I work in a huge farming supply complex, and that includes an outdoor department selling tractors.

A customer has just completed the paperwork to buy one of our models on the lot. As I’m walking him to his car, congratulating him on his purchase and asking him if he’s looking forward to the delivery, we hear some distant thunder.

Customer: “You’d better wrap up the tractor in case it rains.”

I laugh at the ‘joke’.

Customer: “Why are you laughing? I don’t want my brand-new tractor getting damaged.”

Me: “From rain?”

Customer: “From the elements!”

Me: “It’s been outside on this lot for a few months, sir.”

Customer: “Yes, but now I own it. Shrink wrap it so it won’t get damaged by the rain.”

I was tempted to ask him where his farm is. I’d love to visit an entirely indoor field!

Back when I was a teenager in my first job, I worked for a large warehouse-type membership store, the kind with everything in bulk and on big pallets. I see a customer on top of a ladder getting some heavy items down from a staff-only shelf.

Me: “Sir, please don’t use the staff ladders. If you need something, I can call someone qualified to—”

Customer: “—I’m in a hurry, mate. I don’t need to wait for the staff. I can grab it myself.”

Me: “Sir, those ladders are for employees only. Some of those boxes are over fifty kilos.”

Customer: “I lift heavier than this at the gym.”

Me: “You lift almost three metres off the ground?”

Customer: “Look. This saves time for me and for you lot. Shut up.”

My manager is walking over and sees this guy drag the step ladder down the aisle.

Manager: “Sir, where did you get that ladder?”

Customer: “The back somewhere.”

Manager: “Sir, you need to stop.”

Customer: “I’m nearly done. Just need that pallet up there.”

Manager: “You’re not insured to touch that.”

Customer: “Shut up! I’m doing you all a favour!”

Manager: “Right. One moment.”

The manager presses his radio.

Manager: “[Supervisor], can you come to aisle forty-two with your lifting kit?”

Supervisor: “On my way.”

Customer: “What for? I’ve already got it.”

The customer heaves a heavy box onto his trolley, which is already sagging in the middle. That thing is waaaaay over its limit.

Me: “Sir, that trolley is rated for—”

Customer: “—I know what I’m doing. Just leave me alone, all of you! I’m a weightlifter! I could lift you all right now and not even blink.”

My supervisor arrives. He has a prosthetic leg, but it’s not immediately obvious under his work trousers. The manager calls him over.

Manager: “This gentleman needs help loading safely.”

Customer: “I don’t need help. I just need you to be quick!”

Supervisor: “No problem. First, I will need to spread all your items over two trolleys, as these are stacked too tall and—”

My supervisor grips the side of the trolley to push it to the side of the aisle and out of the way. The customer doesn’t like this and pulls it back. The sudden back and forth forced one of the badly stacked boxes to slide off and hit the floor with a loud crack. It fell on the side where my supervisor is standing, and he instantly dropped to the ground.

Supervisor: “Oh! Oh no! My leg!”

Customer: “What?!”

The customer runs around the trolley to see my supervisor on the floor… with one leg missing.

Customer: *Turning white.* “I… I didn’t… I… someone call an ambulance!”

Supervisor: *Holding up his prosthetic leg, which he had hidden behind him.* “Oh, wait, it’s over here!”

There is a moment of suffocating silence.

Customer: “That… that’s not…”

Supervisor: *Popping the leg back in within seconds.* “Relax. It’s designed to do that. Unlike your trolley, which is not designed for that amount of weight.”

Customer: “You people are sick.”

Manager: “And if that had all been real, you’d be arrested.”

Customer: “I… was just in a rush.”

Manager: “A trip to the police station or hospital might slow you down a bit, though, eh?”

Me: “Shall we unload your trolley properly, sir?”

Customer: *Very quietly.* “…Yes.”

Supervisor: “Brilliant. I’ll hop to it then, shall I?”

Customer: *Blank stare.*

Supervisor: “Too soon?”

