I work in a supermarket as a “Service Host” on checkouts. I’m essentially a supervisor who doesn’t get paid extra, but I don’t mind since it beats sitting on a till all shift.

We have a home shopping department that is constantly understaffed. With not enough pickers to pick people’s orders, most days are spent with the rest of the store having to lend half their colleagues to go and pick the items.

In the checkouts department, we have a lot of older women or people who have disabilities or injuries that make checkouts the only place they can comfortably work, since being a cashier is a sitting role. Nearly everybody in the store begrudges having to help the home shopping department, but I figure that the quicker it’s done, the quicker the store can function properly. And I may as well help them out when I can, rather than having them take colleagues when I actually need them.

My husband happened to be a section manager on home shopping for six months, but they took away the section manager role after his initial contract (which he was promised would turn permanent), and after becoming a colleague again, his relationship with the senior (and now only) manager of the department has soured somewhat. We can only assume this is because my husband is still expected to “help out” with manager bits even though he no longer has the title or the salary to reflect that.

The senior manager is on thin ice with the rest of the management, since part of the issue is his inability to the rota’s properly — a job my husband used to do. He also likes to joke with and talk to me as if I’m his friend since my husband used to be his support manager. However, since he’s treated my husband poorly, I don’t engage in conversation with him unless I have to.

It’s a Thursday. The store manager comes and asks me if I have any colleagues spare to pick. With some rearranging of people’s breaks, I give him three colleagues. It also means I have to run the Customer Service Desk and be a runner/supervisor for the tills for an hour, but since it’s mostly quiet, it’s not too big of a deal. It just means I have to go back and forth a lot whilst helping customers in between.

One of the colleagues comes back after an hour and claims she’s too tired to pick and be on her feet, so I take somebody off of checkouts and decide to quickly train him how to pick. He’s only nineteen and doesn’t mind. I take him up to the home shopping hub to set him up with the telxons (little mobile devices) that are used to pick. As I enter the hub, senior manager says hi and I let him know that I’m training one of my new colleagues to pick to help, since they’re so behind. This is the interaction.

Me: “Hi, [Manager]. This is [Colleague]. I figured I’d train him to pick quickly since it isn’t too difficult and you guys are struggling.”

Manager: “Oh, great! Are there any other colleagues you could send?”

Me: “Well, I haven’t got anybody else who’s capable of standing and walking for long enough to do the picking, really.”

Manager: “Oh, but I thought everybody on checkouts was really good at standing about and doing nothing for a long time!”

He laughed, obviously expecting me to laugh back. Since I’d just spent an hour getting my colleagues to agree to go for their breaks early or to work on a different station for a bit, purely to help him, I wasn’t overly impressed by the comment. This evidently showed on my face, as he quickly stopped laughing and apologised.

A week later he was put on management review — essentially a last-ditch attempt to see if he can improve before they can fire him from his role. He’s still holding onto his role, although the consensus in the store is that he won’t last much longer. Our current store manager is new, as the old one was fired three weeks ago for not dealing with the home shopping issues (amongst others), and everybody was surprised the senior manager’s head didn’t roll, too!

I’ve been covering for [Coworker]. She has some big project, and I don’t mind sitting in a few meetings once in a while if it helps a coworker out.

I hear that her project gets cancelled, but she still acts like she is the busiest person in the company. I stop covering her meetings as I do actually have other work to do.

She takes offence to this, but it was a favour, after all, and I legitimately was getting behind with my work. I make some excuse and she stops asking.

One morning, my boss pulls me aside.

Boss: “I’m going to ask you to support [Coworker]; she’s really busy at the moment.”

Me: “I have my own priorities to deal with. Are we sure this is the best use of my time?”

Boss: “Not really, but [Project] is getting a lot of attention and it’s apparently really important.”

Me: “That’s been cancelled; I heard it from [Senior Manager] himself.”

Boss: “What? I’m getting to the bottom of this.”

It turned out that [Coworker] didn’t know the project had been cancelled, as she never attended any of the meetings and actually didn’t have work to do. She just got her name added to the project team when she heard how important it was and then pretended to be busy with it without really knowing what it was about.

She got a warning and a lesson in not fobbing work onto others.

[Coworker] works as a driver. I only meet her in passing, but that’s enough to realise she is a very clumsy, slightly ditsy woman. Her van is a state, both dirty and damaged. When I hear that she is referred to as the best driver we have, I’m shocked. For someone who often forgets why she has come into a room or ends up in the wrong meeting room, how she is the best we have is beyond me.

It’s none of my business… until I get a complaint from one of her customers. Apparently, all of my paperwork was completed incorrectly, I messed up poor [Coworker]’s deliveries all the time, it was all my fault, etc. The complaint copies in my manager and demands a new representative.

