I was interviewing with a company to do graphics design and marketing work, or so I thought. They said I seemed to be a good fit and told me to come by the next day for a job shadow.

I showed up in my best business suit and a pair of nice confident heels. They told me I’d be “riding along” with another girl.

To my surprise, we got into a car and drove a long way — about an hour and a half to a small residential neighborhood. I was starting to suspect ax murderers until they gave me the pamphlets; the position was actually door-to-door sales.

The humidity was nasty, and my suit was not the right clothing for this. A few hours in, one of my heels got caught in a grate, and I lost my balance, went down, and heard a snap. My foot started swelling up.

I wanted to go home, but my ride-along was scared that she wouldn’t make her quota and that she’d be fired if she didn’t.

I called my dad. He drove out to pick me up from his home, which is in a different town from where this happened… which was also a different town from my home. This was about a three-hour drive. Dad drove me back to my car, and I drove my car home — which did not help the pain in my foot. I took a bunch of pills and went to bed.

The next day, my foot was even worse, swollen, and purple. I went to urgent care and found that I had an articular fracture.

At first, the people I had been interviewing with tried to weasel out of paying my medical bill, so I had to contact an Employment Attorney. That fixed it; I got my medical bills covered, the lawyer’s fees covered, and some shut-up money to cover rent and necessities while I recovered.

Eventually, I did find a job doing actual graphics design work for advertising, but the break never did heal correctly. I can’t wear anything but orthopedic flats anymore, no more heels (I used to love heels), and I bring a cane or a walker with me wherever I go in case the pain flares up.

Fun fact: the girl I was riding along with did not make her quota, got fired for it, blamed me for it, and sent me a nasty message about it. The attorney and I used that as proof that I was in fact riding along with her when the company attempted to deny it.

I am working an after-school shift at a fast food joint. I clock in and am set to hand out drive-thru orders. As I give my first customer of the day his food, he has a request.

Customer: “Hey, can I talk to her?”

He gestures behind me. I turn around to see one of my managers. This manager is fairly young and also about five feet tall. From the tone of the guy’s voice, I think he might know her, and since he can see her, I’m not giving him confirmation that she is at the store. I go over to my manager.

Me: “Hey. This guy wants to talk to you.”

Manager: “Nope. Just send him on.”

She sounds annoyed, and I’m a bit surprised because the guy hasn’t been rude to me.

Me: “What do I tell him?”

Manager: “Just send him on. I’m not talking to him.”

I go back to the window and tell the guy that my manager won’t talk to him. I forget how much protest he makes, but he leaves. Afterward, I talk to my manager again.

Me: “What was that all about?”

Manager: “Oh, he asked for a manager at the pay window and refused to believe I was a manager because I’m so small.”

Just before I started college, I worked for a new location of a chain of bakeries. I was hired before this location even opened, so I was there from the start. We baked bread and sweets from scratch daily and also sold sandwiches made from our bread. Understandably, this made a lot of customers ask if we also sold soup. For some reason, though, corporate didn’t allow new locations of this bakery to sell soup until they had been open for at least six months.

Most customers were understanding and moved on after this was explained. But not one older gentleman I spoke with.

Older Gentleman: “So, you sell sandwiches, but no soup?”

Me: “No, sir, I’m sorry, but we don’t sell soup. Unfortunately, corporate doesn’t allow us to sell soup until we’ve been open for at least six months.”

Older Gentleman: “But why can’t you just get some soup and sell it?”

Me: “Because we’re not allowed to. Our owner is actually working with corporate right now to see if she can get permission to sell it sooner because so many people have asked! But so far, we cannot.”

This went back and forth in slightly different variations many times. Overall, I think this conversation took at least ten or fifteen minutes. Because of the way our store was run, there were no managers to send him to, and I tried not to send issues to the owner unless I had no other options. The guy wasn’t being aggressive, just persistent, so I kept talking to him.

At one point, I remember him saying “You don’t sell soup for the children of Crown Point?” I felt like saying, “No, sir, nor for you or anyone else!”, but I refrained this time. However, I wasn’t so patient by the end of the conversation.

Older Gentleman: “Well, can’t you just go to the store, buy some soup, put it in a pot, heat it on your stove, and sell it?”

