The company I work for is pretty hard to get into, even if you have an impressive resume or an awesome reference. Unfortunately, we had a new client. In one quarter, his business would keep our lights on for about ten years. He asked if his cousin or “little nephew” could have an entry-level position at our company, and we reluctantly said yes.

[Nephew] surfed the web all day looking at cars to buy. Whenever we’d ask him if he had completed a task, he’d either lie to us and say he had or say he didn’t know how to do it and didn’t want to bother any of us for help. Then, [Nephew] brought all of his gaming systems into the conference room, saying that clients could play them while they waited. That would have been nice, but [Nephew] played games in the conference room all day.

So, it came to a point where we gave him the least amount of work to do — ordering paper, delivering lunch, etc.

Two years later, the client came to us.

Client: “I’m going to have [Nephew] handle the work I was giving you. It’s to help him start his own consulting firm.”

Apparently, the kid had lied like no other, making his uncle believe that he was helping run our company.

Three months later, the client came back to us for our business.

Client: “That a** tried hiring a consulting firm to the side to do his work so he could play Sonic The Hedgehog all day!”

I work as a beach lifeguard. I am ending my shift and signing out at the office for the day. Meanwhile, my manager is being confronted by a member of the public at the door. She looks livid.

Woman: “My boyfriend applied to be a lifeguard, and you said no!”

Manager: “We get a lot of applicants. What was his name?”

Woman: “[Boyfriend].”

Manager: “Oh, yeah. He was not… suitable for the role.”

Woman: “You failed him for his drug test!”

Manager: “I’m not permitted to—”

Woman: “I don’t take drugs! So you’re lying about that!”

Manager: “Wait… you… don’t…”

Woman: “He’d done, like, maybe a couple of joints the weekend before. It shouldn’t be a big deal! He used my pee instead for your stupid drug test, and it was clean, and you still said no, so you lied!”

Manager: “Ma’am, we didn’t reject him because there were drugs in his drug test. We rejected him because we knew he wasn’t using his own urine.”

Woman: “And how did you know that?!”

Manager: “Because it’s very unlikely that he is pregnant.”

The woman’s face goes pale. An eternity of silence passes between the two of them.

Manager: “Congratulations?”

Related:
¡Que Embarazada!, Part 3
¡Que Embarazada!, Part 2
¡Que Embarazada!

Our elementary campus had, for the most part, a majority of middle- to upper-middle-class homeowners, with some children from lower socioeconomic groups. (Schools are zoned this way on purpose.)

I had a student whose father identified as White Rapper with his failing musician business (mom’s educational job, ironically, paid the bills). They were homeowners in the subdivision but limped along. Their child was absent for a week before a long break. Her parents had emailed me asking for extra materials for [Child] to bring up her grade in one subject. I sent home a packet of materials, etc. 

[Child] returned to school wearing a Disney jacket and boldly displaying her Disney swag art materials on her desk. Other students told me that she had bragged about going to Disney before she left. 

Guess who ended up in truancy court? And then tried to throw me under the bus saying I knew they were going and so had condoned the absences? I won because I am meticulous about documentation. 

I know some people feel strongly about “making memories”, etc., and saving money. Just don’t expect me to make up a week of in-person instruction or get your child to finish all of their graded assignments on time when they return. Some children can handle it, but very few. 

Another family also chose to take a week at a resort, but the child made up the work easily and without their parents throwing me under the bus. Apparently, they and [Child] said to each other, “Hey, saw you in truancy court.” 

The family paid in truancy fines whatever they saved on the trip.

I was working for a temp agency in the 1990s, and they sent me to a “business center”. It was a small mall in the 1980s and had now been turned into four or five businesses in the same space, sharing the general facilities — lunch room, copy machines, etc. I was brought on as a tech as these businesses really weren’t big enough to have their own IT departments. I was told that the previous guy in the position, “Joe”, had left for a more stable job, and everyone in the place was sorry to see him go.

The first week I was there, I started finding problems with the guy. I came into one place and was told a computer was acting up. The business owner looked like she was about to burst into tears.

Owner: “When the last computer did this, Joe said it was broken and I had to get a new computer.”

I fixed the problem in five minutes with a free antivirus program and set up the rest of the computers in that office, as well.

Me: “What did Joe do with the old computer?”

Owner: “Oh, he took it home for parts since it wouldn’t work anymore.”

And all that week, I kept running into things that were really simple fixes, but good ol’ Joe had either taken all frickin’ day fixing them or announced that the machine was borked and had to be replaced. And Joe was apparently the designated recycler.

One owner said Joe was always in the office, working on the system; he’d be all day working on that computer. It turned out that before he’d left, he’d tried really hard to convince the owner to turn that tower over to Joe, and Joe would replace it “for free”. But the owner decided not to do that; he told me he just didn’t trust Joe all that much.

After taking a look at the computer, I could see why Joe wanted to take it with him; it was full of adult material grabbed from the Internet. After I showed this to the owner, Joe became persona non grata at that place.

It gets better.

It turned out that Joe couldn’t hack it in the real world and ended up going back to the temp agency. He asked for his old job back, but no, I had that position. So, he came to the facility and tried to bug me into quitting. I reported him to the agency, and he was written up and told not to return to the facility for any reason.

And when he did return to the facility, I informed building management, who called the police. Upon seeing the po-po, Joe took off like a cheetah, trying to exit the building through the back door — but failing because it now had a lock on it due to a break-in a few months previous.

After he tried (and failed) to resist arrest, the cops called in a request for his records and found out that Joe was wanted for suspicion of dealing. I had been talking to the cops at the time, and upon hearing this, I had my own suspicions. I went to check that computer that Joe had spent so much time on.

Sure enough, hidden in the files was a partial record of Joe’s activities back when he’d worked there. I printed out the file, handed it to the cops, and told them I’d send them anything else I found on the computer.

The next day, the feds showed up and took the computer. Joe went to prison for five years.

I was hired to photograph a wedding, and I even did an engagement shoot to be displayed at the wedding. I billed the client for that shoot and got paid for it. However, later, I received a text.

Client: “The wedding is getting expensive. Keep the pictures; we just want our money back.”

Me: “There are no refunds for work that’s already completed, sorry. However, I can void the rest of the contract for you, no problem.”

At that point, the client called the bank and reported their payment to me as fraudulent activity.

The worst part? I’d billed them at a steep 45% discount because they’d ordered a full package.