I applied for a government-sponsored work placement scheme several years ago — thankfully they don’t exist anymore because of abuses of the system — and my employers pulled some strings to get me on a different scheme so they could employ the two best candidates for free. (See abuses.)

I had submitted all relevant paperwork to the Department of Social Protection — AKA the employment office — in plenty of time, had good contact with the scheme representatives, and was officially working and getting paid for a month when I got the following phone call.

DSP Worker: “Hi, [My Name]. We’ve been told that you’re going to be taking part in a [Employment Scheme #2] position. Do you have a start date for it yet?”

Me: “Uh… A month ago? I started officially on [date].”

DSP Worker: “Oh!” *Pause* “We’ve actually been paying you at the post office since then. You’ll have to collect it by [date].”

I got paid double for four weeks and nobody saw the error or tried to make me pay it back. I still don’t really trust the local office for many other blunders that weren’t in my favour.

I’ve been working at call centers and customer services for a while now. At the moment, I am a team leader at a technical hotline that answers customer requests about everything concerning Internet and computer for business customers.

In the first-level entry jobs, we hire just about anybody who can speak and write German and is able to put basic information into a ticket system so second- and third-level can call back and solve the issue as soon as one of the more qualified technicians is free.

Second-level technicians are tech-savvy workers promoted from first level and educated by us. All you had to do was work hard and show talent and you’d get a chance.

Third level needs a diploma or certification in order to get the job. Once or twice a year, the company will offer stipends to especially talented second-level employees so they get a chance to rise up in ranks, but never new hires or outsiders. Outsiders know we offer educational benefits after a certain time, so we have lots of people trying to rise through our ranks and get their certifications through us. Lots of drop-out students try, too.

As a team leader, it is my duty to do the last job interview for everyone who wants a job with us and will go to my team, which is a first-level team only. I have the final decision if an applicant will get in or not. Screening and interviewing are usually done before people even get to me and it is absolutely entry-level. I’ve heard that HR has already requested their contracts and badges when I get them scheduled for interviews, so I’m sure no one expects me to ever turn anybody down. I never have so far, and I’m not sure my interviews are more than a formality.

Today, I have three interviews scheduled. I’m standing outside our side door with an employee who is very upset due to some stress, and I’m trying to get her to calm down before she goes on working.

While I am consoling her, a young man briskly walks straight toward us, completely ignoring the big sign for the main entry.

Young Man: “Get away, you fat a**es!”

And he rudely pushes between us to get to the door. We stare at him while he tries to get in several times, which doesn’t work because it is an employee-only door. After rattling the door several times he turns around and yells at us.

Young Man: “Get me in here, d*** it! I’m here for my interview! I’m an engineer! I’ll be your boss soon! So move your fat a**es or I’ll get you fired!”

For a moment, I think I’m having a bad dream or am in a bad soap opera. I can’t believe what I am hearing. My employee chuckles beside me, so at least something good is coming out of it, but I could barely restrain myself against so much stupidity.

But I think it isn’t my problem and decide to let it slip and just give the manager of the third level a warning later on. I point the guy to the main entrance with my best customer support voice, which makes my employee chuckle even more, and soon we go in again.

Shortly after that, I go down to HR to retrieve my own first applicant. It is a young man who sounded nice at the phone interview and is a promising candidate. He told us he’d had to interrupt his technical studies due to family troubles and hoped to work his way up through our ranks to finance his career.

But guess whom I find in front of the HR’s office waiting for his interviewer?

You guess right! It was Mr. I’ll Have You Fired!

Our HR lady turns to introduce us.

Me: “I don’t need his name. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to be part of my team with all those fat a**es surrounding him!”

He went beet red and tried to stutter an apology, but I quickly shut him down and went past him into HR and gave our recruiter my final decision on the hire and a report on why I’d not work with him and wouldn’t conduct the last interview.

Then, I rushed out without sparing him a second glance.

How stupid could he be to botch his best chance to get paid education by insulting unknown people in front of the workplace where he had an interview? If he had done his proper research, he would have known who I was, because my photo and name are easily accessible on the company’s website!

I overhear the following conversation between two workers: one is an old-timer that nobody gets along with, and the other is a newly-hired temp whose contract is about to expire. He has already politely inquired with the offices whether the company is extending his term or letting him go, to no avail.

New Hire: “Has anyone had any idea of where I’m assigned as of next week? 

Old-Timer: *Chuckling* “Why do you bother asking? The company isn’t hiring indeterminate contracts anymore!”

New Hire: “If you were the last one, I see why they wouldn’t.”

I work in an ops team that handles the deliveries of our stock. One day, my boss gives me a task to problem-solve a list of deliveries for one of our big customers.

Usually, what happens is we import the stock, store it in a warehouse, and then tell the warehouse how much to deliver while removing the stock from our system. But for this specific customer, we import the stock and deliver by the container to the customer’s own warehouse. They then help themselves to the stock they need and send us a self-bill detailing what they have used at the end of every week. We’re talking around fifteen metric tons of various stock per week. On receiving the self-bill, my department amends our system to signify that the stock has been used and is no longer in the warehouse.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking to yourself, “That sounds like a terrible system with a massive margin for error,” and as it turns out, you’re absolutely right.

