CONTENT WARNING: Death, Description Of Cremation Process

I used to work at a funeral home that was set in a large cemetery. We also had a crematory sited on a hill just adjacent to the cemetery.

One Saturday, I was performing a cremation on a body that came in just barely under our maximum weight limit. Without getting into too many gory details, fat burns very hot, it produces a lot of thick black smoke, and in order to cremate very large bodies completely, it is necessary to use a long metal implement to sort of drag the flaming corpse up under the retort burner a time or two. It is incredibly unpleasant work, but luckily, it only takes a few minutes at a time.

I had just completed one of these “pull-ups,” which had filled the crematory building with smoke. Normally, this smoke gets sent through an afterburner, incinerating the remaining particulate which makes it black, which is why all crematories don’t look like cartoon coal-burning plants. A big, black cloud of it came billowing out of the door with me when I left, and there was no wind that day, so it took a minute to dissipate.

I locked the door, and turned around to see a very shocked and angry-looking young man walking up from the graveside where a priest was performing committal rites. I didn’t recognize him personally, but I clocked him for a student intern from another funeral home in town. After seeing that he was staring aghast at the black smoke now wisping its way very visibly into the sky, I met his eyes, grinned brightly, and chirped, “Hooray! We have a new pope!”

I am cleaning up outside our fast food place. There is a long line of cars at the drive-thru. A woman gets out of her car with her little dog and lets it do its business right next to our outside seating area.

She locks eyes with me and then gets back in her car with her dog, leaving a steaming pile of doggie doo-doo right there without any attempt to put it in a sanitary bag and dispose of it in the special trash bin provided.

I grab a takeout paper bag used by our store and, using my special tools for just such occasions, I take her “leftovers” and place them in the bag.

She has just reached the drive-thru so her window is down. As she is ordering, I walk up to her car and hand over the bag.

Me: “Ma’am, you forgot this.”

Customer: “What is that?”

Me: “I believe you dropped it.”

The customer opens the bag and screams.

Customer: “You little c***! Get me your manager! I’m gonna get you fired!”

The manager comes over to the window and the customer complains.

Manager: “Ma’am, dog fouling carries a fine of $500. Would you like us to put it back where we found it and report your license plate to the police?”

The customer took the poop.

My manager told me not to do that again because what I did so close to customers and food was a big health no-no, but it was so worth it.

Not every bad drive-thru customer gets their comeuppance, but it’s amazing when it happens! Sadly, they’re not the only bad examples, as evidenced by these 13 MORE Crazy Stories About Drive-Thru Customers!

I’m getting my car looked at, and I overhear a worker on the phone with some apparently dirty guy.

Worker: “I’m sorry, but we cannot go into your car.” *Pauses* “Because it’s a health hazard. There are rat droppings and feces everywhere in the seats, under the hood…” *Pauses* “I’m not lying! Come to us and you’ll see!” *Pauses, and then responds very angrily* “No, we won’t! I’m not kidding. There are piles of it! Come to us and I will show you!” *Hangs up*

I was shocked. Yuck! Was it just hanging around in a junkyard?!

CONTENT WARNING: Dark Humor Involving Animals

For those unfamiliar with Mexican culture, you can find taco stands on pretty much every street corner in densely populated areas. I’m at one of such stands in a city I’ve just moved to, with a colleague I’ve just met.

Me: “It’s kind of weird.”

Colleague: “What’s weird?”

Me: “In my hometown, you’d find stray dogs begging for scraps at every food stand. But I don’t see any here.”

Colleague: *Matter-of-factly* “We have no stray dogs in [City].”

Me: “Yeah, I can tell.”

Colleague: “We do have many places where you can get the cheapest tacos in the state. You do the math.”

Me: “What does that have to do with… Oh… Oh, no…”

I used to work at a big chain pet store. One day, some horrible customer had used the bathroom and smeared their waste ALL OVER the walls, sink, door, and floor. It was everywhere.

I reported it to the manager.

Manager: “Well, go clean it.”

Me: “No. For one, we don’t have any of the OSHA-required safety equipment to clean up human waste. And for another, I’m a dog groomer, not a janitor.”

(OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)

My manager blew a gasket and went off on me about being a team player and so forth. I thought he was going to have a heart attack; his face was turning purple! He wasn’t used to being told “no” because he was such a bully that he intimated everyone.

I turned my back on him while he was screaming at me and walked off, which made him even angrier. What he didn’t know was that I had started recording on my phone right before I reported the mess because I knew he’d try to bully me into cleaning it.

I left the store, and [Manager] called and screamed at my voicemail that I was fired.

I sent everything to Human Resources. Then, when they refused to do anything, I reported the company to OSHA.

I heard later from a friend that still worked there that the company totally threw [Manager] under the bus to save themselves, but they still got fined because of the email they’d sent me telling me I should have done what I was told, shouldn’t have just walked out, [Manager] was right, etc.