CONTENT WARNING: Violence, Animal Abuse

I like to consider myself a very gentle person. I live in the dorms. It’s against the dorm rules, but I recently acquired a semi-feral kitten, and I’ve been secretly taking care of her in my dorms.

One night, my roommate comes back drunk. He’s absolutely sloshed. He bangs open the door of the dorm, walks up to me, and presses his chest against mine.

Roommate: “I don’t f****** like you. I’mma… I’mma f****** kick your a**. You’re so f******… f****** uptight all the time. You gotta relaaaax some. Let’s fight. Come on. Let’s fight. Let’s get these feelings out and fight.”

Me: “Yeah, no. I’m not going to fight you. You’re drunk. Go to bed.”

He looks around the dorm. First, he knocks my books off of the table.

Roommate: “Come on. Fight me, man. Fight me. We gotta work… gotta work these feelings out.”

Me: “No.”

Then, he grabs my laptop and slams it against the wall. It breaks into pieces. I pull out my cell phone and start to dial 911 since I figure this has gone far enough, but he slaps that out of my hand, too, and stomps on it.

Roommate: “Come on, man. Be a f****** man, not a p***y. Fight me.”

Me: “No.”

I was looking for a way out now; I was planning to run to the Resident Advisor’s office.

My kitten chose this inopportune time to make a noise.  [Roommate]’s eyes lit on the kitten. Before I could stop him, he grabbed the kitten and slammed her against the wall. Hard.

Lord help me, I started giving him that beating he wanted. I grabbed my desk. Not stuff off of the desk. Not my books. I grabbed my whole desk and, in a fit of hysterical strength, I hit him with it.

He went down. I kept beating on him, punching and kicking. I didn’t let him stand up. The only thing that stopped me was hearing my kitten start to whine.

I grabbed her and ran out, looking for a late-night emergency vet clinic.

The next day, I got back into my dorm, and my roommate was in his room, apparently asleep. The next time I saw him awake and active, he had casts on. We didn’t talk about it. I don’t know if he even remembered it.

I requested emergency roommate reassignment from the RA, and we were reassigned.

We’re running a very awkward promotion where we’ll do your tax prep for half of what a competitor charged you last year if you switch to us this year. So, if you came to us last year, you get no discount. If you went to another tax company last year, and they charged you $300, we’ll charge you $150, regardless of the difficulty of your taxes.

A lot of people took advantage of this. They had very simple taxes last year, but this year a life change made them much more complex… and they get them much cheaper than they should. Honestly? More power to those people.

I see it as my job to make sure that the client pays the minimum possible — to the government or to my company.

This client, though, was a moron. Last year, he went to a tax prep office that was inside a Walmart. This year, he came to us.

The first thing I noticed about his previous year’s return was that someone had slapped a grand total of seven completely blank Schedule Cs onto his taxes, along with a number of other unnecessary returns. According to his receipt, he was originally charged $650.

His taxes were very simple: two W2s, one kid, and some unemployment, for a total charge of $210.

The client demanded the half-off deal. I explained that I could not offer it because he was already being charged less than half of what he’d paid last year.

He made a huge stink about it, so I grabbed a manager. The manager shrugged and keyed in a manual price increase to $325, which the client then happily paid.

Related:
Math Is Your Friend, Part 10
Math Is Your Friend, Part 9
Math Is Your Friend, Part 8
Math Is Your Friend, Part 7
Math Is Your Friend, Part 6

I work in IT for a large company in the financial industry that has several divisions. It also has quite a few detached agents that don’t technically work for us but sell our services. I don’t know what it is, but almost universally, they seem to believe they are God’s gift to the company and are very rude and impatient.

I get a call from an agent one evening because he can’t log into his laptop. This is a common occurrence and is usually just a simple matter of unlocking their account. This time is different, though. He has forgotten his password completely, so there is a whole long process to go through with lots of steps. He’s overall not the worst so far, but I can tell he’s getting impatient.

I have him restart his computer, and then the REAL issue reveals itself, which turns out to be an entirely different login than what he originally said it was. When I realize this, I tell him we’ll have to do a different process, and he drops this classy line.

Agent: “Can I just talk to someone who knows what the f*** they’re doing?”

Me: “[Agent], I’d just like to remind you that these calls are all recorded. If you continue to speak to me that way, I’ll end the call.”

Of course, he doesn’t apologize, but he does sort of huff dismissively. We finally get to the point where I’m telling him his new temporary password, which has a dollar sign in it, and he suddenly has no idea how to type that. I’m surprised that he, someone who allegedly uses a computer every day for his job in the FINANCIAL industry, doesn’t know how to type a dollar sign, but I tell him it’s SHIFT + 4.

