She Tried To Talk Bad About The Company, But Everyone Else Loved Them
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“I worked for a company that had one of those video game buses with the TV’s and couches and stuff on the inside. I was the only employee and was technically the ‘Event Manager and Supervisor.’ That was just a fancy term for me being the only one to drive the truck, set it up and do maintenance on it. All my boss did was schedule bookings and tell me where I was going. I processed the payments as well, so I was basically in charge of the entire operation.
One time, this woman came into the trailer at the end of a party to yell at me since her kid didn’t have enough fun. I told her all the other kids were having a great time and nobody else complained.
She insisted I give her a full refund since her kid didn’t enjoy himself and I told her I wasn’t going to do that. She asked who my manager was and I told her I was the manager. She then asked who my employer was and I told her his name. She demanded I call him so she could talk to him and on speakerphone. My boss said, ‘I wasn’t there to see how things were going. It’s up to my employee to determine whether a refund is called for or not.’
Side note: while he was technically my boss, it was more like two friends running a business. He’s a few years older than me and hired me off the street, but we were both in our 20’s at the time (he just turned 30 like 6 months ago). His dad paid for everything for him, so he wasn’t really concerned about sucking up to customers.
I ended up telling her I wasn’t going to refund the entire $350 because one kid didn’t have a good time and promptly left. What’s funny is a bunch of the parents at the event apparently got raving reviews from their kids and that party actually brought in like eight new customers, a few of whom booked us multiple times a year. She apparently tried talking bad about the company to the other parents, but that didn’t seem to stop them since everyone else had a great time.
I miss that job. Best job I ever had.”
He Let Her Run Her Mouth While He Collected Evidence
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“I got into an argument with a co-worker while waiting at a train station about my lack of religious beliefs. She actually interfered in my conversation with someone else and ended up becoming offended by it. We rode the same bus and train to work every day because we also lived in the same apartment complex. Well, later that same week, I got promoted to Supervisor and guess who was on my team? That’s right. The co-worker who hates me.
She was the worst employee I ever had, but I tried to work with her. Eventually, I had to write her up for call avoidance. However, she went to HR and told them that I was being unfair to her and cited her religion as the reason why. She told HR about the conversation we had but neglected to tell them that it didn’t happen on company grounds. HR and my boss came to me to talk about it and I set them straight, but since religion was involved, it was decided to not ruffle any feathers, so she got off.
Knowing that she had it in for me, I decided to only communicate with her through my Team Lead. Once again, she was avoiding calls, so I wrote her up again. This time, I allowed time to pass and tracked all of her time and got so much data that HR couldn’t ignore it. Once again, she tried to cry foul and claim religious harassment. But little did she know, I had my Team Lead and my boss watching her as well. This time, she had no recourse and HR agreed to allow me to fire her.
That was the best feeling in the world.”
They Might Want To Think Twice Before Messing With Their Web Developer
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“I worked for a school board and they contacted me to do some additional work on the side creating a website.
When it was complete, I went to the guy for presentation and payment and he told me he wouldn’t be paying me and there was nothing I could do. I leaned over and deleted the site. He seemed curiously surprised somehow. I giggled. He later wanted the website restored and he would pay me with stolen school merchandise. I told him I wasn’t going to steal from children and teachers just so he could have leverage over me.
Another time, I had made a website allowing people to send messages to the members of the school board. He later wanted me to send him the messages so he could ‘vet’ them. I added him to the CC of every message. I was then asked in a board meeting why he was also getting these messages and I told them why he felt entitled to their private communications. They talked to him. When I put in my notice there, he came to my cubicle on a busy floor and told me I’d have to pay them back for the training they sent me to. He said it so quietly, too. So, I asked him if he was threatening me, but I said it loudly so everyone came to see what was up.
He literally fled. What a freaking prick.”
