At my company, we have a manager who is, well, toxic. This is the nicest thing I can say about her. Other things I can say about her are… pathological liar, narcissistic, and cruel. She is not only not a nice person, but she’s kind of evil at the end of the day. She also loves to ruin other people’s vacations.

It is the last week of September, and I am finally taking my first “vacation” all year to go to my cousin’s wedding. I will be leaving early Friday morning and coming back late Sunday night. I decide to take an extra two days off as it is also my ten-year anniversary that Wednesday, so I am gone Wednesday through Monday.

I also make this manager aware that I have a doctor’s appointment at 4:10 pm on Tuesday due to reduced health because of her abuse.

At 3:25 pm, she sends me a text, right as I am packing up to leave.

Toxic Coworker: “Hey, I know it is last minute, but [Contractor] has a 4:00 pm appointment to get his computer fixed, and I cannot stay around for it.”

I roll my eyes and leave because she doesn’t need me to stay. It is done remotely and the contractor isn’t even in the office. Before I go, I send a reminder email that I am unreachable.

At 4:11 pm, she texts me again.

Toxic Coworker: “Yikes! I forgot you are going on vacation! I hope you have a good one. No one deserves it more than you. <3”

Again, I ignore it. She tries to call me at 5:30 pm. I send her to voicemail.

On Wednesday morning at 7:30 am, I get my third text from her.

Toxic Coworker: “So, will you be in the office today?”

She only does this when I am on vacation, and only immediately after she acknowledged in a text the night before I am on vacation. So, I ignore it.

At 8:15 am:

Toxic Coworker: “I know you are probably on your plane but I have [issue she can fix herself]. I am hoping I can catch you before.”

At 9:30 am:

Toxic Coworker: “Never mind. Fixed it.”

At 10:15 am:

Toxic Coworker: “Where do I find [file that has nothing to do with my job]?”

At 11:00 am:

Toxic Coworker: “Found it!”

It goes like this every hour on Wednesday, where she tries to pester me with non-issues. I never responded until she eventually got bored and left me alone for the rest of my vacation. She never bothered me during my time off again.

I’m new to flirting and am interested in this guy I met at work. I’m trying to think of something clever to say, so I blurt out:

Me: “Hey, you know what your name means in Spanish?”

Cute Guy: “No, what?”

Me: “‘To come.'”

He awkwardly chuckles and I suddenly realized that he thought I meant the slang for ejaculation.

Me: “I-I mean ‘come’! C-O-M-E! You know, like, to come and go?”

Cute Guy: “Yeah, sure.”

He assured me he knew what I meant, but oh, man, was that mortifying. We never flirted again.

We have been getting a lot of bad job applicants lately; many don’t turn up, are completely unprepared, or clearly have no interest, despite all having a great (if a little similar) CV.

It’s a massive waste of all of our time. Three of us spend a day a week not actually doing our jobs and instead doing pointless interviews and all the paperwork that goes with it.

I’m confused as to why so many people just are so terrible. That’s when one of the team members tells me that, to get certain benefits, people have to be seen to look for work. So, by showing up and wasting our time, they can falsely claim that they are actually looking for work.

Not anymore.

The next two interviewees don’t show up. I tell Human Resources to categorically tell anyone who calls that they didn’t show. (Apparently, they weren’t doing this before.)

The very next guy refuses to give any answers at all and is rude about the pay (even though it’s on the advert). To top it off, he accidentally knocks over the magazine rack on his way out and just leaves it all over the floor.

Again, I tell Human Resources to just say he didn’t show up. They get quite a few calls, but I tell them to keep to the same story.

Eventually, I get someone at the door wanting to see me. It’s the most recent interviewee, and he looks angry. I go down to see him.

Interviewee: “Why are you lying about my interview? First, you don’t give me a job. Then, you lie so I can’t claim. I mean, you lie about me not coming.”

Me: “You weren’t present in the interview; you didn’t answer questions. You have no idea what the job was even for.”

Interviewee: “That’s a lie! I would love to work here. I just don’t do interviews well.”

Me: “So, you really want to work here, huh?”

Interviewee: “Yes!”

Me: “You are interested in the company and know what we do?”

Interviewee: “Yes!”

Me: “What’s the name of the company?”

Interviewee: “Err…”

Me: “What do we do?”

Interviewee: “Err… make things?”

Me: “If you want a job like you say you do, apply again and I’ll interview you. But turn up like you did, and I will tell them you didn’t show.”

He went away, promising that he would show me and that he would apply again. He never did.

Word must have gotten around because, while we got a lot fewer applicants, we only got people that actually seemed to want to work here. We filled the vacancy less than a week later.

