I am an office assistant at a decent-sized company. My office phone is constantly ringing, so I miss a lot of calls while I’m on with other people. I am on a call when another comes through. They don’t leave a message, though, and I don’t know the number, so I write it down to call back when I have a minute. Over lunch, I see that the same number has called two more times but still left no message. I decide to call back.

Callee: “What?”

Me: “Hello, this is [My Name] with [Company]. I saw you called earlier today.”

Callee: “Finally. God, you must be so busy not answering your phone all day.”

Me: “Is there something I can help you with?”

Callee: “I need to know why my son isn’t on our insurance.”

Me: “You would have to ask your insurance provider, ma’am. I’m sorry, I—”

Callee: “That’s why I’m calling you! [Employee] is my husband, and he swears he put [Son] on our insurance, but he’s not!”

Me: “You still have to call your insurance provider.”

Callee: “Maybe you’re not listening. I am calling my insurance provider. That’s you. You provide our insurance through his job. Do you get it?”

Me: “I do, ma’am, but you are incorrect. We are not your insurance provider. That is the company covering you.”

Callee: “Why can’t you just tell me why he isn’t on the plan?”

Me: “You’ll have to take that up with your husband, ma’am.”

Callee: “This is bulls***. You’re being obtuse.”

Me: *Firmly* “Ma’am. I don’t know who [Employee] is, nor I do have access to his personal information.”

Callee: “But—”

Me: “Furthermore, I don’t know you from a hole in the ground, and I would not tell you anything even if I did.”

Callee: “What?!”

Me: “If you have questions about your insurance, ask your husband to contact your insurance provider.”

I looked for [Employee] in our contact database but found nothing. I don’t know if she called the wrong company or what, but she never called back.

A patron hurries up to our helpdesk with a CD in her hand.

Patron: “I was told you could help me. I have a video from my security camera, and I need to get a license plate of a car that destroyed my mailbox.”

Me: “That’s not a service we normally provide, but let me get you set up on one of our computers, and let’s see what we can do.

I get her set up and logged in, and we play the video from her CD. The resolution is TERRIBLE, and we can barely make out the make of the car, let alone the license plate.

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t help you with this.”

Patron: “Can’t you zoom and enhance?”

Me: “Pardon me?”

Patron: “Zoom and enhance! Like they do on CSI.”

Me: “Ma’am, that’s a TV show. It isn’t real.”

Patron: “You’re just being lazy! They can see things off of eyeballs! This should be easy!”

She’s referring to a much-ridiculed scene from the show where the characters zoom into an eyeball on camera and can see a crime being committed from the eyeball reflection.

Me: “Ma’am, I know what you’re referring to, but it’s made up for TV. That stuff isn’t possible with your camera. Your resolution is just too low.”

Patron: “Then show me how to be more resolute! Push the button to make more resolution!”

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, that’s impossible.”

Patron: “Is it because the shot doesn’t have any eyeballs?”

Manager: “I don’t need this albatross around my neck like the Sword of Damocles!”

Me: “That’s the most pretentious mixed metaphor I’ve ever heard.”

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Cruelty

My coworker and I are taking turns assisting customers with fish. A fun fact: customers don’t know fish. They’d be willing to throw a goldfish in a gallon tank if we let them. My coworker approaches me.

Coworker: “These people are trying to get fish without having their tank cycled or anything. I told them they should wait at least a day, but just a heads-up in case they ask you.”

Me: “Okay, thank you.”

Sure enough, they come to the registers and the customer continues complaining to my coworker.

Customer: “So, we can leave the tank waiting until after supper?”

Coworker: “It’s really best to wait at least a couple of days.”

Customer: “We’ll be back later.”

It’s obvious she wants to come back when my coworker and I are gone.

A few hours later, she comes back. My coworker has gone and I am in the last hour of my shift. We informed our manager earlier on.

Customer: “I’d like to get some fish.”

I go back and inform my manager, as earlier the customer told her grandson he could get eight fish for a ten-gallon tank, which I wasn’t going to do and I wanted a witness.

I walk over to the tanks and explain to her that I can’t sell her eight tetras; I can sell her at most three.

Customer: “It said on the box that we could get ten fish!”

