Me: “To illustrate the fact that you’ve been around for twenty-five years and your business has grown a lot since then, I figure we can use old photos of your small team back then, fading into the new, expanded team.”

Client: “Yeeeeah, I don’t think our employees are… Ya know? They’re not good-looking enough. They’re not…”

Me: “Models?”

Client: “How much would 150 models be?”

Me: “$120 a pop, per day, bare minimum.”

Client: “Okay, well, what if we just bought one really hot one to be our spokesperson?”

Me: “We’re trying to build trust, remember?”

Client: “Yeah, but who’s not gonna buy from a super hot model?”

This story takes place before online job applications have become omnipresent; the clothes shop where I work still takes résumés in person. A young lady comes inside and comes up to the counter.

Me: “Welcome to [Clothes Shop]. Can I help you with anything?”

Lady: “I need you to refuse to give me a job.”

I was VERY confused until she explained. She had landed her dream job at a nearby bookstore, but her mother was adamant that she apply for something “more dignified than serving nerds all day”.

I have never been so happy to tell someone we weren’t hiring.

I’m the author of this story. Since then, I’m happy to say my coworker has (if a bit begrudgingly) accepted the work-smarter-not-harder mindset, and our new employee that was hired since that story is also getting past new-hire slowness. Granted, we’re in an overall slower period of the year, but it’s better to get issues ironed out now than when we’re getting slammed.

One day, there is a meeting between the Orders team — that’s us — and the Shipping team after the monthly managers’ meeting. This is a bit odd because normally each team breaks off and has its own individual catch-up meeting, and this one’s in the big training room with the big monitors for presentations. My group’s manager is the one heading up the meeting; she’s also been the driving force behind all the recent updates and changes to the website.

Manager: “All right, guys, I’ve got good news for a change.”

Us: *Random happy noises*

Manager: “Starting Monday, the web portal folks are going live with the address checker, so when orders are coming in, we will no longer be double-checking the addresses with Google Maps or anything else like that.”

Head Shipper: “That’s going to cause problems; plenty of things come through as the ‘right address’ that still aren’t right.”

Manager: “We’re still going to be checking for things like having the Attention in the right place, suite number on line two, obviously wrong information like ‘Main Street’ with no number — things like that. I’m saying that from now on we’re not checking for things like a city coming in as a little town but [Shipping Company] says it’s a different town or minor typos; if the zip code is correct and the street address is valid, we take it.”

Shipper: “I get that, but the customers still enter things certain ways.”

My manager takes a moment to pull up the “test site” and show the way it looks; the only new addition is the “Confirm Address” button over the “Complete Order” button.

Manager: “Take a look here. Each line that’s required has a big red ‘REQUIRED’ on it, they have to click ‘Confirm Address’ to end it, and if they refuse to use a provided corrected address, they have to select this box that states they affirm this is correct and that they are responsible for any address correction or reshipping fees it incurs.”

The two guys from shipping get up and come close, looking over the screen.

Shipper: “That looks good to me.”

Head Shipper: “Yeah, that’s perfect. My apologies; I take back what I said. People have to be complete idiots not to be able to fill that in correctly.”

Manager: “Well, I’m not in the business of calling our customers idiots, but we had to go through all this because of all the issues we’ve been having with shipments after already putting the previous notes on the page they had to confirm.”

Head Shipper: “Fair enough. No more complaints from me!”

With that, my manager turns to the coworker from my previous story with a little grin.

Manager: “You hear that, [Coworker]? YOU DON’T. HAVE. TO CHECK!”

Fortunately, the coworker shared a good laugh with us, and she got a laugh back at the manager later. She’s learning.

Related:
Don’t Make Things Harder For Yourself

I work from home for a small company and communicate with my coworkers via our company’s instant messaging program. I catch the notorious sickness after years of managing to dodge it. I post in my department-specific IM that I will be out for a week minimum and upload a photo of my positive test as an explanation.

As I’m emailing my boss more details, my company notifications start going crazy.

Coworker #1: “Oh, my gosh, congrats!”

Coworker #2: “So happy for you, [My Name]!”

Coworker #3: “That’s awesome.”

Coworker #4: “We can definitely cover for you, no problem.”

Boss: “What?! Congratulations!”

Me: “Guys… This is a positive [illness] test.”

Coworker #1: “OH, NO.”

Coworker #2: “Okay, that’s actually a little hilarious. I’m sorry. Feel better LOL”

Coworker #3: *Cry-laughing emojis* “My bad, my bad.”

Coworker #4: “I was wondering why you were taking an entire week off rather than a day or so, but I didn’t want to be the jerk who asked that haha.”

My boss messages me in a separate private channel.

Boss: “I don’t know how I forgot that just six months ago you had to take a few weeks off for your surgery. I’m so sorry. Of course, you can take the time off, no problem. Feel better soon.”

The surgery I had just six months ago that my boss forgot about? My hysterectomy. Once I was able to laugh without coughing up a lung, I had a good laugh about it.

This is a story from back when my husband and I first started dating. We were in our early twenties but each still living with our families. He and I had plans to go somewhere the next day, so we asked his parents if it would be okay for me to sleep over so he wouldn’t have to drive to the next state to pick me up. Since we were just dating, his parents said we couldn’t share a bed. Fair enough. Their house, their rules. My boyfriend offered me his room, and he slept on the fold-out couch.

His family lived in one of those cape-style houses. The bedrooms upstairs had those slanted ceilings, and his bed was pushed up under one of them.

I went to bed, and everything seemed perfectly normal.

Then, the next morning at around 6:00 am, my poor sleepy self was brutally woken up by the most obnoxious rock song I have ever heard playing at top volume. I sat up in a panic and slammed my head against the ceiling. Panicking, I started banging on his CD radio, trying to turn it off. (I think I only managed to mute it.) Throwing the thing out the window seemed like an option at the time.

After I silenced the screeching monster, with adrenaline and heart racing, I ran down the stairs and leaped onto my boyfriend, grabbed him by the shoulders, and started screaming while shaking him:

Me: “What the h*** was that?!”

I ended up waking up his family, who were used to his alarm by now, but he was just dazed and confused. He’s a deep sleeper, thus why he needed an obnoxious alarm. His mom started laughing and told him:

Mother-In-Law: “You deserved that.”

She then led me into the kitchen with an offer of coffee and waffles. To this day, I refuse to listen to that song. Ever. Even if I like the band’s other songs. He and I still laugh about it today. We’ve been together for twenty-five years.