I work at a housewares store and I run the stockroom staff. We sell some flat-packed furniture and we have a backdoor pickup for customers to load items into their cars. The back-of-house staff has to help these customers, and though they’re very hard-working, most are quite introverted compared to the front-of-house staff.

One of my guys loads a ten-foot rug into the back of a long SUV. There would be plenty of room for it if the customer was willing to remove one of his kid seats and fold the chair over, but he refuses, even though he is shopping alone. My guy props the rug on top of the seat, running through the middle of the car.

Employee: “I have to warn you that it will not be safe to have a kid in that seat until the rug is unloaded.”

Before closing the trunk, my guy walks to the front of the car to see where the rug is in relation to the rearview mirror. He decides it is too close and turns around to move it slightly, but the impatient customer takes that moment to slam the trunk shut. The rug pushes straight into the mirror, which punches through the windshield.

The customer is furious, and I have to go out there and be shouted at.

Customer: “This guy damaged my windshield!”

I knew this guy wouldn’t do that, so I pointed to our camera out there and threatened to bring up the tape. There was no tape; we would have had to get corporate involved and I have never seen them take the store’s side over a customer. But the customer didn’t know that. Suddenly, the customer admitted that he’d slammed the trunk himself, but he still felt it was our fault the windshield was damaged.

He threatened to sue the store for “tricking” him into smashing his own windshield. I had an awesome boss at the time who took our side to corporate. I’m pretty sure we lost the customer, though.

I work for a company that provides a utility truck to employees. One of the analytics they monitor is how long the truck stays in place with the motor on. The target number is something like 3%. I am consistently stuck in traffic because I recently changed areas to the downtown area of my city and, naturally, that raises my idle percent.

My supervisor begins constantly badgering me over the raise of my idle percent, about 10 to 12% higher now. After they decide to give me a written verbal warning, I become the MOST efficient truck no-idler in our branch. I bring my percent down to a 0.00 by shutting the truck off at every stop sign, red light, gridlocked highway, and drive-thru, and I INSTANTLY shut off the truck when I get to where I am going.

This is a utility truck that is charging my two phones, laptop, tablet, and various equipment’s rechargeable batteries. All this juice-sucking and no alternator spinning putting the power back into the truck battery causes it to die. A LOT.

Company policy makes it forbidden for me to jump the truck myself, so I have to call the company to send out a tow truck to jump start it for me. I could do it myself and probably would, but they are writing people up out here for petty s***. Every time I call this tow truck, it takes a minimum of two hours for it to show up. I begin doing this multiple times a day, every day, until they figure my truck is broken. It goes to the shop, checks out, and they give it back.

I kill it again.

They end up giving me an entirely new truck. I start killing it. I repeat this process until they give me a THIRD truck and the manager calls me to asks what my daily routine is. I go through the basics and add in the whole thing about turning my engine off at every possible opportunity.

Manager: “Why the f*** are you doing this?”

Me: “My supervisor wrote me up for my idle time being too high.”

Manager: “This is completely ridiculous.”

He tossed my write-up, and I’m guessing he talked to the supervisor, because I never heard a word about idle time again and I quit caring about it.

I work in a fast-paced healthcare environment where every minute counts and I have both male and female coworkers on my shift.

We have lockers with opaque doors where we’re allowed to store our things. When I’m in the office area, I leave mine unlocked for easy access and I’ve started keeping a box of tampons in my locker. I’ve told my female coworkers that if they’re in a hurry and need a tampon, they’re welcome to just open my locker (when it’s unlocked and I’m in the office) and take one, no problem.

I get called into my boss’s office one day because a male coworker of mine complained that me keeping tampons in my locker was “disgusting” and he hated that he could see the box whenever my locker was opened. My boss is also a man.

Boss: “Some men are really sensitive to this type of thing. You should try hiding them in a different type of box, so you won’t offend your coworkers.”

Me: “What’s the point in that? My coworkers would see someone reaching into a cracker box or a Pop Tart box and taking out a tampon instead of food, anyway.”

Boss: *Huffy* “It’s for the best. You just need to do it.”

