We were really understaffed in the deli where I work. It was so bad that there was an understanding that if we got backed up, we could call over the PA for a manager since they were all technically trained in every department.

One day, I was working alone with an older Eastern European lady, who was just done with everything. It was busy, and we got backed up really badly. My coworker went stomping over to the phone, set it up in PA mode, and yelled into it.

Coworker: “If someone doesn’t come help us, I’ll quit!”

Managers materialized from every direction and came running as I (and the customers) just stared at her in disbelief.

One of my former coworkers was a rather spiteful woman. She didn’t say anything outright, but she tended to print out newspaper articles and superglue them to people’s cubicle walls. It took quite a lot of money to remove the paper, as every centimeter was glued down. We could never prove it, but she always seemed to be absent when the articles would go up and seemed to agree with the stories.

In one example, there was an article about the link between obesity and heart failure pasted on the wall of a rather overweight employee who had been trying to lose weight. Another time, there was an article about a “heck house” that was placed in the cubicle of an openly gay woman.

However, this one was the worst by a mile.

One of our fellow coworkers, a friend of mine, had recently undergone a hysterectomy. I’m not certain why she had one, but it had something to do with her risk of cancer. I also know that it was in another state, and she had a family already, so that could have been a factor.

I arrived one morning to hear my friend shrieking and crying, as other employees did their best to comfort her.

Me: “What’s happened?”

Friend: “Look what [Coworker] did now!”

I went to [Friend]’s cubicle, expecting to see pictures of protesters at abortion clinics, but I was wrong. Instead, I saw an article, far bigger than previous ones, glued to the cubicle wall. This was about a woman who had undergone a hysterectomy only to lose her family weeks later in a tsunami. Words such as “hysterectomy” and “drowned” were highlighted and a circle was drawn around the mother in question with “SINNER” written underneath.

I went and comforted my friend while [Coworker] came out of the elevator with a smug, triumphant smile.

Me: “What the H***, [Coworker]?”

Coworker: “I don’t have the slightest idea what you mean.”

Between a few other employees and me, we screamed what had happened at the unfazed coworker.

Coworker: “Well, that happened in a Buddhist area, didn’t it? What goes around comes around.”

I did my best to resist slapping her, and I was about to actually slap her when our boss came up the stairs. When he heard us screaming like cats, he asked what was going on. When we explained, he looked sympathetically at [Friend] and glared daggers at [Coworker].

Boss: “Unfortunately, since we don’t have working cameras on this floor, we can’t prove anything, but there will be an investigation.”

While the investigation didn’t confirm that [Coworker] had done anything, due to the frosty atmosphere in the office, she was moved to an office with fewer people and lower pay.

Related:
Wow. Not A Single Drop Of Compassion. Part 4
Wow. Not A Single Drop Of Compassion. Part 3
Wow. Not A Single Drop Of Compassion. Part 2
Wow. Not A Single Drop Of Compassion.

A new food stall has opened in the cafeteria opposite my office. I go there one day to grab my lunch. (I’ve removed the description of the food as it would be too easy to identify the company.)

The server who takes my order is a woman in her forties or fifties. 

Me: “I’ll have a [main] and a [side], please.”

Server: “The [side] will take fifteen minutes to cook. Are you okay with waiting?”

Me: “Yes, sure.”

I’ve ordered this before at different outlets, so I know how long it takes. I am planning to eat the main first while waiting for the side. 

I take a seat at a table. I usually eat a late lunch, so it’s after 2:00 pm, and there are no other customers — only the other staff going around busing the tables or sweeping the floor. My table faces the stall, and I can see them preparing the food and putting it onto the stove. I sit there and wait… and wait… and wait. 

After almost ten minutes, another customer comes in and places an order. The other server prepares his food, and he receives it within five minutes. 

I go back up to the stall. 

Me: “May I know if my order is ready? I’ve been waiting for some time.”

Server: “We’re going to start cooking it now.”

Me: “But… I’ve been here for fifteen minutes already!”

Server: “We were waiting for the [side] to be done cooking.”

I stared at her, nonplussed. I could see the stove from where I’ve been sitting, and there’s definitely more than one burner, so it isn’t as though they have to cook one dish at a time. In fact, the other customer’s order was made on the second burner. If they were able to prepare his order, why not mine?

Me: “Couldn’t I have the [main] first while you cook the [side]?”

The server stares at me as though she hadn’t thought of it.

Server: “Oh! Why didn’t you say so?”

Me: “You mean I have to tell you that you’re able to cook more than one dish at a time?”

I admit that I was so flabbergasted that I said the first thing that came to mind. She gawks at me as though it never occurred to her in a million years that she could cook [main] first while waiting for [side] to be prepared. 

Server: “Here’s your [side]. Please wait; your [main] will be ready in five to ten minutes.”

Of course, the [side] was too hot for me to eat right away. I had been waiting for twenty minutes now and was really hungry, but I still had to wait even longer for them to cook the [main]! I wanted to do a facepalm. 

I never went back there. I heard a lot of colleagues say that they were just too slow, and they hated buying from that stall as it wasted a lot of their lunch break. The stall closed down a few months later, unsurprisingly.

My cousin was on a film crew in Australia. Because so many of them were vegetarian, they requested that the hotel they took over serve only vegetarian food. He said the spread was amazing, with a variety of interesting and tasty dishes.

And every dish was topped with diced bacon!

What stuck with me about it was how impressed my cousin was with the care they put into the food. It was all done with love. This was last century; I bet every town in Australia large enough to have two dining options has good vegan food now.

I live in a rural area, and while I’ve never had my mailbox smashed, I did have a very lazy postal worker. I’m 99.9% positive she’d open our Netflix DVDs and watch them before we got them back when we first moved in. She’d bend people’s mailboxes back so she could more easily put in the mail from her car, but it would also let rain get in.

A few years ago, someone stole our mailbox. It was one of those plastic Rubbermaid ones,  and they pried it up and made off with it, leaving nails just sticking up from the base. For the new mailbox, we put rebar a good foot or so into the ground and whatever else my husband did. The end result was it gave the mailbox a nice recoil.

The postal worker tried bending back our mailbox, and it bounced right back — WHAMMO! — right into her car. She tried complaining, but our box was totally compliant with PO standards.

No more soaking wet mail.