I work for a computer repair service in a large big-box store. A customer comes to pick up his computer after we call to confirm that his repair is complete. In comes a middle-aged man who looks as if he thinks he owns the world.

Me: “Can I have your paperwork to get your computer?”

Customer: “I don’t have it.”

Me: “May I ask for your ID?”

I need to prove he is who he says he is.

Customer: “No. Now go get my computer!”

Me: “I’m afraid I have to refuse. Policy states I have to be sure it’s the owner taking the computer back.”

Customer: “I don’t care about policy! Ugh, my name is Tim.”

It just so happens that my manager is walking by from getting lunch, so he has his outside jacket on. He hears the commotion and comes to the customer’s side of the counter.

Manager: “Hi, my name is Tim. I have a computer here and want to pick it up.”

I immediately know what he’s doing and hand him the customer’s computer.

Customer: *Jaw drops* “What the f*** are you doing?!”

Me: “He’s Tim, and that’s his computer.”

Customer: “I want to see your manager, now!”

My manager takes his jacket off.

Manager: “I’d like to see some ID.”

I snickered as I watched a completely beaten man shake while he grabbed his wallet to find his driver’s license.

Related:
Has ID, Still No Idea, Part 3
Has ID, Still No Idea, Part 2
Has ID, Still No Idea

I work in a restaurant. I’ve made plans in advance relying on me getting out at 3:00 pm today from an opening shift (10:15 to 3:00 pm). The reason I was able to plan this is that I can see everyone’s schedules both online and on the paper copy. My replacement is supposed to be there at 3:00, meaning I can easily get out by 3:05, if not before.

That is until my replacement calls out at 1:30 pm. I tell the manager on the floor that I can only work what I was originally intended to, and she says she’ll try her best. It has always been the precedent that, as a busser, if your side work is done and your replacement is here, you can leave after checking out with a manager. The floor manager eventually gets someone to come in earlier, which means that I should be able to go without issue.

Three pm rolls around. I check out with my busser coworker who I’m leaving behind, and I go to a different manager to check out. She then proceeds to argue with me about how I “know that’s not how we roll” and such trying to keep me. I proceed to stand my ground, and she calls in the general manager. The general manager has me come into her office and sit down. They apparently expect me to suddenly work two more hours on the fly without even asking me.

I’m sixteen, I don’t have a car or license, and my ride is waiting on me. I can’t just tell them to wait for another two hours

General Manager: “So, I heard that you were intending to leave at 3:00. Why did you make plans?”

Me: “Because I could see everyone’s schedules, saw my replacement was due to come in at 3:00, and planned accordingly.”

General Manager: “So, you just assumed you would be getting off at 3:00?”

Me: “I guess?”

General Manager: “Did you call a manager to see when exactly you were to be off?”

Me: “No.”

I am astounded that I have to even think of calling a manager just to see when I will get off. I don’t think management would want all of us constantly calling to make sure we’ll be off anytime we want to make after-work plans.

General Manager: “Okay. So, you assumed you’d be getting off at 3:00. You know that isn’t how our schedules work. Just because it says, ’10:15 to 3:00 pm,’ that doesn’t mean you’ll be getting off at 3:00.”

This throws me for a loop; why bother with printing schedules in the first place? You sit here and wonder why people are upset with their schedules when you don’t even follow them yourself?

I sit there in silence.

General Manager: “The best I can do is to get you out of here at 4:00 pm.”

Me: “That won’t work.”

General Manager: “Have a little bit of compassion. [Coworker]’s grandmother just died. You were in a sticky situation, too, and people took up for you.”

This is a reference to when I had to escape a domestic abuse situation and was unable to work.

Me: “I am truly sorry, but I cannot cover for him.”

General Manager: “So, you’re saying you have to leave right now? Are you sure you want to deal with the consequences?”

Me: “Yes.”

General Manager: “All right. This will be your final written warning. This cannot happen again.”

Me: “Okay.”

General Manager: “I’m very disappointed in you. I thought you had a great work ethic and you were mature and responsible. Now my opinion of you has been changed, probably permanently.”

Me: “Okay, that’s fine.”

General Manager: “You’re free to go.”

I’m going to be putting in my two weeks on Tuesday, along with a written letter disputing the write-up. They tried to get me to sign the write-up, but I declined and said I had a response in writing that I would be submitting. They frustratedly agreed and let me continue my shift the next night.

My first non-internship IT role was as the sole actual IT person for a small community clinic. The layout was like this: the main building had a 10Mbps/5Mbps connection. The office building had a dedicated fiber run from it to the main clinic building. The small satellite clinic had a dedicated T1 connection to the main clinic.

There was one domain controller on the entire system. One. It was a pizza box system because VMware was new and expensive. (It was not really that expensive, but that’s what they kept telling me.) It was running on Windows Server 2003 R2 (2008 was a new thing at the time). This was right about the time Windows Server 2000 SP4 went EOL (end-of-life).

The issue? They had slow login times at the satellite clinic. Five people worked in that clinic, and every morning, at logon, it would take the users anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes to successfully log on to their systems. We continually received help desk tickets on the issue. Every time I went to test with the user who submitted the ticket, the login time was long but not fifteen minutes — more like five.

