This happened in the early 1990s, during the start of the registered pharmacist shortage. I was paying off school loans and trying to save up for a house, etc., so when I was called for extra shifts, I rarely turned them down.

On this particular day, I was off and laying in bed. At 8:45, my phone rang. It was my district manager.

Manager: *Sternly* “I need you to be in [Store] by 9:00.”

This store was an hour away from my house, and I had never worked there before.

Me: “I’ll go in, but I can’t get there until 10:00.”

Manager: *Gruffly* “No! Be there at 9:00!”

Me: “Look! It’s an hour-long drive, so I will get there as soon as I can, but it won’t be by 9:00.”

I got there just before 10:00. In walked my district manager with four of his higher-up bosses, and he immediately started berating me in front of them and customers.

I took it for a couple of minutes, hoping he was just trying to impress his bosses, but he started getting worse and worse about how bad the store’s inventory, tech budget, etc. were.

I’d had enough. And since, at that time, a pharmacist could get a job the next day, I lit back into him.

Me: “You know good and d*** well that I’ve never even been in this store before and that those things aren’t my fault! If you’re going to humiliate me in front of your bosses, then consider this my two-week notice.”

I never heard from the district manager again, but his bosses all came back down to try to talk me into staying.

I work in a grocery store where we’re required to see ID to buy cigarettes regardless of how old the customer is. I have a guy come in wanting two packs of cigarettes.

Me: “Can I see your ID?”

Customer: “I don’t have it, but my birthday is [date].”

Me: “I need your physical ID.”

Customer: “It’s in my car.”

Me: “I need to see it.”

He goes to get it and comes back in with an ID. I go to scan it, and then he tells me this key piece of information.

Customer: “This is my wife’s ID.”

Me: “Sir, I told you I needed your ID. Since this isn’t yours, I can’t sell you the cigarettes.”

Customer: “Are you f****** kidding me?!”

The customer stormed out, and then his wife came in and bought the cigarettes.

The funny part is that the guy was old enough that I wasn’t going to look at the front of the ID, so had the guy not said it was his wife’s ID, I never would’ve known.

Related:
Has ID, No Idea, Part 51
Has ID, No Idea, Part 50
No ID, No Idea, Part 49
No ID, No Idea, Part 48
No ID, No Idea, Part 47

I’m constantly told that I’m like a taller version of my older brother with a deeper voice, but other than that, we are basically the same. We wear the same clothes, and I guess our mannerisms are pretty similar.

Around two or three years ago my older brother worked at a [Store]. One day, my brother’s car broke down and we had to take him to the store. I went to buy a Halloween mask while my brother was in the store working. I ran into his boss while I was crouching down, looking for a mask.

Boss: “Go get on a register!”

Me: “Yeah, I don’t work here.”

She looked kind of confused. I wasn’t able to find the mask, so I just stood up and went to tell my brother goodbye. His boss came stomping down, and I guess she wanted to scold me until she saw me high-fiving my brother. As I was leaving, I heard her say:

Boss: “Is that your twin brother?”

Brother: “Nah, that big guy right there is six years younger than me.”

I don’t really know how she confused me as an employee since I wasn’t wearing a red shirt, which all employees have to wear.

Related:
Oh, Brother! – Part 7
Oh, Brother! – Part 6
Oh, Brother!, Part 5
Oh, Brother! – Part 4
Oh, Brother! – Part 3

Around eight years ago, my wife and I were at a big box store buying the stuff to make a pizza. When I have time, I prefer to make the crust from scratch, but I buy premade when I’m in a hurry. We were hungry now, so we were looking at said premade crusts.

I went to grab our favorite type but noticed that they were all expired. I knew from having previously worked at a different location of this store that they would not be noticed by staff any time soon, so they wouldn’t be reordered, so I took the entire selection and sought out an employee.

Luckily, just as I left the aisle, I saw a manager speaking with someone. I stood nearby waiting to speak with him. He saw me with my armful of crusts.

Manager: “Yes? What?”

Me: “These crusts are all expired.”

Manager: *Angrily* “Then take them to claims!”

I looked at him for a second.

Me: “Are you sure?”

Manager: *Even louder* “TAKE THEM TO THE D*** CLAIMS AREA! AND PICK UP YOUR F****** VENDOR BADGE WHILE YOU’RE BACK THERE! Also, I don’t think that a band shirt is part of your company’s dress code!”

I was wearing my favorite Dead Kennedys shirt that day. I stared at him, just waiting to see how this would play out. He stared back for a moment, and then realization slowly dawned.

Manager: “You… you do work for the crust company, right?”

Me: “No, I just thought you’d like to know that you have expired product on the shelf so you can get it replaced.”

He apologized repeatedly and offered to comp a different crust option for me. I took it, but from then on, my wife and I shopped at another store.

This happened back around 2000. I was working as a swing shift server admin for a large bank. Our location was one of three data centers.

Most nights were extremely busy. This night was slow, so I took the opportunity to look for something to do. I decided to check out the Day Shift Desktop ticket queue. There was a ticket that had been open for over a year.

Ticket: “User’s monitor image randomly shakes. Team cannot duplicate problem. Monitor has been replaced several times.”

Challenge accepted. There were almost no employees there at night, so I went for a walk. I found the user’s cubicle and the monitor looked fine. She had a very large CRT. This wasn’t normal. Most had LCDs at this point. I took a look at her coworkers’ cubicles and realized the problem almost immediately.

The user on the other side of the cube wall — who had an LCD Monitor — had an electric desk fan sitting six inches from the back of the large CRT with only the cloth cube wall between them. I turned the fan on and the monitor wigged out. I left the owner of the fan a note asking her to relocate it.

I closed the ticket. The following day, I was told that the day techs were given a hard time all day over how simple it was to solve the “Unsolvable Trouble Ticket”.