Me: “No, sir. As I’ve explained, we are simply not allowed to sell soup right now. And besides that, we are a bakery! We don’t have any pots or a stove; we only have bread pans and an oven! We absolutely cannot sell soup right now!”

Finally, he was satisfied that eighteen-year-old me could not magically sell him soup and he left, thank goodness! It was such a strange interaction. The owner did prevail eventually, and we were able to sell soup before we’d been open for six months, so we got some soup warmers and we were off. So many people were happy, but I don’t remember if I ever saw that gentleman again.

I work at a popular sandwich, salad, soup, and bagel restaurant. This takes place during the global health event and a time when we are notoriously short-staffed. I am working the opening shift at the front registers: 6:00 am to 2:00 pm. Based on where I am living, this meant I was up at 4:30 to make it to work on time.

We have a regular customer who consistently calls in and orders upwards of fifteen special drinks to be picked up: frozen coffee, smoothies, hot lattes, the works. Almost every drink has some sort of modification that changes how the drinks are made. More often than not, due to her order, on Fridays, we usually have an extra person up front to help out with her order.

Despite the extra people, we usually tell her it will be about an hour before she can pick up her drinks.

On this particular Friday, I am the only person working as front cashier, which includes making all the drinks and grabbing other items like bagels and pastries. We have a line out the door and a drive-thru line wrapped around the building, and the phone is ringing off the hook. I’m working my best to keep up. Most of these customers are my regulars who I know, so I can have their stuff set up ahead of time.

About an hour later, things are still crazy. We’ve had the next cashier coming in call off, so I’m alone until our lunch rush at eleven. [Awesome Manager] tells me to call him up if I need help. In walks in our regular customer, who can see that our line is through the door and that I’m the only one up front.

When she finally gets to the front of the line:

Me: “Good morning. What can I get started for you today?”

Regular: “Hi. I tried to call in, but no one is answering the phone.”

Me: “I’m so sorry about that. I’m the only one up here right now, and it’s been through the door all day. What can I start for you?”

She gives the reward information for the business that orders the drinks and then starts listing all fifteen drinks. After getting her whole order in and repeating it back to her:

Me: “Okay, you’re all set. It will be about half an hour before the drinks will be ready. Have a nice day!”

Regular: “Um. Excuse me? I came to the store. Doesn’t that mean you have to serve me first?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but as this is still a large quantity of drinks and we’re very short-staffed today, I have to make all of the drinks between helping other customers.”

Regular: “But I came into the store to order, so now you’re going to make all the other people in line wait until I get my drinks.”

I am sensing a problem worse than I can handle right now.

Me: “Let me go get a manager for you.”

I go to the back, explain the situation, and for some reason, I start crying. I’ve been up since 4:30, been up front all day by myself, and just can’t take it anymore. [Awesome Manager] comes and talks to the customer.

Awesome Manager: “Ma’am, please understand that, even though you’ve come in to order, you’ve still ordered the same thing you would have ordered over the phone, and it will therefore still take the same amount of time to make.”

[Awesome Manager] stayed up front to help me, and we switched between taking orders and making drinks. The regular showed up to pick up her drinks half an hour later and found me (finally with no line) finishing up her last couple of drinks. As my manager and I had discussed, I went back to let him know she was back.

From that point on, she ordered her drinks online so we could print out her order and start on it as soon as possible. She never gave us any more issues, and a couple of months later, I had a new job closer to where I lived.

I am a store manager of a convenience store. I have only been a manager for about a month now, but I have been training for over a year, and I actually successfully ran another store for three months while IN training, raising sales and customer satisfaction, etc. My new store is bigger than my old store and has twice the staff, but they’re severely undertrained and six months behind on stuff. With our inventory a month away, I know I have my work cut out for me.

For some reason, I come in to find myself with two assistant store managers. One thinks he’s in charge but doesn’t want to do the work. Another WANTS to be in charge but doesn’t know HOW. I decide I’ll start with him. If I can get him trained, then he’ll be able to take a load off my shoulders and step up to where he could be.

I can tell immediately that I am going to have issues with [Assistant Manager], but I try to let it slide. When he starts being late for work on a daily basis, I pull him aside, ask if everything is all right, ask if he needs time off, and ask if we should change his schedule to suit his home life a little better.

