(I work as an unloader in a supercenter, and occasionally we pull palletized trucks to the coolers for another team to break down and run. Recently, we got a new hire, and since I have been there the longest, I end up training all the fresh meat. The kid, a high school student, is not the sharpest and quickly earns a reputation for being the most idiotic and lazy employee. It gets to the point that if someone else is being lazy we tell them that they are being a piece of [New Kid] as an insult. It is during the pulling of a frozen dairy truck that I finally lose all hope in him ever being a useful individual, not just at work but in everyday life. I put one pallet into the freezer and wait to remind the new kid that he must check the temperature and pull the thermometer.)

Me: “[New Kid], don’t forget the temp, okay? It has to be below 10°.”

(There is a long pause.)

New Kid: “Uh… Hey, [My Name], can you come here?”

(I enter the freezer to see him staring blankly at the pallet, open-mouthed and dead-eyed.)

New Kid: “I don’t know how to read this.”

(He’s just staring at the back of a digital thermometer where it would clip into the board.)

Me: *internally screaming* “Here.”

(I flipped around the thermometer to reveal a digital -2° and just walked out, leaving a piece of my soul behind.)

(At our thrift store, we take donations of gently-used items and resell them. We are quite popular, often having to limit donations to five bags or boxes of items simply because so much comes through. A woman drives up with a trailer load.)

Coworker: “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we have a limit of five boxes of items, so we won’t be able to take it all today.”

Woman: *immediately angry* “Are you kidding me?!”

Coworker: “I’m afraid not. We get so much stuff that we just can’t take it all. We’re also limiting what we can take.”

Woman: “What do you mean?!”

Coworker: “Well, ma’am, it’s currently July. We can’t take any of that Christmas stuff. We don’t have the shelf space to store it for the next five or six months. We also can’t take disassembled furniture or gas-powered items. It’s a liability issue.”

Woman: “Well, you can just make an exception for me!”

(She starts trying to drag items out of the back of her truck, but my coworker immediately seizes every box she drops on the ground and simply tosses it back into her pickup.)

Me: “Actually, ma’am, no we can’t. We do have a list of other places you can go who would be happy to take—“

Woman: “I DO NOT WANT TO DRIVE AROUND ALL DAY ON A SATURDAY LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO TAKE THIS!” *to my coworker* “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?! STOP THAT!”

Coworker: *now cross and no longer polite* “Well, ma’am, if you don’t want to be inconvenienced, what makes you think we want to be? I’m refusing to take any of your things now. If you dump anything else on our property, I will call the police with your license number.”

Woman: “I want to talk to your manager!”

Coworker: “Go right ahead. Her name is [Manager], and you can talk to her by going to the front door and asking for her.”

(He closes the door in her face. I’m gaping at him, but he just smiles.)

Coworker: “[Manager] put those restrictions on, and I know I won’t be fired. I handle furniture pickups and deliveries. I also manage the sporting goods, power tools, and the entire half of the store dedicated to furniture. [Manager] would have to hire three or more people to replace me and we both know it. She also told me not to take crap from entitled people.”

Manager: *walking by a few minutes later* “Got a complaint about you from some lady about a big trailer of stuff. I told her that your judgment is law at the donation door. She didn’t like that.”

(My manager shared a smirk with my coworker and wandered away.)

(This story takes place in my high school, during history class. We have just finished the topic of World War II and Adolf Hitler. As we all enter class and sit down, our teacher is going around class, asking us one by one, who could be an “icon” of a certain thing or time. He gets to me.)

Teacher: “So, [My Name], who could be an icon?”

Me: “Adolf Hitler is an icon of the Holocaust?”

Teacher: “[My Name], that is completely inappropriate of you to say. I don’t know why you would even bring that up out of nowhere. Go to the office right now.”

Me: “But we literally just studied this—”

Teacher: “I don’t care. OFFICE, NOW!”

(I grab my things and head out of the history room to the office, where I am greeted by our principal.)

Principal: “Oh, [My Name], you’re here? What did you possibly do?”

Me: “[History Teacher] was asking us who an icon of a certain thing could be, and considering we just studied the topic, I said Adolf Hitler could be an icon of the Holocaust, and he sent me down here.”

Principal: “Oh. Um… Well, just stay down here for this period and you can head to your next class.”

(And that’s the story of how I got in-school-suspension for one class period because of our foolish history teacher! Spoiler: he was fired not too long after this.)

The doctor office where I work has lost two front desk receptionists at the same time without a two-week notice. While we are looking for someone to replace both of them, there’s only two of us left to take on the workload of four. That leaves me stressed out until we find the replacement, since my workload has increased substantially.

One day during lunch, I go to a nearby convenience store to pick up some almonds for snacking. I stand at the cash register for a good three minutes, clearing my throat and looking around for somebody to check me out, because I’ve had a god-awful day already, and I really want to have that snack for those days when I can’t even get a lunch. Finally, a sulky woman comes to the front register and immediately complains, “I’m tired of working the register. You people should just stay home.” In a foul mood myself already, I make the statement that I can leave the items there for her to put up later, or she can just check me out, which is part of her job. She takes off her apron and tosses it down, saying, “I don’t even need this job.”

A week later, my office manager is conducting interviews and I see the same woman sitting in the lobby. My suspicions are confirmed when my manager meets with her for one of the front desk positions. After she has left, my manager comments that she is unsure about the candidate and I relate what happened at the convenience store. I also tell my manager, “Maybe she had a bad day, but if she is willing to quit like that, she will leave you in the lurch.”

My manager hired her, anyway, and when she found out how many patients we dealt with in one hour — 30, to her five customers per hour — she quit.

(I’m reading Not Always Right stories when my dad, a store manager at a local gas station chain, walks into my room.)

Dad: “What are you doing?”

Me: “Reading Not Always Right.”

Dad: “What?”

Me: “Reading Not Always Right. You know, bad customer stories? ‘The customer is—’”

Dad: “Oh! I can tell you a lot of those. Actually, I can show you one right now…”

(He pulls out his phone and loads up a picture of a truck parked in his gas station parking lot, ‘parked’ being a relative term. The truck is about three feet away from the pump, turned diagonally, and blocking the pump next to it, too, as well as two parking places.)

Dad: “This is how you park at a gas station, right?”