Many years ago, I temped at a recruitment agency that specialised in support positions that required security clearance. This could be anything from a security guard for a government building to a senior administrator for MI5.

I had been hired for a few months to effectively screen the person who would be doing the job I had been hired as a temp for, except she was going to be a recruitment manager, so she’d have a few more duties that I wasn’t qualified for. I was chosen as a stopgap because I already had full security checks from a previous position working in a school and extensive admin experience.

The new hire couldn’t start until everything came back clean. This included running an extended criminal check, as well as calling for references from all previous employers. Let me tell you, getting references from twenty-plus years ago can be a time-consuming pain in the backside.

Her criminal check came back clean. However, her employment references were… problematic. Any references where she had indicated management experience either had no record of her working for that company or no record of her working there in a management position. A few references were for companies that had long since closed, so there was no way to confirm either way. Still, I soldiered on through the references.

During this time, the new hire came by the office a few times to drop off necessary documentation such as photo ID and to do some training. While she was in, I asked her if she had gone by any other names, thinking this might explain why some employers had no record of her working there. Perhaps I was just giving them the wrong name. She looked down her nose at me and told me no in the most condescending way possible. “Okay,” I thought, and got back to work, grateful I wouldn’t be working alongside her.

I was having difficulty locating the correct information for one of her more recent employers, so I decided to see if she had a Facebook account that might confirm the right details — many people list where they’ve worked, after all.

That’s when I discovered that she was writing nasty comments about various people in the office on her public Facebook profile. She wrote that I was a “fat cow” who was deliberately dragging my feet on getting her references so I could steal her job. She also called my manager a “perv”, and she said she would report him for sexual harassment when she started to “put him in his place”.

But the worst part was that she had managed to sneak photos of some staff and had added nasty captions. She managed to take a picture of me while I was nibbling on some food at my desk and wrote the caption “porky”. On a photo she had snuck of my manager, she had written the caption “panty sniffer”.

Aside from the malicious nature of the photos, taking any photos in our office was strictly forbidden. Cameras and mobile phones were banned from the office because we dealt with a lot of confidential contracts. Phones were taken at reception and put in secured lockers to be collected either when you went to lunch or when you went home. The receptionists were pretty on the ball about this, so I have no idea how she managed to sneak a phone in.

But the icing on the proverbial cake was that she regularly complained about how long it was taking because she was going travelling in nine months. Every day I “dragged my heels”, I was “stealing” money she needed for her travels. That explained her attitude with me.

In her interview, this woman had not mentioned anything about her planned travels. In fact, she had said she was looking for something long-term and expressed an interest in helping the company grow. It became clear that what the woman really wanted was to grow her bank balance with this high-paying job, so she lied through her teeth about having management experience.

I informed my manager of this, emailing him screenshots of her posts. The woman was marched into my manager’s office, where he not only told her we were rescinding our offer of employment, but he made her delete all the photos from her phone and Facebook while he watched. He warned her that if he saw any photos of this office or its employees on social media, he would be taking legal action.

In response, the woman posted rant after rant on her — still public — Facebook profile saying we had discriminated against her and that my manager tried to feel her up and then fired her, she claimed that I lied to make her look bad, and she also claimed my manager was racist and that’s why he terminated her. Both my manager and this woman were white, for the record.

I reported it to my manager, who called her and told her that unless she took down those posts, she would be sued for libel. The posts were taken down within the hour, and passive-aggressive posts about freedom of speech and how “you can’t say anything without people getting offended” posts replaced them. And she still didn’t make her profile private. Go figure.

An older gentleman pulls his beat-up pickup truck up to pump number six and walks up to my booth.

Old Guy: “I’m gonna leave his truck there while I go into the store to buy a few things. I’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

Me: “Sir, even if it wasn’t pretty busy, I can’t have your truck blocking a pump while you’re gone; it will hold other customers up.”

Old Guy: “I’m very low on gas, and I’m not sure if it’ll start up again if I move it. I’ll only be gone a couple of minutes.”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but if you’re not going to use the pump, I really need you to move your truck, as there are already other customers lining up behind it.”

Old Guy: *Angry* “Didn’t you hear how low on gas I am? I’ll only be gone a couple  of minutes!”

Before I could continue to explain to him why he couldn’t leave his truck there, he walked away toward the store.

I had to go out and tell the customers behind his parked truck that they were going to have to move to a different pump. I put up a yellow “NO PARKING” hobby horse thing so people wouldn’t keep lining up there. Having that one pump out backed traffic up at the other pumps while he was gone.

A couple of minutes went by. Five minutes. Ten minutes.

Finally, the guy walked back with boxes full of groceries. He got to his truck and tried to remove the hobby horse himself, but he picked it up from the middle so it fell apart into three pieces. I went out there to put it back together and carried it back to the booth as he loaded his groceries into his truck. I expected him to get back out to pump the gas that he was supposedly so low on, but instead, he just got in and DROVE AWAY.

He didn’t pump a drop of gas.

Essentially, he just used pump six as a parking space while he grocery shopped.

