(I want to buy a stuffed cat for a friend and call a really big multi-product store.)

Employee #1: “[Store], how may I help you?”

Me: “Can you transfer me to your toy department?”

Employee #1: “One moment, ma’am.”

(The phone rings for a long time.)

Employee #2: “Hello, [Major Fast Food Chain].”

Me: “What?”

Employee #2: “[Major Fast Food Chain]. How can I help you?”

Me: “Well, I was calling to ask about a stuffed animal, but, um…”

Employee #2: “Well, I wouldn’t know. I’m actually only a customer here and the phone kept ringing and ringing and I just couldn’t help it.”

Me: “Can I get a book of stamps, please?”

(The clerk opens the drawer under the counter where they keep the stamps. She takes out a book of stamps…and another…and another…and another until every book of stamps in the drawer is on the counter.)

Clerk: “These are all we have. Is this enough for a whole book?”

(My coworker can’t log into his work account, which means he can’t use any of the programs we need to do our work, including his email account. He phones tech support.)

Coworker: “Hi, I can’t login. Can you help?”

Tech Support: “Unfortunately there is an overall problem with login in. We will let you know when it is fixed so you can login normally again.”

Coworker: “So you will call me when I can log in again?”

Tech Support: “No, that is too much work. To save time we will email everyone who has this problem.”

Coworker: “But if I can’t login, I can’t read the email you will send.”

Tech Support: “We will email you.” *click*

(To help pay my expenses at uni, I get a job in a big shop. The hours are only four hours every Saturday. This is my first job. After 4 weeks, the manager calls me into the office.)

Manager: “I noticed that it’s taking you a really long time to get the hang of the tills.”

Me: *nervously* “Is it?”

Manager: “Well, there was that issue last week with the customer’s voucher, and before that there was the discount card.”

Me: “But it was the first time I’d ever done one of those. I couldn’t remember how to do it.”

Manager: “You’ve been here four weeks. You really should know how to do these things by now; I can’t believe it would take so long. Most of employees pick it up after their first week.”

Me: “First week? Like seven days?”

Manager: *patronising* “That would be a week, yes.”

Me: “But I’ve only been here for four days!”

Manager: “You’ve been here a month!”

Me: “Only on Saturday, for four hours! So that’s like four part-time days total or two full days, but spread out over a month. It’s a little harder to pick this up when I don’t spend much time here refreshing my memory.”

Manager: “…You can go.”

(She continued talking about how I was so slow for someone who’d been here ‘over a month,’ so eventually I left and got a job with more hours elsewhere. Picked up the tasks pretty quickly when I had frequent practice!)

(I get hired for a summer job where every employee is supposed to tackle a bit of every job, e.g. cleaning, doing front registers, drive-thru, and making sandwiches. I start the job and am trained on everything except how to make sandwiches. This happens at my trainee review session with my supervisor after a month of working there.)

Supervisor: “Are there any areas at which you would like you or us to improve?”

Me: “Well, I still haven’t been trained on the sandwich station. In fact, none of the employees that were hired alongside me have been trained on it.”

Supervisor: *laughs* “Don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of sandwich experience.”

(A month passes and neither I, nor any of my new coworkers, have had any training on the sandwich station. The busy season has started, and so the supervisors don’t want to put new people on the sandwich station to train them, as it would slow them down. When my next trainee review comes along…)

Me: “I still have not had any training on the sandwich station, and neither has anyone else. For improvement I think you guys need to work on scheduling training for your new people.”

Supervisor: *sternly* “We’re working on it. You will be trained on how to make sandwiches.”

(Another month passes. I only have a month left to work at this job before I go back to school. By now, most of the experienced people have left due to poor treatment from the owner, and now the store is stocked with inexperienced people who were not trained on the sandwich station, among other things. By this point, the only people who know how to make sandwiches are the supervisors, who become too busy with that task so they aren’t able to do most of their other duties. My final trainee review happens, and I echo what I’ve said before, to be told that I would be trained that week. A supervisor ‘tries’ to train me, but shoos me away after twenty minutes. It is now my second last day on the job.)

Supervisor: “So, how would you like to get trained on sandwiches now that it’s slowed down?”

Me: “Um… I’m leaving tomorrow, and you have a BUNCH of new people who all have less training than I do.”

Supervisor: “Still, at least you’ll know what you’re doing!”

Me: “For one day out of the entire summer?”

(So there I was, doing sandwich training on my second last day. Needless to say, I didn’t put those skills to use for very long. The kicker? The owner came in on the last day and shouted at the supervisors for making sandwiches when “the regular staff should be doing that.”)