Our store regularly lists things on Craigslist. We have a really nice chainsaw that we’re selling. We put it on Craigslist at closing one day, and when we all come into work, we have about twelve replies from people wanting to buy it.

We copy-paste the same reply to everyone basically saying it is first come, first serve.

The first guy that shows up kicks the tires for a good fifteen minutes, which is really annoying everyone. The saw runs great and is in like-new condition, but…

Customer: *Complaining tone* “I can’t run a compression test on it, so you should give me a discount since it might have a weak motor.”

Owner: “It’s already quite significantly discounted.”

Customer: “Yeah… I don’t know… I think you need to go lower for me since it’s used.”

After a few more minutes of arguing, another customer walks in.

New Customer: “Do you still have the saw?”

He then sees it on the counter and puts the full asking price on the table in cash without even asking to test it out.

Owner: *To the first customer* “You going to pay asking price for this? Yes or no?”

Customer: “Uh… I don’t know—”

Owner: *To the new customer* “It’s yours.” 

The first customer swore at the owner, slammed our door open while walking out, and peeled out of our parking lot in his car.

About a year into my last job with a military contractor, they put this guy in the night shift supervisor position, and it was almost immediately apparent that this guy couldn’t lead rats off a sinking ship. He would agree that the upper management were unreasonable a**holes — in private. But as soon as they were in front of him — usually wailing about some imaginary problem that they literally invented because they had nothing better to do — he would alternate between just sitting there saying nothing while we got berated and written up for fabricated reasons or being down on the floor doing everything short of kissing their a**es.

[Night Shift Supervisor] was also terrified of addressing any kind of issue between employees, so he always went down the “just figure it out” road. He was completely useless about it; he would claim to go address the problem and then do absolutely nothing. The few times that he did something, all it took was even slightly raising your voice to him and he would run away with his tail between his legs like a whipped dog.

The final straw came for me when [Night Shift Supervisor] approached me with the first shift supervisor. If we messed up something on our shift, we were expected to fix it. If the first shift messed something up… we were also expected to fix it because, for whatever reason, the day shift was never held responsible for anything at all. So, they approached me with a rocket tube; the first shift idiot who did my job had royally messed up the positioning of the lot number and ammunition number that got printed on every rocket body. They expected me to fix it because of course they did.

I was logging myself into the new production lot at that moment, which I think they waited for so they could sneak up on me with this nonsense. So, I listened, and then:

Me: *To [First Shift Supervisor]* “Day shift should fix their own screw-ups; we always get their mistakes to fix on top of doing our own jobs at night.”

This guy had the absolutely brass stones to tell me:

First Shift Supervisor: “You’re making that up! Your shift is never expected to clean up after day shift; that’s never the case! If you don’t agree with that, then maybe you’re in the wrong place.”

And right then, I noticed that [Night Shift Supervisor] was just… standing there listening to this fool tell me that something I had watched happen for almost five and a half years never happened. And he said nothing in my defense — not a g**d*** word.

I decided that the day shift fool was right; I was in the wrong place. So, I unclipped my badge — before I turned around so they couldn’t see it coming until it was too late — and then spun around, clipped it onto HIS shirt, and said:

Me: “Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to go find the right place.”

And I walked away. They were both literally stuttering as I left.

About two years before the pandemic, I was working as a nurse at a mid-sized hospital. One of the members of our cleaning staff left due to a shoulder injury, but a few months later, she started selling breakfast burritos to the hospital staff. She would go unit to unit with an insulated bag full of the best burritos you’ve ever had, and since she had worked at the hospital, she knew exactly when to show up so that the night shift staff had a good meal to take home and the day shift staff started their day with a good breakfast.

It’s important to note that she never once approached any patients or patient visitors, nor did she ever go anywhere that was off-limits to the public. She would exit the elevator, approach the nurse’s station, ask if anyone wanted burritos, collect her payment, and go up to the next floor. It’s possible that this was against some policy somewhere, but since our floor manager also got burritos every day, we were all content to not go looking for it.

Except for one nurse. She didn’t even work on our floor; she worked on a locked floor, so she hadn’t seen the burrito lady before she was floated to our unit. I still don’t know why, but she was really bothered about it and grumbled about it her whole shift. We pointed out everything I said before — that she didn’t approach patients, that she didn’t go anywhere the general public couldn’t go, etc. — but to no avail. She complained about it, and in the face of an actual complaint, the floor manager told the burrito lady to stop coming. We were all pissed about this, not only because it cut off our burrito connection, but also because this hustle had been making up for the job she had lost cleaning our very hospital.

I was venting about the whole thing to a friend of mine on the cleaning staff as I left my shift one morning, and she did a genuine cartoon side-to-side check if the coast was clear.

Friend: “Go to the backup ICU waiting room before you go home.”

Our ICU had a second waiting room that only opened at 9:00, so it was an odd place to direct someone at 7:00 am. I went down, and who did I find in the empty waiting room but the burrito lady? Apparently, after she’d been kicked off of the floors, the ICU manager had offered to let her use the extra waiting room to sell her burritos from before it opened. Even with the blessing of the unit manager, though, she still wanted to keep the operation under wraps except for people she could trust to keep their mouths shut — luckily, that included me!

She stopped selling when the global health crisis hit, understandably, but she still made the best breakfast burritos my husband and I have ever had.

I am at the public library with my nephew, my sister, and my brother-in-law. My nephew looks like my sister, and my sister looks like me, so in a roundabout way, you could say that my nephew looks like me.

I’m sixteen, and I look younger. My sister goes to the bathroom, and my brother-in-law goes to get books, so I am left alone while my nephew plays in the children’s area. Another patron of the library approaches me.

Patron: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

I look around, unsure if they’re talking to me.

Patron: “You! How old were you when he was born?”

Me: *Not catching on to the subtle undertones* “Oh, fourteen.”

Patron: “And you’re just walking around like it’s normal?”

Me: *Still not getting it* “Uh…”

Enter my brother-in-law, who’s more than ten years older than me and looks it.

Nephew: “Dada!”

My brother-in-law picks him up, and the patron looks shocked.

Me: “Are you okay?”

Patron: “This is disgusting!”

Brother-In-Law: “We’re in a library. Leave us alone.”

The patron looks disgusted and opens their mouth. Then, my sister comes back.

Nephew: “Mama!”

And cue all the air leaking out of the patron’s balloon.

Me: *Still confused* “What’s going on?”

Brother-In-Law: “Some judgmental stranger thought you were an unmarried teenage mother.”

Me: *Blinks*

Sister: “Not that it would have been any of their business if you were.”

I was on break and checking my local state’s lottery website. One of the available lotteries would pay out $10,000 per month for the rest of my life. I figured the odds were ridiculously low, but I decided to play.

My boss wandered in and asked me what I was up to. I explained the winnings and my boss scoffed.

Boss: “Not worth it. Who can survive on only $10,000 a month, anyway?”

I stared at him until he shifted uncomfortably under my stare.

Boss: “What?”

Me: “[Boss], how much money do you think you’re paying ME?!”

My boss shut his mouth and fled from the break room. I just shook my head at how out of touch he was with reality. 

He avoided me for over a week.