I was the office manager and retail manager for a non-profit. Basically, I did everything but sign checks. There was a new executive director who was looking for an easy job to take her through until retirement. When she realized I had been carrying the organization for the last year or so, she took advantage and avoided learning how anything worked or how to operate any of our systems. Because I believed in the mission, I let it go — until she underestimated me.

My annual review was due. Instead of doing it herself, [Executive Director] got the board president to also be there, and they changed the rating scale without telling me beforehand. They then informed me that I was going to be doing something completely different for the organization, despite there not being a plan to cover the work I was doing. I knew I would be expected to do my current job plus this new role, and then they could just critique and criticize me for not getting things done since I was already overwhelmed.  

[Executive Director] and [Board President] assumed I would just go along with it, underestimating my connections in the community.

Within weeks, I had a new job with higher pay and clearly-defined duties in an organization structured so that I would never end up with everything on my plate. Seeing how shaken [Executive Director] and [Board President] were when I gave my notice was great.

What was even better was a year later when the new board president of the non-profit hired me back because there was some important tax stuff that needed to be done and no one knew how. They had to pay me way more than I had been making and work around my schedule. I went back for the people who benefited from the organization, not the organization itself.

I work for a nationwide non-profit store. I am wearing the store’s “uniform”: just the T-shirt with the store’s logo and blue jeans. I am the last backup on the cash register and call for the next person in line.

We have a regular customer who always causes problems. No matter what, each day she comes in, there is an issue.

Recently, a policy has changed. The company has decided to stop using plastic bags and charge ten cents for a reusable bag, which counts as a donation/tax write-off.

Our regular always buys lots of glass flower vases (at least fifteen each visit) and asks the cashier to wrap each vase in paper, place them into T-shirt-sized plastic bags (usually two vases fit per bag), and then place those bags into the larger bags we have (three of her vase bags fit). Oh, and every bag has to be double-bagged.

Before I ring her through this time, I tell her about the change of bag policy, which she agrees to and repeats back to me. I ring her vases through — not wrapping or bagging any of them — and tell her the total.

Customer: “Why didn’t you bag anything?”

Me: “I mentioned the new policy at the start of the transaction.” *Points out the signs*

Customer: “Well, obviously, I missed all of those. Go in the back and get the bags you keep back there.”

Me: “Any stock of bags we may have had when the policy changed got returned and recycled. We have none in the store.”

Earlier today, I was promoted to supervisor, so I am running the sales floor. I just haven’t had my new uniform arrive yet.

Customer: *Very loud and demanding* “Get me the sales floor manager!”

I pause for a moment and then reach down to my lanyard which has my new nametag.

Me: “I am the manager. If you want to express your concerns, you can tell corporate.”

I then gave her the customer service phone number.

She always returned most of the vases when we used to accept returns, so it wasn’t a loss at all when she exclaimed she was never coming back. Oh, I also never heard anything about her complaint.

 I work at a non-profit that hosts a major festival every year. The main draw of the festival is the tours of private houses and gardens, which are $75. They last three hours, include six to eight properties, and are self-guided, with volunteer docents providing tours inside the houses.

We also have our “premium” tours, which are $250, last two hours, and include four to six properties, but are led by certified tour guides and include lectures by local experts. I personally don’t think it’s worth the cost, but others evidently do as most of these tours are sold out.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Non-Profit] ticket office. This is [My Name] speaking; how can I help you?”

Caller: “My name is [Caller], and I bought tickets for the garden tour tomorrow. I have friends in town, and they said that tomorrow is the Saint Patrick’s Day parade and there will be absolutely no parking. What am I supposed to do?”

Me: “Are you able to get a taxi, bus, or rideshare downtown, or do you have to drive?”

Caller: “I have to drive because I’m coming from [Municipality forty-five minutes away], and that’s too far for a cab. I just don’t understand why you would schedule a $250 tour on the same day as a parade. That’s just poor planning.”

Me: “I understand that must be frustrating—”

Caller: “I don’t need your platitudes. I’ve been coming to your city for six years, and it’s never been on that date. I just can’t believe your organization would do that.”

Me: “We’ve had this event around this time of year for over seventy-five years, ma’am. Granted, the last few years have been a bit wonky because of [contagious illness], but it’s always in March and April.”

Caller: “I don’t understand why you would put a $250 event on the same day as a parade. Why did you do that? Don’t you know that makes it harder for people to attend?”

Me: “Most people stay downtown within walking distance of the festival, so they don’t have to worry about parking. If you arrive early enough, I’m sure you could—”

Caller: “My friends said it’s absolutely packed and there’s no way to find parking. I just can’t believe your organization would do this. I organize events for a charity in Connecticut, and I always check the calendar when I’m planning events. Why didn’t you check the calendar and see that the parade was today?”

