The bookstore where I work once suffered from a plague of preachers. You know the ones: religious pamphlets left on the shelves, at the checkout, and next to the inventory look-up computer, and offered up to other customers along with a spiel about the Grace of God. Our manager wouldn’t have any of it and chased them out whenever he caught them leaving things about… which, unfortunately, became increasingly less often as they started to realize we were onto them. Corporate was adamant that we couldn’t remove people from the store if we didn’t catch them in their problematic behaviour, previous offenses be d***ed, and we resigned ourselves to shooing them out if we caught them and removing all this scrap whenever we didn’t.

Until we hired [New Guy].

[New Guy] introduced himself as “the biggest nerd you will ever meet” to all of his coworkers. He didn’t socialize much with his coworkers even on a slow day, but we’d often find him on his breaks reading books, watching anime, or playing games — proper video games, not smartphone downloads. He also had some admirable voice imitations, his most proud of which was a growling Liam O’Brien impersonation that was honestly jarring compared to his usual high-pitched pleasantry.

One day, he found one of those pamphlets and assumed it was misplaced by someone who had decided against it. He sought me out and asked where it was supposed to be, and I told him about our problem.

New Guy: “That’s a thing? I thought religious nuts like that were a myth! Hey, [Manager], am I scheduled for tomorrow?”

Manager: “I don’t think so, why?”

The next day, [New Guy] approached the opening shift manager in a hooded robe and mask that made him unrecognizable. He had a giant bag of pamphlets that looked WAY too well-done to have been made overnight, all featuring religious teachings… of various fictional religions. There were stories about the Church of Martel, the Fabula Nova Crystallis creation mythos, inferred teachings of Hylia and the Golden Goddesses, some fanfic writer’s doctrine of Arceus worship, and what looked like half the Hierarchy of Laguna, just as a start.

With management’s permission, [New Guy] found a comfy seat with his bag and waited. Eventually, someone noticed a left-behind pamphlet and recognized one of our problem visitors, and we signalled him to [New Guy] while he was on his way out. The preacher went white as a sheet when this masked stranger in a dark robe came up to him on his way out and spoke to him in an intimidating baritone.

New Guy: “Greetings, friend. Do you have a moment to spare?”

Preacher: “Um… Yes, what is it?”

New Guy: *Drawing out a pamphlet* “I am come to share the teachings of the goddess Etro. Please, take this, and listen to—”

Preacher: “I… No, thank you, I shouldn’t.”

New Guy: “Please, I insist. Surely a man of your generousness would not be opposed to such faithful discourse? If you do not have time, then at least accept this, that you might peruse Her teachings on your own time.”

Preacher: “I don’t see why I should—”

New Guy: “No? But did I not see you earlier leaving teachings of your own for others to see? Surely you should take no issue with receiving a gift such as this?”

The preacher stammered an excuse I couldn’t make out as [New Guy] took his hand and set the pamphlet into it, and then he fled the store, leaving [New Guy] to retake his seat.

The rest of the day — and the next day, because he had that one off, too — [New Guy] waited for us to inform him of our problem visitors and greeted each one with a pamphlet in hand. Some of them acted too polite to flee, and he’d go on a spiel — quiet enough not to trouble the other customers — about whatever belief he’d drawn for that encounter. Others tried to give him h*** for it, decrying his faith as worthless next to their own, and we were able to forcibly remove them from the store for their disruptive behaviour.

Our plague receded for a few days after that, and we all bought [New Guy] a drink for his effort. When they started back up, [New Guy] showed up on his next day off in the robe and mask again and had his pamphlets at the ready. When it seemed like the preachers might have figured out his schedule, another coworker offered to contribute with her own faux-religious garments and mask, and [New Guy] gave her his bag of pamphlets to distribute if the need should arise.

We’re currently going on five months of preacher-free work, but [New Guy]’s bag of pamphlets is sitting behind the front desk, just in case.

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I was a project manager, and my not-so-bright boss dumped a do-nothing and know-nothing employee onto my team. Why, I have no clue, but despite my objections, I was stuck with him. He had no idea what our project was even about, but I tried to find something important for him to do — like documenting our processes and procedures — that wouldn’t cause our project to fail. But he failed at that simple task, too. 

Then came annual evaluations for all members of my team. After writing them, I met with my boss for review and approval. My recommendation, complete with a list of all the screw-ups and mistakes this jerk had made, was to put him on probation for ninety days, and if he didn’t improve, he was to be let go. And he would receive no raise that year.  

Instead of my boss accepting my recommendation for this guy, he told me to promote him to a Senior Analyst position! I could not justify that, and I told my boss so.

Boss: “Do it, or you might be reporting to that guy.”

I got the drift and somehow managed to write a half-decent reason for promoting this guy.

But, I did two things: along with my promotion request, I sent all communications explaining to my boss why I didn’t want to promote him and his responses to “do it”. And in the minutia of the request for promotion, I wrote, “[Employee] is being promoted only because I was told to do it. He is not worthy of this promotion.” My boss never saw or read the negative comments; he just signed off on it, and this guy was promoted.

