I am a facilities manager for a medium-sized tech company. During a major expansion, we score a new operations director, stealing him away from one of our biggest customers. It should have been a clue that the customer didn’t seem all that upset to have lost him.

It quickly becomes apparent that our new director LOVES meetings. Every morning, all of us managers — about ten of us — have to attend his ops meeting, which never goes less than three hours and often runs over four hours.

In every one of those meetings, some of us are told to schedule new one-on-one meetings with him to discuss items from this meeting. We send the meeting requests, he accepts, and then 98% of the time he fails to appear, usually because he tends to double-, triple-, or quadruple-book and only ever attends meetings he’s scheduled himself in those cases.

One day, about three and a half hours into the ops meeting, an item in my area of responsibility comes up.

Director: “[My Name], why is this back on my agenda?”

Me: “I don’t know. I dealt with that three weeks ago. It was a five-minute fix.”

Director: “I thought I asked you to schedule a meeting with me to go over it.”

Me: “You did. I just figured I’d save you the trouble of standing me up by not scheduling it in the first place.”

That was the last time he ever spoke to me.

He tried to lay me off a few weeks later, but the owners were already on to him. He was given the opportunity to succeed elsewhere, meetings became fewer and further between, and I stayed with the company for about ten more years.

I’m a freelance writer and editor, so I’m always interested in new projects. I had an ongoing contract with a client for around a year, working alongside another freelancer. The other guy and I got on well, and when the project ended, he said he was getting busy with work and could use some help from me if I was up for it.

It sounded like a no-brainer — regular work and reporting to someone I already knew I worked well with.  

After the first week, he said there’d been some problems and he’d had bad feedback from the client. It had taken him as long again as I’d spent working to fix the issues. Obviously, I was mortified. I apologised profusely and said that, of course, I wouldn’t invoice him if what I’d done hadn’t been up to scratch and had actually caused him more work. I really wasn’t sure what I’d done so wrong but had no reason to doubt him.

The second week, the work was for a different client. As well as writing, it involved uploading to an online portal. As far as I could tell, I’d followed the previous examples to the letter, but the guy came back and said I’d done it all wrong and it would take him several hours to sort it out.

Hmm. Now I was getting suspicious. Again, though, I felt I couldn’t invoice him for the time I’d spent.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt one final time and agreed to do some more work the following week. Yet again, there was some issue he said he had to spend ages sorting out afterward.

I decided to go back and check what had been published online against my original work, look at publishing settings, and so on. I couldn’t see any changes.

Not wanting to burn bridges — this guy and I are both members of several online groups and forums, and he could affect my chances of getting other work — I chose not to confront him. But I told him I’d suddenly landed some more work myself and would be too busy to help him after all.

It’s the last day of my job after working through two months of notice. I’m an advocate in the justice system. Although I love my clients, I’m horrifically overworked, underpaid, and being systematically treated like a dogsbody by all but a select few of my colleagues.

So far, I’ve had two threatening calls from my manager telling me I need to work another month, the CEO asking if I think that jobs grow on trees, and my coworker saying I’m being selfish as she’s going to have to work her full hours now.

I also had a “goodbye” card that had clearly been written for someone else, with their name crossed out and mine written over it, and a bunch of lilies — I’m allergic, which should be well known.

I’m so ready to leave that I’m considering jumping out a window when one of my clients turns up at my office carrying a big shopping bag.

“Hey, [My Name],” she says. “I just wanted to say goodbye, good luck, and thank you. I hate goodbyes so don’t start getting emotional with me. Take this and have a really good life! F*** anyone who tries to tell you you’re not awesome! Bye!”

She nearly threw the bag at me and ran from the building. 

I opened the bag to find a casserole veg pack — I’m dieting — a keyring with a hand-drawn portrait of me on it, and a homemade thank-you card.

She was right to run; I cried so hard at the weird, thoughtful gift and decided in that moment to never be treated below my worth again.

The keyring is still with me ten years later.

This story is part of our feel-good roundup for August 2020!

Read the next feel-good story here!

Read the feel-good August 2020 roundup!

I work in IT for a retail company. I freely acknowledge that the users I support don’t have the technical knowledge or experience that I do — that’s how I keep my job — but it amazes me the number of people who don’t know even basic stuff about computers. I get variations on this a lot.

Me: “Okay, it looks like I’m going to have to remote in. Can I get your computer name?”

User: “It’s [employee number].”

Me: “No, the workstation ID so I can remote in?”

User: “Oh! It’s a Dell.”

Me: “No… the name of the computer so I can connect to it. I need to connect to the computer to assist with your issue. It’ll be in either [format] or possibly [other format].”

User: “Where is that?”

Me: “If you don’t have a sticker on the tower, you can pull up your start menu and type [NAME].”

I spell it out phonetically.

User: “What’s a start menu?”

Me: “In the lower left-hand corner of your screen; you’ll see either four different colored boxes or four white boxes.”

User: “Where’s the start menu?”

Me: “Do you see the clock in the lower right-hand corner of the screen? Opposite that.”

User: “Start menu… Okay, where am I supposed to click?”

Me: “Just type [NAME].”

User: “Where?”

Me: “Once you’ve pulled up the start menu, just type [NAME].”

User: “Okay, now what are you looking for?”

Me: “There should be something that says either [Device Name] or [Computer Name].”

The user proceeded to read me all the system information for the computer.

I returned to work after lockdown and, as a result of my line of work, my back pain and migraines returned.

We had a backlog of three months that we had to catch up on. This meant extra shifts at work and getting a headstart with the new protocol. 

I was hesitant to return to work due to the still-present illness and due to the heightened demands. But I decided to go ahead with work. 

After a month of work, we all felt the exhaustion. But this week, my boss took me aside and gifted me a box of chocolate, saying how much she appreciated how hard I was working and how grateful she was that I came to work.

Such a kind gesture really brightened up my difficult week. Kindness can go a long way!

This story is part of our feel-good roundup for August 2020!

Read the next feel-good story here!

Read the feel-good August 2020 roundup!