I work in a small open-plan office. I have just finished writing a technical manual, so I hand the hard copy over to my technical manager for checking. As a precursor to asking if anyone else wants a drink, I make a comment.

Me: “Well, I think I’ve earned myself a cup of tea.”

Before I can ask if anyone else wants one, my technical manager responds.

Technical Manager: “You get paid in tea now, do you?”

Me: “There’s a thought.”

Coworker: “The rate you go, you’d be paid a fortune.”

Me: “Can you imagine the problems that would happen if anyone found out about me being paid in tea? Trouble brewing!”

There are a lot of groans around the office, and the admin assistant’s head falls into her hands with a comment of, “Oh, [My Name]!”

Me: “You don’t know how much pleasure your collective cries of agony gave me.”

I was following a tractor-trailer through town. When we came upon a crosswalk with people waiting to cross, he put on his flashers and let them cross in front of him. That’s when I noticed the “Call this number if you have comments about our driving” sticker on the back of the trailer.

When I got home, I called the number. “I have a comment about a truck today,” I explained.

The receptionist got a worried tone in her voice as she said, “Let me get my boss on the line.” 

The boss answered with the same concerned tone and wanted to know the truck number and then asked me for my comment.

I told him, “I thought he was driving very professionally. He stopped for people at a crosswalk, he kept up with traffic, he always used his turn signals, and he was just an all-around competent driver.”

Mr. Boss seemed very relieved, telling me that calls to the reporting line are almost always negative. He assured me he would pass along the feedback. To this day, I can’t help but wonder how the boss went about delivering the unusual compliment to his driver. Was it, “Come to my office; we got a call about your driving today.”?

This story is included in our Feel-Good roundup for July 2020!

Read the next Feel-Good Story here!

Read the July 2020 Feel-Good roundup!

Times being what they are, everyone in my office is working from home, and meetings are all being done via conference call.

During one such call, I’m in the midst of explaining a problem that I’ve been working on and what I’m going to need to resolve it, when suddenly one of my coworkers — a woman a few years older than me — breaks in and says very sternly, “Well, I’m gonna need you to be a big boy and DEAL WITH IT.”

The call goes silent, everyone stunned for a moment at such a rude comment, when somebody else on the call, who is a bit quicker on the uptake than the rest of us, says, “[Coworker], you’re not on mute.”

Coworker: “Oh! I’m sorry. My kid was bothering me about something. He knows he’s not supposed to talk to me when I have my headset on unless it’s an emergency.”

Me: “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were using your Mom voice on me!“

Then, everyone laughed, and it took a few minutes to restore order and get on with the meeting.

This story is part of our July 2020 Roundup – the best stories of the month!

Read the next July 2020 Roundup story!

Read the July 2020 Roundup!

I work at a small engineering company. We are still very small, only about twenty-five people. We have an IT guy who is responsible for interfacing with clients when their problem is more software-based and installing any modules we program for them. Therefore, he interacts with clients more than most of us engineers. He has a bit of a short temper but is otherwise excellent at his work and great as a coworker.

We also have a very abusive jerk of a client who gives us a lot of revenue and a lot of headaches. He expects each of us to grovel and scrape whenever we interact with him, has sworn at all of us at some point, and is a horrible human being in general.

He’s just found a minor bug on a software we sold him. This is fairly normal and we warranty new software for two to five years because bugs do happen.

My colleague and I, who are the programmers, my manager, and the IT guy are all at his site trying to solve the problem and have already taken a lot of abuse.

Client: “You’re all morons who can’t do anything right. I don’t know why we still bother with your company!”

Manager: “[Client], we are here to fix—”

Client: *Like a chant* “Morons, morons, morons! Come on, sing with me what you are! Morons, morons, morons!”

Three of us there are shocked and don’t know what to do. And then, there is [IT Guy].

IT Guy: “Sure, I’ll sing with you! F*** YOU! F*** YOU! F*** YOU!”

The client’s jaw hits the floor and he starts getting red in the face. But [IT Guy] continues his own chant, raising his voice to the point of yelling in this guy’s – open plan! – office space, and adding dancing middle fingers!

IT Guy: “F*** YOU! F*** YOU! F*** YOU!”

My manager quickly — but not too quickly! — gets us out of there before security comes to get us. [IT Guy] is still yelling as we drag him out the door.

IT Guy: “F*** YOU! F*** YOU! F*** YOU!”

He was fired, of course. In a company as small as ours, we couldn’t afford to let this behavior go unpunished — not with that many witnesses — or our reputation would go down the drain. But he was the office hero for months!

And the client was so hated that [IT Guy] was not fired for cause and was offered a settlement equivalent to two months of his salary, on top of the normal unemployment benefits. My manager also wrote him a kick-a** reference letter and sent his résumé to some connections. He had a good new job in under a month and remained friendly with us.

And we never did business with the abusive client again!

I’m a receptionist in a newly-constructed building. Due to it being brand new, there have been technical issues and just general things not working right. This includes the front doors, where instead of opening automatically, a person outside — or I at the desk inside — must push a button to open them. This is important because yesterday the building inspector came and immediately started straight-up screaming at everyone. 

Me: “Good—”

Inspector: “THESE DOORS CANNOT BE LOCKED! FIREMEN WILL BREAK THROUGH THE GLASS! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?”

Me: “The doors can be opened by—”

Inspector: “I SAID THEY CAN’T BE LOCKED. THEY ARE LOCKED. DON’T TELL ME THEY AREN’T.”

Security: “Okay, sir—”

Inspector: “DON’T OKAY ME! I SAID THEY CAN’T BE LOCKED! THEY ARE LOCKED AND THAT IS A PROBLEM!”

We went silent waiting for them to stop screaming. We were never able to explain we were trying to get them in touch with the right people, that there had been technical malfunctions, or that the door could be kept open for emergencies so no one would have to break through any glass.