I have a manager who, to put it frankly, is eviler than a Disney villain, and with far fewer redeeming qualities. She takes advantage of employees straight out of college and will often resort to manipulation and gaslighting them. She will often act like she is the only one who can save you from being fired by the “unreasonable” owner and then expect you to return the favor by giving her ideas to make her look good. And you can never actually call her out on her crap because she is vague enough about it that if you do, she will act offended and make you feel malicious.

On Tuesday, she gives me one of these vague threats toward my job. Unfortunately for her, after four years, I recognize the tactic and am indifferent. Armed with the knowledge that if they were to fire me, they would be royally screwed, I just stare blankly at her as she backtracks and tells me how she will “protect” me. She then launches into the next topic at hand: finding tasks for her intern who starts on Monday.

I shrug my shoulders.

Me: “What were you planning on doing, anyway?”

Manager: “I don’t know.”

Me: “I suggest that you talk to [Coworker] about it as she might have tasks for the intern to work on.”

My Villain never does and spends Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday asking me to come up with ideas for her. Obviously, I continue to ask her why this intern was hired and what sort of plans she had for them because, again, you don’t get to threaten a person’s livelihood and expect them to be a wealth of ideas and resources.

By Thursday, she knows she has messed up and sends me a nice note telling me how much she appreciates me and wants me to know I am a “valuable” team member. I ignore it, so Friday, she comes into my office and out of the blue says:

Manager: “I just want you to know I mean every word.”

I feign a smile.

Me: “I appreciate that.”

I go back to work until she leaves, annoyed that I didn’t give her something more heartfelt in response to her insincerity.

Friday afternoon, my coworker I told her to talk to is complaining about how she is working on an intern task, so I tell her to email [Manager] with the idea. She is hesitant as [Manager] is also known to be volatile to new ideas, so I do it. 

The response I get back at 5:07 pm is absolute gold.

Manager: “Hello, all. I will let [Intern] and the team know that there are other tasks on the development team that need expertise. Let us know how critical or time-sensitive this becomes, as I don’t see [Intern] with downtime. But happy to contribute to the needs of the team. Thanks, [Manager].”

At this point, I was absolutely rolling at the audacity of this woman. She also copied her boss on it to show what a team player she is. I sent her back a note telling her it was all good; I’d only mentioned it since she’d asked for ideas. Again, I made sure her boss is copied.

Then, Monday rolled around. The intern came in at 9:00 am, and lo and behold, she had nothing for the intern! So, she texted me asking me to show them how to perform that task I mentioned on Friday. 

With great satisfaction, I told her I couldn’t do it today as I had nothing prepared; she had told me it was unnecessary. She wasn’t too happy about that. I cannot wait until she threatens to have me fired again!

My employers are SUPER stingy with money, and our IT guy is a conceited, arrogant jerk who believes himself to be God’s gift to the IT field. This combination means that we haven’t gotten new electronic equipment in at least ten years, because management would rather shut down the department and let [IT Guy] tinker around for hours on end trying to patch together a repair, instead of buying new, functioning equipment.

I’m sitting at my desk one day, plugging away on my Windows Vista laptop — in the year 2020 — while [IT Guy] is busy working under my neighbor’s desk, trying to figure why her printer won’t work. Suddenly, my laptop is yanked off my desk, crashing to the floor.

Desk Neighbor: “WHOA! [My Name], what was that?”

Me: “I don’t know what happened. My laptop just flew off my desk. Did someone trip over the power cord or something?”

IT Guy: “I might have grabbed the wrong cable. Let me get it plugged back in, and you’ll be good to go.”

[IT Guy] hands my laptop back to me without looking closely at it, and I immediately notice a problem.

Me: “Hey, [IT Guy]… not to bug you about this, but… um… do you have the other half?”

IT Guy: “Haha, [My Name]. It’s plugged in, so shut up and let me get back to work down here.”

Me: “No… seriously. My laptop broke in half. I’m missing the monitor. All I have up here is the keyboard.”

IT Guy: “Nice try, [My Name]. I’ll take a look at— OW! What the f***? Okay, who spilled a bunch of glass down here? Very funny, people.”

Me: “Is there any chance that glass came from my monitor? Because I still don’t have a monitor up here.”

IT Guy: “Yeah… looks like there actually is a monitor here. I’ll get that fixed for you when I’m done with this stuff, [My Name].”

Try as he might, [IT Guy] could not get my laptop fixed, so I finally got upgraded… to one of the “backup” laptops, running Windows XP. I also got written up by management because [IT Guy] — even though HE ADMITTED to being the one who accidentally yanked my laptop off my desk — claimed that the entire incident was somehow my attempt at tricking management into shelling out for a new laptop and that he was a hero for having a backup laptop ready instead.