I work for a bus charter company. The problem is that my boss is a total cheapskate. This is one of the stories where he treats people like dirt instead of spending money.

One of the buses develops a problem: after driving a certain number of miles, it loses its gear. It has an automatic transmission, so this is obviously internal. There’s nothing we can do about it except take it to a transmission shop. And since it’s not really drivable, it should have be towed.

Not to my boss.

He grabs the backup bus and has me follow him in my car up to the disabled bus. The existing driver takes the backup bus, transfers the passengers, and leaves, leaving the “broken” bus and us behind, and my own car on the side of the highway. Highway patrol already came by and asked us to call a tow… or they’d call one for us.

So, my boss jumps into the bus and tries to start it. It won’t start. Nothing from the starter.

I climb under the bus. It looks like the ground wire has come loose from the starter, so there’s an incomplete circuit. But a starter in a bus is like 100 pounds, I kid you not. I don’t have the tools to remove it, redo the ground wire, and put it back. The connector has snapped off, so it’s not a matter of just screwing it back in, either.

My boss gives me an order.

Boss: “Just hold the connector to the ground stud until I get the bus started.”

Okay, fine.

It’s getting dark, and we’re next to a highway where big rigs drive by at speed limit and wind is whipping me every few seconds.

He gets the bus started. I get out, slap my dust off, get into my car, and follow him off the freeway.

But he doesn’t stop. He goes through the underpass, gets back on the highway, and starts heading back home.

I call him.

Me: “What’s going on?

Boss: “I’m going to drive it home.”

Me: “But the transmission is acting funny.”

Boss: “As long as it moves, it’ll be fine.”

Keep in mind we’re about two and a half hours from the home base — 120 to 150 miles.

As predicted, after about twenty-five or thirty miles, the transmission conks out. And the only way to fix this is to turn the power off, thus resetting the transmission computer… which means I have to climb under the bus and do the restart procedure again.

And again.

And again.

And it’s getting worse, enough that my boss is forced to take LOCAL roads instead of the highway, as these highways are not that wide.

What should have taken two and a half hours took us five hours, instead. And my car was a total mess because I had climbed in and out and rolled on the ground so many times that both I and my car were filthy.

It turned out that the bus needed to be towed ANYWAY, because our mechanic said it had to be done at his shop… which was an hour away… back the way we had come from.

We could have saved a TON of time and I would have been a lot cleaner if my boss weren’t such a cheapskate.

I work at a chain restaurant in a state where indoor dining is reduced to 25% capacity. Because of this very fact, we are almost always on a wait during dinner. We are also in charge of taking down information for contact tracing, so there is no open seating anymore; you must talk to the host to be seated. Right next to the bar is the takeout area, which has its own entrance; often guests will wander in through the wrong door, at which point I direct them toward the host for seating.

One night, I am bartending in addition to covering some tables. Three young adults come in through the takeout area, so naturally, I point them toward the front of the restaurant to go see the host about getting a table. They’re visibly annoyed that I won’t let them seat themselves.

They get sat at my table.

Me: “Hi there! Can I get you started with some drinks?”

They aren’t ready to order beverages, so I agree to come back. It’s dinner time, so my section is quickly filling up and I am running around. They wave me down for drinks, and as soon as I bring those, they let me know that they need more time, so I go to my next table to take their order.

While I’m punching in the other table’s order, one of the three young adults comes up to tap me on the shoulder — during a health crisis.

Customer: “We’re ready to order our food.”

I finish what I’m doing and head over to take their order. Not only are they not ready, but they modify every single thing they order, a LOT. I am really annoyed, and I’m busy, so I go to the computer to put in their food — which includes an appetizer and a well-done steak — and go into the kitchen to grab another table’s food.

I come out of the kitchen not even two minutes later and all three of the young adults are gone. Not a jacket or a phone left behind. Okay, that’s weird. I assume they told the host where they went.

Me: *To the host* “Hey, did you happen to see where the three people seated at [table number] went? Did they talk to you?”

Nope. Nobody knows where they went. We even check the bathrooms and outside.

Their appetizer comes up, but they’re not back.

Me: *To the host* “Leave the table open for the party that left; if they lose their table, they’ll have to wait for another one to open up.”

Their entrees come up and they’re still not around, so I clean off the table and tell the host to clean it, since clearly, they’re not coming back, right? I mean, they have been gone for upwards of twenty minutes.

I have another party sat at that table, and I go about my business. Minutes later, in walk the three young adults, and they look shocked that there’s someone else sitting at their table. Mind you, this new table already has drinks and they’re ready to order. I am busy, so I ask my coworker to tell them that we thought they’d left.

