We have this new hire who isn’t great at figuring out computers. When she needs help, she’ll just sit there and say to no one specific:

New Hire: “Help.”

She does this in a monotone, low-volume way and will never change the way she says it. The same tone, the same volume, every few seconds, until someone comes over.

New Hire: “Help.”

New Hire: “Help.”

New Hire: “Help.”

Me: “What is it?”

New Hire: “I’ve forgotten my password.”

Me: “Click on the ‘forgot password’ button and follow the instructions.”

New Hire: “Oh.”

Later:

New Hire: “Help.”

New Hire: “Help.”

Coworker: “What is it?”

New Hire: “How do I logout?”

Coworker: “Click on the ‘logout’ button.”

After a couple of days of this:

New Hire: “Help.”

Coworker: *Singing.* “I need somebody.”

New Hire: “Help.”

Coworker: *Singing.* “Not just anybody.”

New Hire: “Help.”

Coworker: *Singing.* “You know I need someone.”

New Hire: “Help.”

Coworker: *Sighs.* “What is it?”

New Hire: “I forgot my password again.”

The new hire has either never heard that Beatles song or was completely oblivious, as she didn’t react to the singing at all.

I used to work at a very large consulting company that was famous (or infamous) for sending all of its interns to Orlando for a weeklong onboarding/training session. This was to ostensibly train college grads on how not to lose clients as soon as they start, but it was also a great way to filter out people who… still lived spiritually in a college frat house.

On my intern’s second day, he was called out of my training by HR. He came back pale as a ghost and told me he had a family emergency and needed to leave work. I never saw him again.

Later that day, I decided to crash a neighboring office’s happy hour (consulting actually encourages college-level drinking after the first year or so). A close friend is telling a hilarious story about an intern who got fired that day.

Supposedly, the intern had come back to his hotel so drunk that he couldn’t find his room and tried to book a new room on the company card. A few other interns tried to save him by stashing his drunk ass in someone else’s room. He woke up in the middle of the night and tried to fight the original occupants of the room, whom he was convinced were actually inside his room. Security was called.

As you can probably guess, this turned out to be my intern.

HR never actually informed me that he got fired.

I’m setting up my email at a corporate job. The IT guy is going through all the quirks on the software.

IT Guy: “Also, there’s no spam or junk folders, so everything will be in the main folder.”

Me: “Okay, that’s kinda weird though.”

IT Guy: “It’s a decision from just after the COVID lockdowns. The boss moved three hours away during COVID and never came back. Your team was supposed to be hybrid, but somehow it shrank to one on-site meeting every three months.”

Me: “What’s that got to do with the lack of spam folders?”

IT Guy: “So then you got a new hire. Usually, that meant a day or two in advance, the boss would call a coworker living nearby to come into the office and greet them, and then for the next few months, somebody needed to be in the office on a daily basis to train them. But somehow the boss totally forgot about this guy.”

Me: “Forgot?!”

IT Guy: “Yup! He came in on his first day to the office, and it was empty. It was empty the day after. After a week or so, he just gave up and stopped coming back.”

Me: “And no one noticed?”

IT Guy: “Hey, forgot is forgot. The team had rotating nightshifts. Once per month or so, you would have to take phone calls and solve some issues. There was some automated Excel file that would assign coworkers for those shifts. Each newbie had a half-year grace period to learn the ropes before getting these night shifts.”

Me: “Six months? I think I can see where this is going.”

IT Guy: “So on one random meeting, the guy currently on the night shift is asking, who is the person he should switch it with, as he’s never seen that name before. The newbie. He’d been collecting the wages for seven months and working for half a year in a different company already!”

Me: “Okay… that’s amazing. It still doesn’t explain the—”

IT Guy: “—the spam, yeah. So when HR tried to get those wages back, the newbie said he’d emailed the boss to ask why no one was in the office and what he should do. The email ended with “I await your instructions.” That email went to the boss’s spam folder, and he never saw it. The newbie argues that he was still “awaiting instructions” and HR gave up chasing.”

Me: “So… I’m a newbie. Do you think you could forget about me?”

IT Guy: “Haha, sorry, but no. That story has gone down in infamy and will never be forgotten. That guy is kinda my hero!”

I’ve got a new job as a second assistant for a corporate bigwig (think Anne Hathaway’s character in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’), and the first assistant is explaining certain aspects of the job for me.

First Assistant: “Now there’s an item in his calendar for 10 AM every day, and it’s SUPER IMPORTANT that you tell him when it’s 10 AM, and that nothing is scheduled for 10 AM for him until 10:15 AM.”

Me: “Got it.”

First Assistant: “It’s so he remembers to take his meds.”

Me: “Yeah, that does sound important.”

First Assistant: “Yeah, the last time I went on vacation, there wasn’t anyone around to remind him, and by the end of the week, the voices were back…”

Me: “Uh…”

First Assistant: “And we found out just how flammable the meeting room office chairs were…”

Me: “Uhm…”

First Assistant: “But it’s fine, because you’re here now, so he’ll always have someone to remind him every day!”

Related:
Please Be A Prank, Please Be A Prank…, Part 7
Please Be A Prank, Please Be A Prank…, Part 6
Please Be A Prank, Please Be A Prank…, Part 5
Please Be A Prank, Please Be A Prank…, Part 4
Please Be A Prank, Please Be A Prank…, Part 3

I’ve been working at the grocery store for a couple of weeks.

Coworker: “Watch out, Duchess Whine-ington has walked in.”

Me: “Duchess who?”

Coworker: “The lady in the fancy dress. Despite how she looks, she’ll find an item that she thinks is overpriced and will whine about it.”

The ‘duchess’ approaches me holding a jar of peanut butter.

Duchess: “Why is this so expensive?!”

Me: “That’s an organic brand of peanut butter. Actually, that one is more expensive as it’s cashew butter, not peanuts.”

Duchess: “Hmph, well, it should be the same price as the peanut butter! What if I like cashews but don’t like peanuts?!”

Me: “I don’t set the prices, ma’am, but if you wanted to provide feedback, you could—”

She flounces away before I can finish the sentence. My coworker walks over to me.

Coworker: “Told you.”

Me: “That nickname was pretty accurate.”

Coworker: “We have them for all our frequent flyers! There’s Red Bull Red Handed, because he’s always caught red-handed stealing… You guessed it, Red Bull. There’s Crystal Methodist, high and always preaching about God, and there’s Count Backula, who always counts every item as it scans and keeps an eye on the total, and always gets cashback.”

Me: “I love how descriptive the names are! I really feel like I can see them.”

Coworker: “Yeah, some are more obvious than others. Wait until you meet Granny NoPants…”