I was in my store before we opened, stocking shelves and getting ready for the day. A man in a uniform for a soda company we work with came up to me carrying a pre-made sandwich, a soda (from the competing company), and a bag of chips.

Man: “Hey, where’s the cashier? I’ve been walking around looking for someone for fifteen minutes.”

Me: “We aren’t open yet.”

I looked at his uniform.

Me: “Are you making a delivery?”

Man: “I’m just trying to get my lunch before work.”

Me: “Ah. Unfortunately, we aren’t open for another hour so—”

Man: “Then why was the door unlocked?!”

Me: “Because the employees are inside. I’m sorry I can’t ring you up.”

Man: “Just open the f****** register. It takes two minutes.”

Me: “No.”

I turned and went to the back room, looking at the security camera to see when he came in. He pulled the doors apart (they are automatic but off outside business hours), walked right to what he needed, and right up to me.

After I left him standing there, the man threw the sandwich on the floor, opened and dumped the chips, and shook the soda before spraying it all over the floor. I called our contact at the soda company he worked for and told them the story.

They asked for the video, which I emailed. They never told me what happened to him, but I haven’t seen him since.

I have a coworker who has always said whatever he wanted. If someone calls him on being rude, he has an immediate excuse and doubles down on what he said.

A woman approaches us at the fitting rooms with a pair of jeans.

Woman: “Excuse me. Do you have these in a size four?”

Me: “We do. Just let me—”

Coworker: “You need at least an eight.”

Woman: “No, I’d like a four.”

Me: “I’ve got this, [Coworker].”

Coworker: “Okay, but they won’t even get over her legs.”

Woman: “I’d like your manager, as well.”

Coworker: “Why? You’re getting what you want.”

Woman: “Because you’re being rude.”

Coworker: *Smiles* “I’m autistic; I can’t help it. But you really are too big for a four.”

Me: “Okay, [Coworker], I will take it from here.”

Coworker: “But—”

Me: “Go.”

Coworker: “But I have—”

Me: “Thank you!”

Woman: “Oh, my God.”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am. I will get the four.”

Woman: “What an a**hole. Is he really autistic?”

Me: “I am not privy to my coworker’s medical records.”

Woman: “Even if he is, he has to understand that he can’t talk to people like that. I still want the manager.”

Me: “Okay, I can call for you. Here are your jeans.”

[Manager] came over and spoke with the woman. He later pulled [Coworker] aside. I don’t know what was said in that conversation, but that was the last time I saw [Coworker] in the store.

I had a coworker who was absolutely awful to waitstaff because he believed it got him better service. I once asked him if he minded the fact that the waiters might spit in his food, and he went, “Heh, heh, heh, some places charge extra for that.”

Worse, I was usually seated next to [Coworker] at corporate functions because our last names were only a few letters apart, and seating was by last name.

It hurt my soul watching [Coworker] act the way he acted, and it hurt my happiness watching as the service at our table consistently went from “okay” to “the worst service in the house” due to his behavior. I started requesting specifically not to be seated at the same table as him.

Another corporate event was coming up, and when I checked the seating chart, to my dread, I saw that I was once more seated at the same table as [Coworker]. Fed up with it, I hatched a plan.

I found out who the catering company was and warned them about [Coworker] in advance. I advised that they record his outbursts, gave them the email addresses of some high-level executives, and told them that if [Coworker] gave them trouble, they should threaten to blacklist us. It took a while for the person I’d called to understand, but eventually, I got passed along to a manager in the catering company who had a brilliant evil cackle as we conspired together.

Next, on the day of the event, I made sure to rile the guy up. I knew what sorts of things would upset [Coworker]. A couple of his biggest triggers were praising young people and talking about the poor, so I made sure to say a few triggering phrases to him before the servers came around.

He had so many nasty outbursts with the waitstaff that day, and each time he started to calm himself down, I mentioned something else to piss him off, like talking about a homeless encampment or mentioning an article about a fast food worker getting a GoFundMe after the company stiffed him for his many-year anniversary.

My a**hole coworker barely knew which end was up by the end of the day. He was practically frothing, and his face was blotchy and red. I’m surprised he didn’t have a heart attack. He had to call off work the day after because his “voice was too hoarse”!

My plan did not take long at all to come to fruition. By the next week, [Coworker] had been let go.

I never told anyone else about it, though one woman seated at the table watched me do it and secretively congratulated me when [Coworker]’s “retirement” was announced.

