After two years of working from home, I return to the office. I see a coworker whom I haven’t seen in real life in that same time, and we start chatting near the coffee machine.

Coworker #1: “And how is Robin doing?”

Me: “Oh, Robin is fine. The only odd thing is that he’s lately very obsessed with my bras. He keeps on sniffing the one I wore that day. I tried giving him an old one to fool around with, but no, it has to be the one I wore that day.”

Coworker #1: “And he never did that before?”

Me: “No, but I guess as long as he doesn’t rip them, I’m okay with it.”

Coworker #2: “[My Name], how could you?!”

Me: “Eh… excuse me? Oh, hi, [Coworker #2], didn’t see you.”

Coworker #2: “How old is Robin now?”

Me: “Eh… seven years old?”

Coworker #2: “And you just let this happen?! You should put a stop to this, right now! Sure, it may be bras now, but what’s next, panties?! And you’re just okay with that? [My Name], you of all, people, I expected more of. How can you be okay with this? And don’t go saying, ‘Boys will be boys’! What does your husband say about this?”

Me: *Pauses* “[Coworker #2], you do remember that Robin is my cat, right?”

I’ve never seen anyone turn that red. [Coworker #2] quickly left; she must have remembered that my husband and I don’t have any children. And while I am looking into my cat’s behaviour, I doubt a seven-year-old, neutered, indoor cat will be the world’s next danger for women.

I work for the IT department of a rather big company as a first-level tech. My job is to answer the internal IT-Desk helpline, open a ticket, make a first assessment of the caller’s problem, if possible, solve it if it is minor, and forward it to the right expert if it isn’t.

I answer a call with my usual greeting, which clearly states that the caller has reached the IT help desk, but I am interrupted before I even get to it.

Caller: *Loud and upset* “You need to come here right now! There’s a rat in my drawer!”

Me: “Pardon me? There’s what?”

Caller: “A rat! There’s a rat in my drawer!”

Me: “I think you’ve got the wrong number; this is the IT helpdesk! You want maintenance. Let me get you—”

Caller: *Interrupting again* “No! I need help! This is the helpdesk! There is a rat in my drawer! Now come and help me, you lazy f***!”

Me: “And what am I supposed to do with your rat? Does it need software updates? You want a new casing for it or maybe a mousepad to make it cosy in your drawer? I can’t help you, madam! Call maintenance!”

The caller falls into expletives, yelling ugly derogatives at me before I can even try to give her the number for maintenance.

I don’t have to stay on the phone with abusive idiots who don’t understand that IT doesn’t have to play nice here, so I just disconnect the call and block her number for thirty minutes so she can’t immediately hassle a colleague. I am now lost as to what to put into the ticket I have to write for every call for documentation. Finally, I just put, “Caller tried to report a rat in her drawer. Directed her to maintenance.”

Every employee has a personalized caller ID that automatically attaches their tickets to their individual call in the system, auto-filling their names and positions as well. I don’t write in about the swear words and derogatives in detail as I think she was just scared of the rat, but I flag her as getting abusive anyway and hit the button to save the recording of the call which would otherwise be deleted as soon as I closed the call.

The next day, I get called into my boss’s office. Inside is a smug-looking woman leering at me, one of the department heads, and my boss.

Boss: “Well, we’re here to clear up an accusation against you. Mrs. [Caller] here insists you’ve cursed at her, belittled her, and refused to help her with a simple issue. Can you clear that up for us? I would have looked up your logs, but [Department Head] insisted on talking through that issue.”

Me: “Well, I insist on listening to that call right now; I saved it to the ticket just in case. Before that, we’re not talking about anything.”

I see Mrs. [Caller]’s face go pale, and she opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, my boss, who must have pulled the ticket with her name already, hits play, and the call recording blasts from his speakers.

After the whole fiasco plays, everyone is silent until my boss turns to the woman and says sweetly:

Boss: “So, what was it you wanted from us for your rat? The hardware or the software update?”

The department head is red as a tomato. Between clenched teeth, he apologises and shoos the woman out of the room. My boss is grinning from ear to ear.

Boss: “Sorry for that scene. I would not have allowed this to happen to anyone else, but I know you can take it. That moron, [Department Head], is just newly promoted and already trying to push his weight in a really inappropriate way. His whole department nowadays behaves as if they’re everyone’s bosses, and they need a little pushback. And I needed a witness.”

I assured him it was all okay and agreed to go on and put in a complaint against both with Human Resources along with my boss. The next time I got that woman on the line — this time for an actual IT issue — she was very meek and subdued.

HR listened to the call, and I know she got a warning not to treat colleagues that way.

During the next meeting with my boss, he dropped that the department head was demoted again. He hadn’t even lasted a month.

I worked at a pet store chain. We were often expected to work off the clock, including helping customers on unpaid breaks and clocking out before helping close.

I always told them that I wasn’t going to work without being paid. In return, they called me greedy and “not a team player.”

Apparently, this multibillion-dollar company can’t afford an extra few bucks to pay a minimum-wage employee if they stay late to close or work on their “break”.

A woman came in and ordered over $100 worth of food for a party she was having. I was the only person to put the orders together and bag them all up.

The head manager came in to start his shift, walked past my register, and noticed my timer saying fifteen minutes. The expected service time is five minutes maximum per customer. He proceeded to rip my head off in front of everyone.

The customer stepped forward and showed the huge receipt.

Customer: *To the manager* “Apologize to him right now, or give me my money back!”

He did apologize, but the woman stared daggers at him for a punishing thirty seconds and then said:

Customer: “You know what? Give me the number to corporate! This is exactly why I ended up going into business for myself! These people who work for you aren’t horses or sled dogs!”

I don’t know if she called corporate, but I do know that my manager became VERY friendly to everyone from then on! If I made a mistake on an order, he would simply show me the error with a disapproving look, and anything positive I did would be met with, “Nicely done! I appreciate your effort!”

I never got the lady’s name but if I hadn’t been so broke at the time, her order would have been on me!

I work with a manager who has alienated everyone we work with because of a medical emergency I had. We got so slammed one morning that we were still trying to catch up at noon when my relief manager came in. My friend was working on breakfast dishes. I was trying to clean the egg grill when I got dizzy all of a sudden and passed out.

From what I was told, [Friend] saw me and ran right over, got on the ground, and held me up so he could check my pulse and make sure that I was breathing and that I wasn’t bleeding from the head. Someone alerted my manager, who had my cashier call 911 while he walked around aimlessly.

[Friend] started giving the cashier my medical history.

Manager: “[Cashier], get off the phone and get back to work!”

My friend took the phone from her so she could do that, and he took over giving dispatch information while still holding on to me. Thirty seconds later:

Manager: “[Friend], leave her and get back to work.”

Friend: “No way! I’m not leaving her until the paramedics get here”

Finally, I woke up and tried to sit up by myself, but [Friend] had one hand on my back in case I fell.

The paramedics came in and checked me over. They told [Friend] it was a good thing he had stayed with me; my heart rate was so high that I could have gone into cardiac arrest.

Manager: “Good thing I told you to stay with her, [Friend]!”

Everyone denied this. Later, [Friend] told our General Manager everything that happened.

Sadly, the idiot still has a job.