Bathroom Bandit
“Back in high school, I worked at the local Chipotle knock-off restaurant. The manager was (of course) a jerk, but one of his saving graces was that he never told anybody about Toilet Plugger.
As far as we knew, the toilet in the men’s room would occasionally overflow, and our manager would uncharacteristically insist that we NOT clean it up. Our job was simply to make sure that customers stayed away while he put things back to rights. Nobody suspected that the problem ran deeper than faulty plumbing.
One day, I’m on the line making a burrito for somebody when my manager comes sprinting up from his basement office (he was a fat, old, hard-drinking, hard-smoking guy so I was shocked to see him move so fast).
He flings open the door to the men’s room and shuts it behind him. I see the water start to trickle from underneath the door again. In about twenty seconds, some guy in a red hat waddles out of the men’s room and shuffles out the door as fast as he can. We go through the routine of cleaning up the mess, as usual.
But this time, when we’re done, my manager tell us about Toilet Plugger. This guy would come in, pull all of the toilet paper out of the dispenser, stuff it in the toilet, take a poop on the mountain of toilet paper, flush the toilet, then jack off into the toilet as it overflowed and spilled all over him.
My manager caught the guy sans pants jizzing all over himself and his own feces. Evidently, Toilet Plugger was having performance anxiety that day because there wasn’t enough time for him to finish the job before my manager noticed the water dripping into his office.”
Look Who It Is
“I’m a computer repair technician, and I frequently go on site to a person’s home to conduct repairs. One evening, my boss asked me to go to one of these service calls after I was supposed to be getting off work.
Needless to say, I wasn’t in a very forgiving mood. I was behind a line of traffic on a two-lane thoroughfare, and in the right lane is a line of merging traffic. I do my duty and let a guy in front of me, but as I do, the guy behind him speeds up expecting to jump ahead as well.
I’m pretty good at keeping my cool, so I just keep on the first guy’s bumper. Another 20-30 feet past the merging lane, he starts honking at me from the shoulder. He then proceeds to flip me off in the lamest way possible while shouting obscenities.
After that, he merged behind me, where he stays 2 inches from my bumper until we get to the source of the traffic. A minor fender bender. After the initial gesture with his hand I was pretty mad, so I took the extra second to open the moonroof, and bam, double-barreled him with both middle fingers.
He was so mad he called the number on my car (company car) and screamed at my boss who called me while he had this guy on the phone. We’re laughing about it while he’s still shouting out the window.
Then my boss gets another call, and it’s from someone in the left lane! They start telling my boss how I wasn’t at fault and how the guy behind me was throwing a fit.”
He Needed To Take A Chill Pill
“I was working at a phone/internet company as a kind of quasi-supervisor. Basically, the job was helping customer service trainees do their thing. A customer called in to order DSL, they already had a modem and wanted DSL turned on NOW. Not tomorrow, now.
The rep was pretty flustered–she was 45, and not all that skilled with computers, so I ended up helping with most of the work. We did everything we could; normally the wait is 5 business days (I have no idea why) but we got it moved up to the day after.
The customer was furious and kept telling the rep that he was going to have her fired if she didn’t get it done. Finally, he accepted the due date and that was that. Oddly enough, he wanted us to send a new modem because he thought his current one was ‘getting old.’
Later, I got a call from our executive escalations people. They were investigating an alleged fraud (which is what they called all employee misconduct). The same customer had called back and claimed he had only asked about internet and was shocked, SHOCKED, that he had been signed up for phone service when he had wanted nothing of the sort. Heck, he already had a modem, why would he order another one?
This lady was in training, and the call was not recorded. She definitely would have been fired based on this had I not been involved like I was. I just can’t process the fact that some jerk in Shawnee Mission, Kansas thinks he can take a good paying job away from a single mother because he has to wait an extra day to get his YouTube.”
Grocery Store Stupidity
“I work in a grocery store. Rudeness comes standard in any day. Plain, unthinking rudeness, like when people leave their carts in the aisle at the front of the registers so that other shoppers can’t get around.
Stupid, lazy rudeness, as when people put the meat they don’t want behind some cans of soup, or the milk they don’t want in a freezer (you’d be amazed how much food gets thrown out daily due to idiots like this).
