I’ve previously submitted this story about the cinema I used to work for.

One of the notable things about the layout of our cinema that was relevant in that story and in this one was that, whilst there were public toilets on each floor of the building, only those on the first-floor bar area could be accessed without a ticket. On all of the other levels, the toilets were located beyond the concession stands and the theatres themselves, which meant you needed to have a ticket for a show to use them.

We also typically wouldn’t allow people into the theatres far in advance of their films’ start times, but if they were prepped and ready, then we’d start allowing people in about ten minutes before.

One day, a couple turned up about half an hour before their film was due to start.

Me: “I’m sorry, but you can’t enter your theater yet.”

Customer: *Gesturing to his partner* “Can she use the toilet?”

Me: “Go ahead.”

He then waited outside of the bathroom for her, and the two of them walked straight into the theatre, past my annoyed colleagues who had literally just finished cleaning it. Another show was just starting, so I didn’t have time to go and remove them, and technically, the theatre was ready, so I swallowed my irritation and let it go.

Fast forward to a week later. I was suddenly alerted to women screaming about a man acting violently in the ladies’ bathroom. I summoned security immediately using our emergency code and investigated what was happening. Someone had tried to use the tampon machine, and it had swallowed her money. Instead of, you know, asking staff for help, her boyfriend decided to enter the bathroom screaming obscenities at the machine before proceeding to punch it and trying to rip it from the wall.

Just as I started to wonder what the heck I was going to do, security arrived and told me to go back to the end of the hall and prevent further customers from entering until the situation had been resolved.

A few minutes later, my old friends from the week before arrived and we had the following conversation.

Me: “I am really sorry, but I can’t allow you past at the moment. As you might be able to hear, there is an ongoing incident that security is in the middle of dealing with at the moment, so for your safety, we are asking customers to stay back until it’s resolved.”

Customer: “Okay. Can she just go to the toilet, though?”

Me: “Unfortunately, no. As I said, we are not letting anybody through, but there are toilets on level one she can use in the meantime.”

Customer: “Nah, I don’t want to walk down there. Can she not just go?”

Me: “Well, no. And your film doesn’t start for another half-hour, so you’re really too early to let through, irrespective of the security incident, so I’d ask you to please use the facilities on the first floor.”

Customer: “Just let us through, mate.”

Me: “Look. To be honest, I had a very similar conversation with you last week. I let you through so she could use the toilet, and then you both walked into the cinema, ignoring my instructions. I am definitely not able to let you go through at the moment in case you ignore me again.”

The man immediately started shouting a few inches from my face.

Customer: “HOW DARE YOU?! That’s outrageous! If we want to use the toilet and go into the cinema, you have no right to keep us out.”

I tried to stay calm.

Me: “Sir, you can take my advice and use the toilets on the other level, and we will begin letting people in closer to your start time, but until then, I’m going to have to ask you to step back.”

At this point, the police had arrived through the fire escape entrance behind me and were removing the violent customer. One of the managers heard the guy shouting at me and decided to intervene in a completely ineffectual way.

Manager: “Woah, guys. Both of you, please calm down and stop shouting.”

I wasn’t; I double-checked with nearby colleagues later who confirmed I hadn’t raised my voice once.

Manager: “What’s going on?”

Customer: “This guy called me a liar and won’t let me through!”

Manager: “[My Name], is this true?”

Me: “I told the customer that he couldn’t enter the lobby whilst that incident was ongoing and that I couldn’t let him enter his screen so far in advance of the start time, anyway. I reminded him that we had the same conversation a week ago and that, after I let them use the toilets, they walked straight in, ignoring my instructions, so I asked them to use the toilets on another level.”

Manager: “Okay. Well, it’s over now, so let them in.”

The customers marched passed me with their noses in the air and walked straight into the cinema, their need for the loo apparently forgotten. All in all, it was a bit of an eventful shift made all the more frustrating by the duty manager not having my back.

Related:
Stubs To Be You

Many years ago, I took a job as a “Data Input Administrator” for a third-party mortgage and home loan company in Glasgow. The job description was rather vague, and the specific nature of my duties only became clear during a week-long training in one of their offices in Yorkshire. We were to remove paperclips and staples from mortgage packs, scan them, and shred the physical copies. If you’re asking yourself why that needed a week’s worth of training in another country, well, that question was raised a lot over that week, and the best answer we got was, “That’s what the process says.”

