My friends and I are at the local shopping mall, walking around and what have you. As a jovial bunch of fellas, we’re moving throughout the mall at a pretty steady clip. When we come to an escalator to move down a floor, we start walking down it. There are a couple of people on the escalator that we squeeze past, offering a polite “Excuse me” as we go. My friends make it down to the floor without incident, and I move to follow them, attempting to move around an older woman and what I’m assuming are her two adult children, a man and a woman.

Me: “Excuse me—”

Suddenly, the woman violently thrusts her arm out to block my passage.

Woman: “DON’T YOU WALK IN FRONT OF ME, LITTLE BOY!”

For the record, I am a college sophomore, so I don’t know why she called me that.

Anyway, swiftly realizing I’m not getting past Guardian Grandma, I take a step back up the escalator and just wait. As we’re waiting, her daughter sneers at me.

Daughter: “He looks like a wimp, Momma! I bet I could beat him up, Momma! Want me to beat him up, Momma?”

The older woman said nothing but continued to fix me a steely gaze until we reached the bottom, after which, they all walked off without further hostilities.

I’ll concede that walking down the escalator is perhaps a bit rude, but that seems to me like a bit of an overreaction. Plus, my two friends passed by them without any comment, but I haven’t a clue why I wasn’t permitted passage into Guardian Grandma’s realm.

I had a coworker who was absolutely awful to waitstaff because he believed it got him better service. I once asked him if he minded the fact that the waiters might spit in his food, and he went, “Heh, heh, heh, some places charge extra for that.”

Worse, I was usually seated next to [Coworker] at corporate functions because our last names were only a few letters apart, and seating was by last name.

It hurt my soul watching [Coworker] act the way he acted, and it hurt my happiness watching as the service at our table consistently went from “okay” to “the worst service in the house” due to his behavior. I started requesting specifically not to be seated at the same table as him.

Another corporate event was coming up, and when I checked the seating chart, to my dread, I saw that I was once more seated at the same table as [Coworker]. Fed up with it, I hatched a plan.

I found out who the catering company was and warned them about [Coworker] in advance. I advised that they record his outbursts, gave them the email addresses of some high-level executives, and told them that if [Coworker] gave them trouble, they should threaten to blacklist us. It took a while for the person I’d called to understand, but eventually, I got passed along to a manager in the catering company who had a brilliant evil cackle as we conspired together.

Next, on the day of the event, I made sure to rile the guy up. I knew what sorts of things would upset [Coworker]. A couple of his biggest triggers were praising young people and talking about the poor, so I made sure to say a few triggering phrases to him before the servers came around.

He had so many nasty outbursts with the waitstaff that day, and each time he started to calm himself down, I mentioned something else to piss him off, like talking about a homeless encampment or mentioning an article about a fast food worker getting a GoFundMe after the company stiffed him for his many-year anniversary.

My a**hole coworker barely knew which end was up by the end of the day. He was practically frothing, and his face was blotchy and red. I’m surprised he didn’t have a heart attack. He had to call off work the day after because his “voice was too hoarse”!

My plan did not take long at all to come to fruition. By the next week, [Coworker] had been let go.

I never told anyone else about it, though one woman seated at the table watched me do it and secretively congratulated me when [Coworker]’s “retirement” was announced.

A few years later, I saw [Coworker] manning a cash register at a retail store. I asked him why he was here, and he ranted that his “401k” in his mid-fifties wasn’t enough to retire off of and he had been disqualified from the company pension.

In my mid-twenties, I worked in a grocery store which was the absolute worst job I ever had. And one of the people who made it so miserable was [Rude Coworker].

[Rude Coworker] claimed to have some flavor of mental disability. I never actually found out what specifically he claimed to have, but it manifested in him striking up random conversations with people to share fun facts that were ALWAYS something either insulting or upsetting to the person he was telling them to. They were never anything that they would actually find “fun”.

We would complain, but management didn’t want to rock the boat with his disability claims, and they just generally told us to suck it up and deal with it.

