I work in an inbound contact centre for a financial services company dealing in various products. This story is about insurance policies.

The client calls and says he wishes to make a claim on PPI and make a complaint about being mis-sold the product. None of our products across the board ever had any PPI, but if a client claims to have been mis-sold, then we have a procedure in place to take full details and pass the complaint on to the management company that we do admin for, so I proceed with the call.

The client is perfectly pleasant as he gives me his information. I actually struggle to pull up the details as his plans are archaic, though he claims we are still taking his money for a mortgage protection plan on a home he no longer owns.

On finding the details, I confirm that the last payment made to us was in 2004; we had even sent him a cheque after lapsed payments on the back of the plan having an investment written in. We absolutely are not taking any money from this client and have not been for almost two decades.  

This is when he states that he can see from his bank statement that he is still paying [Different Company] for this plan and that I should investigate this.

Forty-five minutes later, he is finally convinced to call [Different Company] to find out what he was paying for and why.

I still can’t figure out why he thought calling a company he last paid nineteen years ago would know who and what he was paying someone else now.

I have one coworker who just doesn’t have any common sense. We have a list of customers who we are not allowed to accept checks from, because they have written bad checks in the past. One customer on the list comes during my shift, and I refuse her check. She leaves without buying anything, and I think that is that.

The next day, I am doing the daily deposit, and noticed that the same exact check was accepted! The customer had ripped off the top part of the check, where her name was. But her signature was very clearly legible. My coworker admitted to taking the check and saw nothing wrong with taking a check that not only was ripped, and thus missing important information, but was from someone on our clearly posted “no-checks” list! 

Sadly, he wasn’t fired, because he was one of the few employees who showed up for every shift.

Around 1999 or so, I was a brand-new IT manager in a conglomerate of radio stations. We had a sleeve of “account executives” who thought they were all that.

One called my office one day saying that her data was gone and she couldn’t work, and that her computer was dead. I asked her to bring the box to me, and she did. I rebuilt it with the backup data. The next week, it died again. I rebuilt again. The next week, yet again.

She emailed the GM, VP of operations, my boss, and the owner of the company saying that I was unable to do my job. I was annoyed, at least. The next week, she had the same complaint about her desktop box. I went to her cubicle and retrieved a tower with no fewer than twenty fridge magnets affixed to it. I was vindicated.

When I was in my early 20s, I worked for a dental clinic where the dentist’s wife was the office manager. We weren’t permitted to take our own vacation days; we could only take time off when the dentist was closed for his own vacations. We worked Monday to Thursday, so any personal things could be done on Fridays. The wife was not lenient in letting us take any vacation or sick time, so we were expected to be there every day for all office hours. I don’t recall taking any sick days or ever asking for time off in the three years I worked there.

My boyfriend had been across the country working for a month and was due to fly into the airport at lunch time on a weekday — not a Friday. We live in a smaller city without public transportation from the airport, which is outside the city limits. I was very excited to see my boyfriend after him being away for so long and only needed to leave half an hour before lunch to pick him up on time.

I checked with my other coworkers that it wouldn’t be an issue for me to leave early this one time. They assured me they could cover the half-hour; we didn’t admit patients at that time of day, which was my job, so they would just be watching to make sure no one arrived off-schedule. So, I happily set off for the airport and picked up my boyfriend and drove him home.

I was back to work on time after lunch and my coworkers said everything was fine. When the dentist’s wife found out the next day, she called me into her office and berated me for ten minutes about how selfish I was for taking an early lunch, how irresponsible it was, and how I needed to grow up! I was in tears when I left her office. My coworkers were livid about the encounter but there was nothing I could do. 

I gladly quit for a new job a few months later. Thanks for having compassion for a loyal worker, lady!

I was going on an Amtrak overnight trip to see my daughter and grandbabies. The train usually leaves the local station around 6:35 pm, so my husband said he’d take me to dinner.

There are a lot of nice places around there, so I thought this would be a nice send-off!

Wrong. (-Ish)

We had to go to a local big warehouse membership store for some treats for the grandkids. Said big warehouse membership store has a food court that sells, well, food. 

Specifically, they sell a hot dog and drink for $1.50 plus tax.

Guess where my hubs ended up buying me dinner? At least he thought of me. 

It’s still a great laugh.