I work for an insurance company. I’m on vacation, enjoying myself and relaxing, when I suddenly receive a text message. It is from my direct supervisor.

Supervisor: “YOU’RE FIRED!”

This particular supervisor has hated me from the day she started working with me. I’m initially puzzled and furious that she’d fire me via text without any reasoning behind it, much less wait until I’m on vacation to do so. I’m about to reply asking why I was fired when I notice something.

She sent me that text message in a group conversation. With my boss.

A few moments later, another message appears in the conversation.

Boss: “[Supervisor], come to my office. Right now, please. [My Name], I’m sorry about that. You’re not fired.”

I ended up getting a few laughs out of a moment that nearly ruined my vacation. When I returned to work five days later, my supervisor was nowhere in sight and her formerly-cluttered desk was now completely empty.

I order a video game from a big online delivery service, along with a book. I get the package. In it is a lot of material, and I find my book but no game. It is small, so I look and look, but nothing. I check my email and it says it was delivered so I figure it was forgotten about. I’m really disappointed because I was looking forward to playing it, so I email them and express my disappointment. They say that they are sold out of the item. I demand a refund, and they comply.

Sometime the next week, I’m cleaning my room and my sister comes in and watches.

Sister: “Hey, what’s this? It looks important. “

I brush my hair out of my eyes and take a good look. I’m usually pretty stoic but I feel my eyes widen into plate sizes.

Me: “That’s my game! Oh, my God! Where was it?! I ordered it!”

My sister is taken aback and a bit scared.

Sister: “It was on the floor. Are you okay?! You’re acting like you’ve found the holy grail.”

Me: “I was looking everywhere for it! I had to get a refund… Oh.”

I blame my very outdated glasses. I wonder if I should contact them and explain, but I figure since it was just a $20 game, they wouldn’t care.

I’m a programmer who has the unfortunate luck of being assigned to work with a notoriously awful manager. For the non-geeks, a library is a collection of prewritten code provided by someone else. If many people are likely to have the same issue, then odds are there is already a library written to help with that issue, and a smart programmer will look for one before trying to reinvent the wheel. Not only does this save time, but a popular library will be far better tested and significantly less prone to errors than something you wrote by hand.

Manager: “I don’t want you to use any external libraries.”

Me: “Why not?”

Manager: “I had a project where we were using a library that changed their licensing terms. We had to spend a lot of time and money removing it because it was too expensive to pay for a new license, and I don’t want to do that again.”

Me: “Oh, so it’s only licensed libraries you don’t want to use?”

Manager: “No, I don’t want to use any libraries at all.”

Me: “But most libraries are open source. They’re completely free; there’s no way we would have to worry about paying for licenses.”

Manager: “They could always change it to charge money later.”

Me: “I’m pretty sure they can’t. They’re published with licenses that explicitly say they can’t charge money for it! Charging money is anathema to the very concept of the open-source community!”

Manager: “I’m still not going to take the chance.”

Me: *Taking a deep breath* “Okay, but I want to use Boost. It’s practically synonymous with C++. Half the stuff that ends up in C++ first spends time as a Boost library before being adopted. I don’t think any programmers do C without Boost. You might as well worry that they will start charging for C++ itself!”

Manager: “I said no.”

And so, I ended up spending at least 60% of my time on that contract writing networking logic that is freely provided by Boost. It was oddly nostalgic, working on the sort of challenges I was assigned to do in college, but it was hardly the most efficient use of my time.

Shockingly, that project ended up behind schedule and stayed that way long after I left. The fact that the manager’s personality tended to drive programmers away within months of starting the job likely also played a role in his falling behind. Either way, I’m happy to be working on a new contract where I can use any library I d*** well please.

I fill online grocery orders. We have this one customer who is a massive pain to shop for. She is super, super picky. We can have three different managers look over her order and verify that everything is correct and looks good, and she will still call and complain.

This lady has been banned from every other store in our district. Unfortunately for us, right before she started shopping at our store, we got a new district manager who won’t let us ban her because she’s a paying customer, so we’re forced to put up with her. She will threaten to call corporate if we dare to contradict her on anything, which just adds to the tension.

I shop her order today, and I am extra careful when picking items, especially in produce. The last time she had an order, she managed to get a $50 credit from one of the managers, so I know I cannot mess up this order in any way, shape, or form.