On my particular final straw incident, I came into work having just gotten some terrible news about my family a few hours before. On top of that, I had spent my entire previous shift the weekend before with [Rude Coworker], dealing with him popping up randomly to share “fun facts” about all the ways I’d have been tortured and punished for speaking back to a man back in the Middle Ages. This “somehow” became his topic of focus after I asked him to be more careful when he knocked over two displays I was working on near the start of that shift. It had, in fact, “somehow” become his topic of focus with me in particular two times before this one, and all three times, management’s response to my complaints was, “Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

So, suffice it to say, my tolerance for [Rude Coworker] was at an all-time low.

Rude Coworker: “Oh, hey, [My Name]! You know, you might not like to hear it, but—”

The last strand of my temper snapped.

Me: “THEN WHY ARE YOU GOING TO SAY IT?!”

There was dead silence as [Rude Coworker] stepped back, looking shocked, and a few other coworkers and customers turned to look toward us. Maybe I could have pulled back at that point, but everything just came spilling out.

Me: “WHY?! You just said that you know that I won’t like what you are about to say, so WHY ARE YOU PLANNING TO STILL SAY IT?! Why open your mouth? Why?!”

Rude Coworker: “I don’t—”

Me: “Oh, oh, let me guess! You don’t get social cues? Is that it? That’s what you always smirk after you insult everyone, isn’t it? Well, guess what? Knowing that someone won’t like what you say is a social cue, and you obviously do get it, because you just said as much right now!”

Of course, [Rude Coworker] fled to [Assistant Manager] to cry about me being rude to him, and I got pulled in to be scolded for not being more “understanding” and “kind” and more of a doormat — though that last bit was only implied, not stated. They told me to just go home, and that they’d be discussing my continued employment with [Store Manager]. After so many times of absolutely nothing happening to punish [Rude Coworker] and after my big blowup, I was just emotionally drained and didn’t have the will to try and fight it.

I went home and called up my family to get more information on the bad news, and I spent the time until my next scheduled shift focusing on that and doubling down on the job searching I’d already been doing.

When I came into my next shift, however, I found out that [Rude Coworker] had been fired. It seems that maybe getting me “sent home” for standing up to him emboldened him or something because he had apparently told a customer, in graphic detail, exactly what sort of sexual acts he’d like to do with her. And it turns out that sexual harassment of actual customers is a hard line — even for that store’s terrible management — that no number of disability claims would get them to overlook.

So, he was gone, and absolutely no mention was made of my blow-up or any “discussions about my continued employment”. I still ended up leaving that job the very moment that I found another job a few months down the road because, while [Rude Coworker] was one of the most terrible things about that job, it still had plenty of others to make it a terrible place to work.

I stop into an upscale juice shop on my way to get groceries. After I grab a bottle of juice from their row of refrigerators, I notice an older and younger woman, probably a mother and daughter, already in the store. At that moment, they are cleaning up a puddle of pee from their puppy. The older woman is pulling out wipes while the younger woman is freaking out and trying to apologize.

I walk around them and head over to the counter to pay. The two employees are in the back making smoothies that the two women ordered. I wait off to the side to pay.

Older Woman: *Shouting* “I left a $10 bill on the counter for the extra waters I wanted to buy!”

I look over and notice it’s not there.

Older Woman: *Irate and demanding* “Where is it?!”

One employee comes from the back to bring one of the smoothies. She looks startled.

Employee: “I’ve only just come from the back; I didn’t see the money.”

Older Woman: “This is ridiculous!”

She then looks directly at me. It’s clear she wants to accuse me of taking it, but she knows it’s not a good idea. She holds eye contact with me, willing me to say something.

Me: *Calmly* “I didn’t see it.”

The older woman opens her wallet to pay, muttering under her breath that she’s sure she already paid. All she has is $100, and the cashier says they can’t take it. 

Older Woman: *Loudly* “Well, I did have a $10 but it’s mysteriously vanished!”

The younger woman, to her credit, is trying to get the older woman to look for it elsewhere.

Younger Woman: “Maybe it’s in one of your bags?”

Older Woman: “I don’t know. This is ridiculous.”

She finally walks over to the largest bag they have.