A few years later, I saw [Coworker] manning a cash register at a retail store. I asked him why he was here, and he ranted that his “401k” in his mid-fifties wasn’t enough to retire off of and he had been disqualified from the company pension.

In my mid-twenties, I worked in a grocery store which was the absolute worst job I ever had. And one of the people who made it so miserable was [Rude Coworker].

[Rude Coworker] claimed to have some flavor of mental disability. I never actually found out what specifically he claimed to have, but it manifested in him striking up random conversations with people to share fun facts that were ALWAYS something either insulting or upsetting to the person he was telling them to. They were never anything that they would actually find “fun”.

We would complain, but management didn’t want to rock the boat with his disability claims, and they just generally told us to suck it up and deal with it.

On my particular final straw incident, I came into work having just gotten some terrible news about my family a few hours before. On top of that, I had spent my entire previous shift the weekend before with [Rude Coworker], dealing with him popping up randomly to share “fun facts” about all the ways I’d have been tortured and punished for speaking back to a man back in the Middle Ages. This “somehow” became his topic of focus after I asked him to be more careful when he knocked over two displays I was working on near the start of that shift. It had, in fact, “somehow” become his topic of focus with me in particular two times before this one, and all three times, management’s response to my complaints was, “Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

So, suffice it to say, my tolerance for [Rude Coworker] was at an all-time low.

Rude Coworker: “Oh, hey, [My Name]! You know, you might not like to hear it, but—”

The last strand of my temper snapped.

Me: “THEN WHY ARE YOU GOING TO SAY IT?!”

There was dead silence as [Rude Coworker] stepped back, looking shocked, and a few other coworkers and customers turned to look toward us. Maybe I could have pulled back at that point, but everything just came spilling out.

Me: “WHY?! You just said that you know that I won’t like what you are about to say, so WHY ARE YOU PLANNING TO STILL SAY IT?! Why open your mouth? Why?!”

Rude Coworker: “I don’t—”

Me: “Oh, oh, let me guess! You don’t get social cues? Is that it? That’s what you always smirk after you insult everyone, isn’t it? Well, guess what? Knowing that someone won’t like what you say is a social cue, and you obviously do get it, because you just said as much right now!”

Of course, [Rude Coworker] fled to [Assistant Manager] to cry about me being rude to him, and I got pulled in to be scolded for not being more “understanding” and “kind” and more of a doormat — though that last bit was only implied, not stated. They told me to just go home, and that they’d be discussing my continued employment with [Store Manager]. After so many times of absolutely nothing happening to punish [Rude Coworker] and after my big blowup, I was just emotionally drained and didn’t have the will to try and fight it.

I went home and called up my family to get more information on the bad news, and I spent the time until my next scheduled shift focusing on that and doubling down on the job searching I’d already been doing.

When I came into my next shift, however, I found out that [Rude Coworker] had been fired. It seems that maybe getting me “sent home” for standing up to him emboldened him or something because he had apparently told a customer, in graphic detail, exactly what sort of sexual acts he’d like to do with her. And it turns out that sexual harassment of actual customers is a hard line — even for that store’s terrible management — that no number of disability claims would get them to overlook.

So, he was gone, and absolutely no mention was made of my blow-up or any “discussions about my continued employment”. I still ended up leaving that job the very moment that I found another job a few months down the road because, while [Rude Coworker] was one of the most terrible things about that job, it still had plenty of others to make it a terrible place to work.

I usually work from open to close, about seventy-two hours a week. I’m the most experienced person who works here, and I get paid more than my manager. The only reason I’m not management is I’m mentally ill, can barely fill out paperwork, lack certain interpersonal skills, and need to take sanity in a bottle to function.

I came in to work one morning to find the doors unlocked and the staff area ravaged. My psychological pills, which I kept locked in my cubby at work, and some electronics that I didn’t want to keep at home were missing, as were a few other things I keep at work.

The manager tried to blame me for leaving the door unlocked at closing the night before. I checked the security cameras and confirmed that I had locked the door. Then, I looked ahead and found the manager in question breaking into my locker, stealing my psychological meds, and then throwing everything around the break room to make a mess. I also found that he broke my electronics and threw them in the dumpster.

I forwarded the video to upper management and went home to have a cry. It is very hard to get more psychological meds when I’m not on my meds, especially when I lose them in the middle of a refill, and this was near the start of one. I have the next few days off on half-pay for medical and legal purposes. 

I’ve already been reassured by upper management that my manager’s going to be fired and charged by the store with theft and vandalism, but I’m going to have to make a statement to the police soon so I can get a police report so I can get a refill of my schedule II drugs.