(It’s mid-day Monday; I’m on my way home from a charity shop I volunteer at every Monday morning when I get a phone call from my paid work.)

Manager: “Why aren’t you at work? You were supposed to be here hours ago!”

Me: “Huh? I never do Monday mornings; that’s my shift at [charity shop]. I’m not due in ’til two this afternoon.”

Manager: “Well, I have the timetable printout here in front of me, and it says you were due in at 10!”

Me: “That’s really weird; I’m not supposed to be scheduled on Monday mornings, and I copied all my shift times for this week down when I left on Saturday afternoon.”

Manager: “Oh, I didn’t like this week’s timetable, so I took it home Saturday night and brought the revised one in yesterday. It says your shift started at 10.”

Me: “Sorry… so you took the timetable home on saturday after I left and brought it back on my day off, having changed the time of my first shift afterwards? How was I supposed to know?”

Manager: “You could have come in and checked, you know? You can’t expect me to do everything for you. Just get here as soon as you can!” *hangs up*

(Turns out he’d done the same thing to about half the staff; that week was chaos!)

Related:
Mismanaged Expectations, Part 5
Mismanaged Expectations, Part 4
Mismanaged Expectations, Part 3
Mismanaged Expectations, Part 2
Mismanaged Expectations (Not Always Right)

(My family and I are shopping in a theme park souvenir store devoted to a certain legendary space movie series.)

Sister: *to us* “Last time I was here, I saw light-up R2D2s that I’d really like to get. Help me find them!”

(We search the store, and are stopped by an employee standing at a counter full of bins.)

Employee: “Can I help you find something?”

Me: “What are those bins?”

Employee: “It’s our build-your-own-robot figurine section! We’ve got all these parts, and you can build your own, any way you like!”

Me: “Wow, that’s actually pretty cute. I’ll have to think about that.”

Employee: *to my sister* “How about you? Are you sure you don’t need one? They’re cuuuuuuuute!”

Sister: “No, thanks. These aren’t the droids I’m looking for.”

Employee: “You win the park.”

(My boss is lunching with one of our biggest clients. As a nice Christmas gesture, he wants to give them a gift and sends me out to see what the local winery has. Once there, I spy a four bottle box set of very nice Italian vintages and take it to the register. Note: this happens on December 21st which is slated to be a potential date for the end of the world.)

Cashier: “Oh man, you’re going for the good stuff, aren’t you? Quite a party you’ll have with these!”

Me: “I wish! They’re actually for a client of ours.”

Cashier: “Oh, right.” *winks* “Don’t worry, I’m planning to welcome the apocalypse in a similar way.”

Me: “Uh, no… seriously, I’m buying this for a customer of my boss.”

Cashier: “Yeah I get ya.” *winks again* “Just a suggestion? Grab yourself some high strength painkillers as well. A few handfuls mixed in with these and you’ll be so out of your head you won’t care the world is ending!”

Me: *quietly takes the wine and walks out*

(I’m working the register. The shift lead is making drinks, and the manager is in the back. A woman comes in and stands in line, holding a puppy in her arms.)

Shift Lead: “Excuse me, ma’am, but it’s against health codes to bring animals inside. You’ll have to take your dog out.”

Customer: “It’s a guide dog.”

(The puppy appears to be only a few months old, and doesn’t have a guide dog vest.)

Shift Lead: “I’m sorry, your puppy isn’t wearing a vest. You’re going to have to take him outside.”

(My manager comes out from the back.)

Manager: “Ooh, look at the cute puppy!”

Me: *facepalm*

(I am the hospital’s pharmacist. Occasionally, a patient is admitted to the hospital who brings in medications from home, often in a plastic baggie or other unlabeled container. One day, a nurse calls me ahead of sending down the pills.)

Nurse: “I’m sending down some pills to be identified, but they smell funny… like bad breath or poop or something.”

Me: “Uh, okay.”

(About 10 pills arrive in the pneumatic tube system. They look funny, are irregularly shaped and have no imprint codes stamped on them. The brown outer coating is sloughing off. I think they are perhaps an herbal product. When I open the baggie, the stench nearly knocks me off my feet. I put on a pair of gloves and spend a few minutes gagging, but nonetheless trying to figure out what they are. Defeated, I call the nurse back.)

Me: “Where did you say they patient got these pills from?”

Nurse: “Oh, the gastroenterologist is here, and he dug 40 of them out of the patient’s rectum.”

Me: “…Say WHAT?! Listen, for future reference, that would have been nice to know before I opened the package and nearly threw up!”

Nurse: “Consider yourself lucky: the unit secretary touched them with her bare hands!”

(The “pills” were indeed several weeks’ worth of tablets that had been the cause of the patient’s severe constipation!)