I’m out with the family, including my eight-year-old twins. We stop at a cart for some hot dogs and fries, sit down on a nearby bench, and chow down. As I get up to clean, my son says:

Son: “My compliments to the chef!”

Me: *Chuckles* “I didn’t make it, kiddo.”

I step away to throw out our trash. As I turn around, I see my son standing on his tip-toes in front of the hot dog cart. Then, I see the guy behind the cart get a very somber look on his face, and he sticks his hand out and shakes my son’s hand. My son comes trotting back laughing.

Son: “He called me ‘sir’!”

I smiled and waved to the man, who smiled and waved back.

I think about that man at times and am thrilled that my little boy’s “compliments to the chef” had to have brightened his day — and his response to my kiddo brightened mine.

This was over ten years ago when e-readers were becoming a thing. On a brisk winter day at the bookstore, I was assigned to the e-reader kiosk. It was set up right in the store entrance to be the first thing anyone saw. I was instructed not to leave the kiosk for any reason (lest thieves get their hands on the sample units).

After an hour, I was nearly frozen, with cold wind gusting in every time the doors opened. I buzzed the manager on duty.

Me: “Can I get someone to cover me for five minutes so I can bring a coffee back to the kiosk? I can barely feel my fingers.”

Manager: “Sorry, the policy of no drinks where customers can see them stands.”

Me: “I can put it down behind the kiosk counter. No one will see it, and none of the tech is back there to be in danger of spills.”

Manager: “Policy!”

Me: “Can I at least have cover to run back to the break room for my gloves?”

Manager: “No one’s available. Tough it out. It’s not that cold.”

Time passed, and I kept chafing my hands together and tucking them into my cuffs. Three women who had paused to look at the e-reader saw me.

Woman #1: “Honey, you must be freezing!”

Me: “It’s pretty cold!”

Woman #2: “They should let you wear a coat, or at least keep a hot drink handy!”

Me: “Well, I might be able to get my coat and gloves on my break, but the store worries about liquids near all this expensive technology.”

Woman #3: “Well, for heaven’s sake, they’re making bank on hot drinks today, but they won’t let you keep warm? That’s just silly.”

They took an e-reader brochure and went into the store proper, and I continued to shiver. About fifteen minutes later, the head cashier walked up with a lidded cup.

Head Cashier: “Hot cocoa. Keep it behind the counter, and don’t drink it when you have customers.”

Me: “…thank you?”

Head Cashier: “Thank the three ladies who saw the manager in the cafe and gave him an earful about the ‘poor frozen thing’ working in front of the entrance without anything to keep her warm. I’m instructed to tell you this is a one-time thing, and you can get your gloves on your break.”

That cocoa, plus my gloves eventually, got me through the rest of my time at the kiosk that day. Thank you, ladies!

A couple of years after the housing balloon popped in the mid-2000s, I was let go from my job along with a dozen other people. The company we were working at was a flooring installation company that provided materials, tools, etc., for installing flooring, and with the housing market being so bad, business was way down, and the company let a lot of us go.

Now that I was gainfully unemployed, I had to do the whole prettying up of the resume and work on finding a job. I didn’t find a full-time job for almost a full year, but during that year, I had a couple of part-time jobs that helped pay some of the bills. One of them I absolutely hated, but work was work.

The job I hated was working as a cell phone sales representative for a kiosk location that rented space in a giant retail chain company. I’m not a people person, and having to put on a cheery face and mingle with people is absolutely draining and brutal for me. By no means were the cell phone provider company and the retail chain company affiliated, but since people shopping at the retail chain store didn’t care (or possibly didn’t know), I turned into a “go-to” guy for questions about electronics sold and locations for all other merchandise. I had to constantly talk to people all day.

My supervisor had been working the cell phone kiosk for the past eighteen months, and she knew her stuff, but she was arrogant and unwilling to work with anyone who was employed under her. One other person and I worked under her. The other person floated between kiosk locations, and I never officially met this person, but I knew she worked at this location because her name was on the schedule for days I wasn’t.

I had been working at the kiosk for a few weeks. I was going to go out of town for a week, so a month before the trip, well in advance, I informed [Supervisor] and handed the notice to her in writing. She said she’d make it work and it wouldn’t be an issue for me to be gone for a handful of days.

A few days before the trip, I checked the schedule, and [Supervisor] had me on it for four days out of the six days I’d be gone. I was the only one working the kiosk that day, so I had to call her and remind her that I wouldn’t be around and that she’d known about this a month before.