Anyway, I sleep-walked through the job, absolutely bored out of my tiny little brain, for a couple of months before applying for another job in the same office. This one actually involved processing the applications and preparing the information needed by underwriters — something a bit more interesting and challenging than my previous role as a walking and talking staple remover.

I got the job and noticed that someone else joined the new team at the same time as me, but she was never there and always seemed to be helping out managers in another team (who she was very friendly with). However, I otherwise never really paid attention to this or thought about it.

After about a year, the mortgage crunch hit and hit hard, so we started getting fewer and fewer applications. The business decided to refocus and retrain the majority of staff as debt collectors, but I was relieved to be part of a specialist team, one of the very few “safe” areas that would not be expected to capitalise on human misery. 

Then, I got a letter advising me that my secondment was being ended and that my retraining as a debt collector would commence in two months. I immediately spoke to my manager.

Me: “Hey, [Manager], there seems to have been a mistake. I’ve been told that my secondment is ending, but I’m not on a secondment. This was a permanent post!”

Manager: “Huh, that’s weird. Let me look into it.”

The next day, she came back to me.

Manager: “Hey, [My Name], I’ve got some bad news. I’ve been told that when you and [Colleague] joined the team, there was a permanent position and a secondment. You were the secondment.”

Me: “No, that’s not right. I was never told that this was a secondment. As far as I was and I am concerned, this was permanent.”

Manager: “Well, I did tell them that was your understanding, but they said that this should have been clear. Even if it wasn’t, though, they told me that they have the right to redeploy you, so either way, I’m sorry, but it looks like you’ll be moving.”

Me: “I don’t want to drag [Colleague] down, but this doesn’t make sense. She literally does nothing for this team and she’s only nominally part of it. I literally can’t remember the last time she did any work for us. It seems like utter cronyism that she gets to stay and I’m being moved.”

Manager: “I can see that you’re upset, but I’m not going to talk about [Colleague’s] circumstances. I suggest that you try and make the best of it and don’t do anything hasty.”

I wasn’t hasty. I went home, updated my CV, and had a new job lined up two weeks later. I then typed up a two-page resignation letter detailing the various ways I had been misled and let down since joining and the evident favouritism at play, and I handed it to my boss for onward submission.

Manager: “Uhhh, [My Name], I get that you’re upset, and I honestly don’t blame you, but are you sure you want to burn your bridges like this?”

Me: “[Manager], I don’t want you to take this personally, but h*** yes, I do.”

Two weeks later, I spent the last ten minutes of my employment distributing a couple of dozen copies of my resignation letter throughout the building before I peaced out. I figured people probably wouldn’t care about my personal circumstances, but they ought to know the type of company they were working for.

This story is about an ex of mine and her one-day career working for a catalogue shop in the UK, but it starts with her brother. He had taken on a job at the local branch of [Chain] and quickly proved to be an unreliable and flakey worker who was routinely late and, even according to himself, not the most diligent when he was there. To no great surprise, he got canned after a few months.

To my somewhat surprise, my ex applied for a job at the same shop and was successful! However, she was working a one-month notice period, and a few days before she was due for her first shift, she got offered a job she liked better and decided to take it. To my greater surprise, she decided to work that shift. 

Me: “Why do you think that’s a good idea?”

Ex: “Well, I don’t want to let them down with short notice.”

Me: “The first day will usually be Human Resources stuff and training anyway. I don’t think coming in for exactly one day when you’ve already told them you aren’t taking the job is going to be that helpful for anyone. To be honest, I’m shocked they’re giving you the option.”

Ex: “Well, as I said, they must be desperate!”

Me: “Just remember, then, that you’re only there for one day. If anybody gives you any nonsense, then just walk out.”

She did indeed go in for her one shift. I asked her about how it went afterward.

Ex: “Meh, it was mostly fine until the end of it, although I didn’t really get to do anything.”

Me: “What happened at the end?”

Ex: “The shift the manager called me into his office and said, ‘So, you’re leaving us after one day? I knew I should never have given you a chance; you’re even more of a time-waster than your brother.’ I did what you said, though, and just walked out. Can you believe he said that to me?”