Older Woman: “Unless it’s in here!” 

She dramatically lifted it off the floor — yes, where the dog peed! — and yep, out flew a $10 bill. She handed it to the cashier without acknowledging me.

After she got her change, the cashier gestured for me to come over so I could pay for my juice. Just as I scanned my card, I looked over to see the dog take a poop on the floor. The smell was overwhelming — and I have a dog myself!

The young woman was flustered and clearly mortified, while the older woman just sighed and leaned down to clean up the next mess. I looked at the employee, who had a blank look on her face. I’m saddened to think she might be used to this. 

With my payment done, I walked out to brush off the most ridiculous five minutes of my day.

My supermarket is not the sort of sprawling behemoth implied by the term “chain store”, but it does have several different locations. The particular location where I work has a mismatch between what our circulars say and what our computer system actually does.

For example: this week, there is a two-for-one sale on a certain brand of ice cream. What the circular says: buy one get one free, and you have to buy two. What our system actually does: each item rings up as half off, so you can buy only one and still get the sale.

Today, I have a customer who is buying two tubs of the ice cream that’s on sale. He also has a coupon for a free tub of ice cream, or $5.99, whichever amount is lower. His order is small — only one other item besides those tubs. I ring it all up and follow the usual procedure with this kind of coupon, which involves grabbing a pen to write down the amount it takes off. I read the price aloud to myself in preparation for writing it down.

That’s where the trouble starts.

Customer: “No. No, that’s not right. It’s supposed to be $5.99.”

Me: “Your ice creams rang up as $3.49. It’s giving you one of them for free.”

Customer: “It’s supposed to take off $5.99.”

Me: “Well, they’re $3—”

Customer: “No. The circular says, ‘Buy one, get one free.'”

Me: “That means they’re both half off.”

Customer: “Get me your manager.”

Way ahead of you, sir. Being yelled at freaks me out, so I am only too happy to pass him on to one of my direct supervisors, the bookkeepers. A bookkeeper comes down, rings up the coupon, sees that it took off $3.49, looks at the circular, and says exactly the same things I did.

Customer: “Get the store manager.”

The bookkeeper gets on the intercom and calls the store manager to my register. The bookkeepers all started as cashiers and occasionally come down to work a register if it’s busy. The store managers, as far as I know, have no such history, or if they do, it’s years in the past. When the store manager comes down, it takes him an extra long time just to figure out what is happening. He has to look at the circular, look at the coupon, discuss things with the bookkeeper, etc. He is confused because there is no sign that anything is wrong.

Customer: “It’s supposed to take off $5.99. See, right there.”

Manager: “Yeah, I see it. ‘Up to $5.99.’ Well, the ice cream is ringing up $3.49, and it’s taking off $3.49, so you’re getting one for free.”

Customer: “No. The circular says, ‘Buy one, get one free.'”

Bookkeeper: “That means they’re half off.”

Manager: “Two for $6.98, it says. That’s $3.49 each.”

Customer: “It says, ‘Buy one get one free.'”

Me: *To the manager, who still looks confused* “I think he was expecting one ice cream to ring up at its full price of $6.99, the second one to ring up free because of our sale, and then the coupon to take $5.99 off the first one, so he would get two tubs of ice cream for a dollar.”

The exchange goes on a little while longer. It’s just repetitions of the same. When it becomes clear that the manager is not going to alter our computer system on the spot, the angry guy demands that his entire order be canceled. We return his coupon, he leaves, and the bookkeeper returns the ice cream to the freezers. The manager begins to walk away from my register.

Me: “Hey, [Manager]? What’s up with the circulars? They’re not right. It says that the customers have to buy two, but they don’t. If I ring up a single one, it’s still half off.”

The manager gives the circular another glance.

Manager: “Yeah, the circulars are written for the new system we’re getting soon.”

This would be the new system we’ve been hearing about for six months. That’s approximately when the circulars started saying, “Must buy two,” which implies that at least one location has had this new system in place for months. Why is it taking so long to go around to ten or fewer stores to perform this upgrade?

More importantly, how many more customers like this guy am I going to see before it happens?