This took place through email, over the span of several days.

Mailer: “I hereby let you know that my client, Mr. John, passed away. Please remove my name and email address from your data.”

Me: “I am so sorry to read that. My condolences. Could you please give us his address and date of birth, so we know which Mr. John passed away?”

Mailer: “With his passing, I am no longer connected to Mr. John. I hereby once again request you remove me from your systems.”

Me: “I will certainly do that, but which Mr. John are we talking about? May I please have his address and date of birth?”

Mailer: “I hereby ask you for a third time to remove my data and to never contact me again. If you do, I will file a complaint with [Government Complaint Agency].”

I go to my manager, at a loss.

Manager: “How many Mr. Johns do we have on file?”

Me: “At least five hundred, excluding different spellings. If it was a less common name, I might have been able to find it out myself, but this is a needle in a haystack.”

Manager: “Well, maybe that person will contact us again when we send him an automated letter or something. Or maybe his children will contact us. You did your best; just let it go.”

Three weeks later, a son mailed us to let us know Mr. Johnson (yes, the mailer had the last name wrong) had passed away three weeks earlier, and lo and behold, the in-file correspondence address was the same as the person who mailed us. We deleted that address with glee.

Early on in my career, I took a job that was about a four-hour commute away from my home so I rented a flat near the office and split my time between living there midweek and going home at the weekends.

The rent on my flat didn’t include utilities or Internet, so I took out a second landline and broadband contract with the same ISP that provided my services at home and things went, if not well, at least without any incident worth speaking about until I ended my lease.

I phoned my ISP and very specifically told them that I want to keep my home contract but end the contract at my flat because I was moving out. I was assured that this would be no problem. I emphasised very clearly that it was the service at my flat and only at my flat that was to stop and that the service at my main address should continue.

You can guess what happened next. Yep, they cancelled the service at my main address instead of at the flat. This led to the following conversation with one of their alleged customer service representatives after I explained what happened.

Customer Service: “I’m sorry to hear that there has been a mistake on your account, [My Name]. I will arrange for the service to be reconnected for you. That should be done in two weeks.”

Me: “Pardon me, two weeks? I want it reconnected now.”

Customer Service: “I’m sorry, [My Name], but that isn’t possible.”

Me: “Why not? You disconnected it remotely. Surely, you can reestablish it remotely? What is it that you need to do that is going to take you two weeks to sort out?”

Customer Service: “Unfortunately, whilst we can disconnect your service remotely, a site visit is needed to reestablish it. There are other customers waiting, so our first available appointment is in two weeks.”

Me: “Excuse me? This was your mistake. You cut off service at the wrong location! Surely you can expedite this?”

Customer Service: “No, we can’t.”

Me: “What do you mean, ‘you can’t’?”

Customer Service: “We don’t expedite site visits under any circumstances. It just isn’t a service we offer.”

Me: “Not even to fix your own mistakes?”

Customer Service: “No. However, as a gesture of goodwill, we will refund you for the duration of your outage.”

Me: “That’s not goodwill! That’s you not charging me for a service you aren’t providing. As far as I am concerned, that was never in question.”

I eventually threatened to leave their service and cancel my mobile phone contracts, as well, but unfortunately, I found that I would still need to wait two weeks for a new connection with any other ISPs and that the price I was paying with my existing (lack of) service provider was the most competitively priced.

On the plus side, the manager did give me additional compensation off my bill and there haven’t been any major screw-ups since.

About once a week, I would pop into my local craft/game store. I wasn’t massively into the game top side of it, but I enjoyed the artistic side. I would get “commissions” from friends who wanted a piece painted a particular way. It was fun and it was like being paid to have a hobby. It was great.

The owner of the shop was a wonderful man. He was really patient and helped me find the materials I needed or recommended alternatives. He hadn’t been around the last few times; a younger guy was watching the shop, hiding toward the back.

I was shopping for some supplies but found the shelves oddly empty.

Me: “Hi, I’m looking for like a moss green. Do you have any?”

Sales Guy: “Ugh, greens are over there.”

Me: “I know, but the shelves are empty. That’s pretty unusual. Do you know when you will get more stock?”

Sales Guy: “I don’t know. I just do the sales.”

This was weird; they never run out completely. Even if they were restocking, the owner could find anything from the back in seconds.

