buy from a supermarket to reuse.

Woman: “Can my daughters look around quickly? I promise we won’t be long.”

Me: “Okay.”

I need to tidy the shelves anyway, so I leave the counter. I notice that wherever I go, the woman stays in the same aisle, even closer if one of the two girls is nearby. The girls keep looking at the bars of candy or browsing the rows of clothes. One of the two young women picks up a pretty dress.

Girl #1: “Do you think she’ll let us get this?”

Girl #2: *Sniggering* “The woman who makes you, me, and [Other Girl] wear three bras between us?”

The first girl also starts to giggle, putting the dress back.

Girl #1: “Who knows what’ll happen by the time [Other Girls] starts puberty?”

They keep glancing over chocolate and magazines while I go to count stock. The older woman comes up to me with a T-shirt.

Woman: “Sorry, but could you please take the security tag off for me? I want to pay.”

I go over to the register while the woman keeps going on about the difficulty of finding a good outfit. I soon feel as if she is distracting me. Then, I hear a shout from the two girls. I run over and see that the first girl has fallen on the floor.

Me: “Are you all right?”

Girl #1: “No. My leg hurts.”

I couldn’t see any damage, but I started going into protocol. As I said, I was the only person on shift. My manager had his phone number on a sticky note behind the counter, but my phone was back there. When I tried to get up to leave, the girl whined again.

After what seemed like forever, the woman was standing next to me. I turned to her for help, but she pushed me into a rack of clothing. Before I could get up, I felt the kick of her boot in my face. I heard the three of them running away. When I got up, I found that several items had gone missing and the till was empty.

I called my manager, who then chewed me out for leaving the till unmanned. A total of $316 had been stolen from the register, as well as $276 in goods. Thankfully, my manager didn’t make me pay back the money, but I left that job as soon as I was able to.

This was some time ago, maybe around the year 2000. The place I worked at was a warehouse — nothing special. I had to get orders to pull, help with some customers in the showroom, help with shipping/receiving, and so on. My coworkers, on the other hand, were all pretty special in their own ways. One of them really sticks out in my memory.

[Coworker] was very smart, but it was just book smarts; he had no common sense whatsoever. Our supervisor best described him as such: “You could ask him what time it is, and he’d tell you how a watch works.”

One day, I got to work and [Coworker] didn’t come in. After a couple of days of not being at work, he finally showed up, but he had to utilize his bike and the public buses to get from where he lived (about fifteen miles away) to work. I didn’t really care about his reasoning for being out a few days and riding his bike now instead of driving, but he wanted to freely share his experience with everyone at work.

He liked to visit a local bar by his residence — roughly a two-block distance. He usually parked by the bar, had a few beers, and drove home. He was leaving the bar on Friday, and he’d had a few drinks — nothing out of the norm. As he was walking to his truck, he spotted an unmarked police cruiser nearby. He approached their car and started telling the cops in that they couldn’t be parked there and all sorts of other things I can’t recall. He told us that after he told them he lived nearby, the cops told him to just walk home and cool off. They told him to walk home and come back in the morning to get his truck. He mouthed off to them some more, and instead of listening to them, he approached his truck. They arrested him for DUI. He was held over the weekend until he was arraigned on Monday. Then, he had his license revoked, he had to get a lawyer, and so on.

Now that [Coworker] couldn’t legally drive until he could get his license back, he was using the city bus system and his pedal bike to get to and from work. As smart as the guy was, he really was pretty dumb.

One morning, I got to work and it was just pouring rain outside. The downpour didn’t deter [Coworker] from coming in. He still biked to the closest bus stop, put his bike on the front rack of the bus, got off at a bus stop about a mile from work, and biked the rest of the way. When he got to work, he was dripping wet, soaked to the bone.

He reassured us that he had dry clothes to change into in his backpack, which he had wrapped in plastic to keep it from getting wet. It sounded like he’d thought of everything. Off to the restroom he went to change.

A couple of minutes later, out came [Coworker], and he was in his speedo-looking underwear and a dry shirt — nothing else on, just his underwear and shirt. He proceeded to tell us that he’d forgotten to pack socks and pants, so he had to wait for his wet stuff to dry off more before he could put it back on. He then proceeded to walk around the warehouse without pants on and try to work!

The warehouse manager made him go put on his wet pants and told him he just had to deal with them being wet and that he couldn’t parade around the workplace in his underwear.

About ten years ago, I worked in the cosmetics department of a large pharmacy chain. They were very adamant about pushing flu vaccinations. Employees were required to answer the phone, “Thank you for calling [Store]. Have you had your flu vaccine?” Customers seemed genuinely annoyed about it; some would answer yes or no, but some would just ignore the question and say what they were calling about. 

I didn’t partake in getting the vaccine due to the cost. I made $7.50 an hour, and I didn’t have the extra money to spend. 

I had worked there for six months and had never called in sick until, one morning, I woke up with a sore throat, a fever, and fatigue. I got a doctor’s appointment that morning and tested negative for the flu but positive for strep throat. 

I called in and asked for a manager. Lucky me, I got [Assistant Manager], who was arrogant and an all-around complete jerk. He was the one who got mad that I was helping an elderly customer find the items she was looking for; he had to ring up a customer who was waiting by my register. I was berated for doing my job! 

Me: “Hey, [Assistant Manager], I won’t be able to come in tonight. I am sick. I have—”

And before I could finish, he cut me off.

Assistant Manager: “Did you get your flu shot?”

Me: “Well, no, I don’t have—”

He cut me off again.

Assistant Manager: “Well, you know we offer them here. There’s no excuse for you to have not gotten it. If you would have gotten it, you wouldn’t have gotten sick, now, would you?”

Me: “Well, if I had gotten it, I’m afraid it wouldn’t have helped. I’ve been trying to tell you that I have strep throat.”

Assistant Manager: “Oh, well, when you come back, I expect you to get the shot. Otherwise, if you do get the flu, I will write you up.”

I went back to work two days later. 

A few weeks went by, and [Assistant Manager] called me into the office.

Assistant Manager: “I got a complaint that you didn’t help a customer.”

Me: “When was this?”

Assistant Manager: “Three nights ago. He said you walked past him as you were headed out the door.”

This sounds odd to me; if I was walking out the door, it meant I had already clocked out for the night.

Me: “Was this after 11:00?”

Assistant Manager: “Yes, the guy said it was a little after 11:00.”

Me: “You know, I get off at 11:00, and if I was headed out the door, that meant I was already off the clock. No customer approached me for help.”

Assistant Manager: “Well, we expect you to help customers even if you are off the clock.”

Me: “So, you want me to work off the clock?”

Assistant Manager: “Yes, you would be providing good customer service. I’m going to have to write you up.”

Me: “So, you expect me to stick around and help customers even if I’m off the clock?”

Assistant Manager: “Yes. It’s all about customer service.”

Me: “Wow. You are writing me up for not helping a customer off the clock, even though no customer approached me? Working off the clock is illegal. You know what? I quit.”

I tossed my name badge on the desk and clocked out. 

Did I mention that in the six months that I was there, ten people quit? It was because of this assistant manager, and the store manager was worse!