All three customers start throwing a fit, yelling, “DISCRIMINATION!” as they walk out. Great look for us!

Long story short, we’re in a global crisis, and things are a lot different everywhere, including restaurants. If you’re going out to eat, please be flexible, and don’t take up a table for long periods of time as we are at reduced capacity.

My dad died in 2015, but we are still getting non-stop credit card offers for him. I decide to call up the company and get them to stop sending my dad mail.

Me: “Hi. My father is dead, but you keep sending him mail. I want you to take his name off your mailing list.”

Representative: “I’m sorry, but I need to speak to the person to whom the mailings are addressed, or I need a copy of a death certificate.”

Me: “Ma’am, he is dead. He keeps receiving offers from you. He has no credit card with your company. And I am certainly under no obligation to send a death certificate in order to stop receiving junk mail.”

This same conversation keeps going in circles. Finally, I get fed up.

Me: “Fine! I’d like to open this credit card under his name, then.”

Representative: “But you just said he was deceased.”

Me: “Yes.”

The representative was silent for a few seconds before transferring me to the correct helpers.

I work for a phone network in the UK in the late 2000s as a shop salesman.

The company has a problem with declining sales, so, along with a string of other draconian measures, they insist that if you miss any one of your twenty-one key targets each month, you have to travel to wherever your area manager is and explain in person why you failed and how you will correct this for next month. If you don’t, they start disciplinary proceedings.

A lot of us on the staff realise the colossal mistake they made in the wording. First off, we can choose when to travel to them, and by law, the company has to pay for it. They even say they will pay travel and “other expenses” in the announcement and link to the government website stating the requirement.

Cue malicious compliance!

I have taken a new role in a different industry and am on my three-month notice. This new policy comes into effect in the first of the three months, and a while later, I miss one of my targets (for amount of accessories sold) by 2%. So, I get the summons to see the area manager.

I am informed that there will be a meeting of area managers held in Aberdeen — the far north of Scotland — in two weeks, so I schedule my meeting with him accordingly.

I live and work near the other end of the country, so I use the company system to book my travel, and due to the journey times — nine hours each way — I have to book a hotel for two nights. I also opt to pay the optional £50 to upgrade all my bookings — first-class rail ticket and a four-star hotel instead of a budget option.

On Monday, I travel up and stay overnight. Tuesday afternoon, we have my fifteen-minute meeting.

Area Manager: “So, why are you here?”

Me: “I missed my target for sales of accessories by 2%.”

Area Manager: “How do you plan to correct this so that we don’t have to start a formal disciplinary?”

Me: “I don’t.”

Area Manager: “I beg your pardon?!”

Me: “I have no intention of making a huge effort to sell £4 more stuff. I officially leave the company in three weeks.”

Area Manager: *Turning red with anger* “What the h*** are you doing here, then? Why have you even bothered?”

Me: “Well, I need a good reference, so I’m following all the rules.”

I also showed him how much they had paid to send me up there. Train tickets were close to £800, and the hotel was around £400 for two nights. So, they spent close to £1200 to send me most of the way up the country to tell the manager I was leaving. Oh, and they also paid me for three full days of work to attend this meeting, since it was on company time.

Coworkers told me later that they also did similar tricks and it basically cost the company tens of thousands of pounds to send staff here there and everywhere to these meetings. It also caused a huge turnover in staff who had just had enough with all the garbage. Around three months after I left, I heard that they stopped doing this as the cost was astronomical, and the amount of staff downtime was also astronomical.

The company has slowly learned their lesson, mainly through replacing most of the top brass with people who have a clear idea of what they are doing. But that was the best trip I ever had to Scotland!

I’ll assert myself twice and only twice; after that, what happens is what they had coming despite clear warnings.

I am building towards an exit from the company I work for. I’m in a difficult position to replace. I have asked to transfer out twice, as I do not plan to stay on in this capacity into our winter period. Essentially, I have given them six months’ notice.

At three months in, I suggest training a replacement. When I was hired, my department didn’t exist, so there was little to no training; I basically built it from the ground up and learned as I went, trial by fire. I like the company and I want my replacement trained for a smooth transition after I leave.

Management is furious at the notion of my suggestion and tells me to leave management to management and basically to know my place. So that’s what I do. I keep my head down and do my work, quietly removing any and all personal post-it notes I have tacked up around the office over the following weeks. Because much of my work is unsupervised, no one even knew these notes existed.

If they don’t want me to train my replacement, I am not going to leave my materials behind as a guide. I put my two weeks in and am out before the first snowfall.

A former coworker told me it was nearly four months before they found a replacement.