He just grumbles that he is fine and just wants to work. Then, he asks MY boss — the district leader — to tell me to stop pestering him about it. She is furious at his tone and makes the forty-minute drive to talk to him.

He gets really quiet but seems to understand that what he did was NOT okay.

I let it go for a while, but then he starts texting me during his shift if we are both working, saying he is sick and needs to go home. More than once, I assume he is at the register only to find a line waiting for help, with [Assistant Manager] nowhere to be seen. I’ll check my phone to find a text from twenty minutes ago, an hour ago, or whatever, saying he is leaving.

I pull him off to the side again and ask if he is okay, if something at home is interfering with his job, if I should cut his hours temporarily, or if we can change the shifts he works.

He grumbles again that he is fine and he’ll try to get better at being on time.

A few days later, it gets worse. MUCH worse — like, arriving two hours late without telling anyone and leaving an hour early worse.

I text him, asking if he is okay, if I need to take him off the schedule for a few days, or if he needs some personal time. I am more than willing to work with him to help him get through this, but he completely ignores me, except to send a text saying he won’t be in that day with no explanation.

I talk to Human Resources, and they say I have to chat with him and lay down the law, as it were.

The next time I see [Assistant Manager], I greet him three times, and he completely ignores me, walking right past me. I chalk it up to possibly not feeling well from the day before and let it slide, but I know I have to talk to him, so I call him into the office.

Everything takes a turn from there.

The employee who was sent to bring him to the office, whispers to me:

Employee: “[Assistant Manager] was just standing in the aisle, watching the basketball game on his phone, not working.”

[Assistant Manager] comes in with the game still playing on his phone, and he’s MAD.

Assistant Manager: “I don’t wanna talk! I’m done talking! I just want to work!”

He’s never talked to me. He barely says two words to me every shift. He refuses to talk about ANYTHING unless it’s something he’s found fault in about me.

Me: *Looking directly at his phone* “You want to work?“

He starts ranting about how I give everyone else his hours, how he never gets his full thirty, how he has kids to feed, how I am wasting his time talking to him, etc.

Me: “The only reason I have hours to give someone else is that you keep calling off. You don’t talk to me, so I don’t know what you need or how we can fix this, but I schedule you for thirty hours a week, and you only show up for fifteen.”

Assistant Manager: “F*** this.”

Me: “You walk out that door, you’re fired.”

Assistant Manager: “You sure about that? You sure you’re gonna fire me? You sure? I have kids to feed! You gonna starve them?”

Me: “If you stay, we can talk, and you can keep your job.”

Assistant Manager: “F*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you!”

Yes, I counted; it was twelve times.

As he slams the door behind him:

Me: “Yeah, that’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me at this job.”

An hour later, [Assistant Manager] sends me a private text. I am instructed to open it and take a screenshot to send to HR, in case it is a threat. It isn’t, but it contains some… choice words, including calling me a f****** idiot for thinking I could fire him because he did nothing to be fired for. (Let’s ignore the fact that I live in a non-contest state, so I don’t even NEED a reason.) NOTHING. He then ends the message with:

Assistant Manager: “I’ve hated you since the moment I met you. I’m extremely smarter than you, a better worker, and better looking than you. You’re gonna die in that store, and they’re gonna replace you before your funeral. You have nothing on me, ya dumb b****!”

After sharing this with my boss, I say:

Me: “So… he was just mad this whole time because an ugly girl that’s been training for the position for over a year now got the store manager job when he thought he — a man with two college degrees, who has been with the company for five whole months and hasn’t even finished half his training — deserved it? Okay. That makes so much sense.”

When I didn’t respond to THIS message, he sent a group message to my boss and me, bringing race into the equation. I LAUGHED, because yeah, “a stupid, ugly white girl” got the job over a “smart, handsome Black man,” but MY BOSS is a gorgeous Black woman who is married with kids and never lets ANYONE hold her back.

I’ve been emotionally drained for DAYS dealing with him.

And since he announced that he quit so I wouldn’t have to fire him, he is not eligible for unemployment benefits. So, should I feel bad for his kids? I do… that they have a father like that.