Boss: “Hey, [My Name], I need you to be on call this weekend.”

Our call center pays us a small bonus to go on call for urgent calls one weekend each month.

Me: “I was on call last weekend.”

Boss: “Yeah, but you weren’t called in.”

Me: “That’s not the point, I didn’t make plans and didn’t join friends on a night out in case I had to be available.”

Boss: “Yeah, but you weren’t called in. [Company] paid you extra for nothing. We need you to be on call this weekend as [Coworker] is sick.”

Me: “Will I get a second on-call bonus for it?”

Boss: “No, you got paid last weekend.”

Me: “So you’re asking me to be on call for free?”

Boss: “Well…”

Me: “No thank you. If you’re the manager and your on-call employee isn’t available, then you need to go on call.”

Boss: “But I’m away this weekend!”

Me: “So am I!”

I shut down that conversation right there. I went on a lovely trip that weekend… to Middle Earth, via my couch, all night long, with pizza… and beer (it came in pints)!

The following story is from a while ago and vastly simplified, as I don’t want to slow things down with superfluous details.

As I am coming into work one morning, my boss stops me.

Boss: “The lights aren’t working in the stockroom. Go fix it.”

Me: “Uh, if it’s anything more than replacing a lightbulb, I can’t do that.”

Boss: “Go figure it out.”

I replace the lightbulbs, but no light.

Me: “As I suspected, Boss, it must be an electrical issue. I can’t fix that.”

Boss: “Go figure it out.”

Me: “I’m not qualified to do that, I’m an electrician.”

Boss: “I’m too busy! Go figure it out!”

Fine. I forego my usual opening duties and call a local electrician. I decide to pay whatever it takes to get someone in as soon as possible. I have an electrician in to fix it within a couple of hours, and when the simple electrical fix is done, I present the invoice to my boss.

Boss: “What’s this? Who is this guy?”

Me: “This is the electrician. He fixed the lights. Please pay the man.”

Boss: “What?! I can’t afford this! I wanted you to figure it out!”

Me: “I did! I got someone in to fix it!”

Boss: “I can’t authorize this! This isn’t in our budget!”

Me: “Go figure it out.”

The electrician did get paid, of course. The boss said this was coming out of my end-of-year bonus, but considering none of us ever got bonuses and any promise to get one never materialised, I could live with it.

I work for a design firm. We’re in our weekly team meeting. My manager is reviewing project timelines, and everyone’s half-awake until one coworker, who’s been with the company for two years and understands roughly 3% of her job, suddenly chimes in:

Manager: “So, we’re aiming to have the client deliver final assets by Friday so we can start design on Monday.”

Coworker: *Interrupting.* “Wait, why are they sending us stuff? Shouldn’t we be sending them the assets?”

Manager: “No, we’re designing their product. We need their branding and content first.”

Coworker: *Squinting at his notes.* “Oh. I thought we already had their logo.”

Me: “We have a placeholder logo you pulled from Google Images.”

Coworker: *Nodding confidently.* “Yeah, that one.”

The room goes silent. Our manager takes a slow breath.

Manager: “Please tell me you didn’t send that to the client.”

Coworker: *Grinning.* “Well, I figured I’d save us time.”

Me: “You sent the wrong logo to the client. To save them time.”

Coworker: “Uh… yeah?”

The logo is a classic escutcheon, basically the heraldry shield you see on educational institutions, flags, government departments, etc.

Me: “The logo literally had lorem ipsum where their Latin motto will eventually go. The client thinks our final design is lorem ipsum?!”

Coworker: “Do those things mean something?”

Manager: “[Coworker], didn’t you go to Harvard?”

Coworker: *Proudly.* “Yeah!”

Manager: “You didn’t come across ‘Veritas’ written anywhere during your time there?”

Coworker: “Oh, yeah! I remember all the girls in my sorority saying, ‘In Vino Veritas’ or some s*** like that.”

Manager: “Well… anyway, we’re getting side-tracked. [My Name], call [Client] immediately and tell them what we sent was a placeholder. [Coworker], the text on the logo does mean something; it’s in Latin. Don’t assume it’s gibberish.”

Our manager manages to bring the meeting back on track. After the meeting, I go up to my manager:

Me: “[Coworker]’s Latin earlier, did she say—”

Manager: “—”In wine, there is truth”, yes, I caught that too. If that was her sorority’s motto, it explains the rest of her education…”

Me: “Good morning. Thanks for calling IT; this is [My Name]. How can I assist you?”

User: “I am a new employee with our company, and I cannot get into our system.”

Me: “Are you at the Windows login screen or the Citrix login screen?”

User: “Windows.”

I pull up her account and find the new hire spreadsheet. It has each new hire, their email, and their one-time-use password on it.

Me: “Can you tell me which password you are using?”

We cannot give out passwords over the phone, so I have them tell me their passwords.

For this next portion, I will use fake company names and fake default passwords.

User: “Parker4545%.”

Me: “Hmm. That is what we have on file. I’m going to open up Active Directory and reset it back to that same password in case someone fat-fingered it.”

AD gives me an error: invalid password.

Me: “Strange, it won’t let me use that password for some reason. Trying again.”

Again, AD tells me the password is invalid — strange because this is just a variation of one of many password templates at the company.

Me: “One moment while I reach out to an admin regarding this.”

I pull up teams and reach out to the account admin. He tries resetting it himself and gets the same thing. He pulls in another account admin and gets the same thing. We escalate up to the exchange admin in case it’s an issue with desynching. He checks everything, and he can’t figure it out, either.

This chat is getting larger and larger until the sysadmin (system administrator) joins in.

Sysadmin: “Well, you see guys, the reason you are unable to reset Ms. Park’s password to Parker4545% is that IT HAS HER LAST NAME IN IT!”

The chat is silent for roughly ten seconds and then is quickly filled with GIFs of people stating that they are dumb or GIFs of people smashing their heads into things.

Me: “Ms. Park?”

User: “Yes?”

Me: “We found the issue.”

User: “Oh, good. What was it?”

Me: “Your last name is Park. We were trying to set your password to ‘parker’, which has your name in it, and that is why it wasn’t working.”

She cackles with laughter.

User: “Oh, my God. That is hilarious.” *Jokingly* “How many people did it take to figure that out?”

Me: *Seriously* “Way too many.”

I work in a rural branch of a national retail chain. A new coworker has transferred in from a larger and more urban branch of the same chain after moving into town with her husband.

Transfer: “It’s five minutes to close! Why aren’t we making any closing announcements?”

Me: “Uh… there are no customers in the store.”

Transfer: “How can you be sure?!”

Me: “It’s five aisles and I can see them all from here.”

Transfer: “Well, back at my last job, we started announcing fifteen minutes before!”

Next day, in the break room:

Transfer: “It’s 9 AM on a Wednesday! Why aren’t next week’s schedules out yet?!”

Coworker: “They normally come out around lunchtime here.”

Transfer: “Well, back at my last job, we had them out at exactly nine!”

Coworker: “Yeah, but there’s only six of us here and we all work the exact same hours every week, so…”

Transfer: “I know you country folk like it simple, but at my last job we did everything so much more efficiently and better!”

Coworker: “And yet, here you are. With us. In purgatory. Bragging about a different flavor of misery.”

The new transfer was finally quiet, and [Coworker] sipped her lukewarm coffee like a queen.