I work as a catering agent at the corporate office for a popular somewhat-local restaurant chain. My job includes placing catering orders as well as making sure the actual store locations can handle the orders. The stores that deliver have scheduled drivers. It’s the middle of our holiday rush.

A customer calls, concerned because her catering order was more than forty minutes late. As is standard, I get in touch with the store to see what the issue is.

Me: “Hi. I just wanted to call to check on [order]; it was a delivery for 5:00.”

Manager: “Oh, yeah, it’s ready.”

Me: *Pauses* “Okay, it was a delivery, though. You guys need to get it out there.”

Manager: *Snottily* “I don’t have drivers. You guys are supposed to dispatch the drivers.”

I misunderstand, thinking this means that we are supposed to reassign stores when one can’t handle an order, which is true.

Me: *Getting frustrated* “Did you call and tell us you don’t have any drivers?”

Manager: “Uh, no, you guys are supposed to dispatch the drivers. It’s always been like this.”

It hasn’t. At this point, I just put the manager on hold to get in touch with my supervisor who is working remotely.

Supervisor: *Aghast* “So, the food’s been sitting there for forty minutes and he didn’t bother to call us?”

Me: “Yeah, but I have the customer on the line. What should I do?”

Supervisor: “You get it refunded and let the customer know we can get them fresh food if they would like to pick it up. I’ll call the store.”

My supervisor isn’t the type to chew someone out for mistakes. Unfortunately for that now ex-manager, corporate isn’t nearly as kind. I think he was probably lucky not to have been fired for that stunt.

I had been working at a factory for about a year when they hired another new guy. The new guy immediately singled me out as some sort of enemy after being told that I was also fairly new, and he was always running off to our supervisor trying to get me in trouble. Our supervisor always “investigated” just to appease him, but he never even pretended to discipline me because he knew what the new guy was up to.

One day, I got done using a specific machine, cleaned everything up, and headed out for a short break. This machine has a lot of different settings, so every time you use it, you have to make sure the settings are correct before you start. If you don’t, the best-case scenario is that the parts come out wrong and fail inspection. Worst-case scenario, the entire machine breaks, and the factory basically has to shut down until a new machine can be bought and installed. The new guy had been trained on this machine and knew that he needed to check the settings, but he never did.

I got back from my break, and the new guy was running parts on the machine that I just finished using. The machine was making some bad noises, and I realized that he had forgotten to adjust the settings. I tried to warn him to stop the machine, but he brushed me off, so I hit the machine’s Emergency Stop button to stop him from doing any more damage than he might have already done. Obviously, this enraged the new guy, and he stormed off, returning a few minutes later with our supervisor.

Supervisor: “Hey, [My Name], [New Guy] tells me you were screaming at him for using the machine?”

Me: “I was using it before my break, running different parts than he’s trying to run. The machine was making all sorts of sounds when he was using it like he hadn’t adjusted the settings for his parts, but he refused to stop when I told him the settings were wrong, so I hit the Emergency Stop.”

Supervisor: “[New Guy], did you check the settings?”

New Guy: “I was just using this machine yesterday, and it was running fine. If anything is wrong with it, it’s [My Name]’s fault for messing with the settings.”

Supervisor: “[My Name], what parts were you running this morning?”

I tell him, and [Supervisor] checks the settings on the machine and confirms that they are correct for those parts.

Supervisor: “What parts are you trying to run now, [New Guy]?”

The new guy tells him.

Supervisor: “Then it’s pretty obvious what happened. [My Name] adjusted the settings correctly to run his parts, but your parts need different settings. [New Guy], are you sure you checked the settings before starting these parts?”

New Guy: “Well, [My Name] should have put the settings back to normal after he went and changed them!”

Supervisor: “There is no ‘normal’ setting for this machine, [New Guy]. That’s why you need to check before every job.”

Our supervisor told me to head on to my next job and ended up training the new guy on the machine AGAIN.