Selfish rudeness, like when we had whole chickens on sale for $1/lb, and some jerk grabbed one RIGHT OUT OF AN OLD LADY’S HANDS (‘I hope you choke on it!’ she screamed). But the rudest thing I’ve ever seen was this big guy in his 50s who, for reasons known only to himself, rammed his cart into a display of glass bottles, scattering them everywhere and shattering a good amount of them. He just kept going without so much as a look back. Unbelievable.”
Thoughtless Teacher
“I work I.T. in schools, and one day at one of our schools, the following occurred: I was installing a Smartboard with another technician in a classroom while two teachers (that classroom’s teacher, a younger man, and a music teacher) chatted about their work.
Ignoring the two, we started work at 3:45 or so, just after the kids let out, and a few minutes later an announcement came over the school’s speaker system. ‘Could the owner of the vehicle blocking the wheelchair ramp please move.’
My coworker and I look at each other, the young teacher looks at us judgmentally, and I tell my coworker that I’ll go make sure it isn’t us.
It wasn’t, and we get back to work. We finish putting the board and projector up at a few minutes to five, but during the install every five minutes the following messages are sent over the intercom:
4:00 – ‘Could the owner of the vehicle blocking the wheelchair ramp please move their vehicle.’ [In an angrier tone.]
4:05 – ‘There is a dark blue SUV blocking the wheelchair ramp, can you please move your vehicle.’
4:10 – ‘We have a staff member who is disabled and needs to use the ramp to get home. Can the owner of the SUV please move.’
4:15 – ‘We have a staff member who is bound to a wheelchair, can the owner of vehicle with the license plate number ###-### move their SUV.’
And so on until five, with increasing detail and anger. At 4:57, packing up our tools, there is an announcement where the secretary just didn’t care anymore and yelled the message as if scolding a child.
The music teacher in our classroom, who has been chatting about her work with a giant smile on her face for over an hour, stands up and scoffs: ‘Oh, I’m sure I left enough room,’ and leaves the classroom to move her car. I was mad about that for days.”
She Looked Like A Fool
“A couple of years ago I was working as a barista at a bookstore cafe. One weekend I tore up my foot playing with my goddaughter, so I ended up on crutches. Running a busy espresso bar is actually pretty physical work for a food service job, so my coworkers and I decided that I would sit on a bar chair behind the counter and run the cash register.
So I’m sitting on my chair and a woman comes up to order her drink. I take her order and tell her that my coworker will have her drink up in a minute. She gave me the nastiest look and said, ‘Why can’t you just make it now?’
I opened my mouth to explain, but she cut me off. ‘I don’t want to hear any excuses for your laziness, I just want my drink.’ Keep in mind that while I had grown tired of explaining my injury to every single customer the day before, my crutches were still clearly visible behind the counter.
I’m an experienced enough retailer to know how to handle these situations in the most personally satisfying way. I put on my best contrite servant face and said, ‘Yes, of course ma’am, I’m very sorry. I’ll make it for you right away,’ grabbed my crutches, and struggled laboriously to my feet. ‘It’ll just take a second, why don’t you sit down and wait? I’ll call your name when it’s ready.’ The look on her face was absolutely priceless.
Turns out that it’s really hard to make a blended coffee drink and hold your crutches in place, so I actually did have to put weight on my foot. It really hurt, so my wincing as I handed her the drink was genuine. She looked thoroughly embarrassed–probably because she noticed the three or four regulars giving her the evil eye–and she didn’t even apologize before booking it out of the store, never to be seen again.”
Soccer Mommy Menace
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“When I was 16 I worked 2 jobs – I was a lifeguard and worked at Subway.
One night I was working at Subway, and it was about half an hour before we closed. An hour beforehand, you get out all the bread that’s needed for the morning shift, slice/prep any veggies that need it, and stock the fridge.
I’m in the back (but you could see over the counter that I was working at from the front), just slicing away. Some soccer mom comes in, orders 3 6-inch subs all the same, and my 2 coworkers start to go at it. She sees me and has a huge fit about how apparently she ‘isn’t as important as tomatoes’ and how I was probably ‘too dumb to see her and help.’ It was strange, since my other coworkers were helping her just fine.
The next morning around 6, good old soccer mom comes in, goes to the locker room without paying, gets dressed, doesn’t shower, and jumps in the pool. I watch all this, mouth agape, as she swims about 3 laps, hops out, goes into the locker room, comes back out with 3 cans of Slim Fast, gets back in the pool, and chugs all 3.
