No one likes [Coworker] at work. She is a suck-up and she’s terrible at her job. Any time she gets called out, she shifts the blame onto someone else or just tattles on them. It doesn’t even get her out of trouble; it just gets two people into hot water.

From her constant whining, it appears that [Coworker] has decided that she doesn’t want to work all her agreed hours anymore. She sees other people starting late or finishing early and expects to be able to do the same, even though those people don’t actually work any less; they make up their hours at another time.

The first I hear about this is from a text from her manager.

Manager: “Can you join us in meeting room one? You are going to want to hear this.”

I go and find [Coworker] sitting there with [Manager].

Manager: “Why don’t you repeat what you said to me?”

Coworker: “I don’t see why I have to work all these hours when [My Name] gets to come and go as he pleases.”

Me: “Whoa, where did this come from?”

Manager: “She has a log.”

She brandishes her notebook, and I go and grab my diary from my desk.

Me: “Okay, go ahead.”

Coworker: “May 24th, you didn’t show up for work. Didn’t book a holiday.”

Me: “I was with a customer, approved in advance.”

Coworker: “Okay. Well, on June 7th, you left two hours early.”

Me: “I caught a flight for work purposes.”

Coworker: “Well… Well, June 21st, you arrived late every day that week. And I know you didn’t get stuck in traffic because you came in with coffee.”

Me: “I spent the weekend here and I took my hours back as Time Off In Lieu.”

She frantically searches her little notebook.

Me: “We done here?”

Manager: “Yes. Thank you for your help, as always.”

I left but could hear her manager explaining that everyone has different work patterns, and yes, she could work fewer hours, but she would get paid less. It clearly didn’t happen because she was back at her desk on time the next day.

[Coworker #1] has worked here for years. Everyone goes to him for how to do things. But after properly looking into it, it becomes apparent that [Coworker #1] is only doing things the fast way, not the right way. While it gets things done, it causes huge delays for others later down the line.

[Coworker #1], however, is completely in denial. He knows best and everyone who tells him differently just needs to listen to him.

I walk in halfway through him telling a story

Coworker #1: “So, I tell him, ‘That’s the way I’ve been doing it since before you even started.’”

Coworker #2: “What did he say?”

Coworker #1: “Oh, something about the new process being better. But what does he know?!”

Coworker #2: “Yeah, some manager comes in and tries to change everything. He should do the job himself for a while and learn it himself!”

Me: “You’re not talking about the customer requests, are you?”

Coworker #1: “Oh, has he had a go at you, as well?”

Me: “No, I’ve spent the last three days going through each of them and setting up their contact details.”

Coworker #1: “Sounds like a waste of time to me.”

Me: “It’s a waste of everyone’s time. That’s why he’s asking you to spend two seconds filling out the system properly. It takes us hours to go back and fix things.”

Coworker #1: “Well, if it’s such a problem, why hasn’t anyone said anything before now?”

Me: “The sales team used to spend hours every day messing around trying to find the info and not selling.”

Coworker #1: “Well, let them. They get paid enough.”

Me: “They get paid to sell, to make the company money, not do your job for you — nor do I.”

Coworker #1: “I’ve been doing it this way for years, and I’m not changing anything!”

Three weeks later, [Coworker #1] was pulled into Human Resources as he constantly ignored his manager’s instructions. He was told to do it the right way or be disciplined. He still tried to get away with doing it his way and was given some unpaid time off work to consider his position at the company.

A few months later, everyone was doing it to process and the sales guys had the time to actually sell and did show more sales.

Several years ago, we had a tree fall on our house during a pretty bad windstorm. This happened in roughly February, and being that this was Washington state, it was pretty rainy and miserable, so while crews came out to get the tree off the roof and everything, we ended up with patches — mainly tarps — over the holes because it was too wet and rainy still to fix the roof immediately.

When the incident first occurred, we didn’t have a dog, but between the time of the tarps being added to the roof and the weather clearing up enough to allow them to start repairs, we happened to get a rescue lab-retriever mix. Now here’s the thing with that lovable goofball: when we first got him, he was still young enough that he could have hopped the fence. What we didn’t know was that he wouldn’t — that dork had some interesting quirks, but that’s a story for another time. So, when nobody was home, we’d leave him in the yard, but he’d be on a lead — it was like a ninety-foot thing so he had a decent run of the yard, but again, we were trying to prevent him from potentially escaping.

It was getting to the point where the repairs are starting, and our landlord had reached out to his insurance company about getting repairs covered, so they had to send out an investigator. He managed to show up while no one was home, so he just wandered around the back of the house examining everything. We had gates on both sides of the house, and we didn’t know it at the time, but he left one of them open — the one on the far side of the house that we never used.

