The doorbell rings, and my wife goes to take it. It’s a door-to-door salesman.

Salesman: “Hi, can I speak to the head of the household?”

Wife: “Oh, we don’t use our head for that.”

She closes the door again. On our doorbell camera, we see the salesman opening and closing his mouth a few times, his hand hovering over the button. But the decides against it and walks off again.

Our state is going through its worst snowstorm in a decade, but of course, my manager calls me and tells me I still need to be there to open the d*** store. Why me?”

Manager: “You live closest! I’ll see you when my shift starts!”

I turn up and open the store at 9 AM, and it turns out I was the only one who could make it into the store. Normally, we’d have three or four people working opening shift, but this wasn’t a problem today, as we had zero customers. Zero. The snow was still coming down, so it wasn’t a surprise.

My manager calls me at 2 PM:

Manager: “Yeah, so I can’t get in for my shift. The freeway closed.”

Me: “No s***. So, do I close up and go home?”

Manager: “What gave you that idea? You need to stay until closing.”

Me: “You want me to stay until 9 PM? Even after I opened?

Manager: “No one else can make it in!”

Me: “That applies to the customers too, you know?”

Manager: “Stay until close.” *Click.*

I should have told him where to stuff it, but I was young, and I needed the job, so I dealt with it and actually worked the full twelve hours. I didn’t mind so much because we had zero customers; I was able to get a lot of college studying done without the distractions of home.

The manager called me at 10 PM to ask how the day went.

Me: “I’m just leaving the store.”

Manager: “Why so late? I thought you said foot traffic was light?”

Me: “Practically non-existent. But I did get an urgent customer come in ten minutes before close.”

Manager: “Well, at least you were able to help someone with an urgent need.”

Me: “Yeah… an urgent need to do a huge-a** refund. Which meant we ended the day with negative sales. Oh, and kept me behind an hour past closing, which means I’m getting paid more for a negative sales day.”

Manager: “…” *Click.*

The manager reviewed the footage the next day and confirmed that we had zero customers in twelve hours (apart from that one at the end), and I got a lot of studying done! Did this change Corporate’s policy when it came to severe weather events? Ha ha, of course not.

I work at a Home Depot, we have a preset range of music stations to listen to – it’s commonly left on the 80s or 80s/90s mix station, but one of our managers loves country music, but most of the staff either hate the genre with a passion, and the ones who like country hate that station in particular due to the very short playlist and most of the songs being awful.

Every time someone complains about the station being switched to country, said manager tries to figure out how to make us beg to get back to country by trying to find a music station even more disagreeable to us.

First time (before I was hired), he switched to the Spanish station; most of the staff didn’t mind, but they got so many virulent racist comments from customers that they switched.

Second time, he switched to 2000s-2010s music, aside from that one earworm song, nobody minded, then he switched to the 70s station.

The 70s were basically the favorite due to their very large playlist and variety (soft rock, disco, folk, GOOD country music, and pop), which frustrated him even more, as apparently, he hates disco as much as we hated the country station.

Then I came in, and was confused by a warbling aria… apparently, we have an opera station?

We had a channel for opera music. I’m not sure who was more confused, the customers or us. I actually like opera, and even my coworkers who didn’t care for opera tolerated it because at this point we all knew what was going on and decided to wear him out.

Eventually, he gave up and left the music on the 80s channel.

I have a close friend with scent-induced migraines. All sorts of things set them off, but Lavender is his kryptonite. The tiniest bit of lavender scent in a hand lotion or perfume will have him in agony for days.

Now, I like to smell good, but obviously I care more about my friend, and I meticulously scour the ingredients list for every body product I buy to make sure it doesn’t contain any of his trigger scents. Because, even if something says it’s apple pie à la mode scented, there might be lavender oil down in the ingredients for some godforsaken reason. It’s happened before with a deodorant I really liked that was supposed to be coconut and passionfruit, but for some reason had a hint of lavender.

On days I’m going to be around him, I avoid shops selling body lotions, perfumes, etc, because the lingering scent can and will cause a migraine. If I for some reason have been in one, I go home and change clothes and shower off quickly to make sure I don’t bring in any scented residue. 

So, on this day, I was at the mall to buy video games. The game store in the mall was having a B2G1 sale on pre-owned games, and I was figuring I’d load up on a couple of promising titles I hadn’t purchased at launch.

As I’m walking towards the game store, I pass one of the little booths in the middle of the mall walkway, and this lady working there spritzes me with something heavily cotton candy scented. And not good cotton candy either. EEW.

Me: “What the f…. Why did you do that?!”

Lady: “Smells good, doesn’t it? All the small bottles are on sale this week, so pick out something you like.”

Me: “Uh, no, no thank you. Not after you sprayed me without permission.”

Lady: “Don’t worry, they’re all natural, no harsh chemicals.”

Me: “Doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to be sprayed. What if I had allergies?”

Lady: “They’re all natural.”

Me: “Peanuts are all natural. People die from them.”

Lady: “Well, these aren’t peanuts, are they, smart-a**?”

Me: “You’re nuts. I’m not buying anything. Leave me alone.

She spritzes me again.

Me: “Okay, now I’m totally reporting you to mall security. F*** you.”

And I did. And apparently, I was not the first to complain about ambush spraying mall shoppers. But after I got my video games, I had to go home and completely shower and change before I saw my friend, because I absolutely guarantee you that awful spray probably had lavender in it.

Many years ago, I worked for a top US banking institution. In our building, all of the other departments were allowed to wear blue jeans on Fridays. My manager decided that our department had to wear business attire on Fridays.

To be clear, we had no customer-facing presence. Also, our department processes check deposits from ATMs, and they came in mesh bags from the armored couriers. They were usually quite filthy and were frequently wet in bad weather.

So, when our manager told us that we couldn’t wear blue jeans on Fridays like every other department, the entire team was upset.

Next Friday, I went to my closet and found the most mismatched outfit I could put together, sticking completely to business attire. We are talking pastel floral print shirt with pants with bold colored stripes. I put it on and proudly walked into the office.

My manager just happened to be on vacation that week, so nothing was said about my ridiculously mismatched outfit.

Fast forward to the next Friday, and I once again chose the most hideous combination of an outfit that I could put together. Once again, I walked into the office with my head held high, confident in my business attire.

Imagine my surprise when I walked in, and EVERYONE on my team had on hideous combinations of clothing.

As you can imagine, my boss walks in and sees everyone in their various hideous outfits.

The look on her face was priceless! All fifteen of us in hideous outfits, but all meeting the business attire dress code. She pulled us all into a meeting and told us that our attire was entirely inappropriate for a business environment and that she would have to write each and every one of us up.

I asked her to pull out the company handbook and read the definition of what it said as business attire. She read it, and it stated something like clean and pressed business attire consisting of slacks, skirts, or dresses, and clean pressed shirts or blouses. It went on to say something like no blue jeans, t-shirts, ripped or clothes with holes, no sleeveless shirts, and no athletic or gym shoes.

I asked her where in the guidelines it says anything about whether the outfits “matched” or not. She couldn’t find anything and said she would have to contact HR to discuss with them what her options were to write us up.

None of us was ever written up. She did, however, say we still needed to dress in business attire.

Word quickly spread to other departments about her, forcing us to wear business attire. The next week, two departments around us decided that they would also dress up in hideously matched clothing.

The managers of those departments quickly got in touch with our manager and put pressure on her as they didn’t like how their employees were dressing.

Our manager called us into a meeting and told us we could wear blue jeans on Fridays going forward.