I could write several novels on my first job out of college — all of them being what-not-to-do best sellers, I am sure. While the product the company sells could be quite lucrative as there is a market for it, the owner has selected the worst person to manage it. She decides to “take me under her wing and grow me,” but in actuality, it becomes me just doing her job for her on top of whatever odd tasks we need done. I learn a lot of useful management and soft skills simply because I am doing all the management straight out of college, but I am not improving technically.

Because of that, I let my boss convince me that I do not have a right to ask for a raise for four years. She insists asking for one would be selfish to boot, as we are struggling to get started, but always “acknowledges” how much work and effort I put in — privately, of course, so she can take credit publicly.

Sadly, my manager doesn’t just pull this with me. And even sadder still, I am not the worst case as I at least have a job with meager benefits — health care I have to pay fully for. The other people she does this to are contractors promised full-time jobs. And as to be expected, after six months of waiting for their actual job offer to go through, they end up leaving and looking elsewhere. This typically leads to her finally scrambling to get their contracts so as not to upset the owner. Not that anyone stays. She never knows why these people leave, though! And it is always “their fault” for not asking for what they need.

In actuality, what is happening is that my boss’s bonus is based on our profit margins, so it benefits her to severely underpay people and make them pay their own taxes.

For other reasons, I am pretty fed up with the job. I decide to go back to school to get my Master’s degree and leave the company outright. But before I do, I decide to finally ask for a raise, knowing full-well I have no real shot at getting it approved. I also know because of my boss’s shady business practices that she will try to exclusively speak to me and hide any potential paper trial of any promises made so she can deny everything.

Sure enough, it goes exactly as planned.

Friday #1: At 9:00 am, I send an email asking to sit down next Friday and discuss my compensation plan, pointing out all the things that she has thrust onto me that no one else knows how to do. I do not receive a reply, but the owner seems to be in a good mood with me after. As expected.

Next Monday: My manager stops by my office to say she cannot say anything officially but it was promising. Great! I ask when I will learn something more, to which she cannot give me an answer. Right on track.

Friday #2: I send a follow-up text message to the owner asking to meet about compensation. He doesn’t reply but forwards it to my manager, who calls me into her office to give me thirty full minutes of platitudes about how she sees I deserve this raise, but she cannot give me any information, not even if it is going to be approved. I leave and send a follow-up email thanking her for talking to me and asking to let me know when I can hear an official word. I expect no response except for her to stop me when I leave to let me know she told the owner we spoke.

Next Monday: My manager asks if the owner has responded to the email. I know she said she would take care of it, so I know he wasn’t planning on it, but I tell her unfortunately not. She “apologizes” and says that he was very happy we talked yesterday. I ask when I will hear something and get a vague excuse that he is busy this week. Checks out.

Thursday: I send a follow-up email asking when we can discuss compensation. Crickets from both parties.

Friday #3: I resign, making note that no one has given me official word on my compensation package. I do such at 4:30 pm to send her scrambling.

Monday: I come in to find my manager waiting for me begging me to reconsider. Apparently, as expected, the owner is unhappy, as he approved the compensation weeks ago. She says I am being unreasonable and not giving her enough time. I remind her I only wanted a meeting to have an actual discussion with facts, but both were ignoring me, so I figured this was my best course of action. She is unsatisfied, but what can she do?

Friday #4: I finally get my compensation package approved! (Verbally of course, with nothing in writing.) That’s great, but I am not the kind of girl who likes to resort to blackmail, so I am keeping my word. I wish them the best of luck moving forward.

Safe to say, my boss still hasn’t learned her lesson, but at least the owner is now wising up to what she is pulling.

When people apply for disability benefits, there is a lot of documentation needed. My main job is handling the medical records aspect of it.

One day, I notice that the doctor who filled out a form didn’t say when the evaluation was done. This is a really necessary thing so the government can gauge the progression of the disability. I call the client.

Me: “Thanks for sending in the records from [Doctor]. I’m about to submit them to aid your case, but I don’t know the date of the evaluation.”

Client: “What day does it say?”

Me: “There is no date, but I received those on April 15.”

Client: “They’re from my appointment on May 23.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but since they arrived on April 15, they must have been from an appointment prior to April 15.”

Client: “Right! The doctor said he filled them out next week. I’ll send you the forms then.”

Me: “Sir, it is impossible for me to have received an evaluation last month for the appointment you have next week. When was the last time before April 15 that you saw [Doctor]?”

This goes on for five minutes and I am crying at my desk out of exasperation before…

Client: “Did you ever get the records from me seeing [Doctor] on March 8?”

Me: “When did you send them in?”

Client: “April 15.”

Customer: “Can you remove the sugar from my milkshake?”

Me: “We don’t have sugar-free options.”

Customer: *Showing a milkshake she has already purchased.* “Oh no, honey, I meant take the sugar out of this one.”

Then laughed like I was the dumb-a** in this scenario!

I work for an international company. One of my more stressful job duties is to translate at the quarterly team conference. I am the only person on my team who speaks English, so I interpret for the presenters from my team and HQ in the US. I’m not very good at interpreting, so having the materials in advance is really helpful — and standard practice for working with an interpreter. We usually get the presentation slides a week in advance, so normally, there is no problem.

While preparing for the last team conference, I noticed that one US presenter didn’t have any slides for her section. Some sections were still being moved or deleted as presenters dropped out, so I assumed she wasn’t going to present. 

The day of the team conference arrives. I do my best for about an hour through the first few presenters, and then the US presenter with no slides takes the Zoom floor. 

Presenter: “I have some points to talk about. [My Name], I emailed them to you a few minutes ago if you want to check your email.”

As she launches into her presentation, I click over to my email in a panic and see that she literally sent me her slides a few minutes ago, an hour into the conference! Worse, the slides aren’t attached to the email; she sent tiny screenshots of each slide almost too small to read. By the time I magnify it to a legible size, she has already read the first bullet point. 

Presenter: *Pauses* “[My Name], just jump in whenever you need to translate!”

I stumbled through awkwardly translating the text I could read from the slide. I wasn’t even the Zoom presenter, so no one could see her side except me. After her turn, I clicked back to the presentation for the next presenter, but I was flustered and couldn’t do my best work. 

Seriously, who emails their part of a presentation in the middle of the presentation, and then only to the interpreter and not the person sharing their screen? Unfortunately, she is too senior for me to complain about it, but next time, I will be more careful about getting slides from her in advance!

I’m about five years old and am lucky enough for both my grandmothers and one of my great-grandmothers to be alive. While I have met my great-grandmother, she lives farther away, so I am not as familiar with her as I am with my grandmother.

My mother is making dinner and has her hands full when the phone rings, so she asks me to pick it up and see who it is. It’s my great-grandmother.

Me: “Hello, [Last Name] residence. May I ask who’s calling?”

Great-Grandmother: “Hi, [My Name]! This is your grandma! How are you today?”

At this point, I decide the voice doesn’t match the voice of either my Grandma or my Oma.

Me: “You aren’t my grandma.” *Click*

Mom: “Who was that?”

Me: “I don’t know.”

The phone rings again.

Me: “Hello, [Last Name] residence. May I ask who’s calling?”

Great-Grandmother: “[My Name]! That wasn’t very nice. Why did you hang up on your grandma?”

Me: “You aren’t my grandma.” *Click*

On the third call, my mother answered, and that was the day we decided that my great-grandmother should start going by “GG”.