Me: “That’s actually the gallons, and unfortunately, these fish grow to about three inches, meaning I can’t sell you eight; it’s cruel to the fish.”

She turns to her grandson.

Customer: “You can only get three fish.”

Grandson: “Why?”

Customer: “Because apparently, we’re living in the Soviet Union.”

Grandson: “But we can come back and get the other five tomorrow, right?”

Customer: “Of course.”

They got their fish and left. I told my manager what their plan was so they could keep a lookout. She came back at least two times to get replacement fish because the ones she had continued dying.

Please listen to employees who work with the animals in question. We want what’s best for them!

The company that I was working for at the time had very low pay for the work we were doing. I got a new car in the first year of my employment and there was no paid vacation. As a result, I didn’t take a vacation for seven years so I could maintain my car payments.

However, in 2019, a friend of mine paid to fly my wife and me from Hawaii to Missouri for a wedding, so I put my foot down with management and told them that I would be gone. I submitted notice of the trip in May of 2018, which was seventeen months ahead of the September 2019 fly-out date.  

By the time September rolled around, I had been working not only for seven years without taking a vacation but also, recently, seven-day weeks due to the company’s inability to hold a staff together. 

Making just under eighty hours a week, I was exhausted but I had maintained constant notice to the company that I would be gone, which they approved and accepted because they knew how hard I had been working. 

The day we were to fly out, I got two texts and a phone call from my direct boss, the person just above me on the ladder. I answered the call.

Boss: “Hey, [My Name], I need timesheets for your crew. Could you submit them today or tomorrow?”

Me: *Politely* “I cannot; I am currently awaiting departure at the Honolulu International Airport, which you have been informed about several times over the last year.”

Boss: “Well, could you take a moment to put the sheets together on your laptop and send them?

Me: “I can’t. I don’t have my laptop with me.”

Boss: *Angrily* “Why not?! It is your responsibility to get timesheets to me when needed!”

This was despite the fact that I was already up to date and the next set of sheets wasn’t due for another three days, a task I had left to my assistant.

Me: “I have no intention of doing any work this trip. This is my first vacation in seven years. You have had notice of my exact flight itinerary. You need to call [Coworker], who I left in charge of my people.”

This seemed to anger him even more, but I hung up the phone.

He proceeded to text me throughout the first four days of our trip, asking me for paperwork, and asking if he could borrow members of my crew to assist a short-staffed one. He asked about emails and equipment requests, and I ignored every single one of them. 

Just before the wedding started, I blacklisted my boss’s cellphone number and office extension on my phone to stop the calls and prevent any interruptions during the ceremony.

Fast forward two weeks. I had been back for a week now. My boss called me on the company phone and he was pissed. 

I had never taken the blocks off of his phone numbers.

Boss: “Why have you been ignoring my calls and text messages?!”

These are specifically in my off time because he has still been contacting me on the work phone during my work hours daily.

Me: “I blocked you.”

Of course, this didn’t sit well with him.

Boss: “Remove the restriction so that I can contact you when I need to!”

Me: “No. My phone is my personal phone, I pay the bill, and I decide what the usage for it is. There is nothing in my contract that states that I need to be contactable twenty-four-seven and nothing stating that a personal number is required. You having my number has been a privilege, not a requirement. You have abused that privilege and subsequently lost it.”

He started to yell, but I had been prepared for this since my return since I deliberately left his number blocked. I picked up a copy of my work contract from my desk where it had been sitting since my first day back. I thumbed through it.

Me: “Do you want to read it yourself? I can scan it and send it through. From now on, you can contact me while I am at work and I have the company phone on me.” 

He was livid, mostly because I had cut him off, and apparently, he went to file a complaint with Human Resources. 

I got a phone call from the HR department only forty-five minutes later, but it wasn’t what I expected. 

HR was calling to ask if I wanted to file a complaint against him! Allegedly, he had filed a complaint for insubordination and explained the situation to them. They had told him in no uncertain terms that I had every right to block him on my personal phone and then turned around and dinged him for contacting me while I was on vacation in the first place. 

At the time, my boss and I were normally on okay terms. I was happy enough that HR had backed me up and knocked him down a few pegs, so I declined to file a complaint. 

It took a while, but eventually, things fell back into place and we started working together as we always had… kind of, sort of okay-ish.