I lived in an apartment building. One time, someone on the floor above me got a package delivered. I know this because when the delivery driver couldn’t get a signature from them because they weren’t home, he began to knock on my windows because he could see me inside. I closed the curtains because it was creepy. He yelled from outside:

Driver: “I want you to sign for this package for your neighbor!”

Me: “No. I don’t know them, and if the package gets stolen after I sign for it, I’ll be blamed.”

He knocked on my windows for the next fifteen minutes, telling me I had to sign for their package. He only left when I told him I was calling the police.

Fast forward about three months. I was waiting for a package and it was, you guessed it, that same delivery company and I would assume that same driver. I started getting tags saying that they had attempted delivery, but no one ever knocked or rang my buzzer.

This particular company would only leave three tags before returning the package to the seller, so I called them to ask why I had received two tags but no one had ever knocked or rung the doorbell.

Employee #1: “We’ll have it redelivered on [date].”

I made sure to stay home that day. Nothing arrived, not even a tag. I called the company.

Employee #2: “A third attempt was made to deliver your package, and it was returned to the seller.”

I went up the chain until I got someone to reverse that decision and send a driver literally right now. FINALLY, the driver showed up, and it was the one who’d harassed me about the neighbors’ package months prior. I answered the door.

Driver: *Snarkily* “See? Bet you wish someone else would’ve signed for this, huh? I knew you don’t sign for other people’s packages, so I didn’t ask anyone else to sign for yours.”

I reported him to the company. I never saw him again. What a weird grudge to hold. It’s not abnormal or bad to refuse to sign for another person’s package when it’s going to get left in a public lobby for anyone to grab.

I work at a mental health clinic. Our treatment rooms are named after various cities, like Paris, Tokyo, etc. I receive a message from one of our therapists.

Therapist: “I’ll be in San Francisco until 12:30 pm.”

I assume she’s working from home.

Me: “Will you be seeing your 9:30 am appointment remotely, then?”

Therapist: “I’m in the room named ‘San Francisco!'”

Back in September, we noticed plumbing issues in our apartment. It took video evidence of the taps at full blast with no water coming out, a kidney infection, and six months for them to start looking at it. This is on top of about six years of our heater breaking down every winter. Needless to say, “emergency” is not a word in the maintenance crew’s vocabulary.

It hit a new peak when I noticed that my brand-new carton of ice cream was soup. At first, I thought that maybe the freezer’s door was stuck open just enough to let the cold out over the day, but when it was duct-taped shut for a day and everything began melting, there were no doubts that the freezer was dead. I called the emergency maintenance line and was told that because it was Sunday, nothing could be done about it until sometime Monday and that I should get a cooler full of ice.

H*** no.

All our meat for the week was thawing in the freezer and the fridge was at a nice, cool sixty degrees F. Salmonella likes to say, “Hello!” at forty. I have had food poisoning so bad I had to be hospitalized because I was blacking out while vomiting. I was not going to stand for this. I screamed, cussed out, and did everything short of threatening violence or having the guy fired.

Monday morning came and we were told that we would be getting a new fridge Tuesday, most likely at noon. Great! I mean, it sucked that we had to throw everything we had in terms of food away right when rent was due, but we’d have a freezer and fridge.

Yet Tuesday at four, it still hadn’t been delivered. Half an hour later, there was a knock on the door. The maintenance guy who I had been screaming at, who had let us down time after time, had important news. The fridge was on its way! Yay! He was done at 4:30, though, so he was leaving for the day, but he’d be back Wednesday morning to unbox the new one, set it up, and wheel away the old one.

So, we went from having a fridge with a dead freezer to a dead fridge and freezer to two fridges that we couldn’t use at all, and we had to rely on fast food because maintenance wouldn’t do any emergency work.

Meanwhile, my autoimmune-compromised roommate had E. coli all weekend and I couldn’t use my only toilet.

I started a new job while the direct manager was on paid time off. I’d only met them for a short period of time during my application. I was hired for a vacancy that had been open for quite a while and the company just couldn’t get someone to stick it out with them. That was a huge red flag, but it was a very difficult and specific role and I’d done something very similar for a partner company, so I knew it was possible that they just hadn’t found the right person so far.

I started training under the supervision of my manager’s manager and a colleague who had done the job on top of her own for a time, and everything went well at first. It was extremely similar to what I had done in the past, and after just a few days, I was doing it on my own. The colleague was very relieved and complimented me, and the manager was satisfied with the positive feedback we got from the customers.

Then, my direct manager came back and I found out why all the others had quit.

Manager: “Did you do [task]? And why didn’t you send me a list if you’ve done it?”

Me: “I did, and the list is on your taskboard in the program.”