Finally, I got fed up with it, and I put an old desktop computer in between the router and the switch at the remote clinic, running a free packet analyzer to help me troubleshoot. Surely there was something amiss here.

The next morning, I came in and checked the logs. Well, that’s weird. Why was SMB (Server Message Block protocol) pushing a ton of traffic when they log on? I checked the domain controller. Well, that’d do it: roaming profiles. Every morning, those users would log in at the same time and try to push MASSIVE amounts of user documents across that 1.5-Mbps T1. Every morning, those users would call the help desk and say, “It’s taking forever to log in.” And every morning, I would work with a user, and the login time would be far less, because the system wasn’t powered off, and therefore, the profile would stay cached.

I went to my boss, who was the Director of Finance.

Me: “Hey, [Boss], I figured out why they take forever to log in every morning.”

Boss: “Yeah? What’s that?”

Me: “They’re using roaming profiles.”

Boss: “What’s that?”

I sighed and proceeded to explain roaming profiles in as close to an orange crayon method as I could.

Boss: “Okay, so what’s the fix?”

Me: “Either we disable roaming profiles, or they need a local domain controller. We should have two anyway, just in case something goes awry with one or the other.”

Boss: “We don’t have money for that, and we can’t disable their profiles being backed up to the server. What else you got?”

Me: “A lot of unhappy users, that’s what we’ve got. I’ll explain what’s wrong to them, and then you can explain why we can’t fix it.”

Boss: “Can’t you just do it? You’re the IT guy.”

Me: “Sure, but I’m going to tell them who told me we couldn’t fix it.”

The next step was that I went to her boss, the clinic director. That conversation went as well as the previous one had. Same response: no money, and we can’t change settings.

Okay, back to the drawing board.

I went to our boneyard, a room in the basement of the office building where we stored old, washed-up PCs before they’d get recycled. I found an old PC with a halfway usable processor. It was an AMD Athlon XP 3200, with a Bioware motherboard with four memory slots. I managed to dig up four 2GB DDR DIMMs (ram). Yes, they were old then. They’re ancient now.

I dug around and found four 250GB 5200RPM 3.5″ hard drives. The motherboard had SATA on it and a built-in RAID controller (life saver). I set up the four drives in RAID 5. I continued digging, trying to find a Server 2003 license. I was unable to locate that, but I found a Server 2000 SP4. I said, “Screw it,” and installed that, promoted it to DC, replicated the remote users’ profiles to it, and changed their targets. I took the server to the remote site and installed it.

I got a call from that site the next day.

User: “Oh, wow! You fixed it! It took almost no time to log in today! Thank you so much!”

Me: “You’re welcome. Let us know if you have any more issues with it, okay?”

User: “Will do!”

I called my boss.

Me: “I fixed the satellite office.”

Boss: “How?”

Me: “Using old equipment that should’ve been recycled years ago. It’s a bandaid fix. We need to have a new server in the budget, period.”

Boss: “I’ll forward your request to [Big Boss].”

Budget time rolled around: no server. The justification? “It’s working now, so why do we need it?”

I left that place within a month after that.

It might still be running this way. I am not sure.

I work at a farm supply store and we have online pickup for customers. I’m minding my own business while checking out a customer.

As I’m finishing up the transaction, an older lady comes in. I watch her walk up next to the wall of the register booth out of the corner of my eye. Usually, when people hang out right next to me like that, it appears they’ve forgotten how lines work. Luckily for her, there aren’t any other people in line behind my current customer.

I turn around to talk to the lady, and she shoves the printed online receipt in my face and waves it around. That ticks me off right away, but I put on my customer service smile and greet her.

I read the print-off, and yep, there are no name or order details. Perfect. I get the lady’s name and go unlock the cabinet to find her order.

I grab the stupid thing and turn around, and the lady is nowhere to be seen. I look out the doors and see her walking out. Okay, she’s probably getting a cart or something, right?

Oh, nope. She’s gesturing for me to follow her. I die a little inside.

I hold this order in one arm while I scan out the paper. Keep in mind that this is a fifty-pound bag. I follow her across our big-a** parking lot and dump the bag in her trunk. She shuts her trunk door and gets in her car without so much as a thank-you.

Honestly, I can say this is the first time someone’s done that. Usually, people will ask for help or put the bag in their own cart. I get it if you can’t lift the bags, but ask, d*** it!

I work at a popular bakery in my town. As a server, my job is to take your order, put it in a box, and take it to the register. When your box exceeds a certain number of pastries, I am required to get them from the racks we have in the back. This is because we do not want to empty the displays in the front, and the pastries from the back are usually a little bit fresher.

A customer orders a dozen pastries, so I excuse myself to the back to get them. I come back, and she is furious:

Customer: “I like the ones right there in the front! Not from the back, but those!”

I calmly take the rack from the display and place it on the table behind it; she can’t see the box with the pastries nor the rack from the front. I pretend to scramble things up and move pastries around.

I do ABSOLUTELY nothing, not even move a pastry. I show her the box, and she promptly replies.

Customer: “Yes, those are the ones I like!”

My coworkers and I had a good laugh about it in the break room later that day.