My company does an awards-ceremony-type appreciation “event”, like a morale booster. Every quarter, they put out a bottle of (non-alcoholic) drink and some snacks and give out “funny” awards.

The trick to get out of it is to take a sneak peek at the human resources manager’s wall diary a few weeks before and schedule a customer visit. No matter how many times they reschedule it, I can still avoid it. (They haven’t figured it out yet!)

My coworker and I are outside on break, as are many others.

Coworker: “Hey, you missed the awards yesterday.”

Me: “I know, but you know, the customers come first, and they asked to see me. So what could I do?”

Coworker: “Oh, such bad luck. You won an award, by the way.”

Me: *Sarcastically* “Great. Cash prize, was it?”

Coworker: “Yeah, but I told them you would rather take the flowers.”

Like every other “prize” they give out.

Me: “Oh, you know me so well.”

Coworker: “I stuck them in water. You want them?”

Me: “Well, I could neglect them until they turn into potpourri. Or you can have them?”

Coworker: “Yeah, I already gave them to my wife. Thanks, by the way.”

Me: “Nothing says, ‘I love you,’ like a gift of flowers that you didn’t pay for.”

Coworker: *Joking* “Could you win another award in a few weeks? It’s her birthday.”

Me: “Such an old romantic. I—”

Before I can continue, I see [Coworker #2] rush in and toward the HR office. He is the same person who complained about me eating “foreign food” because it smelt too much (it was noodle soup) and that a charity collection shouldn’t be allowed because it wasn’t the corporate chosen one (it was for a coworker’s wife).

Me: “[Coworker #2] Cry Baby is causing issues again. If they ask you, tell them I told you to look after the flowers and we didn’t have this conversation.”

Coworker: “Come on. He isn’t going to complain about… Actually, yes, he probably is.”

And yes, we were pulled into HR with accusations of theft and bullying behaviour — also a new one: apparently using “triggering language” on purpose in front of [Coworker #2]. We denied everything, acted dumb, and stuck to our story. With absolutely no evidence, it went no further. 

Eventually, complaining about everything and everyone caught up to him. We got bought out and everyone had to reapply for their jobs; [Coworker #2] was the only one that wasn’t re-hired.

A few months after I start my first ever job — basically data entry, filing, and answering the phones in an accounts office — the finance director decides that she doesn’t like my phone answering manner. Rather than explaining this to me, she hires someone to work alongside me who has far more experience in the role.

This achieves nothing. The new hire is a grumpy woman who refuses to answer the phone, as the company is short of cash and almost every call is a supplier screaming for payment. I end up covering pretty much the whole role until a new accountant is taken on to replace the previous one, who had been driven into a nervous breakdown by the finance director disagreeing with everything she did. He is far more involved in the day-to-day running of the office, has a backbone, and makes sure to divide the tasks up in a more even manner.

However, rather than completing her share of the tasks, my colleague does the bits she is assigned directly by the finance director and ignores pretty much anything else. As a result, a moderately strange set of direct debits end up not being posted for months. A car manufacturer was taking the net cost of each car sold to us on a single direct debit and the total of all the VAT on all invoices for one day as another one. So, every day, you had one more debit than invoices from exactly seven days earlier. That’s slightly weird but not impossible to track, unless you are my colleague.

Eventually, my boss gives up on getting the finance director’s pet to do her job and asks me to work with him to process all these ignored payments. We work on it continuously, tracking down missing invoices, and we eventually get almost everything completed. The fun starts when, after nearly two days of doing someone else’s job, I return to my own desk, next to my grumpy colleague. 

The moment I enter the main accounts office, she starts screaming at me.

Grumpy Colleague: “Where have you been for two days?! How dare you leave me to answer the phones all alone?!”

You know, the job she was hired for in the first place.

I turn around, walk back into my boss’s office next door, where he is sitting perhaps ten feet away from the screaming. The two rooms are connected by an open window through which my grumpy colleague has been able to see me working on her job beside her direct boss for the past two days.

Me: “I’m going home, or I’ll do something I’ll regret.”

Boss: *Laughs* “Go ahead and leave for the day.”

As I was heading out the door, I heard him loudly asking my colleague to come into his office for a quick word. She pretty much never spoke to me again, something that was definitely a benefit.

The company went into receivership a few months later; the family owning it was still spending the money faster than it could generate it. Guess who was the first person the receivers let go, and who was the only person on the accounts team to be kept on by any of the companies that bought parts of the old business? My old boss eventually joined me, and I worked with him for another decade after that.

My daughter is working her first job in a local small company. I know she doesn’t enjoy it that much — mainly due to the idiot owner — but she recognises that the experience she is getting — partly because the idiot owner refuses to pay for experienced staff — will be so valuable in the future.

Then, the health crisis hits, and it eventually gets to the point that company can open under conditions. Of course, the owner doesn’t believe in the health crisis. No measures are in place and he refuses to make one exception.

Daughter: “Dad, I hate it there. I feel scared to go to work.”

Me: “Quit, then. We can support you while you look for work.”

Daughter: “But nowhere is hiring and I don’t want that on my CV.”

Me: “So, blow the whistle on him. He doesn’t care about his staff. Don’t care about him!”

So, we wrote a letter, one to the owner and one to the authorities, stating the reason why she would not be returning to work and listing what requirements he was ignoring. I figured the worse case was if she was fired and had to find a better job.

As it happened, the owner tried to call and then emailed demanding a meeting. But someone got to him first; the whole company was suddenly put on furlough and the owner was nowhere to be seen.

It wasn’t long until the company opened again and instead of the owner, his father was in charge. Apparently, he had let his son run this as his first big venture, and he quickly took back over putting things right.

My daughter stayed there a while longer. When she left, the owner’s father thanked her personally for writing the letter and said he would never have known how badly the company was doing.

Me: “Good afternoon. This is [My Name]. How may help you?”

Caller: “Are you a robot?”

Me: “Excuse me?”

Caller: “Are you a robot or a human?”

Me: “I’m a human, sir.”

Caller: “Are you sure? I’ve been talking to robots all day and I want to speak to a human.”

Me: *Laughing* “I assure you, sir, I’m a human. How may I help you?”

Caller: “Yeah, you must be human. You laughed; robots don’t laugh.”

Me: “Unless I’m an AI.”

Caller: “Nah, that would be creepy.”

The rest of the call went on normally, and at the end, he thanked me for helping him and for not being a robot.

My husband and I are just tucking into our supper one evening when the phone rings. The caller ID says it’s a government department, so I figure I had better answer it. The caller mumbles something about doing a survey regarding cannabis. I try to keep an open mind because various disabilities could cause someone to speak very slowly and slur their words, but she genuinely sounds like she’s stoned out of her gourd.

Caller: “Do you have ten minutes to answer our survey questions?”

Me: “I’m in the middle of my supper.”

Caller: “Can I call back in an hour?”

Me: “Sure.”

It was a very well-spoken young man who called back later, so I’m wondering if she really was impaired and, the calls being monitored, was pulled from the phones.

On a side note, one of the questions the young man asked was whether I had ever been a passenger in a vehicle operated by someone under the influence of cannabis. I told him that, as I had grown up in the 1970s, there was a very good chance of that.