I stroll over and ask her to leave the pool, as we don’t allow food or drink. She glares at me, saying how she paid to get in, so she’ll exercise all she wants. I say, ‘#1 you didn’t pay, #2 you better pay or I’m calling the cops, and #3 you realize if 1 can is a meal, you just drank an entire day’s worth of meals while ‘exercising.’ Oh, and if you order 3 6 inch sandwiches, it’s just the same as eating a footlong with a 6-inch. You should really diet better.’ Her face was priceless.”
Rude Rockers
“I once worked at a large coffee chain located across from a popular music venue. Once when there was a line outside the door for the register, a certain headlining band (30 Seconds to Mars) bypassed the line and stood right in from of my register.
I then proceeded to keep taking the orders from those in line until the prick known as Jared Leto loudly exclaims, ‘Hey we’ve been waiting here for like 5 minutes, can I get some coffee?!’ to which I apologize and point to the line.
He glared at me and started listing off the drinks he wanted. I courteously took the order and processed the drinks. Now I am by no means a confrontational person, but I have my ways. So I charged them for every pump in the drinks, every shot, every change of specific milk they wanted, to the point that their bill was well over $100, which is probably not a lot for them, but for 6 people (including girlfriends) the look on Jared Leto’s face was priceless.
I also commented to him, ‘We are all very impressed that you get paid to do what you love, but it does not entitle you to cut in line. Especially in front of people who are paying good money to see you in an hour.’ There were some other choice words I could have had with him, but I was at work and had a job to do.”
Pharmacy Freak Outs
“Working at a pharmacy brings out the ugly side of people, especially when they’re at the drive-thru. They assume that a window separating us means that they can act like total jerks, swearing and flipping us off for inconveniences.
Then there are the impatient jerks who constantly honk their horn while I’m helping someone. Instead of coming into the pharmacy to pick up their medication, they would call the pharmacy while in line at the drive-thru and yell at whoever picks up the phone.
This one lady actually said something along the lines of, ‘You guys need to compensate me like what McDonald’s would do when they make their customers wait too long.’
There have been numerous instances where people start punching the window with their fist out of anger. This other lady parked her car in the drive-thru for 2 whole hours while spouting racist tirades just because her doctor wouldn’t authorize her anymore refills.
She thought that blocking the drive-thru would make things inconvenient for us (unfortunately for her, we got other tasks finished). Half the time the customers get mad, it isn’t even our fault, it’s either the doctor or insurance company and we’re the punching bag. Working at a pharmacy in the U.S. pretty much turned me into a misanthropist.”
Pudgy Pesterer
“I used to be a server at Macaroni Grill in a city where it was probably the nicest restaurant, so the customers we had acted like they were in a five star restaurant, demanding the same level of service.
Usually this wasn’t an issue; I was a good server and was never really overwhelmed, plus we had a good staff that helped each other out, so even if things got tough I could just ask.
As a server developer, I was the lead on large parties. This one time a party of 30 came in and sat in our fanciest room. The leader of the group, a small middle-aged man, balding, overweight and outspoken, came up to me and introduced himself. I thought, ‘How nice, someone with manners,’ and continued serving them.
The issue came up when the entire group of 30 needed their salads sent out and their drinks refilled. I had my partner on the table start refilling their drinks while I took out the salads five at a time on a tray. Knowing the middle-aged man was the reason for the meal, I served him and his wife their plates first, and he kindly asked me for some roll-up silverware as he didn’t have one. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring it when I have all the salads out.’
At that moment, one of the few kids in the group knocked their drink all over the table, my partner went to clean it up, and I refilled the remaining drinks and went back to the salad serving. When I was done, maybe three minutes later, I walked over to the macro station and grab a roll-up, only to turn around and be face-to-face with the middle-aged man.
He sticks his fat finger into my chest and jabs me with each word, ‘I asked for silverware, how am I supposed to eat my salad without a fork, you idiot?’ Being a tall guy, I kind of peer down at him and just hand him the roll-up in my hand, not saying anything. I follow him back to the table and ask if everyone is okay. Everything is going well, so I proceed to enter their orders into the system.
