I hold a platinum membership (second-highest tier) with an international hotel brand. I came back from a trip to Branson, Missouri, and noticed that my points hadn’t been added to my account, so I contacted Member Services to get that adjusted. After doing so, I was told that, as a Platinum member, I could get 500 points if I listened to some information about a future trip.

Now naive, dopey me agreed to this as I get 500 points just for checking in, so I assumed I would hear some electronic spiel that I could say yes or no to and then go on with my day.

Oh, how wrong I was.

I ended up speaking to a sales representative who made a pitch about what would turn out to be a timeshare. (Conveniently, he never mentioned that, or the fact that if I took this trip, I would be required to sit in on a timeshare presentation. I later learned this from reading the fine print in an email.)

He mentioned a slew of cities, and I asked for some information about Las Vegas as a friend of mine and I go there enough that it might have been a worthwhile offer. It turned out I would have had to pay up front and then use the trip sometime in the next year. Without a firm date, I had little desire to hand over my hard-earned money, so I declined the offer and thanked the representative for his time.

He suddenly got deathly quiet. I knew he was there because he was still breathing. And then, this took place.

Me: “Again, I’ll keep the offer in mind, but it’s not for me right now, and I thank you for your time.”

Representative: *In the snottiest tone imaginable* “So, what? You’re not going to travel in the next year?”

Me: *Annoyed* “I likely will. But I don’t know when or where. Now if you don’t mind, I have a client coming into my office, and I have to get off the phone.”

Representative: “Yeah, sure.”

Me: “Excuse me? I don’t appreciate that.”

Representative: “Well, I don’t appreciate you saying that you go to Las Vegas and then don’t want to buy this trip.”

Me: *Voice cracking like a whip* “I want to speak to your supervisor!”

Representative: “I am the supervisor.”

Me: “I don’t care. Whoever is above you, I want to speak to them now.”

He reluctantly switched me to a more senior member, and I related this conversation and how ridiculous it was that I or anybody else should be treated like that just because a sales pitch was turned down. The senior staff member tried to placate me by saying they were in the sales business, but there were lines that shouldn’t be crossed. He said all the calls were recorded, and he’d do his due diligence to listen to the call and handle things, and then he disconnected.

I realized it was probably a bunch of blather and that I’d never hear a thing. Then, I discovered I had been cheated out of the points.

After I calmed down, I wrote a pointed, but polite, letter to the company restating the story and telling them I was neither going to hold the whole company responsible for one bad apple, nor would I ask for special favors due to a bad experience. However, I did ask for my 500 points as I did hold up my end of the bargain by listening to the pitch.

Then, good Karma started coming out of the situation.

Later that night, I received an email from the company which included a sincere apology. They were not only giving me the points but doubling them, so I got 1,000 points for my troubles.

But it didn’t stop there.

The next week, I found that they had actually double-pointed me for my Branson stay. Now that was an additional $400 worth of points, so I couldn’t keep them in good conscience, so I reported the error.

I got another message with yet another apology from the company, who told me they appreciated my honesty and were letting me keep the points, so I ended up earning a total of 15,000 points for my time and trouble.

So, Mr. Rude Sales Rep, thanks for earning a free room for me!

I was shopping at a dollar store with my mother. She was in line in front of me, and her total was such that she was going to get just a penny as change. 

She handed the money over.

Mother: “Keep the penny.”

Then, it was my turn, and my total was $4.01. The smallest change I had was a nickel, so I handed that over along with a $10 bill. 

Clerk: “Oh, don’t worry about the penny.”

And she handed me back the nickel. I just assumed she was using the penny that my mother had left and thanked her. She counted out my change and handed it to me: a $5 bill and 99 cents!

I was kind of stunned for a moment.

Clerk: “Oh, that’s why you were giving me the nickel: so you wouldn’t have to carry around all that change.”

Me: “Uh, yeah.”

But it was too late. She had already closed her till. 

I just shook my head and walked out with my purchases.