Luckily, I am the only one who keeps the paper copies of my sales receipts, so I check and I can prove that everything I did was perfect. [Coworker] messed up big time. I see my manager.

Me: “Hey, here are all the sales receipts. I have highlighted where the numbers show that I completed them correctly.”

Manager: “Oh, really? Okay, well, this looks in order. I’m glad one of you double-checks your work; I’m sick of [Coworker] complaining about mistakes.”

Me: “What mistakes?”

Manager: “Constant mistakes with addresses, names, and orders. Poor [Coworker] spends most of her time redelivering things.”

Me: “I didn’t know of any mistakes.” 

Manager: “[Coworker] insists on talking to the representatives herself. It’s sweet that she doesn’t want them to get into trouble, but to be honest, it’s overdue that I took over and dealt with this.”

Me: “I have never heard anything about any mistakes or ever seen [Coworker] in the office talking to anyone.”

Manager: “What are you suggesting?”

I asked around, and no one had ever heard anything from [Coworker], and they knew nothing about any mistakes. It took a lot of digging, but we couldn’t find one single issue with any of [Coworker]’s paperwork.

It turns out she would make mistakes regularly. When she was caught out, she blamed the paperwork. She had convinced all the customers that it was our fault and that she was the only one helping them.

They swapped her customers with other drivers and suddenly all the “mistakes” moved with her. I think they moved her into a back room somewhere, but she wasn’t working for the company a few months later when I checked.

I work in the immigration industry. My team is in charge of processing work permit applications for a corporation that employs foreigners working in a very specialized field.

Because we process a high volume of this type of application, management has assigned the receptionist to help us out with document retrieval from the representative portal. All notification emails regarding status updates are automatically forwarded to the front desk email. She has to search for the application number on the portal, download the correspondence, and email it to the person in charge of the file.

From time to time, there will be a lot (100 to 200 or more) of document retrieval requests to complete. I was told to help her out if that was the case. In order for me to determine whether I need to step in, I have to ask her how many notifications are there. The following exchange happens practically every time I ask her.

Me: “Hey! How many portal emails have you got?”

Receptionist: “A lot!”

Me: “Oh, fun! How many exactly?”

Receptionist: “I just said a lot.”

Me: “Yes, I know you said that, but can you provide the number?”

Receptionist: “About a hundred.”

Me: “Okay, thanks.”

When this exchange occurs, I have to call her supervisor (which I shouldn’t) to get that information.

Me: “Hi, [Supervisor]. I’m so sorry to bother you, but would you be able to tell me how many portal notifications you guys have?”

Supervisor: “Yes, of course! We currently have 158 to clear up. [Receptionist] is at the front desk working on them. You can always call and ask her.”

Me: *Sigh* “Yes, I did. I just got off the phone with her, but she was hesitant to give me the exact number. This has been happening frequently. Just to make sure that I am not going against any protocol, I am allowed to ask for the numbers, right?”

Supervisor: “Yes, that is correct! You are only asking for the number; you are not breaking any rules here. If that was the case, you would have heard something from me.”

Me: “Thank you for confirming.”

Supervisor: “I need to have a talk with her because you are not the only one that she has been giving issues to.”

Me: “Oh, okay.”

About a week after that, I heard that management had a meeting with her about her overall performance. Apparently, some of the senior caseworkers said that she needs to learn how to speak to clients properly. She lacks pleasantry when it comes to customer service.

Our other worksite doesn’t have senior management onsite. There are a couple of middle managers, but they don’t seem to think they need to play by the company’s rules as long as they get the product out the door. I hate going over there. Everyone acts like you’re some alien outsider; they don’t talk to you, acknowledge you, or help with anything.

I’m on the site for some big meeting. After it finishes, I’m helping out clearing the meeting room, but we fill up the bins pretty quick.

Me: “Hey, where can I throw these out? They won’t fit in the normal bin.”

I get ignored completely; they don’t even look up. I turn around and struggle to pull open the door with the boxes.

Guy: “Wait, what’ve you got there?”

Me: “Cake boxes; we had catering.”

Guy: “Oh! You can put them there.”

He points to a table past him at the other side of the office, but he doesn’t get up to help me.

Me: “I have a few more if anyone could help.”

Guy: “Nah.”

I prop open the door, grab all of the boxes from the meeting room, and stack them on the table. They swarm round.

Guy: “Where are the cakes?”

Me: “Oh, there are no cakes. As I said, I just wanted to throw out the boxes.”

Their moaning, groaning, and swearing were pretty sweet to my ears. 

Little did they know, I transferred all the cakes from the empty boxes to one very full box. I was more than happy to give it to the team there once I threw out the empties, but suddenly, I didn’t feel like it.

I took the cakes back to my site and shared them with my team, who were very appreciative.