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!”

My first job after college was at a company that didn’t allow flex time. The workday was 8:00 am to 4:30 pm with a thirty-minute lunch break at noon. As a result, for the first two and a half years that I was there, I was in the habit of taking my morning legally-mandated break at 10:00 am and my afternoon legally-mandated break at 2:00 pm.

Most of the rest of the day, I worked in a lab that didn’t allow food, and if you spilled a drink, you had to clean up before the person in charge chewed you out for spillage. So, on my break, I’d get a packet of peanuts and a machine-delivered fountain drink — paper cup, no lid — and go to my desk to eat the peanuts and drink the soda down far enough that spilling was unlikely.

During this time, I was continually in trouble with the manager three levels above me for “always” slacking off. When my immediate manager would defend me, [Upper Manager] would blow [Immediate Manager] off with “he’s got you snowed,” as if [Immediate Manager], who gave me my tasks and knew when I finished them, somehow didn’t know what I was doing as well as [Upper Manager] did.

Then, I found out something.

Coworker: “Apparently, [Upper Manager] uses the Dr. Pepper method.”

Back then, a Dr. Pepper clock had all blue numbers on it except for 10:00, 2:00, and 4:00, which were red.

Coworker: “At the red times on the clock during the day, [Upper Manager] walks around the areas where his people work, and if they look busy then, [Upper Manager] assumes they are busy all day.”

What did [Upper Manager] see me doing at 10:00 and 2:00? Eating peanuts and drinking a soda. He assumed that was all I did all day.

I shifted my morning break to 9:30 am and my afternoon one to 2:30 pm. Shortly after that…

Upper Manager: “[Immediate Manager], [My Name] has turned into such a hard worker! Please pass my praise [My Name].”

When [Immediate Manager] did as he was told, I burst out laughing.

Immediate Manager: “What’s so funny?”

I explained the Dr. Pepper method to him. [Immediate Manager] had noticed that I had shifted my two breaks by thirty minutes.

Me: “All the previous complaints from [Upper Manager] were a result of his seeing me eating peanuts and drinking soda at 10:00 and 2:00, and now that I do that at 9:30 and 2:30, with no other change, I am suddenly a hard worker.”

And then, I watched all respect for [Upper Manager] die in [Immediate Manager]’s eyes.

When I quit, I made sure the HR manager knew about [Upper Manager]’s moronic employee evaluation method. The HR manager was seriously displeased, and I suspect [Upper Manager] felt this displeasure at his next review.

My office is next to a café. We are not affiliated or anything; we’re just two separate businesses next to each other. Of course, many employees visit the café for a snack, a cup of coffee, etc.

A woman walks into the office.

Woman: “I have an appointment with [Employee #1].”

Me: “All right, I’ll let him know you are here.”

Woman: “Oh, and I took a cup of coffee.”

Me: “Eh, okay?”

Woman: “Just so you know.”

Me: “All right. Well… eh, you can wait here while I contact [Employee #1].”

Woman: “Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

Me: “I’m not sure I understand.”

Woman: “Seriously?! I had a cup of coffee! Don’t you dare cheat the people next door out of their money!”

Me: “Wait… You want me to pay for it?!”

Woman: “No, not you… Your finance department, your boss, I don’t care!”

Me: “Miss, why should we pay for your coffee?”

Woman: “Well, don’t you have that deal or something? [Employee #1] took me there last month!”

Me: “If he did, it was his invitation and he paid for the coffee. Our company doesn’t pay for orders of visitors; we are not affiliated or anything like that. It’s a separate café.”

Woman: “Really?!” *Annoyed* “So now you expect me to pay for that coffee?!”

Me: “If you left without paying, I might advise you to go back and pay. I’ll let [Employee #1] know you had a minor delay.”

Woman: “Seriously, I need to pay for that coffee?!”

She left anyway and returned about five minutes later, in time for her appointment. But yes, lady, you need to pay for what you ordered. I get the confusion, but please, be graceful about it.

My workplace has some strict confidentiality rules. What happens in the office, stays in the office. Most of us are totally fine with that rule, as we have the “work stays in the office” mentality. Unfortunately, a global health crisis wasn’t fine with that rule.

When lockdown kicked in, we suffered badly. The company refused to relent on its confidentiality policy, meaning that we couldn’t download any work to take home. As such, next to nothing got done for a few months. Occasionally, a few of us would sneak back into the office to shave off some of the backlog, but that was nowhere near enough.

When the restrictions were relaxed, we faced a massive backlog of work, but social distancing meant that only half the department could be in at any one time.

Our managers worked out a schedule for us, splitting our nine-to-five shift into an eight-to-three and three-to-ten shift. The only time both shifts would be in would be for the joint briefing at three pm. And although they didn’t consult us on who was on which shift, they actually did a surprisingly good job at picking who was on which shift.

The early shift was made up of the guys that lived nearby the office, under the justification that their travel time was lesser, so the strain of waking up earlier was less. That was totally fine for them, as they liked getting off work two hours early and could go drinking before the dinner crowd came in.

The later shift was made up of the guys who lived further, which was great. Personally, I loathe waking up early to go to work and the rest of my shift agreed. It helped that we were made up of the more competent guys, so we could do more work in less time, which meant that we usually left on average two hours early, despite the backlog.

With this system in place, we managed to get our department functional again. Unfortunately, HR cottoned on and decided that they knew better.

First, they stole the dual-shift idea and presented it to the rest of the company as though it was theirs. Second, they insisted that keeping everyone constantly on the same shift was “detrimental to morale” and ordered us to swap shifts every week.

Yeah, that didn’t work out. My shift had to wake up by six am at the latest to get to work on time. Also, as we were the more competent guys, we got everything done early but couldn’t leave until the three pm joint briefing, no matter what. For the other shift, that didn’t matter as they always barely finished in time, but we always had to spend an extra two hours in the office every time we got stuck on the early shift.

The other shift also hated the new schedule, as they could never go back early, couldn’t go drinking, and couldn’t watch late-night shows.

Our managers agreed that the situation wasn’t ideal and told HR that we wanted our shifts to be permanent. They did that… for only the managers under some tortured justification.

That didn’t work. Everyone loved their own manager but hated the other. The early manager was the micromanaging type and could get the less competent shift to work better. And the later manager was more easygoing and knew that us competent guys could do our work without his constant supervision.

However, when shifts swapped, everyone suffered as the later manager hated having to constantly deal with the less competent guys and the more competent shift loathed the earlier manager’s micromanaging.

So, we all sent a more strongly-worded petition to HR, all but demanding that we get back to the original arrangement. HR then spouted some bureaucratic nonsense.

HR: “The rest of the departments in the company agreed that the shift swapping is working well.”

They were totally ignoring that we weren’t them.

Despite all our complaints, our managers insisted that we still had to obey HR.

Manager: “We’re willing to take s*** from you, but we’re not willing to take s*** for you.” 

Basically, if they disobeyed the higher-ups, it was their heads on the chopping board and they didn’t want that. So, obedience it was.

The worst part was that sometime later, the higher-ups still had the gall to demand to know why our department’s efficiency varied so greatly every week and why we couldn’t consistently go at peak efficiency as we had initially done.