We got a call from the store next to ours that a customer had left behind the purchases from our store. There were a couple of board games in one of our bags, but luckily, they had the receipt with them. The customer was part of our loyalty program, so we were able to contact them using the phone number we had on file.

We called and left a message on their voicemail.

And then, we waited.

After a week with no response, we called again and left another message.

And then, we waited.

This went on for several months with us periodically calling and leaving messages, never getting a response.

Unfortunately, we got notice a while later that our store would be closing permanently. We only got a week’s notice, but we called every day while the phones were still connected to try to contact the customer.

We ended up closing the store without ever speaking to them. We had no other contact information, so we just donated those board games to a local shelter.

At one retail job, we closed at 10:00 and opened at 7:00. After closing, we were expected to clean up our departments and then, when we were done, go help the other departments not yet finished. It was a large store, but my department was easy to handle, and I kept moving all night, so I straightened as I went. I was always done by 10:30, which would have been a normal clock-out time.

But the other departments were a mess. More often than not, I would end up being there past midnight. Of course, I was scheduled to open the next day and had to be there before 7:00 for store meetings. Combined with my travel time, I was lucky to get five hours of sleep.

I started really reading my employee handbook, and I found an interesting passage stating that there has to be a minimum of eight hours between shifts. So, the next night that they had me go help another department, I said:

Me: “Sure, but it’s already 10:25. I won’t be able to help so much in the five minutes before I clock out.”

The manager was stunned.

Manager: “Why would you be clocking out at 10:30? Everyone has to stay to help clean up.”

Me: “Well, yes. However, according to the employee handbook, I’m required to have eight hours between shifts. You have me scheduled in tomorrow at 6:30 to open. So, I can stay to help, but does that mean I’m coming in later? Nobody else is scheduled to open my department. The next person coming in is at 9:00.”

They fretted and grumbled a bit and then said for me to clock out.

I didn’t have a bit of trouble clocking out on time after that.

Back when I worked at [Video Rental Chain Store], we would often cover other stores in our city — whether it was just because they were short one day, needed help with inventory, etc.

Another location was having their holiday party and obviously wanted all of their employees to be able to attend. They contacted our store to see if we could spare three people to cover their store from 6:00 pm to midnight. We sent one assistant manager and two regular employees. They got the keys and all the codes and were prepared to handle the evening.

Over the next few days, we started hearing chatter from the other store about something going wrong on that night. It was difficult to keep anything secret between the stores as a lot of people started at one location before transferring to another, and most of us remained friends outside of work.

It turned out that the assistant manager had made some changes to the receipts. We had the ability to add a message at the end of the receipt without approval from corporate — usually to advise of some promotion or something like that. For whatever reason, she typed in some rude message directed at customers. It was nothing blatantly offensive but definitely not something you’d want them to read. She meant it to be funny, but under those circumstances, it wasn’t.

The chatter was that this was a serious offense and that [Assistant Manager] knew there were going to be consequences, even though nothing was said by upper management.

Soon afterward, the store manager and district manager were there one day and wanted to know when [Assistant Manager] was scheduled. It was to be in another hour. They told us that they were leaving but to tell her to not clock in and to stay there until they came back. 

[Assistant Manager] showed up about fifteen minutes before her scheduled time, and we advised her of what the store manager and district manager had said. She saw the writing on the wall and just decided to quit instead, not wanting to get yelled at and fired at the same time, and just left.

The store manager and district manager showed up about a half hour after when [Assistant Manager] was supposed to clock in, wondering where she was. We said that she’d just quit and left. They both were stunned that she wouldn’t stay around at their direction.

I get why [Assistant Manager] had to be fired, but the amount of time between the incident and her quitting was about a week. Of course she was going to figure out something bad is coming. At the very least, they should have stayed around in the store if they needed to fire her.

One other employee got basically a slap on the wrist since he was aware of the changes to the receipt but wasn’t in charge. Nothing happened to the third employee since he was out on the floor the whole night instead of behind the counter.