This customer is managed by my coworker who, while nice enough, has a tendency to blaze through all her work and not look back. What could possibly go wrong, you ask? At the end of the financial year, the discrepancies in the system are something like 20,000 kg surplus of Product A in blue, 12,000 kg missing of Product A in pink, and 10,087.5k g missing of Product B. How we ended with a discrepancy of 87.5 kg of a product we sold by the metric ton is beyond me.

Coworker: “[Boss], what should I do about this self-bill? The stock doesn’t exist on our system.”

Boss: “Take it to [My Name]. They’re great with this sort of thing.”

My analytical brain and I get dropped into this problem of finding what happened to over £100,000 worth of stock. This first involves me combing through a year’s worth of orders and cross-referencing the customer’s order list against our own, and let me tell you, that was a fun afternoon, reading sixteen-digit reference numbers over and over.

On identifying the discrepancies, I then pull the self-bill we received and compare it to the invoice on our system to spot the difference. That’s easier said than done, because the self-bill lists the quantity by the number of cartons instead of the weight of the order. I see on the self-bill 360 cartons and have to manually work this out to its weight in kilos to compare to our order list. It wouldn’t be a big deal if they were 10 kg boxes, but, obviously, they’re a random weight of 22.68kg.

Of the five issues that I find, two of the self-bills haven’t been received for whatever reason.

One week’s self-bill includes 10,000 kg of Product A in blue but was, in fact, processed as 20,000 kg of Product B.

Another week’s self-bill is for 4,000 kg of Product A in blue and 4,000 kg in pink. Guess what was invoiced? 8,000 kg in pink and none in blue.

The final one is the icing on the cake. The self–bill comes through for 8,000 kg of Product A in blue, 4,000 kg of Product A in pink, and 2,000 kg of Product B. I am scratching my head over this one for a long time because the amount that the customer paid us matched perfectly with what our system said they owed for that week.

As it turns out, our stock was put on as 12,000 kg of Product A in pink and 2,000 kg of Product A in blue, with none of Product B. While the correct weight of stock was removed, the different products had different sale prices, so there was an extra line at the bottom of the invoice that said, “Adjustment to make invoice correct,” and a charge of the £3,000 or so that let the invoice match what the customer paid us. So, my coworker had added £3,000 to the invoice for absolutely nothing and promptly forgot about it. Due to the self-bills, the customer doesn’t see our invoice copy so the error wasn’t picked up for months.

I never found the final 87.5 kg of missing stock, but given the value of the rest of the issues, my directors told me not to worry about it. In retrospect, it was probably due to some damaged boxes that we credited their account with.

We don’t send them stock this way anymore.

I work as a concierge in a hotel. I’ve got a coworker who’s honestly what most people would consider a parasite. He works way less than everyone else and is perpetually finding ways to skive off. We call him Wizard.

Our boss absolutely loathes Wizard and is determined to find a way to fire him.

I don’t know the exact details, but she suddenly came in one day and said that the delivery company had accidentally sent our shipment of gift shop merchandise to the branch at the other end of the city and they couldn’t send it to us. Someone had to go in person to pick it up.

Wizard basically got volunteered. It was only later that we found out that he didn’t have a driver’s license, so he couldn’t take a van over there. Worse, our boss specified that we needed the merchandise by 4:00 pm. This meant that Wizard had to somehow cross the city twice in three hours, carrying with him several boxes of merchandise on the way back. It would be impossible, as we estimated the one-way journey by public transport alone would take two hours. Failure, he was told, would be punished by immediate dismissal.

Within fifteen minutes, the janitors were already planning his farewell party.

Imagine our surprise when Wizard turned up at 3:00 pm with all the merchandise, completely unaware that our boss had set him up to fail.

The boss was livid, furiously screaming at Wizard, who was honestly completely lost as to why she was pissed. He got the goods within the allotted time and without damage, so why was this lady screaming at him like he had failed?

This wasn’t the first, nor the last incident. Whenever we had a problem, we’d go up to Wizard, and he’d make them go away. Somehow. We never actually asked how he did it, but after you saw Wizard in action, you really didn’t care how he did it.

A list of his feats:

1) Salvaged a couple’s honeymoon after their original plan suffered several cancellations

2) Got rid of a waitress’ stalker for her. Twice. (Two different men.)

3) Can somehow speak no less than three Asian languages and act as translator for foreign guests from East Asia.

4) Has good enough alcohol tolerance to go drinking with a Russian guest. (Said guest half-demanded that someone take him to a cheap bar and drink with him. That was a weird request, but Wizard had fun.)

5) Knows where to find cosplay events and dress-up parties even in the most inane times of the year. (Another weird request. I immediately handed it off to Wizard)

6) Figured out which guest was stealing stuff from another guest’s minibar.

7) Administered first aid to an old man that fainted.

8) Solved an issue where a regular kept pawing at a female janitor.

At some point, one of the janitors claimed that he was a wizard and that questioning his methods would lead to the magic being lost. Everyone decided to play along with that, leading to his nickname.

Even our regional manager was amused by Wizard, bringing up the idea of having dedicated problem-solvers in every branch. I don’t know how that panned out, but needless to say, our branch considers Wizard one of our key members… even if we basically have to do most of his paperwork for him.