I have a nine-to-five salaried job with overtime pay. I’m living in Europe, and in my country, this is the standard. The job is okay and the colleagues and the working environment are nice. Even my boss is competent and nice. My office has a fluid attendance, where we only HAVE to be there during the core times — 10:00 am to 2:00 pm — but can work whenever we want to, as long as we do our 38.5 hours a week.

I’m not a morning person, so I regularly come in shortly before 10:00 am; therefore, I have to stay later. No problem, because during the core time, I still can talk about important things with the others, and in the evening, I just write emails. I always do my work and get no complaints.

My boss, on the other hand, is a lark and is there at 7:45 sharp every day. One of my jobs is being an assistant to her for many little things, but it has clear limitations, so it is more like general assistance to my small department. And even though she KNOWS I will come in to be ready to work at 10:00 am, she calls me several times a week at 9:00 am on my way to work to talk about the plans for the day. Those calls last between fifteen and twenty-five minutes and are like a stand-up meeting, only she is drinking her coffee and I am not really awake yet. (No worries; I use public transport.)
She starts with this only after I am several months in and it gets worse over time, until she calls me every single day on my way to work, while I actually want to read my books and slowly ease myself into a working mode. It gets so bad that I always wear my headset so my arm won’t get tired while phoning.

Over the months, I try several times to raise her awareness that I do not actually like this and that it maybe could wait until I get there, but she never understands and calls them “just a jour fixe.” This is French for “fixed day” and is a short regular meeting about the status quo. Team members report how far they are and what their next job is.

Maybe I am too friendly about it, but I’ve learned from experience with previous bosses that they are not happy about criticism. When I try to leave a little earlier because of the extra time in the morning, she gets wind of that.

Boss: “You need to work your full hours, because those jour fixes are just phone calls.”

Then, I try to roll my cadaver out of bed earlier, so the call at 9:00 am will count as work time, but I am groggy all day and it hurts my productivity. And I swear to God, after a week, my boss starts calling me even earlier, again on my way to work! When I try to send her to the mailbox, she calls me several times, as if it was an emergency just to talk about the plans of the day, her agenda, and some to-dos for me — which I already know about. I just give up and it still wrecks my nerves. Until…

One day, I have an actual important question that cannot wait, but my boss is already gone for the day. I write an email. She does not answer for an hour. Then, once, I call her during her time off, because this thing really needs to be done today. It is quite short, but she ends the call with:

Boss: “Just for the future: I don’t like to be called during my time off, so please ask me while I am still at work.”

And then she just hangs up.

That is it. From that day on, I write up those calls as working time. We log our time in Excel sheets that I have to convert to the appropriate salary forms at the end of the month, so my boss does not see them. I have an hour a week of extra overtime, so at least I get paid for that.

Then, at the end of the next month, I have several days on which I work longer than the legally allowed maximum work hours per day. I fill out the forms at the end of the month, having several days in red, and send them to HR. They know this is a problem because the fines are quite hefty if the bureau of finances sees that. First, they ask me what those irregular times each morning are and tell me to answer my emails in the office, so this will not happen again. When I tell them what those weird times were and what I tried, they become very polite and end the call pretty quickly.

During the call from the boss the next morning:

Boss: “I have a meeting with HR today. I assume it’s just about some new laws.”

She comes back from the meeting red in the face. HR seems to have ripped her a new one.

Boss: *Sheepishly* “Are those morning calls really such a hassle for you?”

And FINALLY, she listens when I tell her that I am quite groggy in the morning and that an email would suffice because I generally know my to-dos. If she wants jour fixes, I will happily have them while AT work and with my own coffee.

To end this on a happy note: we got along nicely after that, and I could talk a little bit more openly with her. She still liked her jour fixes, but we did them at 10:00 am, when I had arrived at work and was actually awake.

I work as a receptionist in an office that sells hearing aids. We have people call in after seeing our ads to make appointments or ask questions. We are all trained to basically do whatever it takes to get them in the door.

I get a normal call from a potential patient asking about one of our ads. It states that if they complete a hearing aid trial — which is them actually ordering hearing aids and trying them for a ten-day trial — they get something for free. This is usually a little mini grill or a $25 gift card.

Patient: “Tell me about the free gift.”

Me: “As long as you complete the trial, you’ll get the gift.”

This little disclaimer is also printed on the ads these people receive in the mail. The day of the appointment, the patient comes in with her husband and they fill out the paperwork. Already, she’s putting out that “I don’t know why I have to do this” vibe and has asked repeatedly about our free exams and the free gift, so I already know that that’s the only reason she is even here.

Me: “Yes, the exam is free and you receive the gift after the trial.”

Now, most people would understand what “trial” means, but I’ll learn later this lady doesn’t. After going through the whole exam of having her ears checked and tested, and then the clinician going over her results and what options would be best for her, she says she will have to “think about it,” which, in this line of work means, “I’m not gonna buy anything.”