I think she was honestly the only person that didn’t see the snark coming.

This story took place on the night of my nineteenth birthday party, which was more years ago than I’d care to count now. I have been a fan of Marvel comics since a young age and worked part-time in a comic book shop at the time. So, for a gag, one of my friends bought me a five-foot-tall inflatable Spider-Man.

Being students, we went to our local student union and I decided to inflate Spider-Man and put him on one of the chairs at the table. There were plenty to spare, so it wasn’t robbing anyone of a chair; I know that Peter wouldn’t have approved of that. He attracted quite a bit of attention and laughter, particularly when he got his own pint of beer. However, then, the night took a turn.

A guy ran over to our table, picked Spider-Man up, and then ran to the door. At first, I thought he was pranking us because he stopped at the door and turned back with a big grin, so I got up to walk over, and just as I was opening my mouth to say, “Very funny,” he sprinted out of the door! Several of my friends and I put down our drinks and ran out of the bar after him, but he had a head start and there were several different routes he could have taken, so we had to split up and each took a different path.

I couldn’t find him, but five minutes later one of my friends came back, triumphant, with Spider-Man under his arm! He told us that he caught up to the guy, who decided that an inflatable novelty was worth stealing but not fighting over, so he dropped it and ran off again. Thinking that was the end of it, we turned to go back into the bar only to be stopped by the bouncer.

Bouncer: “You guys are barred for tonight. Leave.”

Me: “What? Why?”

Bouncer: “You know why.”

Me: “No, actually, I really don’t. Somebody stole this—” *lifts up Spider-Man* “—from me so we just ran out to get it back. Why are we getting barred because someone stole from us?”

Bouncer: “You broke all of your glasses on the way out!”

Me: “No, we didn’t! Why would we do that? And if we had, why would we be dumb enough to come back after doing that?”

The bouncer stepped away to talk to the management on the radio for a moment before coming back.

Bouncer: “Okay, you can come in, but you have to deflate Spider-Man. He was causing too much excitement.”

When we got back to the rest of our friends, they explained that someone (presumably a friend of the thief) had picked up our glasses where we had each left them to run out, finished our drinks, and then just dropped the glasses, breaking them, before running out as well. Apparently, the bouncer had been given a garbled version of that story, hence his initial reluctance to let us back in.

Anyway, those acts of d****ebaggery aside, at least I got to tell the story about how we rescued Spider-Man on my birthday!

In the Glasgow city centre, there are a variety of nightclubs that are typically licensed to operate and, of course, to serve alcohol until 3:00 am. To cater to the drunk and hungry crowds which fill the streets after the clubs close, a number of fast food restaurants operate in the nearby vicinity. Some years back, in my clubbing days, a friend and I were very excited to try a new American sandwich chain that had opened near our favourite club.

We both ordered and stood at the counter to watch our sandwiches get made and overheard a conversation between the two staff on duty — one of whom had an Australian or New Zealand accent — that concerned us a bit.

Worker #1: “I know the restaurant is new, but I can’t believe how short-staffed we are! There were some jobbies in the kitchen when I started earlier.”

In the Scottish vernacular, “jobbie” is slang for poop.

Friend: “Um, pardon?”

Worker #1: “What was that, mate?”

Me: “Oh, yeah, what was that you were saying about there being crap in the kitchen?”

Worker #2: “Yeah… What are you talking about?!”

Worker #1: “What are you guys talking about?! I never said there was crap in the kitchen!”

Everyone Else: “You said there were jobbies in the kitchen!”

Worker #1: “Uh-huh, so what?”

Friend: “What do you think that word means? Because here, it means ‘crap’.”

Worker #1: *Laughing* “Oh, man, I didn’t know that! Where I’m from, it’s just a word we use to describe ‘temp workers’.”

At that point, we all pretty much fell about laughing (especially my friend and me) and advised [Worker #1] that they might want to be careful about how they use that word in Scotland going forward.

Apologies to the Antipodeans among us; this story goes back about fifteen years and I was drunk, so I can’t remember if the worker was from Australia or New Zealand, but I’d be very grateful if you could confirm this translation for me!