I am a cashier, and most often I am supervising the self-check. My town isn’t huge, so most of the customers will at least recognize me. If you work a certain amount of time, you are required to take an hour lunch break. When we have our lunch break, we fully clock out, and have no access to anything in the system. We are also told that we are expressly not allowed to do any work tasks or help any customers while on our break. If we do the store could get into trouble, and we ourselves could even get fired.

For my break today I have decided to buy a few things for lunch in the store, and then head home to hang out with my mom while I ate, since I live really close. I happily procure my miscellaneous goodies, including a treat for my mom, and happily stand in the line at the self-check, waiting for a register. I had my work vest with me, but it’s off and slung over my shoulder.

When I am next in line and a register opens, a customer shoves past me, literally knocking a precious pack of beef jerky out of my hands, and beelines over to the open register. I am annoyed, but I don’t want to waste my lunch break and she isn’t worth a confrontation. I just quietly pick up my jerky, and make my way over to another register, which has opened up about ten seconds later.

I am just happily and quietly scanning my goodies, when I hear snapping.

Customer: “Hey!”

I turn around and find the same woman glaring at me. I blink at her bewildered.

Customer: “Hey, I need help over here. I scanned this twice, I need you to take it off!”

I see that my coworker for the self-check is helping someone else. I look back at the customer and smile and politely say:

Me: “Oh, sorry. I’m on lunch break right now, so I can’t help you. But my coworker should be free to help in just a second.”

Customer: *Glaring.* “Why can’t you help me? You’re right here?”

Me: “I’m not clocked in; I am on my lunch break. I could get in trouble for helping you, and I can’t really even if I wanted to, because my ID won’t work in the system while I am clocked out.”

Customer: “That’s f****** stupid! You work here! If you’re in the building, you’re working. You have to come to help me.”

At this point, my coworker is done, and has walked over to help, but this customer isn’t having it.

Customer: “No! I asked them to help, they should do their f***ing job! They’re just being lazy!”

I just started ignoring the lady and go back to checking out while my coworker tries to explain to her that I can’t help, but she’s not having it. This adult woman throws the stuff she was buying on the ground, leaving her cart and everything there, and marches over to the customer service desk where my manager is standing. She then brings my manager back over to the self-check.

Customer: “Your employee is refusing to help me and being extremely rude!”

At this point, I have finished checking out and am standing by the self-check exit. My manager just looks at me.

Manager: “[My Name], are you on the clock?”

Me: “Nope. I’m just trying to get my lunch and go home.”

Manager: *Sternly.* “As they’re not on the clock they’re not allowed to or able to help you.”

Instead of going back and getting help from my coworker, she storms out screaming about she’s never going to shop there again. Okay, cool lady, we won’t miss you.

Sadly, it doesn’t even stop there. As I am talking to my manager and a few coworkers and explaining what happened, this customer’s husband comes in. He goes to her register that is still open, finishes checking out, and pays, then comes over to us.

Customer’s Husband: “My poor wife is in the car sobbing and in severe emotional distress because of how you’ve all treated her and embarrassed her. I hope you’re real proud of yourselves!”

I just grinned at him and gave him a thumbs-up. As he’s walking out, my manager tells me I should feel free to take an extra thirty if I wanted. I then happily skipped home, to enjoy my jerky in peace. Believe it or not lady, retail workers do in fact have basic human needs and rights!

I used to work part-time for my University running student events. Experience is the best teacher; I’d participated in these events as a student, assisted in these events under someone else as part of my scholarship, and as a staff member ran the events myself. We had a new college head who was much older — in her fifties or sixties — while everyone else was in their early twenties.

This woman was the most pigheaded, arrogant fool you could imagine, and despite being new, she wouldn’t sit back and observe how things worked or listen to those on our team who’d been there for years. No matter what we told her when she announced something that wouldn’t work or would cause problems, the answer was the same: “I’m older, so I know best!” It didn’t matter if it would take us longer to do it her way or, in one case, if it was technically illegal. (Of course, mistakes that we’d warned her would happen were always someone else’s fault and/or were swept under the carpet.)

During event planning, one look at the schedule told me she hadn’t allocated the team properly. We had this exchange via email.

Me: “Hmmm… It’s probably not a good idea to have the whole team in an hour before the event, most of them standing around doing nothing. It’s best to get five or so people in for setup, get most of the team in for running event, and hold back another three or four for cleanup.”

College Head: “No, I want everyone in helping out equally an hour before the event,”

Me: “They’re only meant to do two hours of work per event. If you have them an hour early for a two-hour event, that’s three hours. They’ll all leave before cleanup. The slackers will slack off, and the proactive ones will end up doing everything.”

College Head: “I’m older than you. I know best. Just do as you’re told.”

Cue malicious compliance.

Me: “Fine, but I’ve got some personal business to do directly after the event. I’ll handle procurement and setup but will need to leave right after the event is over.”

College Head: “That’s fine.”

And we went on to other business.