Agent: “Well, okay, because there’s more than one dollar sign on a keyboard.”

I got him signed in and squared away and hung up.

Then, I closely studied my own keyboard to make sure I wasn’t the stupid one because, on a standard English US keyboard, there is definitely only ONE dollar sign.

When I am in college, I eventually move from the dorms to my own apartment. About six months into the year, the fire alarm over the wall AC unit starts chirping. (I have two fire alarms: one in the kitchen and one in the bedroom over the wall AC unit.)

I email the landlord. He says to replace the batteries, so I do.

It keeps chirping. I email the landlord again.

Me: “I’ve replaced the batteries, but it’s still chirping. Can I get maintenance over here?”

He doesn’t reply, initially, and I wind up sleeping in the IMU (The Iowa Memorial Union) because the chirping is too loud for me to sleep through.

The next day, the landlord replies:

Landlord: “I’m not your dad. Figure it out yourself.”

I shrug and take the batteries out entirely. It continues to chirp. I go online and look for solutions. The recommended solution is to replace the fire alarm.

I go to the hardware store, pick out a fire alarm, and take the current one off of the wall. It’s wired into the electrical system. I’m not an electrician, and that’s a bridge too far for me.

I email the landlord with my findings and request a maintenance person to fix the fire alarm.

Landlord: “Just take the batteries out.”

Me: “No, I already tried that, and it didn’t work.”

Landlord: “Leave it. I’ll deal with it during break.”

Me: “That’s months away, and I literally cannot sleep in the room with it.”

Landlord: “Just solve it yourself. I don’t care how.”

So, I called the fire marshall. They sent someone over to do an inspection and said that it was, indeed, not livable and that the fire alarm unit was expired. I also showed them my email chain.

A couple of days later, a maintenance guy came by and replaced the fire alarm.

The landlord was all, “You didn’t have to get the fire marshall involved,” and, “Just so you know, I’m going to take your deposit for this,” and, “Couldn’t we have worked this out like adults?”

We did work it out like adults. And part of working it out like adults is going to the authorities when necessary.

Six managers ago, I was assigned to clean the office kitchen. I was given simple rules to follow: 

• I would clean every Friday after 6:00 pm when my work day ended. 
• All overtime for this cleaning was authorized. 
• Any food without a name and date was to be thrown out. 
• Any food WITH a name and a date was to be thrown out if it was longer than two weeks since the date. 
• Any food with a name and a date in the future because someone was being a smart-a** was also to be thrown out.

The years came and went, and the managers also came and went. Eventually, I was the longest-running employee in our section.

And apparently, unbeknownst to me, the rules of the kitchen and my purpose were forgotten. My staying late every Friday was taken as some sort of arcane ritual performed by a long-running employee for unknown reasons… as were many of the tasks I regularly handled.

Frankly, by this point, people mostly left me alone to do my thing and did their things around me. It’s a weird feeling gradually going from being the youngest employee on-site to the oldest.

I started overhearing office gossip and rumors about food theft. I never had any problem with it. The newest manager, a pup in their twenties who used “they/them” pronouns — and I’m not judgmental about that — decided to assign staff to be guards. I volunteered for guard duty for a couple of shifts, even. No thief was found.

In all this time, no one made the connection that the food was all vanishing on Friday night, nor did anyone connect it to my staying late on Friday, nor to the fact that the kitchen was clean every Monday. (I put in a LOT of elbow grease every Friday night to keep that kitchen spotless.)

Next, the manager got their hands on some cameras and installed them. This is when they finally “caught” me and called me into their office, demanding that I explain the food theft.

Me: “What food theft?”

Manager: “We have you on camera!”

They brought up the video. It became increasingly clear, just watching the video, that I was cleaning.

Me: “I was cleaning. It’s my job.”

Manager: “You’re an engineer.”

Me: “Somebody has to clean. It was assigned to me.”

Manager: “Who assigned it to you?”

Me: “[Manager six managers ago].”

Manager: “Who’s that?”

Me: “Before your time.”

Manager: “And… you didn’t think to tell anyone?”

Me: “Now you’re making me sound unreasonable. I honestly thought everyone knew. I’ve only been doing it for more than twenty years.”

Manager: “Clearly, we didn’t. Why are we even paying an engineer of your seniority to clean? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to have a janitor do it?”

Me: “I was asked to do it, so I did it.”

Manager: *Pauses* “Right. I’m going to look into having the janitors do it. It’s not your job anymore. I’m not writing you up for it, but it’s not your job anymore, okay?”

Me: “That’s fine by me.”

True enough, the next week, the janitors cleaned the kitchen. They also took pictures of each food item they threw out and posted it to a new corkboard in the kitchen so that my coworkers could see that the food wasn’t stolen, just tossed.