This is how it goes down once she comes back up to the front desk.

Patient: “Okay, so where’s my free gift card?”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you only get one after a hearing aid trial.”

Patient: “That’s bulls***! I asked you when I called about the gift card and you said I get it after the exam!”

Me: “No, ma’am, I said that after your trial, you get the gift card. I’m not allowed to say you get it after an exam. It’s even printed on the ad you brought in.”

Patient: “That’s just ridiculous! I want my gift card!”

She then starts to just stare angrily at me while her husband just stands there watching the whole thing. Thankfully, my clinician has come back out of his office.

Clinician: “What’s going on?”

Patient: “Your dumba** secretary told me that I don’t get a gift card, even though I just had an exam!”

Clinician: “That’s correct. You have to complete a ten-day hearing aid trial before we send you a gift card, regardless of whether you buy or not. It’s on the ads we sent out, as well.”

Patient: “You’re all just a bunch of liars and won’t give me a gift card! I’m going to call your corporate office and complain!”

After being a total witch for a few more minutes while we repeat ourselves over and over, she finally leaves; her husband never said anything.

Clinician: “I mean, she can’t be that hard up for $25 if she’s driving off in a Mercedes!”

We also never heard anything from our corporate office, but thankfully, she hasn’t come back since!

My best friend is a lovely American immigrant woman who also happens to be Muslim. My boss is, well, the stereotypical white Southern bell: extremely bigoted and blind to her own prejudices because she was raised on “good manners.”

Boss: “[My Name], I wanted to use my apartment’s pool this weekend, but there were a group of Muslim women with all their children there having a birthday party. Don’t get me wrong, the kids were cute, but it has to make you wonder… where are all the men?”

Sounds like a typical birthday party, right?

Me: “Fun! It sounds like a good time.”

Boss: “Look, I know you have a Muslim friend, but I was terrified. There were no men there.”

She pauses for emphasis.

Me: “Okay…”

Boss: “They are probably upstairs planning an attack! Leaving all the women and children outside to plan to bomb us!”

Me: “No, I don’t think so. Muslim women are social beings, too—”

She cuts me off and goes on a diatribe about how all these women’s husbands are probably planning to attack America. Eventually, I manage to get her to change the subject because she clearly isn’t going to listen to me. But the next day, I get this gem.

Boss: “Hi, [My Name]. I could totally tell I was making you uncomfortable because you have that Muslim friend of yours and you probably thought that I was a racist, but I am not. I am only being practical here.”

Cue the same racist rant as the day before.

I know she doesn’t necessarily hate other ethnicities, but she has also said some pretty disgusting things about Asians and blacks, as well as homeless people and the mentally ill, in general. I would love to educate her and set her straight, but until she wants to listen with an open mind, it is useless, sadly.

I work in the call centre for my local council. I take calls about school places, roads, grass that hasn’t been cut, and things like that. Occasionally, we get people trying to put in insurance claims against the council for things like tripping over uneven paving slabs, burst tyres due to potholes, etc.

Woman: “I just reversed into one of the streetlights on a public road.”

Me: “Okay, no worries. If you can let me know where the light is, I can put a report through to our engineers. They’ll go have a look at the damage and assess if it needs repairing. Thank you for letting us know!”

I assume that will be the end of it.

Woman: “I didn’t call to report the damage to the streetlight. I called about the damage to my car.”

Me: *Confused* “What exactly are you asking of us?”

Woman: “I would like you to send me some information in the post about how I can put in a claim against you for the damage to my car! It’s your fault the streetlight was there in the first place! And I’d like to take legal action against you for your negligence!”

Throughout this whole conversation, she failed to accept that there was no possible way the council would accept liability for damage to her car because she drove into a lamppost, as there was no possible way the council was responsible for the damage purely because we “put the streetlight there in the first place” as she claimed.

I transferred her to a supervisor, as she refused to take no for an answer. It was probably one of most “What the f***?” phone calls I took in my short time working at a call centre. Every now and then I wonder how far she got with that claim in the end.

I have sent a meeting request to my coworker in the next cubicle. She is known to be, um, problematic. The meeting is twenty minutes from my request. She accepts the meeting invitation.

The meeting occurs, but she does not attend. I walk to her cubicle to fill her in on the results.

Coworker: “You already had the meeting?”

Me: “Yes, it was for 2:00.”

Coworker: “Why didn’t you get me? I didn’t know it was today!”

Me: “I sent the invitation twenty minutes before the meeting; you accepted it.”

Coworker: “I didn’t know it was today! Why didn’t you get me?”

Me: “I had just sent the invitation. You accepted. I assumed you were coming.”

Coworker: “I didn’t look at the date!”

Me: “So, you’re saying it’s my fault you didn’t know about a meeting that you accepted an invitation for twenty minutes before the start, and that you would have been reminded of by the system fifteen and five minutes before it began?”

Coworker: “Yes! That’s your responsibility!”