It’s Always Useful To Know Where You Stand Legally
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“After my father passed away, there was a small amount of estate-related issues to take care of. I was the legal executor of his estate. While I was sorting through things, I started getting letters from a local credit union regarding a credit card account of his that they wanted paid off. Problem was, I could find no evidence on my end, in all of Dad’s paperwork, of his having had that credit card. And though I knew he had a savings account with them, I didn’t recall any prior bills from them regarding said credit card — and I’d been handling his bills for close to a year before he passed away. I went in to ask for evidence and was told that only the CEO could handle the matter. She was on vacation that week, so I left my name and number to have her get back to me. When she finally called me back, she didn’t offer evidence but instead offered a number of demands that I immediately pay the money and that if there wasn’t enough money in Dad’s estate, I should sell the house he had owned (for an alleged debt of about $600). Pointing out that he had not, in fact, owned said house for quite some time by the time he died fell on deaf ears.
The letters continued, some personally written and rather harassing in tone. I was feeling rather concerned, as I didn’t know exactly what they could do, or what my options were. I know the smart thing would have been to retain an estate lawyer to handle it, but what do you do when you’re not an attorney and don’t have the money to retain one? I had been handling things myself as the most financially-minded of my siblings and trying to handle things as a matter of common sense and common decency. There weren’t a lot of assets or debts with the estate, it seemed like it should be pretty straightforward (and other than this one case, all of it went smoothly).
Fortunately, Oregon’s estate laws are actually really easy to read for a layperson. I spent several nights studying the various sections, determined exactly how things should go, and wrote a letter (sent Certified Delivery with a return receipt) back to the credit union CEO. In the letter, I stated the following:
First, as there was no evidence presented for the claim, I was formally denying it in my capacity as executor, which the law allowed, with a window of opportunity of 30 days to appeal the design decision in court.
Second, if she wished to make an appeal to me personally and save on the court fees, she needed to provide documentation of the account, including a record of all transactions and charges to justify the amount claimed.
Naturally, I got a letter back four weeks later. It contained some paperwork, including the paperwork establishing Dad’s savings account…but nothing establishing a credit card. Further, the letter stated that it would be too onerous to provide full records of all the transactions. (A note to any bankers out there: never tell a programmer it’s too difficult for you to access your own data. We know it’s either bullcrap or that you’re admitting incompetence. This would have been a 5-minute database query for me, and that’s if I had to look up the tables first.) It reiterated the demand for immediate payment, again stating the house (again, not actually Dad’s, but she kept insisting it was) needed to be sold to pay for it.
I wrote another letter. In this letter, I clarified several points for her:
First, as she had not provided the required documentation, she had not actually made an appeal that would be subject to evaluation, let alone acceptance; therefore, the original denial of the claim stood unchanged.
Second, that it was not her place to determine my father’s assets, as she was not the executor of the estate.
Third, that even if her claim had been granted, Oregon law requires six months from the decedent’s passing to receive all claims before any of those claims may be paid out, and by demanding immediate payment she was attempting to get me to break the law.
Fourth, Oregon law declares the priority of claims by the nature of them, and credit card debts were rank N (i.e., ‘everything not covered above,’ where the above-included taxes, medical debts, and various other things); even if her claim had been granted, she could not be paid unless there was money left after paying all higher-priority debts, and even if the house had been included, that wouldn’t have been the case.
And fifth, as the one-month deadline for appealing in court would expire by the time they received this letter, they had exhausted all of their legal options, and further attempts to pursue the claim would constitute unlawful harassment, and charges would be pressed in such an instance.
I didn’t hear back from them again.”
Who Knew Trying To Return An Internet Router Would Be Such A Hassle?
“My mother-in-law passed away last year and my wife and I got rid of the leftover stuff. Most of it was easy, except the AT&T router for her Internet access.
We got a total runaround.
I brought it into an AT&T store, the same one my mother-in-law had signed up from, and they said it had to be returned in some special box from the local post office. We went to the post office and were told the special box came from AT&T. We went back to AT&T, in a different city, and were told yet another false story.
It caused my wife an amazing amount of grief. Her mother had just died. She’s trying to do the ‘adult’ thing and responsibly close out her mother’s accounts and AT&T was just being a bunch of incompetent clowns. The router became her albatross.