Me: “A lot of people like to attend the parade as well as the festival, so it’s not typically an issue.”

Caller: “I am really disappointed in your organization. Now I’m out $250.”

Me: “We do not offer refunds, but I would be happy to change your ticket over to another event—”

Caller: “No, I looked, and all of the other events are way less than $250. I don’t want to go to another event. I just want you to know how disappointed I am.”

While I’m not supposed to do it without a manager’s approval, we do offer refunds under special circumstances. Since this is a sold-out event and we could pretty easily sell the ticket before tomorrow, she will probably approve a refund to appease the customer. If not, we could also convert the ticket price into a tax-deductible donation, which would grant her membership status, allowing free admission to our two-house museums and a 20% discount at our shop. I can’t tell her this until I get permission from my manager.

Me: “I hear you, and I want to see if there’s something more I can do for you. Can I take your name and number, give my manager a call, and then call you back?”

Caller: “I’ll give you my information, and you pass it on to your manager. I’m sure you won’t actually do it, but here it is.” *Gives her information*

Me: “My manager takes things like this very seriously, and I will be sure to speak with her and give you a call back as soon as I can. Is there a preferred time today that you would like a call back?”

Caller: “I’ll have my cell phone on me all day.” *Click*

I go to my manager’s office to fill her in on the situation. [Manager] is a sweet-as-pie older southern lady who takes absolutely no crap. She assures me that she’ll take care of it, and I return to my desk. A few minutes later, she comes by to let me know what happened.

Manager: “I called that lady and tried to offer her a refund, but she hung up on me before I could explain it! She just said, ‘I’m very disappointed in your organization,’ and hung up. I’m not even going to bother calling her back.”

I hope she’s satisfied that she lost out on $250 and a fun time at the festival just so she could let us know how disappointing we are.

This happened at a previous employer. The boss was a good person and a decent boss. It was a large facility with twenty-four-hour staffing and high turnover. In any place with high turnover, you will inevitably hit a moment when the staffing level is critically low. The place really didn’t pay enough to be competitive but instead got most of their applicants because they were known to hire just about anyone.

I had been working overnights since I got hired and had just recently switched to mornings. The graveyard shift was predictably loose, and my special scheduling needs due to a partner who traveled a LOT for work had been handled without much fanfare or to-do, so I’d not used any paid time off (PTO) and there wasn’t a record of my specific scheduling needs.

The morning shift was, of course, much more rigid in scheduling, so when my partner’s work-travel schedule for the next few months was settled, I put in for PTO to cover the days they were gone so I could stay home with our kids.

There was a full month until the next trip, so I wasn’t too worried, but then it got denied.

I set time aside to talk to management about this, and to my surprise, I got shunted to the recently-hired new director of the facility.

Director: “I’m sorry, but we’re really short-staffed and are not approving any extra time off right now. I know it’s summer and everyone wants to go camping and fishing, but we can’t spare any hours until we hire and onboard more staff.”

Me: “I get that, but it is summer, and my kids are out of school, and my partner is traveling for work, so I’m not going to be in. It was kind of a courtesy of me to ‘request’ PTO; I won’t be in those days no matter what.”

Director: “Look, you’re going to have to make other arrangements. You can’t have the time, and if you don’t come in, you’ll be written up. I’m sure you don’t want to have that happen.”

Remember how I said they were known to hire anyone? This led to a lot of the management and executives in the organization looking down on the little guys like me and thinking we were all desperate to keep the job. This would be one of [Director]’s first wake-up calls, and I like to think it helped make her a good boss.

Me: “So… here’s the deal. If you don’t approve my use of this little bit of PTO, I’ll turn in my two weeks’ notice, and at the end, you’ll have to cash out the three and a half weeks of PTO that I’ve accrued. And you’ll still be down another staff person on those days. Or, you can approve it, and I’ll be here ready to go the following Monday, and you won’t have to replace me or pay out all my PTO right away. You don’t pay me enough to cover child care, and you need me a lot more than I need this job.”

Director: “Is that really how you want to do this?”

Me: “Yes, because I have been offered a job by almost every one of our partner agencies but have chosen to stay here. I want to stay here because this job is giving me skills that will look good on my CV in my future career. But if you don’t want to work with what my family requires, then I will find somewhere else that will — easily.”

Director: “Give me a day to consider it.”

Three hours later, I got an alert on our time clock and scheduling app that all of my PTO requests had been approved.

I never mentioned it again, and [Director] ended up being the best that facility ever had. One thing that set her apart was that she showed real respect for all the employees, and as a result, they all worked hard for her. Under her leadership, the turnover dropped by almost sixty percent even while the pay only increased to be on par with fast food.

The skills I gained there have continued to serve me, and in my application to grad school, I cited that job as being key to my development in my chosen career field.

