I started working for a relatively small company in April. It’s now December, and the office is frantically trying to finish all of the year-end tasks and get ready for the new year. 

Especially me! I’m the admin for several other people. I take the data the team gives me and I make it dance: spreadsheets to presentations to writing copy and sending out information to other teams in the company. Lots of things are happening, and I like to think I’m doing a pretty good job at it. 

However, I’ve been having trouble with one particular person. For some reason, over the past few months that I’ve been helping them, I’ve either been doing their presentations wrong, or the numbers just don’t add up, or it’s a huge time crunch. This person lives in another state but comes to the main office every month or so, and we talk over email and text all day anyway. 

My anxiety won’t let up either; everything I do for them, it’s a mess, it’s wrong, it’s bad, it’s not what they want — and they’re showing it to the client the next day. It’s just a nightmare for my brain. It also doesn’t help they’re fairly expressionless and monotone, and I can’t pick up clues via the phone.

They and I are trying to figure out what’s going wrong with this one particular presentation, just before the office closes for the holidays, when they come into my office before they leave to go home. 

Coworker: “Hey. Thank you. I appreciate all you’ve done for me this past year.”

I am FLOORED by this. I swear I sit there with my mouth open for a moment. 

Coworker: “I think you’re getting the hang of this. I know I’ve been sort of difficult to work with, but you’ve been catching on.”

Me: “…and you’ve been here for fifteen years, since the beginning, and I started in April?”

Coworker: “Ha! Yeah. But no, I think you’re really a great addition to the team. Keep it up.”

Me: “Th-thank you! Thank you so much! I really appreciate the feedback!”

Coworker: “No problem. See you next year!”

But that’s not all! 

Later that same day, I speak with my supervisor.

Supervisor: “Oh, by the way, I was out with [Boss] the other night, and you know what she told me? “

Me: *Wincing* “…what did she tell you?”

Supervisor: “She told me, ‘I’m really happy [My Name] is on our team. The great energy they bring, the joy and happiness, and of course, their work ethic is fantastic! Wish we’d had them sooner.’ To be quite honest, I think so, too.”

That was a FANTASTIC day at the office!

We use an app at work called Bonfyre. I am taking a new hire through the process of how to use it.

New Hire: “I won’t be doing that.”

Me: “Uh… yes, you kinda need to.”

New Hire: “Get me to do anything else, but I won’t be doing that!”

Me: “Why not?”

New Hire: “Bonfires are linked to witchcraft and pagans!”

I just sit there staring at them, waiting for any more information or context. Nope. Apparently, that’s enough.

Me: “You either use the app like I am about to explain, or you use the exit and don’t come back.”

New Hire: “That’s religious discrimination!”

Me: “Exit is that way. Thanks for wasting half my day.”

I start a new job at an office downtown. I don’t drive or even have a driver’s license, just a regular state ID. I show up for the new hire paperwork and hand over my ID. In my state, regular state IDs are slightly different than driver’s licenses; namely, they have a landscape orientation rather than the driver’s licenses’ portrait orientation. The Human Resources representative stares at it for a second.

Representative: “Huh, your license looks weird.”

Me: “Oh, I just have a regular ID. I don’t drive.”

Representative: “Oh, really? You didn’t drive here, did you?”

Me: “Nope, I took the bus.”

Representative: “All right, let me go make a copy of this and I’ll be back.”

Later, the person doing my training comes over to discuss what we’ll be doing.

Trainer: “You can take your garage ticket over to [Person] on your lunch break to validate it!”

Me: “Oh, no worries. I don’t drive, so I took the bus down.”

Trainer: “You… don’t drive? How do you get places?”

Me: “Um, bus, [Rideshare], carpooling, stuff like that. It’s not that big of a deal to me.”

Trainer: “Huh. Weird.”

Later on, [Representative] is giving me some paperwork and my building pass.

Representative: “Oh, and here’s your parking pass! You’ll use it for [garage].”

Me: “Um, thanks, but again, I don’t drive. Do you have a bus pass program instead?”

Representative: “We do, but a lot of people prefer to drive themselves. Are you sure you don’t want a garage pass?”

Me: “I… You saw my ID. I can’t legally drive — not that I have a car anyway.”

I did get set up with the bus pass program, but the person who signed me up also asked if I’d just prefer to drive myself. Are there really that few non-drivers in my area?

This story reminded me of a very similar story that occurred when I was working at a hotel when I lived in the UK.

[Old Manager] was very laid-back. He was firm, but he knew that he could get the best out of his team by not helicopter-managing them; in fact, if he was any more laid-back, he’d fall over. When it came to the roster, since most of our employees were also attending University, [Old Manager] stylised the roster to be as fluid and flexible as possible. For every full-time employee, there would be at minimum two interchangeable employees who were rostered on the system but were not always obliged to work if their lectures or studies conflicted. It was a very good system, and when [Old Manager] left, we hoped that it would continue under [New Manager].

Oh.

Oh, how wrong we were.

[New Manager] had barely a year under his belt at this particular hotel, so the only logical explanation for what he did next remains at least a best guess: to show us all what a boss he was. On his first day, he demanded that all members of staff attend a meeting during the daytime. Naturally, because he asked this on the day of the meeting during work, with so little notice, the University part-timers weren’t able to attend.

We arrived at a conference-style meeting. [New Manager] was standing there, hands on his hips, and his chest fully puffed out. He could not have looked any prouder of himself if he’d tried.

New Manager: “Thank you all for coming. I am assuming this is our staff for the day shift?”