I have worked in warehouses for years, a few years back when I was a contractor. Companies would hire us and bring in over twenty people for a few weeks when they desperately needed help. I was a shift lead, usually the highest person on site, and needed to talk to my boss regularly throughout the day on a company phone.

One warehouse had a policy where only managers could have their phones on the floor, and technically, I wasn’t a manager. Everyone under me was instructed to leave them in their car or a locker. However, I needed mine.

One day, I was talking on the phone to my boss, and one of the managers for the company we were working for saw me and demanded:

Manager: “Hand me your phone.”

I refused.

He then threatened to kick me out, so I rounded up all my workers and said:

Me: “We are taking a break.”

We all go outside, and I tell my boss what happened. He comes to the site instantly and starts talking to their boss and tells him I need my phone on the floor, but since I don’t have manager in my title, they refuse.

So, my boss decided:

Boss: “You can’t do your job, so nobody under you can do theirs either.”

At the end of the day, the other company is p***ed that we didn’t get any work done, and decides to cancel our contract, which cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars because it’s written in the contract that they will have to pay to send us home before the original end date. 

We all still got paid, and got two weeks off before having to go somewhere else.

I worked in the warehouse at a very popular hunting, fishing, camping, and outdoor activity chain that’s known for being very large with a large fish tank inside.

We had this huge jerk of a dude in his fifties who wanted a very specific duck lure. We didn’t have it on the floor because it was so randomly specific, so I was sent to the back to look for it with a girl from the hunting department.

It turned out we didn’t have it in the warehouse, but instead it was in one of our shipping containers behind the store. So, the girl and I went to look for it and opened the shipping container to be greeted with large boxes, wall-to-wall all the way to the back.

Realizing that the duck lure must be in the back, this poor girl jumped up and army crawled across the tops of the boxes all the way to the back of the shipping container and threw the lure over the boxes before crawling back.

All of this was in the middle of a winter snowstorm next to a highway. We finally get the lure, lock everything up, and head back, only to find the customer had left.

He told an associate that we “took too long.”

I took a job in the warehouse of a large aviation company that did aftermarket modifications and repairs for a much larger aviation company and a large airline. The first two weeks were great, busted my behind to learn the programs and even helped the major airline with their annual inventory.

Two months in, I learned I was pregnant, so I started having doctor’s appointments, and my kid was having issues in school, so my phone was constantly going off. No big deal. My parts processed numbers were still above average, and I did three of the four parts runs plus hot parts (emergency parts) runs in the middle of processing two hundred parts a week. But a coworker of mine was not happy I was on my phone and reported me to our managers.

They called me in and were on me about my phone usage, so I said okay. They also mentioned my numbers. Saying I should do more since I won’t be on my phone. Hmmm, okay, boss.

In the company, your parts are listed by how many serial numbers you move. So, if I had a box of eighty-four generators, I did one transaction (one serial number), moving them from stock to inventory (yes, that’s how they identified it).

I figured out that other people would do eighty-four transactions, moving every single generator (or other part) to its inventory location. Since I was out of the warehouse for four hours a day doing parts runs, my numbers were lower. So, I started playing that game.

In one week, my two-hundred parts shot up to over seven-hundred parts. And because the printing of the tags took so long, I was able to take phone calls and text. Inevitably (about three weeks later), I got called back into the office about my phone usage.

I just smiled and pulled out my reports of transactions, the drive logs showing how long I was gone and how often I took the parts runs, the hot parts log in, and my report from HR of all the locations I had scanned my badge. They told me my numbers should be higher (I was the top producer in my shift of four people) and to stay off my phone.

A week later, two people quit, leaving just me and my former trainer, who was complaining about me nonstop. After a chat with HR, I was told to buck up and deal with it. Smiling, I told her to have a great day.

I called in sick through the weekend; got a doctor’s note about all the times I had been in the office from bleeding due to stress (I was four months pregnant at this point), and sent an email at 4 AM Monday morning with my evidence of why I was quitting effective immediately.

Company rules stated you had to call in at least thirty minutes prior, and I was an hour and a half early, leaving my whiny former trainer to do all the runs and stock himself. They called me multiple times to come back, but that was not happening.