The router sat in the trunk of the car for weeks. One day I was grabbing lunch and notice another AT&T. I walked inside and up to a desk where a rep was talking Internet plans with another customer. I didn’t interrupt, but the rep paused to give me a story about how I couldn’t return the router here and would need to set up a return ‘with a central office.’
I calmly put the router on her desk and said, ‘No, I won’t be doing that. The owner of this account just died. I’m just trying to give you your property back. You’ve given me the runaround for weeks now and I’m done.’
As I turned to walk away, she yelled, ‘but we’re just going to throw it away if you leave it here! You’ll get charged for it!’
‘Okay by me!’ I toss over my shoulder as I walked out the door, ‘Good luck collecting from a dead woman!’
I occasionally wonder if the other customer stuck around or not. But then I remembered who runs the FCC and it’s not like there’s a real choice in ISPs in most areas of the country.”
Accusing Him Of Plagiarism Was A Big Mistake
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“One of my old English teachers was giving me a hard time about writing. She accused me of plagiarism in one of the final assignments I wrote and marked me down because I didn’t write it a certain way.
I turned around and said, ‘Oh, you mean just like the lawsuit you’re currently defending against that accuses you of plagiarism?’
If her jaw could have hit the floor, it would have. She was utterly speechless. She thought no one knew about her ongoing lawsuits. Yeah, I knew about them. Both of them. I also found out about the third one that got her fired from the school when they showed a huge disparity in mark scores because she excessively marked down someone who wrote something she didn’t like in the Australian equivalent of the SAT’s, only for them to turn around and have it marked at two other schools. That was a few years after my encounter though.
She had a real chip on her shoulder with me after that, but man, it was totally worth it.”
They Can’t Do That…It’s Discrimination
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“I was working a show where the stagehands had to walk onstage in costume to hook up some of our performers during a scene for a flight. This HAD to be done by a technician due to the life safety involved and our agreement.
We all grumbled about wearing the stupid costume, but it was provided for us and it’s in our contract that we have to wear whatever they want us to as long as they provide it.
Somewhere along final dress, the director noticed that some of the techs are female. She requested to make all stagehands that do that track male. She was unceremoniously told by our steward that no, she can’t do that. It is, in fact, against the law and discriminatory because we are not hired for our ‘look.’ The actors are hired that way, but we were hired by skill.
She then started requesting the women style their hair a certain way, remove glasses and jewelry, and do their makeup. At this point, the steward met up with the production manager with a note from our lawyer, again reminding everyone that technicians are not actors and she has no choice if she wants to keep the effect
The director was summarily told to shut up in a closed-door meeting and never bothered us again, though I can guarantee it still bothers her to this day.”
“They Can Pay Me Now Or They Can Hear It From The Labor Department”
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“When I was in college, I took a job from a moron. I knew he was a moron about halfway through the interview, but he was willing to let me work around my class schedule. I didn’t care how stupid he was as long as he was writing checks. Two months later, I found out he was more of a moron than I thought. He was a welder/shop foreman with supposedly more than 20 years experience but was unable to understand manufacturing tolerances and how they applied to welding parts together. So he stopped returning my calls and was never at the office/shop.
Three months later, he still had not paid my last three paychecks; I finally caught him in his office. When I asked why it would take that long to pay me, he replied, ‘Just haven’t been able to get around to it, the accountant has been to busy to write the checks,’ and shrugged. However, he happened to have some more work that he wanted me to do. Every check had come from the checkbook sitting on his desk, in his own handwriting, signed by him and him alone. I had never seen or heard a word from this ‘accountant’ that he claimed my pay went through.
I had planned on telling him that he had until Friday to pay me, but his completely dismissive attitude and the shrug changed my mind. ‘Moron, I don’t work here anymore. You can pull out that checkbook and pay me now, the same as every other check has been, or you can hear it from the Labor Department.’
They found that he had not paid 13 total employees in the year prior to me calling them, but it had been smaller amounts.”
