At the beginning of the year, we get a new PhD intern who has a rather inflated ego and will try to exert his authority over others simply because they have a Bachelors or Masters. It suffices to say it becomes quickly apparent that he is not efficient, effective, or all that smart as he claims. He ends up costing the company thousands because he refuses to check his work and in his own words assumes it is “perfect” when he gives it to people. It also turns out he is actually a Masters student and not on track to get his PhD, despite explicitly stating he is working on his dissertation. The icing on the cake is that he refuses to work in the office and can’t work more than 25 to 30 hours a week while initially trying to get 50 to 60 hours a week. Long story short: he is unreliable and a chronic liar, but still thinks he is a real prize.

Around this time, we also have a change in management. Without being prompted or even asked, he determines he will take over the weekly meetings. Our boss, deciding to see where this goes, lets him. Note: he is still technically an intern but is insisting to the rest of us — and his money lender — that he is a full-time employee when the managers are out of earshot. The first week’s meeting goes all right, but they continue to spiral out of control from there.

Eventually, he stops showing up to the office altogether, but still maintains he is going there and lies about it, or even claims his coworkers are the ones not in the office. He then spends the next month or so canceling his own meetings, forgetting about them completely, or trying to get other people to cancel for him.

It finally becomes clear to my boss that this guy is straight-up incompetent, but because he is the type that would sue for wrongful termination, my boss still has to make an effort to correct the mistake. This leads to a round of cries from said “coworker” about how he can’t take the abuse any longer and more whining. My boss even schedules for him to attend a seminar, all expenses paid for, to work on his organization. The guy takes it as nothing more than a suggestion — while still in negotiation for a contract. Eventually, after much back and forth and the boss having several people ask him to go, he agrees…. but his girlfriend ends up driving him.

He uses this seminar to try to leverage more power, while still failing at his job, but obviously gets shut down. Still, he is obviously oblivious to the fact he is in deep s*** at this point.

Finally, around Christmas time, someone else is assigned to run the meetings as we haven’t had one in two months. He, of course, is absent as it is “the holidays.” When he comes back, he is relieved! It goes over his head that he lost his “power” because he was lazy.

Yes, he is still working for this company. And I am currently looking for a new job.

Moral of the story: your coworkers may be a hot mess, but if management allows it, leave.

(Two of my friends and I go out for dinner. We try a new restaurant, and when we arrive they have two or three tables occupied, and we’re seated immediately. The table the hostess chooses happens to be next to an occupied table that currently has a waiter standing at it. Seconds later, before we even look at the menu, the waitress comes over with water and asks for our drink orders.)

Friend #1: “Could I get an unsweetened iced tea?”

(She always specifies “unsweetened” because most places we’ve gone assume the customer wants sweet tea when ordering iced tea, and she’s diabetic.)

Waitress: “You can.” *writes her drink down*

Friend #2: “Do you have [Beer]?”

Waitress: “Only in a bottle. Is that okay?”

Friend #2: “And it’s not light beer, right?”

(She always asks this due to a previous encounter with a naive waiter who didn’t know there was a difference.)

Waitress: “Regular [Beer], we can do that.” *writes her drink down*

Friend #2: “And I don’t need a glass.”

Waitress: *finishes writing and then turns to me* “No glass. And for you?”

Me: “And could you bring me a whole pitcher of water? I tend to drink very quickly.”

(I actually got this idea from a restaurant waitress who accepted that she couldn’t keep up with how fast I drink. Most places accommodate this request. The few that don’t simply say they cannot and I drop the subject.)

Waitress: “We can get you a pitcher. And are you ready to order?”

Me: “Could we have some time to look at the menu?”

Waitress: *already walking away and looking over her shoulder* “Sure. I’ll be back with your drinks.”

(Despite how quickly she came out, she is gone nearly 15 minutes. Not only do we finish reading the menu and decide on what entrees and desserts we are getting, I have finished my glass of water and we have started contemplating going someplace else. We keep our eyes peeled for her while we are waiting, but she seems to have disappeared. I even try to make contact with the waiter I saw earlier, who has come out very frequently, to see if he can track her down. When she does finally return, to her credit, she brings a cold iced tea and a cold beer, both in a glass. And there is no pitcher of water.)

Waitress: “Have you decided, or do you need more time?”

(We each place our orders, ending with me.)

Me: “And could I also get that pitcher of water, please?”

Waitress: *again already walking away and over her shoulder* “Sure.”

(So begins the second wait — roughly twenty minutes this time. I am about to ask if I can take my friends’ waters since I am the only one without a drink, but the circumstances change after they take their first sips.)

Friend #2: “This is [Beer] Lite. I specifically asked if they had regular, right?”

Friend #1: “You did. Just as I asked for unsweetened iced tea. I got sweet tea. I should have just asked for hot tea and a glass of ice.”

