My company is under investigation. I honestly couldn’t tell you what we’re being investigated for nor if we’re guilty, but legal requested that I catalog some documents from the server for them.

My manager countermanded that with a written order to “delete everything instead”. I hated the man anyway — he gave me a half-dozen orders a month that would get me fired if I actually followed through — so I decided this time was the final straw that would get him fired.

I made sure to keep printouts of the documents that legal wanted and a printout of the order; [Manager] helpfully wrote “delete absolutely everything” and underlined “absolutely”. I proceeded to do exactly what my boss requested of me.

I deleted everything — every single file for every single project, and the OS files. I left the backups alone; my goal was to get my boss fired, not to wreck the company.

The next day, absolutely nothing worked. It was absolute chaos. I hand-delivered the files to legal, smiled, sipped my coffee, and waited for the inevitable. Upper management soon came knocking on my door to accuse me of sabotage.

I showed them my orders, and said that the backups were still good and I could get everything running again in about a day. 

My manager was out the door so fast he practically blue-shifted. I got a reputation for being overly literal, and they gave me an official warning on my record, but I’m still employed. 

And I did get the whole computer network set back up again in about a day, by working overnight.

I was interviewing with a company to do graphics design and marketing work, or so I thought. They said I seemed to be a good fit and told me to come by the next day for a job shadow.

I showed up in my best business suit and a pair of nice confident heels. They told me I’d be “riding along” with another girl.

To my surprise, we got into a car and drove a long way — about an hour and a half to a small residential neighborhood. I was starting to suspect ax murderers until they gave me the pamphlets; the position was actually door-to-door sales.

The humidity was nasty, and my suit was not the right clothing for this. A few hours in, one of my heels got caught in a grate, and I lost my balance, went down, and heard a snap. My foot started swelling up.

I wanted to go home, but my ride-along was scared that she wouldn’t make her quota and that she’d be fired if she didn’t.

I called my dad. He drove out to pick me up from his home, which is in a different town from where this happened… which was also a different town from my home. This was about a three-hour drive. Dad drove me back to my car, and I drove my car home — which did not help the pain in my foot. I took a bunch of pills and went to bed.

The next day, my foot was even worse, swollen, and purple. I went to urgent care and found that I had an articular fracture.

At first, the people I had been interviewing with tried to weasel out of paying my medical bill, so I had to contact an Employment Attorney. That fixed it; I got my medical bills covered, the lawyer’s fees covered, and some shut-up money to cover rent and necessities while I recovered.

Eventually, I did find a job doing actual graphics design work for advertising, but the break never did heal correctly. I can’t wear anything but orthopedic flats anymore, no more heels (I used to love heels), and I bring a cane or a walker with me wherever I go in case the pain flares up.

Fun fact: the girl I was riding along with did not make her quota, got fired for it, blamed me for it, and sent me a nasty message about it. The attorney and I used that as proof that I was in fact riding along with her when the company attempted to deny it.

I teach high school in a district where cheating is rampant. Thanks to a year of hybrid learning, where half of the students were in the class at a time, we have built up a large collection of online worksheets. These are Google Docs where students copy the templates and then fill them in with their own answers. The students share their online versions with the teacher and submit them via our web-based Learning Management System (LMS). 

As I’ve gotten older, I find it easier to read documents online rather than in student’s handwriting on paper. This method is also great for students who constantly lose homework papers. However, the downside is that students find it easier than ever to copy online homework. 

The typical shortcut is to ask a friend to share their worksheet. Clever students will view it, write their own answers in their own words on their own worksheets, and then have their friends un-share the original. (These students are not as clever as they think, though, because the worksheets do not count for much and their lack of preparation shows on their tests.)

One time, [Student #1] asked [Student #2] to share his work. [Student #2], of course, shared with his friend, but [Student #1] did not fulfill his part of the social contract. He simply copied and pasted the answers in the same exact words. Our school gives all participants the same penalties for academic integrity violations. The look of consternation and surprise on [Student #2]’s face when he realized that his friend’s laziness had gotten them both zeroes on the work he did was priceless. 

An even less careful student turned in a complete copy of her friend’s worksheet — which I had already graded. I’m sure she meant to remove the grade marks… and her friend’s name from the top of the page. 

The most memorable effort from last year involved a trio of students who were assigned a group worksheet in class. They spent class socializing, and then one student went home and did the work, slapped everyone’s name on it, and turned it in. This might have worked… had he remembered to share it with his partners. The students claimed they had done the work together over FaceTime. Google Docs records the times that documents are edited. Two out of three sets of parents found it easier to believe their kids cheated than to believe they were FaceTiming physics with each other at 11:00 pm on a Wednesday night.

Related:
If You’re Gonna Cheat, You Gotta Cheat Smart

This happened at my first restaurant job. I worked in the kitchen, and a waitress told me about it later. We were open all day during the summer, and there were no set times for lunch or dinner service. It was a Friday, and we were fully booked for dinner.

There was a table that had been sitting there since we opened. They had eaten lunch, they were drinking and watching the cricket, and they wanted to stay for dinner. They asked, and they were told no with apologies as we were fully booked.

Then, a waitress went around and put out the “Reserved” signs on the tables, which sometimes included the first and last name of the person who made the booking. (I guess this was in case we had multiple bookings under common names.)

The group at the table that wanted to stay then called the venue from the table and said they were [Person whose name was on the “Reserved” sign on their table] and wanted to cancel their booking. The girl who answered the phone didn’t confirm any of the details the original booking customer had given and just cancelled the booking.

So, when the actual group who had booked the table showed up, they had a cancelled booking and no spare tables to be sat at.

They kicked out the group who had cancelled the booking.

My family owns a small cafe-style restaurant. We have a few employees from outside our family, but they mainly work as servers or dishwashers; they’re not in a position to operate the restaurant on their own without supervision.

Every summer, my entire family goes on a one-week vacation, so we close the restaurant for the week, with plenty of signs and notices on the door and windows explaining the closure.

On the second night of this year’s vacation, my father — the “main” owner and contact person for the restaurant — gets a phone call from our restaurant’s security company. The caller explains that the alarm went off, police were called in, and a man was arrested as a suspected burglar.

Turns out, the man was trying to eat at the restaurant, and when he discovered a locked door and no lights, he decided to throw a brick through the front window to let himself in and see “why nobody was doing their job and taking orders”.

We ended up cutting our vacation short and flying home the next day. We also pressed charges against the man, and we filed a civil case for the damages and the cost of cutting our vacation short. We won the civil suit, but the man was able to take a plea deal on the criminal charges and was only sentenced to community service.

Of course, his primary defense was that “there should have been a sign saying you were closed”. 

Related:
Not So Closed Minded, Part 35
Not So Closed Minded, Part 34
Not So Closed Minded, Part 33
Not So Closed Minded, Part 32
Not So Closed Minded, Part 31