No One Gets Special Treatment…Not Even Former Employees
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“This guy used to come into the movie theater I worked at every Monday night. Apparently, he had worked there before, but I had been there for six years at this point and I had never worked with him.
Anyway, every time he would come in, he would come late to the very last movie and then expect us to pop fresh popcorn and put new hot dogs on the clean grill. We would save the last batch of popcorn in a plastic bag and keep the hotdogs in a steam drawer, so it’s not like we didn’t have what he wanted. He just wanted special treatment. Then he would try to pull that scam where he gives the cashier a $100 bill and then adds stuff to his order and takes stuff away to confuse the cashier and get free stuff. He was always super rude, too.
When I got promoted to management, I was finally able to stand up to him a little. I said something like, ‘You come in here every Monday, talk down to my cashier and try to scam us out of money. I’m not going to put up with it anymore.’
The dude flipped out. He started saying how he used to work here so he knows how everything works and how he’s on the city council of a different city IN A DIFFERENT COUNTY. I’m pretty sure I just laughed and said, ‘You’re in [my city], so that doesn’t matter.’
He was so mad, but he actually started being less rude and stopped trying to scam us all together. Eventually, he stopped coming. I don’t even know why he came to my theater since his city has like 2-3 to choose from, one being the same chain that mine was.”
His Band Probably Would Have Been ‘More Dedicated’ If He Paid Them
“I played keys for a dude who was on American Idol and wanted to do his own live shows a few years ago. This guy was from an absurdly rich family. They were big local names and they funded his album and live equipment. He lived in a half million dollar apartment, but of course, he couldn’t afford to pay the guys who were making his live shows possible, not even a little. Literally $0.
Over half a year went by and we had spent more money being in this group than we made from driving everywhere. Meanwhile, he was buying all this new crazy stuff with money from his parents and investors. I know playing live shows can take time to build and become lucrative, so I wanted to approach the money topic with care. I raised my concerns by asking if he expected us to invest another year in this and not see a dime. He gave me some sass about how I was not seeing the ‘bigger picture’ and needed to be ‘more dedicated.’
He said, ‘Maybe you aren’t the right fit,’ like it was a threat.
I said, ‘You know, you’re right,’ and walked.
The rest of the guys in the band bailed, too, after I did because he’s one of the few narcissists I’ve met (there were lots of other things besides the money). Since then, I haven’t seen any posts about gigs he’s playing. I wonder why.”
Her Coworker Just Had It Out For Her
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“I was working for a huge clothing store chain as a temp student worker one summer many years ago. I worked there for two days before one of the employees started acting weird around me and bossing me around (we weren’t working in the same department so she shouldn’t even have been telling me anything). She started coming to the changing rooms where I was folding the discarded clothes to talk on the internal phone next to me to say, ‘Oh my God, the new student hasn’t even finished what you asked her to do yet. She’s wasting my time,’ and basically just being demeaning for no reason.
One day, I realized she was following me around the store, hiding behind clothes racks or watching me while pretending to be folding pants (she wasn’t even in her own area so she stuck out like a sore thumb). At one point, she started coming up to me to berate me for the smallest things. She was leaving and coming back every few minutes doing the same routine until she had a ‘real’ grievance about something I forgot to pick up in the stock room and she sent me there to do it immediately.
I had been there only a few minutes when guess who walks in? The crazy stalker.
She started yelling at me and telling me everything I did wrong. She said I was sitting around instead of working (I sat once to do my shoelaces) and said, ‘You’re messing up MY store.’ She was barely above me, only working 20 hours a week.
I listened and replied to some things, until she got to the end of her rant and delivered what was to be her mic drop line: ‘Well, anyway, you’re just a freaking temp worker!’
I just looked at her and said, ‘Well, yeah, I’m a student, I’m just here to pay my plane ticket to go on vacation, you’re stuck here.’
The best part was that she went to talk to the floor manager afterward, saying I yelled at her and called her all kinds of names. The manager came up to me and told me that the girl was crazy and was doing the same thing every time a new temp student came in. It got to the point they had a hard time finding student workers.
I asked the day after to be sent to another store.”