(While [Friend #2] forces down a light beer, [Friend #1] hands me the sweet tea and begins drinking her water. Once again, however, our waitress has disappeared and the waiter continues to snub me. By the time the food arrives, there are no drinks at the table. Due to it being three of us and some of our entrees requiring separate plates for the side dishes, that same waiter helps our waitress carry all of it. Before they arrive, we make sure they’ll have to ask us to move the glasses, just to prove she sees the empty glasses. And once again, there is no pitcher of water.)

Waitress: “Refills all around, I assume?”

Friend #2: “Hang on. I asked for a [Beer]. I think you gave me Lite.”

Waitress: “We only have [Beer] Lite.”

Friend #2: “And you said nothing when I ordered a [Beer]?”

Waitress: “Sorry. It says it on the menu. I assumed you had read it.”

Friend #2: “You didn’t give us a chance to read the menu.”

Waitress: “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

Friend #1: “Then why is my unsweetened iced tea a sweet tea?”

Waitress: “I’m sorry. Did the kitchen staff screw up your tea?”

Friend #1: “Yes.”

Me: “How about just that pitcher of water for the table?”

Waiter: “She already told you: we can’t do whole pitchers for one table. We can give each of you a glass of water, but not a whole pitcher. Now stop begging her to get in trouble every five minutes.”

(They both walk off. Miraculously, we actually get our water within minutes. We actually have a good meal after all of that.)

Waitress: “Anyone still working?”

(We each tell her we’re done. She takes my friends’ plates first. When she comes back for mine, she plants the bill on the table. We always pay for our own portions, but just to be safe, we always have one of us use a credit card to pay the restaurant and leave a tip. This particular time, it’s my turn.)

Friend #1: “So, the tip would be…”

Me: “I’ll take care of that myself.”

Friend #2: “You sure?”

Me: *nodding* “I can afford two cents.”

Friend #1: “Two cents?”

Me: *pointing to [Friend #2]* “She neglected to tell you there was only light beer,” *pointing to [Friend #1] and motioning to the check* “If the sweet tea was a kitchen blunder, why does the bill say you ordered sweet tea? She never told me that a pitcher wasn’t feasible. She disappeared frequently. She lied to her colleague about my requests for a pitcher and how often I’d asked so that he’d jump to her defense. And did you notice we weren’t offered dessert? I just want to know if you want to complain to the manager with me.”

(My friends agreed that we should file a formal complaint. However, we quickly scrapped that idea when we overheard another waitress conversing with the same waiter as before. We asked this other waitress to be sure, but the contents of the conversation were enough to tip us off. That waiter WAS the manager. We instead elected to contact the owner and point out the manager was constantly perusing the restaurant, yet hadn’t noticed one of his waitresses consistently failed to wait on our table, but still chose to believe every word she said without even considering hearing the customer’s side of things. We haven’t been back since, so I don’t know what came of those two.)

(I am 21, checking out at a popular women’s underwear store. As I am checking out:)

Employee #1: “Would you like to sign up for a [Brand] card today?”

(At this question I take a moment to contemplate opening up a credit card here since, granted, I shop here a lot and want to build credit. However, before I can answer [Employee #1], [Employee #2], who I guess has been listening, chimes in.)

Employee #2: “She can’t have one.”

Me: “Why not?”

Employee #2: “It’s a credit card, and you need to be 18 to have a credit card.”

Me: *pulling my credit card out of my wallet* “Like this one?”

(The rest of my transaction was done very quietly and awkwardly. I understand that I look young, but they could have asked if I was 18 or older instead of assuming.)

(On my way into the office one morning, when I stop to get the mail, I see a key has been left inside for one of the package mailboxes. I go to open it and realize the key doesn’t even remotely fit for the box it indicates it’s for. I try the other one to be sure, but of course, it doesn’t work. There’s nothing to be done for it at the moment, so I take it with me to my office and explain to my boss. He says he’ll call the post office to figure it out. Later, he tells me what the mail person said.)

Boss: “They said they couldn’t find the right key, so they just left that one and hoped it worked.”

Me: “So… they don’t have the key to their own box, so they gave us a key on the one-in-a-trillion chance it’d somehow work?”

Boss: “Apparently.”

(I asked for more information, like maybe it was an old key or went to neighboring boxes and they hoped it was the same key, but my boss was under the strong impression that the mail person literally just grabbed a random key and slapped the box number on it. I’m still baffled months later.)

I was laptop shopping with my Dad, looking for a small laptop to take on my travels. This was ten years ago or so before iPads were really a thing, so I needed a small laptop to keep in touch with home.

We were browsing the different laptops when a member of staff came up to ask if we needed any help.

Dad had already noticed that there were higher-spec laptops for less money, but they were too big for my use, so he queried with the member of staff why they were cheaper.

The reply was that bigger laptops are heavier; therefore you can’t walk as fast with them, so people won’t pay as much for them.

I had to walk away to stop myself from laughing in this poor guy’s face. It’s still a running joke; when I added an extra SSD to my laptop today we said it has lost its value now as I won’t be able to walk as fast with it.