My hotel hosted a huge wedding all weekend. We also hosted the big rehearsal dinner, where the bride and groom got into a huge fight that ended up in the lobby with the bride screaming that she hated the groom, that his mother and sisters were horrible harpies, and that she was pregnant and she didn’t know if he was the father.

I was specifically told by management that if any guest from the wedding wanted to check out early not to charge them an early departure fee because the fight was that spectacular.

They then still actually had the wedding (why?!), and I’m told their reception was booked for two hundred people. About fifty showed up.

Some of the wedding guests (some parents and a roughly college-age son) decided to have a huge fight in the middle of the parking lot. It was so loud and aggressive that another guest called 911 on them.

Management wanted to know why I didn’t send security down to defuse it, but the first I heard of the issue was the police showing up; no one called us to complain, and security was dealing with an issue on the other side of the property.

While this was happening, the bride and groom got into another huge fight in the middle of the wedding reception, and the bride went home with her mom.

We were all so happy that the party wrapped up after that!

Related:
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 19
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 18
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 17
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 16
The More You Read The Worse It Gets, Part 15

I work as a tech engineer for primary schools. Here I am, about three years ago, just promoted to Network Engineer from a service desk position, sent out to set up new Wi-Fi access points (APs) for a customer. The ticket states that their alarm system is fickle and I should steer clear of it.

No biggie: five APs. That’s about an hour of work, including configuring SSIDs and checking if they are placed conform to Sitesurvey. I send commands into one and… no connection. I check the IP I got from the DHCP server and it’s off.

Off to the patch cabinet, and lo and behold: in a world where 90% of all primary school devices use Wi-Fi, and 10/100 switches are a thing of the past, I find a 1000mbit fiber switch, functioning as a core switch to a stack of 10/100 UTP switches. Our firewall can be found here, as well, but no devices I can think of that could produce a second DHCP server.

So, I set a static IP in the subnet I got from this rogue DHCP server, and I manage to find a Gigaset VoIP box. I log in with the default credentials, and to my shock, it’s actually running a DHCP server and functions as a PPPoE modem toward an Internet connection no one heard of.

This is where the fun starts. I turn off the DHCP function and start configuring my APs. Halfway through, the alarm sets off. The customer is angry because I changed something. I’m flabbergasted.

I decide to go the “make the customer happy” way and go and fix it right this time. So, first things first: how is this alarm system configured? Luckily, VoIP and the alarm were installed by the same provider. Sadly, this provider sold all their alarm customers and all their VoIP customers to another third party. Both were unaware of what was actually installed due to a horrible handover.

The alarm company luckily can tell that they only have systems using IP to manage, and all they should need is a specific open port to the outer world. This goes against the interpretation of our customer, who is 100% sure the alarm uses a phone connection.

The VoIP company doesn’t have any information on the VoIP box I found and decides to just send someone to handle it and document everything to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Since the VoIP box isn’t in use, doesn’t contain any SIP information, and can’t be found, I decide to remove it from the network. These old switches, lacking proper ARP support, make this an old-school “let’s ping this and pull cables” search. But after eliminating this bugger and resetting the alarm and the actually used VoIP system, I’m finally ready to continue configuring the APs.

Done? No. The party that installed the APs neglected the request to remove the old ones from above the ceiling plates, probably due to a lack of documentation. (Note: we were not in charge of the old APs).

So, I track them down and remove these APs, which are covered in crusty mouse droppings. Never have I been so happy with a bar of soap and hand sanitizer.

When packing my stuff to leave, I hear the school head on the phone with one of our Relationship managers, complaining about the fact that I managed to set off the alarm and shouldn’t have touched it.

IT in primary schools is usually sub-par, but this school took the cake and complained about me after I fixed most of their issues, while not even being there for troubleshooting

I used to know a woman who moved slowly in her jobs. One job didn’t work out well; the other did.

[Woman]’s first job was mostly waitressing at the cafe she and her husband owned. They had great food. Her husband was fast. But after he died, she tried to keep the cafe open. It didn’t work out because she would complete one entire order before starting on the next. This meant that if you had four people at your table, the fourth would be just starting to eat when the first was finishing.

So, [Woman] ended up selling the cafe.

Her next job was as a phlebotomist at the same hospital where I worked. She was very careful and kind; people almost loved having her draw their blood!

Sometimes it takes a while to find your niche.

As a teacher myself, I am still somewhat flabbergasted about some events that took place when I was in high school. I previously wrote this story about some of it. That day with the surgery and the exam was actually even more infuriating as I had a run-in with the PE teacher who threatened to flunk me for missing class that morning, and only that morning.

The fact that I showed her papers from the surgery that proved that I was in the hospital didn’t matter; I had to participate in swim class the following month to be sure to not flunk. I showed her the papers stating that I was forbidden from swimming for two months following the surgery (inner ear), and she began hurling insults at me like I had PLANNED to have my eardrum collapse. In that case, I knew that she had zero grounds to flunk me as I had all the medical papers in order.

When I wasn’t on heavy medication, I did my best to get some training in, mostly biking to and from school. (I am spoiled enough to come from the town with the best bike lane coverage in my country.) My high school was in the neighbouring town, 15 km from home, so I biked 150 km per week.

My darling PE teacher accosted me whilst I was on my way to PE class. (I always biked in the PE clothes when we began the day with PE as it saved me a couple of minutes, and my regular clothes didn’t get sweaty that way.) She began berating me for being chubby and lazy and “never, ever do anything active”.

I was holding my bike, and I pointed out to her that I had biked from [Hometown] just like I did every day. Apparently, biking 150 km a week didn’t count. Huh. Who knew? I mean, cycling is an Olympic Sport and everything, but it wasn’t good enough for her.

In PE, we had some things we did in Year 1 that counted toward our final grade, and ditto for Year 2. Our classy PE teacher took all her notes about what we had achieved and had a bonfire, which made it almost impossible for us to get our final grades. In my case, it didn’t matter much as I have zero talent for PE, but it was quite nerve-wracking for my more athletically inclined classmates.

She was equally thrilled the following year when I was on antibiotics for eight months, constantly changing to stronger doses, and forbidden to participate in regular PE during my ailment. Instead, I was doing workouts. Again, I had orders from the doctor, but she was not happy.

She retired before our final year, and our next PE teacher was amazing.

Related:
If You Could Grade Teachers, An F Would Be More Than She Deserves

My brother used to work for a retail grocery store. One summer day, a child was spotted still in a vehicle in the store’s parking lot. The child was somewhere between five and seven.

The child wasn’t in distress or anything yet, but somebody in the parking lot saw and got the police involved. Just after the cop showed up, the mother arrived back at her vehicle.

My brother doesn’t know if the woman was charged or got a good talking to from the cops. But later on, she came into the store and demanded an apology from the store because her child was crying from that ordeal.

My brother said the store was not involved in the whole situation; they weren’t aware of what was going on until after the cops showed up. Everything was handled by the people out in the parking lot.

It’s a shame there are people like this who think it’s okay to do this to their children, and they think they’re the victim in the end.