Well, fine.

I made a cover for my tampon box that said, “Mother Earth’s Bloody Nutrients Bars: with extra gooey, nutritious filling!” with a photo of a bloody bathtub, and I placed it on the box.

That was two days ago, and I saw the male coworker open my locker, trying to be sneaky. He paled when he read the box and got all angry, and I received an email from my boss soon after that my cover “wasn’t funny” and that I needed to take it down.

So, I emailed our HR person a copy of the email, as well as a summary of what had happened and photos of the lockers, the box, and the cover. I also suggested that the male coworker sit somewhere where he didn’t have a direct line of sight to my locker if it really offended him so much. She thought it was freaking hilarious and said I had “followed my supervisor’s instructions” and so I was fine.

I’m mostly angry that my time was spent on something as stupid as this and not on patient work. I’ve continued to document everything and am encouraging my coworkers, male and female, to do the same. HR is now in the loop, and they have had multiple people come forward with complaints about our male coworker and our boss, so they’re doing some investigating. Hopefully, things will change.

I work at a well-known home improvement store. I am giving one of my coworkers her break from our garden center. It’s usually pretty slow out there, so I have a lot of time to talk to customers and interact with them between transactions.

This lady and her husband come up to me and asked about the marigolds we have on special: five quart-size pots for around ten dollars. I point them out to her and she and her husband disappear for a few minutes. Eventually, they come back and grab five of the gallon-size pots and plop them down on the register.

I start scanning their items like normal, and when I get to the marigolds, they ring up at $4.98 each. I inform her of this and she isn’t the slightest bit happy. My register even says they are the gallon-size.

Me: “Ma’am, these are the gallon-size marigolds, as confirmed by my register. These are not the marigolds that are on special.”

Customer: “You don’t know a quart from a gallon! You need to tell someone to fix your advertisement sign.”

I wasn’t about to start an argument with her, but I remembered the conversion of four quarts in a gallon; I wanted to tell her that and to (kindly, of course) point out that there was no way in heck that four of the bigger pots could ever fit into one of the smaller ones. I finally got her the ones that were on special, but she was so mad at me.

It’s Christmas, so I’m going to write a little differently, and have every sentence in this post be in rhyme:

My dad and our family liked meat a lot, but my entitled aunt, who shall be called EA here, did not.

EA was a vegan, a plant lover, see. Any animal-based product was pure tragedy.

At no other point did she make herself clear than on Christmas Eve on the 2005th year.

My dad always held a large dinner party, our relatives ranging from bitter to hearty.

He always loved meat, whether pork, beef, or jerky, and always took pride in his Christmas turkey.

At the time, I was still a small boy, admiring my cousins’ new Hot Wheel toys.

We were watching Rudolph when all of a sudden, I heard a loud scream that could curdle one’s blood in.

We rushed to the kitchen, and there was my dad, yelling at EA, furiously mad.

Due to fuzzy memory, the quotes aren’t exact, but I fully remember the tone and the tact.

Dad: “What’s this balderdash!? Why did you put my turkey in the trash?!”

EA: *Quipped* “I threw animal cruelty away! Why must you do this before Christmas Day?!”

Dad: *Barked* “I made you a salad, you shrew! Just because you’re vegan doesn’t mean we must be, too!”

EA: *Just yelling* “You should be ashamed! Don’t you know how these turkeys were maimed?!”

Dad: “I don’t give a darn what you eat! You keep your plants, and I’ll keep my meat!”

Dad: “If you don’t like it, get out of my house!”

EA grabbed her kids, who were quiet as a mouse.

She then whispered in her huffy stroll:

EA: “Don’t worry, kids. Meat eaters get coal.”

I started crying because of the yelling, but my grandma soothed me in her voice so compelling.

We ended up ordering pizza that night. Other than the turkey, things turned out all right.

EA still came every Christmas since then, but kept her mouth shut about being vegan.

I think she especially became less of a brat when Animal Control took her “vegan” cat.

She didn’t stop us from having our Christmas feast,

And he, he himself, her son, carved the roast beast.