Have you ever worked with someone who you know immediately is really something special? I’ve had a few opportunities to work with people like this, and my first thought is, “I want to help this person get wherever it is they’re going.”

I worked for a non-profit for a while after retiring from the Army. On my first day on the job, one of my peers on the leadership team pulled me aside and warned me about one of the guys on my team.

Coworker: “You’ll have to keep a close eye on Willie. He’s low-effort, takes a lot of hand-holding, and rubs people the wrong way, and honestly, we’re considering firing him.”

Me: “Thanks for the heads-up! You never know what you’re getting into at a new position, so I appreciate having the information.”

I thought, “F***, what have I walked into?”

But then, I started working closely with Willie and made some discoveries. Sure, Willie was an introvert — he kept to himself and could be a touch socially awkward — but he knew his job inside and out. He managed my department’s logistics requirements precisely; we always had what we needed but never too much excess static stock on hand. He found innovative ways to work with our community partners. He built new initiatives that capitalized on existing resources without incurring additional costs — a VERY important skill to have in a non-profit. He impressed donors so much that he actually convinced them to contribute significant sums in support of his ADDITIONAL duty department — and he wasn’t even part of the fundraising team. Willie was a quiet rockstar, and I quickly realized how lucky I was to have him.

Despite all this, the rest of the regional leadership team seemed to have it in for him. I found out later what it was that set them off. Willie had made an off-hand comment to [Coworker] about a year before I joined — nothing sexist or bad, just a casual observation about a physical aspect of the office space that [Coworker] interpreted poorly. She shared it with other leaders in the organization, they decided that the comment made their teeth itch, and it became a snowball that quickly rolled over Willie’s reputation.

The comment was relayed to me by a third party a few months after my arrival. I went and talked to Willie about it directly; I wanted to get his take. Our discussion revealed that it was totally innocuous, but misinterpretation had caused a misunderstanding and the damage was done. Rather than asking questions of Willie to clarify, they assumed a bunch of s*** and ran with it.

Apparently, Willie had commented that you could hear people’s conversations in other offices because the walls only went up to the drop ceiling. He was genuinely complaining because he was constantly disturbed by loud conversations when he was on the phone. What [Coworker] thought was, “Oh, my God, Willie’s eavesdropping on all our conversations! Must clutch pearls!”

My take is that [Coworker] never stopped to think that if Willie was intent on eavesdropping, he probably wouldn’t have highlighted the sound leakage.

But the stage was set, and Willie realized that he didn’t have a future at our location. Leadership had made up their minds about him and were actively blocking his options when they learned about any moves he was trying to make. I knew of at least three instances where they torpedoed his chances for interviews at other nearby locations in the organization, tripping him before he even got out of the gate.

Willie knew if he was going to advance, it was going to be somewhere else. He started looking for new work, and he eventually found something at another branch of our organization in a different state. He kept it very quiet and got the interview, and the other region was assessing the different candidates. The only other person in our region who knew about it was me, and that was only because I’d spent months gaining Willie’s trust; he knew he could confide in me and I wouldn’t s*** on him.

Around that time, [Coworker] hit me up again about Willie.

Coworker: “I’m amazed by the changes in Willie since you came on board. You’ve really done a lot to mentor him and get him up to his full potential!”

Me: “I have done a lot of work where Willie is concerned. Some of it was helping him with professional development… but most of it has been focused on shifting the leadership team’s perspective. He’s really not that different from when I arrived, but as you just indicated, your perception of him has definitely changed. I’ve put a lot of effort into just letting him shine, giving him credit for the good things he does, and staying out of his way. He didn’t need micromanagement; he needed room to run. Every time he achieved something, I made a point of highlighting his success and the benefit it brought to our organization. The work I did wasn’t on him; it was on you.”

Coworker: “…”

Back to Willie. I asked if he wanted me to go to bat for him in the hiring process with the other region. He said he’d appreciate the help, so I called the manager at the other location.

Me: “I don’t want to lose Willie, but all the reasons why I want him to stay here are the same reasons why you need him there. The problem is, if Willie stays here, the organization is going to lose him because they won’t promote him. I’d rather have him stay with the organization in a different place than lose his commitment and skills entirely.”

She hired him. Of course, it was all him — skills, experience, interview — she knew she was getting someone amazing. My recommendation was just icing on the cake; it made it easier for her to decide what she already knew.

Willie’s taste of sweet, sweet revenge came when the leadership team had to eat crow as they  congratulated him on his move. Willie knew this team of “leaders” had put a lot of effort into making sure he’d never advance. Some of their “congratulations” were less than genuine, including [Coworker]’s.

The cherry on top was that the pay and position at the new job were half a step above mine and the rest of the leadership team. That’s right: he moved on, he moved up, and he outranked us all.

A most excellent “eff you” to the folks who had stood in his way.