Me: “Okay, I’ll try again tomorrow?”

He shrugged at me and I left. I came back a few days later and the shop was closed for lunch. The sign said they’d be back at 12:00, but it was nearly 1:00.

I came back the next week, and the shelves were even more empty and the shop was a bit of a mess. The sales guy was in his normal slumped position on a stool at the back of the shop. 

I didn’t bother asking him. I went to the shelf and found it in the same condition it had been in the first time I visited. I grabbed a feedback form and put down everything I’d seen.

I didn’t make it to the shop again for two more weeks. I was pleasantly surprised to see the owner there.

Me: “Oh, hi! Good to see you back.”

Owner: “Yeah, we had some issues with a staff member. But what can I do you for?”

Me: “Just looking to refill some supplies. Have you had a delivery?”

Owner: “Fully stocked and on the shelves. Listen, you know your stuff, right? I mean, no one I know spends as much time in the store or talking about the products as you do.”

Me: “I guess.”

Owner: “Fancy a job?”

Me: “Well, I’ve never worked in sales before.”

Owner: “It comes with a 20% employee discount.”

I took it! I’ve spent a year here so far. The owner has helped me all the way, and I get to spend even more time painting. Some of my pieces are on display and for sale in the shop!

This story is part of our Halfway-Through-2022 roundup!

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Many years ago, I was working as a chef and de-facto kitchen manager at a nice French-Italian restaurant in London. I was a part of the interview process for our restaurant’s front of house, as well as the kitchen. One morning, we’re wrapping up the interview of a young waitress.

Me: “Okay, this all looks good, and your references check out, so we’ll see you Monday morning at six.”

Waitress: “Huh?”

Me: “Didn’t [Front Of House Manager] explain our policy on cross-training?”

Waitress: “Oh, that. But I don’t want to cook food, just serve it.”

Me: “That’s fine, if you don’t want to work in the kitchen you don’t have to.”

She gets all smiley again.

Me: “But all front of house staff do their first week in the kitchens, and all members of kitchen staff do a week out front. This helps us all to understand what folk are dealing with.”

Her face fell.

She never came in for her first (or any other) shift. Over the years, I enforced that policy (despite wailing from all departments at first). It remained the smoothest and least resentful relationship between front of house and back that I can recall in any restaurant.

I worked in a pharmacy for about five years. I recently started working at a doctor’s office, where now my job is handling the refill requests FROM pharmacies and forwarding everything where it needs to go with relevant information needed. Today alone, I got three separate messages in my queue from the front office, saying that a patient was out of medication and needed us to send in refills and that they had contacted the pharmacy about it already and were told they didn’t have refills.

All three patients lied and wasted EVERYONE’S freaking time. All of them had been sent refills to their respective pharmacies literally within the past three to six months, with refills for one year. But, of course, I wanted to double-check since our prescription refill program has been messing up lately, and it was entirely possible they never got our fax.

Every SINGLE conversation went like this.

Me: “Hi. I’m calling from [Doctor]’s office. Can you check to see if you have [medication] for [Patient] on file? They called us saying they talked to someone at the pharmacy and were told they didn’t have any refills left.”

Pharmacy: “I don’t know why they would say that, because they do have refills remaining; they never called us to refill.”

Or:

Pharmacy: “it’s been ready for them to pick up for a few days.”

I think I was just extra salty today, but I was pissed off at these patients. Like… it’s one thing to think that you might not have refills remaining because your bottle says zero refills and you weren’t aware there’s another prescription on file, but to tell our front office, “I talked to the pharmacist/pharmacy technician and they told me I had no refills left,” when, in fact, you didn’t actually speak to ANYONE over there. You’re wasting our time and the pharmacy’s time by lying.

I was pissed off enough (and had very low blood sugar when this was all happening) that I called all three patients personally and said:

Me: “Hi, I just got off the phone with your pharmacy, and they told me you already have refills remaining and that they can refill it if you contact them.”

Or:

Me: “It’s been ready for you to pick up since Sunday; they would have told you that if you had called them.”

All of them tried to weasel their way out of me calling them out, but I wasn’t having it. I told two of them, “Next time, please actually SPEAK to someone and confirm that you have no refills remaining before you call us saying you haven’t taken your meds in four days because you’re ‘out of refills.'”