Me: “There should be a few more people here. The University stu—”

New Manager: “Yep. Say no more. From now on, the roster will be revamped to better suit the hotel’s demands, not the other way around. Any person not able to attend this meeting will be spoken to privately on the matter of their poor attendance record. If you cannot handle the heat, ladies and gentlemen, stay the f*** out of the kitchen.”

Yep, he really thought he was doing something with this “speech”. Though it was rumoured that he tried to give disciplinaries during these one-on-one meetings with the part-timers, he was unable to do much because of the short notice with which the changes were made.

God bless the part-timers, though; despite the changes to the roster, they definitely did try to accommodate [New Manager]’s demanding schedule, but it became evident that this was not sustainable. Over the course of three days, almost our entire catering staff who were part-timers quit.

The cherry on the top? This was right before the Christmas period.

That year was horrendous, but it was all worth it to watch the hotel’s owner tear the then-demoted [New Manager] a new one for being so stupid.

Related:
Don’t Give Employees Options You Won’t Accept

I used to be in charge of the printer room in a rather large company. We shipped a ton of product every day, and everything shipped had to have the accompanying printed label and documents. Nothing could even be loaded onto the trucks without this paperwork. Now, this was in the olden days of the 1990s, so we had seven massive, four-foot-tall dot matrix printers that did all the work.

These printers were temperamental b*****ds, and if the paper jammed, the printer did not automatically stop printing. It would just keep pushing/jamming more and more paper into the machine until, if left unattended, it would break down.

Running the printer room was a two-person job. When I started, I trained for two full weeks with the two current printer room employees. (One was being promoted; I was replacing him.) It was a rough two weeks, let me tell you, getting the hang of the job and the various things you had to learn, do, etc. One thing that made it even more complicated was the fact that each printer had its own personality with its own problems. Another was the fact that a problem in one printer could have a different fix than the exact same problem in another.

The job would be quiet for forty-five minutes straight, during which we did routine maintenance and such, but it was really slow and quiet and restful. This company processed its shipping orders in batches, once an hour. And then, boy, on the hour, every hour, the batch of orders would go through and thousands and thousands of orders would come spitting out.

Now, if you were on top of things and kept everything running smoothly, the orders would print out very neatly and quickly. But if you didn’t know what you were doing, and if you didn’t maintain things just right, you’d get a back-up and things would go to s*** very, very quickly. And when one machine went down, you had to fix it FAST, before the next one jammed; guaranteed, those machines would jam up multiple times on every batch print job.

I had been working in the print room for several months, and things were great. Then, my coworker gave his two-week notice. We tried to train his replacement, but he was incredibly lazy and got fired — fairly — a few days after the end of his training. That left me in the printer room alone.

Then, the bosses informed me that my “position” was being phased out, and I was going to be replaced by two employees transferred from a different department. So, not only was I losing my job, but I had to train my replacements. And I desperately needed a good recommendation from this company, so I couldn’t just quit or half-a** it.

I quickly learned that both of these transfers were lazy and useless. They’d been with the company for decades, had friends in the head office, and knew their jobs were safe. I’d show them how to do something, and they’d flat-out laugh and say, “Yeah, I’m not doing that.” Every day, I’d try to train them and they would ignore me, chat with each other, or leave to go sit in the cafeteria — leaving me to do a two-person job alone. Luckily, I was good enough to handle the workload, but it was annoying.

Mindful of the fact that I needed a reference from this company, I kept extensive notes on each day’s progress. I clearly documented every single instance of the replacements refusing to learn or even listen to my instructions. I also followed up daily with my direct supervisor, and he knew what was going on. My notes went into the company files and were passed up the line.

Despite my scathing reports, the head office did nothing.

Now, it was my last day. This was the day the training process directed me to let the newbies work alone, with no help or supervision allowed, to see how well they handled the job and the pressure. I was, in writing, FORBIDDEN from helping them or answering any questions.

As I expected, things fell to s*** pretty much immediately, minutes into the first batch of orders. One of the biggest printers jammed, and the clueless t**ts had no idea how to fix the printer jam — because they had ignored me every time I tried to show them how.

So, they turned to me and demanded that I fix things. I was sitting on a desk, coffee in one hand and an apple in the other.

Me: *Smiling* “Yeah, I’m not doing that.”

One of them started yelling at me while the other was basically thumping uselessly on the printer like a gorilla that had just found a candy machine. Then, a second printer jammed.

Paper started spilling out of the back of the first printer. (If you knew the job, this was a really, really, REALLY bad warning sign.)

Me: *Standing up* “Well, I’m going to go to the cafeteria, good luck!” 

As I was leaving, I heard a third printer cccrrrruuunnnch and jam up.

I went to my supervisor and let him know what was happening.

Supervisor: “I expected as much. I even predicted it repeatedly to my superiors.”

He once again specifically forbade me from offering any help, so I went to the cafeteria and read my book for a little over an hour.

Then, my supervisor came to me to let me know what had happened. The entire printer room was down, and every single printer had either jammed up or actually broken. The company was losing thousands of dollars every single minute. One of the shipper/receiving supervisors found me, all in a panic, begging me to get the orders printed.

Me: “Sorry, I’m not allowed to do that.”

Now, several people were running around outside the cafeteria, all in a panic, running from place to place to figure out why they didn’t have any shipping orders.

The chaos took HOURS to resolve. And I wasn’t allowed to fix the problems. Any time someone started giving me a hard time, my supervisor would intervene and show them the memo from the bosses stating that I was forbidden from helping in the printer room that day.

I spent my entire last day at work drinking coffee, chatting with coworkers, and reading my book. The whole fiasco ended up costing the company tens of thousands of dollars.