Manager: “No, that’s all wrong! I need that in my mail so I can print it out and check it! Don’t you know anything?”

Me: “We are not allowed to print that data! And what do you mean? Check it? There’s nothing to check. It’s just a list with all jobs done today, automatically documented by the system. What do you want to check on paper? Just do the final authorisation in the system.”

Manager: “I need to check if you’ve run all jobs! Are you stupid?”

Me: “Again, how do you do that on a printout? The list is generated by the system when a job is run through. A job that’s not on the list isn’t done and still stays in the inbox until it’s done. I finished all the jobs I could. The others are on ‘wait for reply’. They’re not authorized by the customer yet. So, what do you need that list for? Since we are not allowed to print that, there’s no way to get it out of the system into a list to send to you.”

Manager: “Then type it out and stop arguing. I need that list!”

He stomped off and I was stumped. I then wrote a mail to him, with his boss and my colleague in CC, telling him that I wasn’t trained in creating the list he wanted, asking how to get that data out since typing a list with hundreds of jobs wasn’t feasible, asking if there was any news about a change in data protection I wasn’t told of, and telling them that I didn’t appreciate not being fully trained.

I got the answer that there weren’t any changes in procedure and to just do my job as I was told and send in my list.

Five minutes later, my direct manager appeared at my workstation again and started berating me. In his opinion, I was belligerent and insubordinate.

Unbeknownst to him, his own boss, who had been in the loop during training, had appeared behind him not much later. He turned white as a sheet when he heard his boss quietly telling him to come into his office.

The next day, I got a message saying that, from now on, all processes would run directly through my boss’s boss, and my former direct manager was no longer responsible for me.

I was now directly supervised by my boss’s boss, and the coworker who trained me was then given the role to follow up and authorize the jobs I’d finished.

That wasn’t a problem for her to do since that last step was a mere formality; she was only expected to do a random test on a few of them and then mass-authorise them all — a job that could be done in thirty minutes tops.

In the following days, we could see our manager’s boss meandering through the department, speaking with everyone, asking them what they did and how they did it. After a few more weeks, my former direct manager was gone and my colleague was promoted to his role.

As we heard through the grapevine, that stupid moron had created tons of extra steps and “checked” all kinds of lists all day that no one needed with several colleagues who thought it was all authorized by his boss.

Somehow, he’d managed to convince his boss that all of them were needed because his employees were so lazy and constantly skipped steps. No one ever spoke up, so it went on and on.

But the person who had my job retired, and he tried to pull this stunt at that task, too, although it was impossible to follow his demand and the retiree didn’t do it, either.

But the new hires didn’t dare to fight that nonsense; they tried to type the list and finally quit in frustration since they couldn’t get any real work done because of that and got scolded. Neither his boss nor the colleague knew about what was going on.

Me not being able to keep it down and bucking against his insane demands exposed his practices. It turned out he’d barely done anything productive all day when others followed suit. I’ve always been a hothead, and it had gotten me in trouble before, but this time, it was just what was needed: a person without a filter!

Our big boss was now much more involved in our everyday work to not let something like that happen again. He mentored my former coworker much more closely and she became a great manager.

I’m going through a TSA checkpoint at my local airport. 

TSA Agent #1: “Please remove any food, electronics, and liquids from your bag and place them directly into the bin.”

In an attempt to save money, I’d packed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat at the airport.

Me: “Will my sandwich cause a problem?”

TSA Agent #1: “As long as it is outside of your backpack as it goes through the scanner, it will be fine.”

I follow the instructions and observe that other lines are moving much faster than mine. [TSA Agent #2], who is reviewing the screen, is pulling almost every bag for further review. By the time I get to her, she informs me that my peanut butter sandwich is causing the alarm (despite being removed from my luggage) and that my entire carry-on will need to be checked.

I offer to throw the sandwich away but she insists that now that I’ve entered the checkpoint it needs to be checked — for explosives, I presume?

[TSA Agent #3] is reviewing bags that have been pulled. Almost everyone that was in front of me in line one is now in front of him as he empties their bags and swabs their items to find the offending item (which, for many people, is nonexistent). I can tell he’s starting to get exasperated.

After several minutes, I finally get to him.

Me: “My bag got pulled because of this sandwich. I can just throw it away.”

My sandwich, which was made much earlier in the day, is admittedly looking kind of smooshed and sad. At this point, I’d rather throw it away and buy the overpriced airport food.

He looks at me, looks at my pitiful sandwich, and looks at [TSA Agent #2] who is still sending almost everyone in her line to him for further review. Other agents in nearby lines are not pulling nearly the same number of items for review. He hands me my items back without another glance.

TSA Agent #3: “I’m pretty sure your peanut butter and jelly sandwich is not a threat to national security.”