A few weeks after this happened, the new guy forgot to check the settings on the machine again and completely broke the machine. He tried to blame me for “messing with the settings again,” but our supervisor obviously didn’t believe him. The new guy was fired for negligence, and the factory lost a lot of time and money waiting for the new machine to be installed.

I cashier part-time at a franchise hardware store. We get a really entitled businessman in one Saturday (he owns a restaurant nearby that I’ve still never been to, because I don’t want to give him my money) for a paint order.

Customer: “Is my paint ready?”

Me: “I’ll check.”

I page to the back of the store where the service counter is. The paint would have been mixed at the paint counter but then stored at the service desk where there’s more room.

Me: *Shortly.* “Yes, your paint is ready at the service desk.”

I continue ringing up customers as the guy waits, growing increasingly agitated. Finally, he demands:

Customer: “Isn’t someone going to bring it up to me!?”

Sir, if you can’t take the ten seconds of effort to walk back to the service desk, maybe say something?

My wife and I have decided to eat more “conscientiously”. We’re eating less meat, and when we do, it’s free-range, farm-assured, line-caught, or similar. It’s a little thing that we think makes a small difference but an important one.

We’re with some friends, and we order from a new takeaway restaurant. We both pick a vegetarian option. Our friends choose something different. I pay and wait.

Half an hour later, I get a message from the restaurant. It doesn’t make any sense so I call them.

Me: “Hi. There’s a problem with my order? The order number is [number].”

Employee: “Yes, yes, we have run out of [meal]. We can do something else?”

I check with my wife quickly.

Me: “Please can we get two [other vegetarian meals]?”

Employee: “No, sold out.”

Me: “Okay, what about [third meal]?”

Employee: “No, sold out. I can do chicken. Chicken is good. Very tasty.”

Me: “What? No. No chicken. Don’t you have any other vegetarian option?”

Employee: “I can do chicken and rice, but no chicken?”

Me: “So… rice. No, that’s not going to work.”

Employee: “It has broccoli in it, too.”

Friend: “What’s wrong?”

Me: “They have no vegetarian meals. Like, at all.”

Friend: “What? I know the owner. Let me try.”

He takes the phone and is able to talk to them properly. Apparently, they haven’t “sold out”. They have a different chef on tonight who doesn’t want to cook vegetarian meals.

Friend: “Sorry, they’re not normally like this. I canceled the order. Shall we look somewhere else?”

We managed to find only one place that did the food we wanted. It had few to no ratings and we had never tried it before. But to be fair, the food was amazing. We ordered from there again the following week.

Our friend managed to speak with the owner of the first restaurant and complain. The new chef was some sort of substitute. They ended up getting rid of him as he clearly wasn’t right for the restaurant.

My company hired a young man who took a desk near mine. He’s very personable and easy to talk with. One day, I’m called in to the boss’s office.

Boss: “[Coworker #1] was six hours overdue with what he was supposed to get done. He said you were distracting him by talking. Were you doing that?”

Me: “He’s a nice guy and we exchange some small talk now and then, but not six hours of it. Besides, I have my own work and I got it done.”

Boss: “Yeah, I guess that wouldn’t account for six hours.”

Me: “No, but I’ll watch that any talk doesn’t get out of control.”

Fast forward many months. We move to a new office and I am no longer near [Coworker #1]. Then, I wind up in the hospital, and when I return to work, I am buried. Finally, things slow down. I need to stretch, so I go to visit another coworker. It is a Friday and numerous employees take off alternate Fridays, so there are only a few people in the office. I look at the empty desk that I know belongs to [Coworker #1].

Me: “Where’s [Coworker #1]?”

Coworker #2: “We fired him a couple of months ago.”

Me: “Seriously?! Wow! I’ve really been out of it the last couple of months. Why was he fired?”

Coworker #2: “He was too slow. He was taking hours and days to do things that should take minutes.”

Me: “Back when he first started, he threw me under the bus. He blamed me for delaying him six hours on a project.”

Coworker #2: “Yeah. I’m not surprised. It was always someone else’s fault.”

But, seriously, despite an illness, how did I manage to not notice someone gone out of an office of only a dozen people?