I accept an invite to a job interview. I have several lined up over a few weeks and don’t get a chance to do the normal background checks I normally do, so I go in a little blind. Halfway through the interview, I realise that the job doesn’t match the description at all. I stick out the rest of the interview to decide if it is something that I could make work.

After a night’s sleep, I realise that, no, it isn’t something I am interested in, and I will let the recruiter know when I speak to them next.

It isn’t long until I get a call from the recruiter.

Recruiter: “Hey, how did it go?”

Me: “Well, the manager seemed nice and the company looks solid. But the job isn’t for me.”

Recruiter: “What? Why? We spoke the other day and the job role was perfect for you.”

Me: “It is, but that’s not what they are looking for. In fact, it was like I was interviewing for a completely different job.”

Recruiter: “No, that can’t be right. I spoke to [Manager] and clarified everything.”

I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m not lying; I was the one in the interview.”

Me: “What can I tell you?! He was talking about legal and claims. I’ve never worked on anything to do with that stuff.”

Recruiter: “Well, there might be some of that, sure, but you could pick that up quickly.”

Me: “I’m not interested.”

Recruiter: “But I’ve already told them you would take the offer!”

Me: “Why did you do that?”

Recruiter: “They loved you and offered you the advertised rate.”

Me: “As I said, the job didn’t match the description at all. So, no, I won’t be interested.”

Recruiter: “Fine!” *Hangs up*

Not only did the recruiter waste my time, but I would bet money that he blamed me for turning down the job!

[Coworker] should have retired years ago, but somehow he convinced the senior management to let him stay on a few days a week to “help out when needed.” Instead, he pokes his nose into things and picks faults, even things that have nothing to do with him or he knows nothing about. When he gets called out, he claims he was only trying to help and offer opinion.

Luckily, he leaves me alone as I’m mainly working on an IT project that he has no ability to even access. Then, he badgers my boss to give him access to check something or another and I set him up with limited access. I am reluctant to do so.

One day, I’m pulled into my boss’s boss’s office. My boss and [Coworker] are there.

Boss: “We have some concerns with your project.”

Me: “Okay.”

Boss: “You said to me last time that 90% of the work had been done, but all of the files are gibberish.”

Coworker: “I’ve checked it myself; you claim it’s working but clearly you messed something up.”

Boss’s Boss: “I don’t pretend to understand all this, but is it true that there is a problem?”

Coworker: “All this money spent on computerising stuff and it’s worse than paper. What a waste!”

Boss: “Okay, calm down, [Coworker].”

Me: “This is lorem ipsum; it’s a placeholder text. It’s an industry standard used to give you an idea of what it will look like.”

Boss: “So, the documents are where?”

Me: “Where they have always been. It would be pretty stupid to load live documents into a test environment.”

Boss: “In English, please, mate.”

I demonstrated that the documents were, in fact, fine and how quickly the document could get transferred over when finished. [Coworker] sneaked out during this, so I took the opportunity to complain in detail about how he had been doing this to every project and slowing things down, making up issues and pretending to have solved them. He was moved onto one project at a time and not allowed to give any feedback without the project’s owner being involved.

My friend and I are standing in a long queue for a popular ride at a British theme park when a couple of teenage girls cut in front of us.

Friend: “Excuse me. But you need to return to the back of the line.”

Girl #1: “Whatever. I am not going to wait twenty minutes just to go on a stupid ride.”

Friend: “I am sorry, but we have all been waiting; you can wait, too.”

Girl #2: “Oh, piss off, b****!”

My friend is about to retort to that, but I grab her by the arm and whisper in her ear that I have an idea and that she should just let it go. As we get closer to the front of the line, I wait for my opportunity to get my revenge.

The girls stop at the front of the line, and as we are just about to get on the ride, I flag down the operator.

Me: “Excuse me. Those two girls in front of us cut the line further back, and when we tried to tell them to go to the back of the line, they call my friend a b****.”

Girl #1: “WHAT! NO, WE DIDN’T! SHE IS LYING! SHE JUMPED THE QUEUE! SHE AND HER FRIEND DID!”

At that moment, the people in the queue behind us confirmed my story, and the two girls got sent to the back of the queue, shouting obscenities as they went.

The queue had now stretched to a forty-five-minute wait time.

I have a very small piece of land outside the front of my house. I have a few mature shrubs growing, really just so it isn’t bare ground. I keep it in reasonable shape, weed it when I remember, and trim it before it really goes onto the path. It’s never been an issue before today.

I hear an angry knock on the door and I answer.

Woman: “Your bushes, they cut me!”

She shows me the sleeve of her coat; it is indeed badly torn.

Me: “Oh, I, err… I’m sorry. I had no idea it was on the path.” 

Woman: “Oh, he didn’t know. He didn’t know. How is this fixing my coat?”

Me: “There is nothing I can do right now. But if you leave me your details, I—”

Woman: “You take this and buy me a new one. My husband will be round later. You’d better pay.”

She throws her coat at me and leaves.

I feel awful. I figure I’d better trim the bushes back before anyone else gets hurt. As I go outside with the shears, I quickly realise that the bushes are well away from the path. They haven’t grown much at all since I cut them. Confused, I ask my neighbour if their doorbell caught what happened.

It did! It turns out the woman was on her phone, tripped over her own feet, and fell into the bush. It was hilarious; she waddled around for ages to get out.

When her husband comes around, I show him the video.

Husband: “I should be pissed off, but that was funny as f***! Can you send that to me?”

Me: “What about the coat?”

Husband: “Oh, yeah, I’d better take that, too. Sorry about my wife; she can be a real dumba** sometimes.”

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When I first started at my company, I was put with a coworker who was well past retirement age but stayed around as the company had this big thing about knowledge transfer from old employees to new.

Unfortunately, [Coworker]’s job has changed massively over the last five years. A lot of it has become automated by IT, meaning that after a while, [Coworker] couldn’t actually show me much of anything, and what he could show me was basic IT stuff that I was already better at than he was.

A good trainer would admit what they could and couldn’t teach, but [Coworker] would insist that he teach me, even on stuff that wasn’t relevant. Once, he tried to show me how to use equipment we didn’t even have — nor will we have again — and made me read the instruction manual. Front to back.

On his off days, I managed perfectly well. [Coworker] wouldn’t allow me to use things like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, so I was actually faster on my own.

Eventually, I was fed up enough to talk to my boss, who then sided with [Coworker]. In retaliation, [Coworker] made me read more instruction manuals.

After months of this, I was REALLY fed up. I was chatting to a friend who worked in another department. 

Me: “I don’t see the point of all this ‘training.’ I am not learning anything.”

Friend: “There is a job going in my department. I can ask to see if they will transfer you.”

Me: “Yeah, anything other than this. But I think [Boss] will block it. I’m supposed to be the guy that takes over from [Coworker].”

Friend: “My boss is pretty senior. I’m sure he could make it happen.”

I applied and hoped for the best. One day, I got an email to sneak over to the other department where I interviewed in a back office. I was eventually offered the job and told that they would make it happen, regardless of what my boss said.

It turned into weeks of arguing, but ultimately, I did get the job. [Coworker] had to fill in for me until they could get a replacement. I did hear that my old boss asked for me to go back and train [Coworker] on my job. Apparently, this was refused by my new boss, which is probably a good thing.