I called her cell phone, and she didn’t answer. That was fine. I wouldn’t leave a message this time; I’d just call again in a bit.

I called a bit later, and still no answer. I left a voicemail about the issue and asked her to call me back.

I didn’t hear from her after a couple of hours, so I called her again. No answer. I left another voicemail.

A couple of hours later, when my shift was about to end and I was closing up the kiosk, I called [Supervisor] one last time since she hadn’t called me back. I left her another voicemail because she didn’t answer.

She never returned my calls from that day.

I wrote a note for her, too, and left it in the lockbox so she’d see it when she came into work the next day. I told her I wouldn’t be around, she’d known about it a month before, and she’d told me it wouldn’t be an issue for me to be gone and she’d cover shifts and get the other rep to cover shifts.

A couple of days later, I was out of town, and that was when I finally got a phone call from [Supervisor]. She was pissed that I wasn’t at work. She said she’d gotten a scathing call from the general manager that no one had opened the kiosk that morning and that I had marked for a no-call-no-show. She was mad that she’d had to go to work on her day off to cover the kiosk. Then, she went on to argue with me that she had never okayed my time off and that I had to come in; otherwise, she’d mark me for no-call-no-shows, and after three of them, I’d be marked as abandoning my position. I chewed her a** about the lie and told her to eff off. Then, I called the general manager and explained the situation.

After talking to [General Manager], he assured me that I wouldn’t be released or fired for the whole situation and that he’d resolve things on the work side. I never did meet [General Manager] in person, but at least he was understanding and had the backs of the employees when they had a problem.

When I got back into town, the first thing I did was go to work and hand in my two-week notice, and the only reason I did this was because [General Manager] was a decent person.

[Supervisor] was still pissed at me because she got her a** chewed by [General Manager] and was written up for poor management of the whole situation, and now she was mad that I was quitting because that meant she’d have to handle more shifts until they found my replacement.

I guess to spite me, [Supervisor] didn’t even bother to schedule me for the last two weeks of my two week notice. I can’t say that hurt my feelings, but I don’t know why she didn’t take advantage of it and schedule me to work every day so she could have them off. I guess maybe she thought she was punishing me; in fact, all she was doing was giving me the awesome gift of never having to deal with her again.

Related:
Please Take Better Notice Of My Notice

I was a Girl Scout in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Part of Cookie Season involved booths — sitting in front of stores and imploring people to buy some of our surplus stock. A lot of people would ask if we took credit cards. This was before Square readers and Zelle were around, so my leader or whichever other girl was running the booth with me (they almost never let me do the talking) would apologetically say that no, we didn’t.

I always wondered: A, how they didn’t realize that people were saying this to be funny, not to be serious, and B, why everybody seemed to think they were making a wholly original joke.

One day, I was manning the booth alone with my leader, and she allowed me to take the lead.

Me: “Hello, sir! Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies?”

Customer: “How much are they?”

Me: “$3.50 a box.”

Customer: *Barely suppressing a smirk* “Do you take credit cards?”

I was fed up after hearing that “joke” approximately seventeen times in the last hour.

Me: “Yes, but we don’t give them back!”

I’m working at a food stall at a public park that’s open all year round. I’m sixteen, and it’s my first job, so I’m being shown the ropes.

Manager: “It’s $2.50 for the hot dogs and $3 for the burger, so it’s very hard to get it wrong.”

Me: “Yeah. That’s a simple menu! What’s that sign saying, ‘Terence pays whatever’?”

Manager: “Terence is our special customer. He pays whatever he can.”

Me: “Oh, that’s nice of you all.”

I spend the day selling snacks and drinks to customers enjoying the park over the summer. It’s a beautiful day, so there is a line of customers getting ice creams. Then, I notice that one member of the line is not like the others.

Me: *To the manager* “There is a German Shepherd in line with the customers.”

Manager: “That’s Terence! What does he have in his mouth?”

Me: “Uh…” *Looking back* “A… stick?”

Manager: “Sticks get him a sausage! Leaves get him a burger patty!”

Me: “Seriously?”

Manager: “Hey, if a dog was able to watch us humans and figure out how the bartering system works, I’m not going to leave that unrewarded!”

That’s how I met Terence, the uncharacteristically intelligent German Shepherd who learned that you have to pay for food.

Apparently, he was doing it for a few weeks before his owner realised what was happening, as he thought he’d just run into the bushes chasing a smell — not knowing that the smell was us!

And yes, yes, I know we shouldn’t feed a dog without the owner’s permission, but my manager was old-fashioned and could never say no to a good boy.