When I’m done, I get a different manager to look over her order, and then he has to watch me call her. She once gave us a bad phone number, refused to admit it, and then kept complaining that we never called her, so now a manager has to verify that yes, we did actually call her. I call her and go over her out-of-stocks and verify the substitutions I was able to make, and she drops this:

Customer: “Can you go over my entire order?”

This lady has nine children, so her orders are always freaking huge. The order is mostly cereal, bread, milk, and produce, so I’m hoping it won’t take very long.

Me: “Sure, just give me a moment to pull up your original order.”

A coworker is on the computer. This coworker has a bit of an abrasive personality, but she’s a good worker.

Me: “Could you pull up [Customer]’s order, please?”

Coworker: “Okay.”

It’s taking a little while for the computer to respond.

Me: *To the customer* “Sorry, our computer is being a little slow right now.”

Coworker: “What does she want?”

Me: “She wants me to go over her whole order with her.”

Coworker: “What? She’s crazy! Tell her no! We don’t have time for that!”

Manager: “Yeah, you really don’t have time.”

Customer: “Cancel my order.”

Me: “Cancel it?”

Customer: “Yeah. I didn’t like the way she sounded.” *Click*

I put the phone down in disbelief. I spent almost an hour and a half shopping this order, scrutinizing over every little thing that she could possibly complain about.

Manager: “Why does she want to cancel it?”

Me: “She didn’t like the way [Coworker] sounded in the background.”

Coworker: “Oh, my God! Are you kidding me?”

Manager: “What’s her phone number?”

I gave him the number, and he went into his office to call her back. He told her that if she canceled the order, then she’d need to start shopping somewhere else. So far, she hasn’t placed another order with us, so hopefully, we’ll never see her again. And that’s how we accidentally got rid of a problem customer!

Related:
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 5
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 4
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 3
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn, Part 2
Some People Just Want To Watch The World Burn

In my freshman year of high school, I have some pretty bad luck with my health early on in the year. Somehow, I manage to catch strep and tonsillitis AT THE SAME TIME, so I miss about two weeks of school. I am okay for a while after the full course of antibiotics, but I start feeling sick and groggy again pretty quickly so I go back to the doctor. This time, I have mono. Not only that, but I have TWO DIFFERENT STRAINS of mono.

My school, in their infinite wisdom, says I can’t miss any more days or I’ll have to repeat the semester. Great. So I try to just power through, which is made more difficult by the fact that my first class of the day was algebra.

I’m sitting in class, nodding off HARD while trying to pay attention and take notes, pinching my arm black and blue trying to stay awake. Eventually, I decide to take a ten-second power nap to try and recharge a little bit. I close my eyes and count to one…

Teacher: *Shaking my shoulder gently* “[My Name]?”

Me: *Groggy* “Huh?”

Teacher: “Your pencil’s still moving, but your head’s been down for ten minutes.”

Me: “What?!”

I look at my desk and see pencil scribbles everywhere.

Me: “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I’m trying to pay attention, I swear I am…”

I frantically try to clean up the scribbles and grab the desk when I get dizzy.

Teacher: *Concerned* “[My Name], you look like h***. What’s wrong?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I have mono.”

Teacher: *Shocked* “What?! What are you doing in school? You should be at home resting!”

Me: “I’d love to be, but the office said I can’t miss any more school since I missed so much last month.”

My teacher is silent for a moment, clearly angry.

Teacher: “Put your head back down and go to sleep. I’ll print the notes for you. Do you need, I don’t know, water or something? Anything I can get you?”

Me: “I’m okay. Are you sure?”

Teacher: “I’m sure. Go to sleep.”

I thanked him and went to sleep. I genuinely don’t remember the rest of the day, or most of the recovery period, but when I got home my parents had gotten a VERY apologetic call from the office saying that I could stay home until I was better and my teachers would email me notes and assignments. Turns out my algebra teacher had gone to the office and demanded an explanation as to why one of his students was being forced to attend class when they were too ill to even stay awake and the vice-principal, who was awesome and way better than the principal, hadn’t heard about this and demanded an explanation, as well. I might hate math, but that was the absolute best math teacher I ever had!

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