I’m in the office emptying the shredder into a garbage bag so the shredded paper can be taken to the pet shop — because who doesn’t love an excuse to help out the puppies, kitties, bunnies, birdies, and such? The general manager sees me.

General Manager: *Pondering out loud* “Should we charge them for the bag?”

Me: *Confused* “What? This is the shredded paper for [Coworker] to take to the pet shop.”

General Manager: “I know that. Should we charge them for the bag?”

Me: *Incredulous* “They won’t pay for a bag of shredded paper. They ask for donations. They just won’t take it.”

General Manager: “Not the paper. The bag. Do you know how much those cost each?”

Me: *Eyeroll* “Yeah, they’re something like thirty-eight cents each for the black bags. You know if we ask them to pay, they’ll laugh, right? Then it all just goes into the bin — bag and all.”

General Manager: “Hmm…” *Walks away*

This might even make a slight bit of sense if he’d spoken to housekeeping about reducing their rubbish bag use. But nope. We already emptied the three office bins into one bag to take out each day, so I thought zeroing in on the once-a-month shredded paper bag was just out there, even for him.

I know there are some real cheapskate business managers around, but this exchange is one I’ll remember for the rest of my life in the hopes of never, ever becoming this miserly.

I used to sell cars. About ten years ago, we had a customer come in and we landed them on a car. We got them approved at $600 a month, but the car needed to be privately trucked from one dealer to another, and that was going to cost about $500. My manager was willing to cover the cost, but he wanted a $500 deposit, and they would forfeit the $500 if they backed out.

They agreed, and we swiped their card for $500.

It was declined.

We tried three more cards, and they swore they had the money.

Me: “Let’s try and write a check for it.”

They naturally didn’t have a checkbook.

Me: “No biggie. Let’s log into your bank; I’ll pull the account and routing number and do a debit that way.”

Their account balance was -$300 in their checking account, with fifty-two cents in their savings account.

After my manager found this out, he pulled out the entire deal. Our lending agreement gave us big bad trouble for first-payment repossessions.

This got escalated to my manager, and I overheard him say:

Manager: “Your payment is $600 a month plus insurance. You have a negative balance and payday was yesterday for you.”

Our community centre is having a “community garage sale”, so for $10, you get a table to sell whatever you want. I pay for a table so my six-year-old son can get rid of a lot of his old toys and keep the cash — win-win!

He has a ton of free toys from fast-food kids’ meals, and he starts selling them for fifty cents each. As the afternoon wears on and the good ones are all gone, he lowers the price to twenty cents.

A woman, who came by two hours ago and bought two toys, comes back.

Woman: “Refund these now, so that I can buy them back at the lower price.”

Me: “All the money was going to the kid. He’s trying to get rid of the last few that nobody wants.”

Of course, she starts yelling. My son says to me:

Son: “Dad, I’ll just give her the toys for free.”

The woman looks smugly triumphant.

Me: “Yup, lady, you won. You got a pair of free [Fast Food Place] toys from a six-year-old by being a class-A a**hat.”

A few years ago, we had a new manager start in the sales department. She’d been at the post for a few weeks when we got a request from her for some new software. This was very specialised CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. These were the days when CRM was the latest buzzword on the block. It cost a fortune, had questionable reviews, and above all, looking at the sales blurb, needed several weeks of expensive training before you could use it.

I took the request to my manager, who agreed with me that this was not a good fit with our organisation, so he called [New Manager] and tried to talk her out of it. She refused to listen.

New Manager: “No! You have to purchase it! It’s vital to the continuing health of the company!”

We were still very reticent, but she said she would bear the cost out of her own budget, so we reluctantly agreed.

Fast forward a few weeks. The package arrived on several DVDs. I read the installation instructions and immediately realised that it was going to take a whole day to install this piece of crap. I called her to arrange a time to do it.

Me: “It will probably take all day to install all of this.”

New Manager: “I’m too busy. It’ll have to be done out of hours.”

I informed my manager. He told her that was okay, but she must pay the overtime out of her budget. She agreed to this, so I went in on a Saturday and installed the software. It was a b****! Does anybody remember installing Novell NetWare from a bunch of floppies? It was like that.

I finally got it all done and running, but I couldn’t test it; as I said, it needed a training course. So, I closed it down and went home.

Monday morning came, and I went up to see [New Manager] and told her it was installed. I was quite interested in seeing exactly what she was going to use it for, so I clicked on the icon and the opening page came up. Her first words to me were:

New Manager: “Great! Now show me what it does and how I use it.”

I was flabbergasted! She’d spent all this money on some software that she’d read about in a magazine somewhere, and then she’d given the impression that she was an “expert”.

The result was that the software was never used, as she’d blown her budget buying it and couldn’t afford the training courses. She left a few months later.

When my husband and I were dating, his mother had a strict housekeeping policy. NO ONE was allowed to have alcohol or tobacco on her property — no exceptions. During one Sunday dinner at his house, [Mother] sat at her usual seat at the head of the table, said grace, and then looked at me.

Mother: “[My Name], I would like you to explain to [Her Younger Children, both girls under eighteen] why you brought alcoholic paraphernalia onto my property.”

Me: “Um… what?”

Mother: “You were drinking at [Restaurant] last night.”

She produced a receipt from the restaurant, showing I’d had one beer with dinner.

Me: “I also had a full meal and three glasses of water. I’m twenty-two; I can drink—”

Mother: “You know the rules about alcohol in this house.”

She removed my place setting from the table.

Mother: “You are not welcome in my house until you properly apologize.”

Me: “Where did you get that receipt?”

Mother: “It was in the car.”

Me: “You got in my car?”

Boyfriend: “Mom, why were you in her car?”

Mother: “Please leave.”

My boyfriend walked me to my car.

Boyfriend: “[My Name], I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her. Maybe next week—”

Me: “I will not be coming back here. I love you, but that woman is crazy.”

The next day, my boyfriend called and asked if he could move in with me. He had gotten into a fight with [Mother] over respecting boundaries, and she’d said that if he didn’t like the way her house was being run, he could leave. So, he did.

I also found out that [Boyfriend] had been paying $1,000 a month to live under her iron fist. His mother’s little stunt cost her that extra income and a relationship with her only son.