It’s my first day working at the supermarket after training. I am talking about this to my manager when a customer approaches us.

Customer: “I’m looking for the pyramid tea bags — you know, the ones that grow on the trees? I don’t want those artificial flat ones.”

Me: “Uh… pyramid tea bags don’t—” 

Manager: “Right this way, sir!”

My manager shows him the boxes of tea bags that come in a pyramid shape, designed to improve how well they infuse the water as they steep.

Customer: “Perfect! Thank you!” *Trots off happily* 

Manager: *To me* “If you know what they’re asking for, just take them to it. You’re not paid enough to argue with stupid. None of us are.” 

Related:
Choose Your Battles, Part 9
Choose Your Battles, Part 8
Choose Your Battles, Part 7
Choose Your Battles, Part 6
Choose Your Battles, Part 5

I worked at a place that did lobster bakes on Fridays. You got a steamed lobster, baked potato, corn on the cob, and a cup of chowder.

The new and grossly misinformed waitress told a table they could sub the chowder for a second lobster at no upcharge. The ticket went into the kitchen, and the chef let out a loud yell for the manager.

We couldn’t get the waitress to understand that we were not doing this sub and never would.

I had to take over the table, and when I went to explain, they just laughed and said, “We thought we’d try!”

Typically, cashiers at this job would be on their own mid-shift or after one day of training, depending on how quickly they picked things up. I spent three days training this one lady who could not grasp the basics:

Me: “Remember, for every transaction you have to hit the total key to get the total!”

She couldn’t even remember that. The next day:

Manager: “We need you to continue training [New Hire].”

Me: “No, I refuse to train her for a fourth shift.”

Management was annoyed and had her continue with another cashier. And yup, then they finally listened, gave up, and switched her to floor tasks. She didn’t last long there either.

Many MANY years ago, I was going on holiday and my bosses (my supervisor and our manager) hired a temp to look after the place while I was gone for a few weeks. It was nothing fancy, just some light helpdesk work, support around a hundred-and-fifty users in one building over five floors on Windows 95 (at the time). It was basic MS Word and Excel, easy hardware troubleshooting… that kind of thing.

It’s the first day of me showing him the ropes.

Me: “Oh, can you copy that file, please.”

Temp: “How do I do that?”

After picking my jaw up off the ground (remember, this is meant to be a techie), we move on:

Me: “Move the file explorer window over so we can see something behind it.”

Temp: “How do I do that?”

They got a new temp in the first week I was away.

We had a new hire get fired during training because she thought it was funny to prop her filthy feet (she was wearing sandals) on the shoulders of other new hires in the class. The trainer told her in no uncertain terms that this was inappropriate behavior and it needed to stop NOW!

New Hire: *Giggling* “I’m not hurting anyone.”

That didn’t go over well with the trainer or her classmates, but she “behaved” herself for the rest of the morning. Then, she decided to do it again after their lunch break.

This time, it didn’t go well for her. The classmate she propped her feet up on reached up and shoved the bottoms of her sandals so hard that her chair wheeled backward for a short distance and then tipped over, leaving her sprawled on the floor screaming her head off.

Just then, the trainer walked into the classroom.

Trainer: “Shut up, get up, grab your stuff, and go to the site supervisor’s office.”

There, she was promptly fired. [Trainer] told me later that she was screaming at the site supervisor:

New Hire: “[Classmate] should be fired, too! He assaulted me!”

Yeah, no. Not gonna happen.