This is a laborious process for such a large group with their own additions and subtractions to each plate, and right as I’m finishing my manager comes up to me and tells me I’m off the table. Naturally I’m shocked, seeing as everything was fine. My manager tells me the middle aged man complained that I was rude and wasn’t moving quick enough.
Now that would’ve be fine if it were true, but I had managed to get drinks and salads out to a group of 30 less than 15 minutes after their arrival, which is good time by any measure.
Unfortunately my section was with the large table, so I had to serve the tables around this group. The first time I went back I heard him loudly exclaim to my partner that had taken over the table, ‘What happened to the other guy?! Did he retire? Hahaha.’
My partner didn’t say anything, but I turned around and smiled at him. ‘No sir, I didn’t retire, you asked that I stop serving your table.’ He was silent, and his wife and several other people looked at him with quizzical faces. His wife asked, ‘Why did you do that?’ to which he had no answer. As the group was leaving, this man’s wife had him walk up to me, hand me $20, and apologize. It was a pretty nice ending to an otherwise crappy situation.”
Bamboozling Bozos
“When I was younger I carried a backpack around at basketball games. It was filled with bottles of Bud Light, which I would sell to patrons on behalf of the venue. I hated this job more than anything.
It was extremely humiliating. Imagine carrying 3 cases on your back and having to lug it up and down flights of stairs for wasted guys who are only buying it off you for a laugh.
On this particular day, a guy yells from about 10-15 rows up ‘Oi, brew boy, come here!’ He then turns to his mates, high fives them, and they all laugh uncontrollably. So I arrive, and they all try to keep straight faces because it was the funniest thing that had happened to these dip sticks today.
The guy asks, ‘Can I have four?’ I say, ‘Sure, that will be forty bucks’. His brain ticks over and then he says, ‘But they are only $5 at the bar. Shouldn’t that be $20?’ I say, ‘The bar is down the stairs and out the door, and I’m here now so if you want your drinks it will be $40.’
After a while he thinks about it and then gives me the $40. I give him his beverages, then I put twenty in the cash bag and twenty in my pocket. The look on his face was priceless…he had no words. His friends all lost it laughing. It’s fair to say that I used that trick more than once after that incident.”
Little Debbie Downer
“A coworker of mine had been feeling down for a while, so to cheer him up, another person I work with who was friends with him made him a WHOLE TRAY of cupcakes. When she presented them to him, saying she hoped they improved his day, he didn’t even move to take them from her hands.
He just looked at them, paused and said, ‘Why did you make me those?
‘Uhhh…I made them to cheer you up!’
‘Well, I hate cupcakes.’
He was dead serious. She just stood there perplexed, holding the cupcakes as he turned around and went back to what he had been doing. No one in the room had any idea what to do.”
Snack Attack
“I was watching Inglourious Basterds in a theater with my girlfriend, and the lady at the end of our row kept opening a plastic grocery bag, pulling snacks out of it, and tying it back into a knot. This went on for the majority of the movie.
I felt red anger rush over me every time she crumpled the bag. I’m not proud to say that I eventually walked over to her and asked her to stop making so much noise. She got very defensive and asked if I worked there.
I told her no, and she flipped out even more, making a ton of noise. She got up to complain about me at that point, and I did the same for her. Apparently it’s okay for someone to crumple a plastic bag throughout the duration of an epic movie.
After it was over, she was talking to the manager and said ‘Ew! There he is!’ and started following me. It kind of freaked me out, so I power-walked to the car and had to change directions to evade her.”
Completely Uncalled For
“I was at a McDonalds and had just finished ordering. I fell to the back of the store, watching the other hungry guests eagerly fall into the queue, waiting to place their orders. It was a fairly busy weekday, with about 10 people waiting to order.
Then I noticed an elderly white male, and I mean OLD. Cane, hunch, and all. He had a McFlurry in his hand, and he seemed to be trying to return it. I couldn’t hear them from afar, but then the old man suddenly spoke up.
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T RETURN IT?’ The young girl looked shook up, giving him condolences that from afar I could not make out. The old man spoke again, ‘WHY DO THEY LET PEOPLE LIKE HER EVEN WORK?!’
He took the top off his McFlurry, raised it high in the air, turned it upside down, and slammed it onto the counter, making a huge mess and getting it all over the girl and the counter. Everyone in the store fell silent, the old man just strolled away, and the girl retreated to the back room as the manager and her co-workers cleaned up the mess.”