I am a clerical worker for a State Government Agency. All these robocalls and scammer calls are ridiculous. The phone rang the other day, and I looked at the caller ID. I was almost positive it was one of those, but hey, work phone. I answered.

Me: “Hi! [State Government Agency], how can I help you?”

I heard the click as the robo-dialer kicked it over to a live person, who did not hear this greeting.

Caller: “Hello?”

Me: “Hi! You’ve reached [State Government Agency]. How may I help you?”

All I can figure is he thought I was lying about the number he’d called and was trying to get out of talking to him.

Caller: “Well, then, f*** you, b****!”

And he hung up.

I started laughing and told my coworkers that he didn’t even give me a chance to tell him, “Not unless you buy me dinner first!”

My manager and I are standing behind our wall just chatting after I have delivered food to my only table. As we’re talking, we see a diner has finished his roast beef and gravy meal. Just before I can go drop the check, I watch him pluck some hair from his own head, wrap it around the fork, and smear it around the plate.

He looks over and sees me and calls me over.

Customer: “This is unacceptable! There is hair in my food! I want a refund, or I am going to sue!”

I let him go on for a minute before telling him:

Me: “Sir, I watched you do that yourself.”

Customer: *Red and angry* “You can’t prove that! Get me your manager!”

Manager: “I’m right here, sir, and we have it all on video. Pay and leave. You’re not welcome in our restaurant again.”

My manager made him pay and off he went, hair and all.

I used to work at a popular sandwich chain. Due to poor pay and poor management, there was a revolving door of employees. Nobody stayed more than a few months (including me). Of course, some were… memorable. This one woman in particular takes the cake.

I showed up for my opening shift at 8:00 am, and I saw an unfamiliar car parked in the employee section. I thought it was odd but didn’t really care until the woman in the driver’s seat rolled down her window and began literally yelling at me.

Woman: “I’ve been here since six am!”

I was a little confused and surprised by her attitude and volume. Also, there was a convenience store literally next door where she could’ve gotten food. I wondered why she’d been sitting here for so long, but I was tired and honestly didn’t really care.

Me: “We don’t open until nine, ma’am.”

Woman: “No! I don’t want a sandwich. I want to work! I’ve got to feed my kids! I haven’t eaten in three days! I work for [Chain] all over the state! See, I’ve got a shirt!”

She pulled on her shirt to show me the uniform while I stood in the parking lot, dumbfounded. Was she asking for a job?

Me: “You’ll need to speak with my manager.”

I began walking away from the crazy lady, and she got out of her car and followed me into the shop. (The door only locks from the outside so she could simply waltz in.) My manager was already there and looked at me, confused. Before I could say anything, the woman continued her tirade of, “I need a job! I haven’t eaten in three days! I need to feed my kids!” My manager gave me a look that said, “I’ll handle it.” I headed to the back and began my opening duties.

Over the course of an hour, I heard my manager talking to this woman, saying we didn’t need her help, we had full staff for the day, etc. She didn’t stop, and eventually, my manager gave up and allowed her to work! At least the woman showed that she indeed knew what to do and didn’t need training. After a couple of hours, my manager came up to me and said she was leaving! I was stuck with the crazy woman.

Not even an hour after my manager left, this woman told me she’d been fired from another chain restaurant for stealing food! She literally used those exact words. She justified it by saying she was “too good of a worker,” and her manager was scared she was going to take his job. When I asked her about the stealing food part, she said that the last chain would allow her to take home food just before it went bad and he used that as justification to fire her. I’m sure there’s more to the story, but I said nothing.

We also get a free sandwich per shift. Being that she hadn’t eaten in three days you’d think she would’ve eaten the free sandwich. Nope, she called a friend to come to get it, and she took it out to her friend’s car where nobody could see them and out of sight of the cameras.

The next day, I showed up for my shift and she was there again! We had one too many people, which my manager said was not allowed, so someone had to get cut. I checked with my other coworkers. They said they didn’t want to lose hours and would put up with the crazy lady, so I said I was going home.

She started giving me orders! She was saying I needed to do X, Y, and Z, and then I could go home. I’m usually non-confrontational, but I gave this woman a look that said, “Ex-f******-cuse me?” She told me she was training to be the manager. Based on her previous behavior, I was 100% convinced she had just decided this herself. The actual manager was also not there, so there was nobody training her.

I left without saying anything or doing as she’d “asked” because I don’t get paid enough to put up with her BS, and the actual manager had said we could get in trouble if too many staff stayed.

Over the next two weeks, this lady over-prepped the kitchen so badly that there was no way we could use everything before it went bad. Conveniently, she offered to take it home since “we shouldn’t waste food.” She “messed up” a suspicious number of sandwiches, which she would then give to her “friends.” These “mess-ups” almost always included some of the most expensive meats, and she always delivered the sandwiches to her friends’ cars.

She refused to use the guards when slicing meat and veggies and cut the tips of her fingers multiple times. She then told the manager she needed worker’s compensation until they were healed. She refused to do anything that didn’t involve over-prepping food or making sandwiches that she could mess up.

After three weeks, she was fired.