When I started my current job, there was a guy who started at the same time that was so horrible, EVERYONE wanted to work with him. He was loud and obnoxious, so you could sit down, suck down sodas and nap, doing absolutely nothing all day and still look better than him. 3 major things all came together the same week, and nobody felt bad about what happened to him.
Event 1 on Monday was getting fired for sexual harassment. He told a senior manager that he would like to (direct quote) “bend her over and break her open shotgun style.” Up until then I thought it was every woman’s fantasy to be lusted after by a hairy little troll, but I guess I was WRONG.
Event 2 on Wednesday was having his truck repossessed. He told the dealer to take half a payment twice a month on paydays. They got the half payment part, but forgot the twice a month bit. He honestly thought he would get the truck for half price, and didn’t put the money away for when they asked for it. He blew it on an amazing amount of beer.
Event 3 was on Friday, when he got served with a court order. His ex wife found out he had a job, and he was supposed to be paying alimony. Oops.

My boyfriend wasn’t feeling well and ended up going to the hospital, he was telling me about his trip later. I should say English is not his first language.

As they had taken quite a few bloods and he hadn’t drunk a lot they ended up giving him saline but not at as an IV apparently but as a synringe and a big one at that. His comment to me for it:
“Why couldn’t they have given me oral?”

He meant orally.

<i>I’m a low-level purchasing approver for my department. One day, I get an email from my manager’s manager.</i>

Manager: Hi [my name]. Are you able to approve this requisition request for me? I thought I had the role for this account, but I do not see the option to approve.

<i>I take a look and the problem is obvious, something she should have easily seen for herself. It’s never fun telling superiors they’re idiots, so I softball it.</i>

Me: Hi [manager]. No, I’m sorry, I can’t do anything either. Maybe because it’s marked as contract review needed, it’s routed away from us right from the start? [employee A] and [employee B] are listed in the approver group, though, they should be able to see more.

Manager: I have never seen this. It might be [employee]’s first req, I wonder if she did something different, let me check.

<i>Yes, she selected ‘contract review needed.’ Still, there’s a chance it’s something unrelated.</i>

Me: I had problems with a glitchy req last week, so it could be [program]. Let me know if you find out something concrete!

<i>Five minutes later.</i>

Manager: I see that [employee] clicked off contract review, so not sure if that prompted something. I’ll have her delete and start again.

<i>Gee, wish I’d caught that!</i>

This was told to me by my dentist, who had been hanging around his office building since he was a child (because his father had also been a dentist.)

It’s the depth of the 1930’s Depression.
The office building has a fleet of elevators, each of which has to be run by an “elevator operator” (no automatic self-service elevators there then.)

The “dispatcher”, that is, the manager of the elevator operators, fires all of the operators, and hires them back at a lower pay rate. Obviously, they are all very angry, but they have to accept it because there are no other jobs available in town.
*Note: my dentist had himself been a part-time elevator operator in his teenage years.

In the 1960s, my dentist ran into one of the old operators. They get to talking about old times. And the subject of the dispatcher comes up.

Other Operator: What ever happened to that [string of curse words] dispatcher?
Dentist: Oh, he died, some years back.
Other Operator: Dead?! Good! [vulgar insult!] Come, I buy you beer to celebrate!
*So they went to the nearby bar and hoisted a glass of beer to the dispatcher’s death!

I was painfully shy as a child. This was especially problematic in school since participation in class was part of the grade. I felt especially self-conscious in English class. Even though I had no problem reading or writing, I was very uncomfortable when speaking a foreign language. In order to remedy this, I decided to attend a language class in Malta at sixteen. While this worked out perfectly well for my education, here’s what went terribly wrong.

The language class included transport from my hometown (including the flight), accomodations, boarding (breakfast and dinner) and English classes. It did not include drinks, lunch or anything I might want to do besides classes.

My parents did not want me to bring a lot of cash with me and therefore transferred my allowance to my bank account. We spoke to the bank before my departure and they informed us that while I could withdraw money from the account free of charge abroad, it would only allow me 25 € per month. We were also told that my mother’s card for my account had no such limitations. So I took my mother’s card along for the trip and started looking for an ATM as soon as I had settled in.

I tried about 5 different ATMs with no luck and grew increasingly desperate. Tap water in Malta is NOT suitable for drinking and I had no funds to buy bottled water. The last ATM at least gave me a reason why the other machines had declined my transactions: I was not permitted to withdraw the amount of money I had tried. I had planned to withdraw funds for my two weeks of vacation and hadn’t considered there might still be a limit. Now I had at least some funds to get supplies for a few days, but 25 € doesn’t go far if you want to do anything more than sit in you room all day.

I called my mother and she tried to solve the problem with the bank, but no luck. Even though they had told us otherwise beforehand, there was indeed a limit on my mother’s card as well that could not be lifted.

So I settled into a boring first week of vacation and language classes on a tight budget. Luckily I made friends with a neighbour who also attended classes at the same language school. Since he was thirteen years older than me, his bank account worked perfectly well. My mother transferred some funds to his account and he withdrew the money and gave it to me.

So thanks to the kindness of a stranger I was able to enjoy the second half of my vacation far more than the first. We actually kept in contact for a while after the vacation (mostly thanks to the fact that I developed a crush on him over the two weeks) but we lost touch when I was dealing with my first bout of depression.

I switched banks when I got back home.