I got home from school and was the only one home. The rule was: get home, let the dog off his lead, play with him for a bit, and then go do homework. When I went to go back inside, he didn’t want to come in, so I left him in the yard because he didn’t mind it, and I went off to do my homework.

Sometime later, my mom got home and the landlord showed up and wanted to take a look at some reports he’d gotten from the investigator. He and my mom went into the backyard and my mom asked me where the dog was. Any guesses? He’d managed to find the open gate and slipped out. Unfortunately, I had no idea how long he’d been gone. We started looking for him but couldn’t find him anywhere. My brothers and I were kind of devastated.

My dad called the investigator.

Dad: “Why did you leave the gate open and not say anything about it?”

Investigator: “Well, the dog was tied up, so I didn’t think it mattered.”

Dad: *Pissed off beyond belief* “Okay, first of all, do you think we just keep him tied up all the time? Second, forget the dog for a moment. You had no way of knowing if there were small children here. What if one of them had gotten out of that open gate and then gotten hit by a car?”

We lived off a street that intersected with a main drag, so we’d get people speeding down the street all the time.

Investigator: “Oh, well, I guess I never thought of it like that.”

Dad: “Of course, you didn’t. You’d better hope we find the dog; otherwise, you will be buying a new dog for my kids.”

The investigator started sputtering about that not being fair.

Dad: “Maybe keep that in mind next time you’re wandering around properties.”

It took a couple of days, but we finally found the dog. We got really lucky and one of the families near the school had managed to grab him. We had started putting up Missing posters, and then a friend called having seen a Found poster. We’d put the Missing on one side of the pole and the Found posted was on the other side; you wouldn’t see it unless you turned around.

We got our dog back, and I don’t know what happened with that investigator, but knowing my dad, there was definitely something to the guy’s manager.

[Employee] joined us straight from university where she was a mature student. She seemed like a really unusual match for the department. She had no previous experience and no relevant qualifications. She seemed nice if you got past her constant white noise about how great her time in university was and how it changed her and how being an older student was great — just a whole lot of information no one asked for.

But she seemed nice enough and she got on with things. I did start to notice that she was very picky with what orders she took. This isn’t an issue until one day.

Employee: “I can’t do this.”

Me: “What’s wrong?”

Employee: “This design. I just can’t handle it right now.”

I look over and it seems a simple task, all the client’s instructions are there, and it’s a pretty easy scope.

Me: “Why don’t you take five and come back to it with a clear head?”

Employee: “Yes, good idea. It’s just so… ugh.”

She goes outside and the rest of us look at each other completely confused. She is gone for fifteen minutes before she comes back in. She takes one look at the order and freaks out again.

Me: “What’s the matter?”

Employee: “This man, this misogynist wants me to design naked women.”

It’s an artistic design of a woman holding a product.

Me: “That man works here and is only relaying the client’s orders.”

Employee: “Well, you need to get him to tell the client to change it.”

Me: “We don’t do that. The client tells us what they want and we do it.”

Employee: “Well, I will quit, then!”

The room is quiet with the sound of no one caring.

Employee: “I’m going outside.”

She was gone for an hour, only to come back and not do any work. Someone else finished the design — which turned out to be a “by women for women”-type brand — but we can’t have anyone in the team just refusing to do work. She was given another week, but then she threw another fit over a request to use pastel colours and again wanted the client to change their mind.

She was gone the next day.

A couple of years ago, I received an email from the UK branch of an American travel agency, informing [Stranger] that her new account with them had been created successfully. I had received similar emails in the past, always addressed to [Stranger], and the last name was always different, so I suspect a bot was creating accounts in online services that don’t verify email addresses before activating accounts.

I sent [Travel Agency] an email informing them of the fact that I had not created the account and saying I would like them to remove my email address from their systems. No response, and I kept getting emails from them addressed to [Stranger], so I decided to call them.

After talking to a guy who promised to take care of the issue, nothing changed until, one day, I received a confirmation of a flight booking from, let’s say, Manchester to Amsterdam early in the morning on [date]. At least they had had the common sense to not include the entire credit card number used for the booking in the email, no doubt as a result of earlier blunder(s) featuring stolen credit card number(s) and irate customer(s).

That’s when I decided I’d had enough. I went to the site and used the “recover password” function to gain access to the account and deleted the account, after which I blocked the agency’s domain name from my email. The deletion of the account shouldn’t have affected the booking, and even if it did, it’s not my fault they didn’t take action when they had the chance, is it?

Besides, since my email address does not contain the name [Stranger] — or anything even close to it — there is no way that half a dozen [Stranger]s from the UK, all with different last names, have all accidentally entered my email in account registration forms instead of their own, so I doubt than any real [Stanger]s were harmed in the process.

I hope the aftermath caused them at least as bad a headache as their incompetence caused me.