On the day of the event, the whole team showed up an hour before for setup. As expected, five or so did all the setup work while most of the team stood around on their phones. Some even got bored and wandered off. It was not the team members’ fault for standing around; only so many people can do meal prep and set up tables without getting in each other’s way.

Ten minutes before the event, [College Head] showed up. Everything was running smoothly, and the event was a lot of fun. Some of the team continued to wander off, some ran the events, and some participated. I was running around as a gopher letting [College Head] take credit for the event in front of everyone — not doing any work, mind, but taking credit for it. I made sure to remind her that I had to leave right at the end of the event for “personal business” in front of the other college heads several times.

To be extra spiteful, I neglected to stop several team members from wandering off who’d done no work other than stand around talking or eating, and I encouraged several people who’d definitely done two hours’ worth of work to call it a night and thanked them for their help. Forgetful me, I also didn’t tell team members standing around during events to start cleaning up as things were finishing.

All the free food was gone, all the games were over, both students and team members were wandering off into the night, and all of a sudden…

College Head: “Wait. Where are you going? There is so much mess, and we’ve got to put away all the tables and tidy up all the different games, but everyone has left.”

Me: “Hmmm, yes, we probably should have saved up a few team members to do cleanup, but they’ve all already done their two hours. Anyway, like I told you earlier, I’ve got some personal business to attend to directly after the event, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

College Head: “What personal business is it?! It will take over an hour to do all this on my own!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I said ‘personal business’ because I wasn’t comfortable discussing with you or the team what it was, as it really is quite personal, and I’m going to be late.”

I wandered off home for my “personal business” of closing all my curtains and playing Xbox in my underwear, chuckling at the thought of that arrogant woman having to do all that work by herself.

The formal complaint she put in for me leaving didn’t really go anywhere as I just forwarded the email exchange to management. Sadly, pig-headed people are pig-headed because they don’t learn no matter what. I eventually quit, and a few months later, I was introduced to my replacement’s replacement who was also ready to quit.

Back in the 1990s, I was working for a pizza franchise.

I was a Senior Manager Trainee, with a few months of training left to go to become a full-time store manager.

During every weekday, I was the opener, prepper, cleaner, in-store cook, manager, etc. I did my best to make sure everything was ready for our very busy evenings.

I worked a full two shifts one weekend and then worked a full opening shift on Monday morning. On Monday night, I was called to come in as the junior manager trainee was sick, and no one could get ahold of the store manager (as usual).

I offered to come in, but since I had to open the next day, I didn’t have the energy to do a full closing shift, and I had already worked a full opening shift.

So, I went in, took care of all the existing customers, made sure all the orders were taken care of, made sure deliveries went through, and made sure everything was done 100% correctly.

Then, I told the customers we would be closing early because I was not able to get ahold of a manager to help out or to take my morning shift.

I started getting calls from the regional manager to stay and do the full closing shift. I said I was not able to because I was very tired from both the weekend and morning shifts, and I had to open the next morning, as well.

I asked if any of the four or five other corporate stores had an extra person to come in and close so that I could get enough sleep to work my opening shift the next day. I had called all the different stores, and they had refused to help.

Then, the regional manager started to insult me as if I were trying to destroy the store. 

I also tried to call the store manager and got no result, and I had no other choice available to me. 

I had been worked to the bone.

So, around 10:00 pm, I completed all orders, took care of all driver’s money, cleaned the store, and closed it.

When the next morning started, I arrived to do my regular morning shift. I found out through the internal management network that I had been demoted to driver.

No one had been willing to help me, but I was supposed to sacrifice my health.

At that point, I decided to quit because of how abusive that situation was. Poor management by others does not mean I have to abide by it.

I quit immediately and called my store manager, locked the door, and left to never return.

There were plenty of stores that had extra people, and they would rather demand unreasonable effort from me than give me or my store help.

That lack of good management up and down still irks me to this day.

I worked for an office for a couple of years. My start time was 9:00 am and I left at 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday. Our office had a messaging system kind of like Skype on our computers where we could instant-message each other. We could only see these instant messages when we were logged into our work computers during our work hours.

One day, I came into work at 9:00 am and saw this message.

Boss: “I need you to work on getting those letters sent out. They are urgent.”

The message was sent at 3:00 am. About fifteen minutes later:

Boss: “[My Name], did you get the letters sent out?”

About five minutes after I clocked in, the boss sent me this instant message.

Boss: “[My Name], did you get those letters sent out? I told you they were urgent.”

Me: “No, I just got here and saw your messages that were sent to me at three o’clock this morning.”

Boss: “Oh, well, then work on this now if you can.”

I am not an on-call employee. I don’t know why he would message me in the middle of the night knowing we can only see the messages when we are logged into our work computer. And this was not the first time he had done that; he had also sent me instant messages around midnight before saying that he needed work completed right away. 

I suppose he thinks that we stay up all night in front of our computers, checking our messages.

Me: “I appreciate your business, but I’d rather you didn’t text me at midnight with your website revisions.”

Client: “My last designer didn’t care when I texted him.”

Me: “Wasn’t your last designer your husband?”

Client: “Yeah, so?”