Thankfully, our project was over in a couple of months and my staff was reassigned, as was I, to other projects. [Employee] was assigned to a different project manager that reported to a different boss. His new project manager quickly learned just how bad this employee was and read his employee file, including the “review” I had written.  

The project manager and his boss came to talk to me about it, and I told them the entire story, complete with copies of the emails between my boss and me, where I constantly wrote and provided examples that this employee was incompetent and did not deserve a promotion, and the responses telling me to “do it”.

Then, the three of us went to the Vice President of the division and explained what happened. [Employee] and my boss were asked to resign or be fired. They resigned.

Good riddance.

I work as a barista trainer. My entire job is to train and certify baristas, and it’s actually really fun! I’ve only been at this job for eight months or so, but it has been the best job I’ve had! However, I still need to put up with idiots all the time.

Basically, how the class works, you need to do the first three hours of the class (which is very content-heavy) before you can do the fun latte art two-hour component. If you haven’t done the three-hour, you can’t do the two-hour.

The other trainers and I were setting up class two in the hour break we had between them when I noticed someone at our door, knocking pretty frantically. Being management, I walked up to see what was happening.

Me: “Hi! How can I help you?”

Trainee: “Oh, hi. I’m here for the latte art class.”

Me: “We’ve just started set-up, so we’ll still be about fifteen minutes before we start. You can wait here or have some lunch and come back then?”

Trainee: “Oh, okay. Can I do the class?”

Me: *Confused* “Uh, yeah, it’s just that we haven’t set it up yet. It’ll be another fifteen minutes before we start.”

Trainee: “So, I can do it?”

Me: *Still confused* “Yeah, we’ll start in about fifteen.”

Trainee: “So, it doesn’t matter that I missed the first class?”

Now it made sense.

Me: “Oh! No, you need to do the first part before doing this one. When were you supposed to do the first class?”

Trainee: “This morning.”

Me: “Oh?”

Trainee: “Yeah, I showed up thirty minutes late and saw the door was locked, so I just left.”

I was dumbfounded. It’s company policy that we’re allowed to let students into the class no matter how late they are, so usually, they just stand outside until one of the trainers lets them in. It will at most take five minutes before we notice them.

Me: “Unfortunately, because you didn’t do the first class, I can’t let you do this one. You’re going to have to rebook. There’s no extra fee.”

Trainee: “But I was here.”

Me: “Yes, but you did not complete the class and I was unable to assess you.”

Trainee: “But I was here! It’s not my fault you didn’t let me in.”

Me: “Yes, but you left before we could let you in.”

Trainee: “But—”

Me: “Sir, if you just call us on Monday or come into the store, we can rebook you for another class free of charge.”

Trainee: “Why can’t you do it now?”

Me: “It’s a Saturday, so no receptionists are in.”

Trainee: “Why can’t you do it now?”

Me: “I’m just the trainer; I don’t have access to the systems.”

Trainee: “This is stupid. Let me talk to your manager.”

This was the happiest moment of my life; this job was my first management position, and this was my first shift by myself, so I FINALLY was able to pull the card I’d wanted to pull for years!

Me: “Sir, I am the manager. I’ll see you on Monday!”

I shut the door, leaving him on the other side. He banged the door for a little bit before storming off.

He did indeed come back on Monday and tried to complain to ME about this rude employee he’d encountered on Saturday. Oh, his face when I calmly explained that he was complaining about me. I wasn’t aware people could turn that red! Icing on the cake? When he finally took the class, he failed it because he kept arguing with my boss over the training. Some people are just made to be entertainment, I guess.

I work at a home improvement store in the flooring section, and I’m training a new employee. I am giving the kid a tour of the department when I hear a whistle. I ignore it at first, but then I hear it again. I turn toward the noise and see three guys with a grocery cart standing in the laminate aisle.

Me: “Excuse me?”

Customer: “Yeah, we’re looking for flooring?”

Me: “Welp, you sure found it. This is the flooring department.”

And then I turn back around and continue training the new kid because I am not a dog nor a servant.

Me: *To the new kid* “You absolutely do not need to respond to anyone who treats you so poorly.”

The guests did approach the new guy a few minutes later. They weren’t apologetic, but they were slightly nicer. The new kid made a pretty decent sale from them but I refused to help them at all after that. Oh, well.

I am training a new coworker on how to use our checkout.

Me: “This is the POS. It’s where the customers have the most interaction, so naturally, it’s also what breaks down the most.”

Coworker: “Hah. I get it.”

Manager: *Walking up* “Getting up to speed on the Point Of Sale system? Careful, it’s temperamental.”

Coworker: “POS means Point Of Sale? I always thought you called it a POS because it never works?”

Manager: “I don’t understand.”

Me: “Piece of s***.”

Manager: “Oh… to be fair, it is that, too.”