My dad told me this story long ago, so I apologize for not knowing specific ranks or terminology. He was one of the ship’s cooks aboard a minesweeper during the tail end of the Vietnam War. At some point, the ship took on a bunch of Marines for an excursion.

I can’t speak for the behavior of servicemen now, but the Marines at the time were a bunch of arrogant jerks (keepin’ it PG) who believed themselves to be the best of the best and believed that Navy servicemen were wussies (also keepin’ it PG). There was a lot of strutting, preening, and smart-aleck, derogatory sneering toward the Navy men aboard the ship.

In port, anyway.

On the first day on the ocean, things turned around rather quickly against the Marines. Sneering jerks turned into very quiet, very green balls of misery who nibbled delicately at plain crackers and often could be found hanging over the side of the ship. Seasickness hit and hit hard.

This is where my dad and his fellow Navy men took their petty revenge. After days in port with swaggering jerks, certain foods were… requisitioned from the kitchen. Kippered snacks. Anchovies. Oysters. Pickles. Food with powerful smells and tastes got distributed among the Navy servicemen.

The worst offenders got to see fishtails sticking out of mouths and being wiggled up and down as though waving, while the rank smell of canned seafood followed behind them. Many Marines turned a deeper shade of green and fled their vicinity.

The Marines were quite subdued and far more respectful to the Navy men, well before the exercise was finished.

Dad said a few higher-ranking officers merely cleared their throats, ordered the men to finish chewing before they touched equipment, and said nothing more. To his dying day, Dad didn’t know if this was an official exercise or a punishment detail that Dad and his fellow Navy workers took malicious glee in strengthening.

I’m the manager of the front end/customer service area and frequently work as a go-between when it comes to angry customers; it’s my job to shut them up and give them what they want without getting an actual manager involved if it can be avoided.

A man comes in wanting a refund on a copy of Microsoft Office. Immediately, red flags go up for me, because under no circumstances are we allowed to refund software unless it’s faulty in some way, and even then, we can only do an exchange for the same product. Any actual returns have to be processed through the manufacturer, and all their information is printed on every box of software.

I walk this guy over to the customer service desk where I examine the copy of Microsoft Office he has thrown on my counter. I’ve worked in retail for a long time and have seen people do all kinds of stupid backhanded stuff just to get their money back, but this guy doesn’t even try to make the package look unopened. It’s duct-taped shut, plain and simple.

I very politely try to explain that I cannot process the return, and he completely loses his s***. He swears up and down “that’s the condition I bought it in” (yeah, okay, buddy) and that “you have to refund my money!”

I decide to call over a manager without him even asking me to because I know that sometimes just a manager’s say-so will shut up the rudest and most ridiculous customer.

My sales manager comes over, and I calmly explain the situation to him while this guy is screaming his head off about how we’re trying to rip him off to anyone in his vicinity. Other employees and shoppers are now staring at this point. My manager tells the guy that there is no way he’s walking out of this store with a refund, but he’d be glad to do an even exchange for the same product.

The dude continues to flip out, shouting racial slurs, etc. This goes on for a few minutes, until finally, he gets fed up, throws his duct-taped copy of Office on the counter, points right at me, and screams, “THAT WASN’T EASY!” (“That Was Easy” is our store’s motto, of course.)

I told him to have a nice day, and he stormed out.

A former (and lovely) boss of mine was called Joanna, but everyone referred to her as Jo.

During lockdown, we were all working from home and would communicate mostly via email or online messaging.

She’d often send us information, to which I would reply, “Thanks, Jo,” but the stupid autocorrect on my phone changed the J to H, so I once replied to my boss, “Thanks, Ho!”

*Facepalm*

Related:
Autocorrect Picks The Weirdest Words
Autocorrect Has Daddy Issues
Autocorrect Rears Its Ugly Head Again
Autocorrect Causing Friction Once Again
Autocorrect Is Cat-atonic

My husky was a real pain in the rear when it came to escaping and disobeying. The wife and I didn’t want him on the furniture and he made it difficult to find ways to keep him off the furniture. As soon as you weren’t looking, he was up on the couch or the recliner.

There are some tips and tricks we tried to do to deter him from going up on the furniture, but none of them worked.

The one that stands out the most was the idea of using a mousetrap. The idea was that you set traps and place one in the center of each cushion. When the puppy tried to climb up on the couch, his weight would cause the cushion to shift, and the mousetrap would tip over and go off. The loud snapping sound of the mousetrap should help deter him from jumping up on the furniture.

I set the traps and headed upstairs. At first, the mousetrap thing worked. I’d hear a trap snap, and I’d peek downstairs to see the puppy standing at the side of the couch second-guessing his actions, but this only lasted a day.

The next day, I set the traps on the couch and went about doing things I had to do around the house. I came into the living room, and the puppy was up on the couch with all the traps triggered, and one of them is chewed up to a bunch of wooden slivers and metal trap components.

I shooed him off the couch, reset the good traps, and left the room. I hid out of his line of sight, but I was still able to see what he does. He would go up to a mousetrap and nudge the edge of it with his nose until he got the trap to go off. Then, he’d grab the trap between his teeth and drop it on the floor. Once the traps were sprung and off the couch, he climbed up on the couch to lay down.

As a summer job, I used to work the midnight-to-8:00-am shift at a popular twenty-four-hour fast food place. On quiet weekdays, I usually worked alone, which suited me perfectly.

One night when I clocked in, my manager was waiting to introduce me to my new trainee. I later heard from the day shift that [Trainee] was a friend of the manager and needed a job because he was on probation, but [Trainee] and I never really talked other than for me to tell him how to clean and for him to tell me that he knew a better way.

The way I showed him to clean the sidewalk along the front of the store was to hose it off, scrub it as necessary with a stiff push broom, and then hose it off again.

But [Trainee] knew a better way.

A few nights later, I was cleaning the grill and heard a crash and a muffled obscenity. I looked out the window to see that [Trainee] had been mopping the sidewalk and as he had lifted the mop to put it into the wringer, he had smashed the broom handle through some fairly expensive overhead neon lights.

He swept up the broken glass and disappeared into the manager’s office for the last couple of hours of our shift.

Fine with me.

As usual, the manager came in while I was busy serving breakfasts and disappeared into his office with [Trainee].

When I clocked out, [Manager] called me into his office to discuss the consequences of my having broken the neon lights.

I probably shouldn’t have smiled, because that triggered a lecture about trivializing the damage.

I pointed out that only an idiot would use the mop on the sidewalk. I looked at [Trainee], who looked at the floor.

I pointed out that [Trainee] is dangerously stupid and dishonest, so I would never have left him alone inside the store while I went outside long enough to clean the sidewalk.

I pointed out that only one of us still had glass fragments in his hair, and that it wasn’t me.

Regardless, [Manager] told me that he had no choice but to fire me for negligent damage to the store.

I told him that, since I was going back to school in two weeks and was tired of working with liars and idiots, I was absolutely fine with leaving him with [Trainee] as his graveyard shift.

I guess tradition requires me to say that the franchise went bankrupt the next month, but in all honesty, I never looked back.