The electronics store where I work has one particular worker who seems like a bit of a contradiction. He’s EXCELLENT at solving problems that other workers are having, but he makes some VERY dumb decisions.

As an example, our video games section has empty cases on the shelf. You bring a case to the front counter, and they ring you out with an unopened case that has a game in it taken from a storage locker of sorts. [Worker] single-handedly keeps the locker sorted so that the most popular games are in the most convenient place for a worker to grab them. And yet, if he happens to be the one who sells a customer the last copy of a certain game that is in the locker, he’ll grab a giant stack of games from the back room, refill the locker, return the remaining games to the back room, and then resume checking out the customer.

One day, I overheard two of my coworkers talking about him.

Coworker #1: “I don’t get [Worker]. How can someone be so smart and so stupid at the same time?”

Coworker #2: “Well, you have to remember that ‘stupid’ can mean both ‘lack of intelligence’ and ‘lack of wisdom’.”

Coworker #1: “What’s the difference?”

Coworker #2: “Intelligence is being able to pop the hood of a car, look at the engine running, and tell what’s wrong with it. Wisdom is knowing better than to pop the hood of a car and look at the engine running while it’s in motion. [Worker] has the first one; he doesn’t have the second one.”

Ever since, whenever I run into a stupid customer, I keep this conversation in my mind.

Back about twenty years ago, a vegetarian friend was on a bus tour of Russia. At one point, the whole group had a banquet. All the other tables had food piled up. The vegetarians were at a table together, and in the middle was a large pot of soup. One member of the party dipped the ladle into the soup, and it came out with a whole chicken!

They complained to the waiter, explaining that they don’t eat flesh, so the waiter removed the chicken from the pot and walked away.

End of story, they did not eat that night. Hopefully, they had snacks back in their hotel rooms!

I recently had my purse stolen, which necessitated getting a new copy of my driver’s license. After a three-hour wait at the DMV (seriously), I finally got to the employee at the counter. He was helpful until it came time for me to pay. All I had was a hundred-dollar bill — no credit cards because of the stolen purse — and my total was $30.

Me: “Can you make change for a hundred?”

Employee: “Sure, I think so. Let’s see.”

He opened his drawer, took out a fifty-dollar bill, and eyed the scant few bills he had left.

Employee: “Err, one sec.” *Turning to the employee next to him* “Hey, do you have change for a fifty?”

She gave him two twenties and a ten, and he handed her the fifty. Then turned back to me.

Employee: “Okay, so, the twenty plus the…”

He stared at where the fifty had been — the one he had just handed to his coworker — and then at the bills in his hand. Then, he let out a huge sigh. I could SEE the defeat in his eyes.

Employee: “Sorry, it’s been a long day. I’ll take your hundred-dollar bill and go get change from the manager’s office, okay? I’ll be right back.”

He did eventually give me the correct change, but it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one dead inside after spending too long at the DMV!

This is back in the days when to get Internet at home, you had to get a landline installed. This meant I had a phone that only rang when my parents called or it was a telemarketer, most of whom left me alone when I told them I was renting. Except for this one guy. He was persistent. I could get up to three calls a day from him on my days off.

I was also going through a terrible time. I was divorcing my ex thanks to an affair, I’d been made redundant from the job I adored, and the replacement position they’d found me because “we don’t want to lose you” was doing none of the work I enjoyed while being surrounded by the nastiest clique of overgrown Mean Girls I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back was when I got home from a day of work, which I’d done on very little sleep because my sister, brother-in-law, and six-week-old nephew had been T-boned by a drunk driver the night before. (They were all fine — the worst injuries were whiplash to my sister and horrific bruising to my brother-in-law — but I didn’t know that at the time.)

I heard the phone ringing as I was heading up to my door, so I raced inside, thinking it might be my parents with an update.

Telemarketer: “Hello! This is [Telemarketer] from [Company]. Is this [My Name]?”

I just broke and burst into tears.

Telemarketer: “Hello?”

Me: *Still sobbing* “I’m sorry, did you not hear? She was hit by a drunk driver last night.”

Telemarketer: *Click*

I never heard from him or his company again. And my sister thought it was hilarious when I told her.

CONTENT WARNING: Sexual Assault Of Minor (Prior to events of story)

I used to work at a thrift store, and we got a new employee, [Creeper]. He was hired to be a truck driver to go around doing furniture pick-ups.

[Creeper] seemed to be a good-natured kind of guy. He tried to be friendly. The problem was that he was a little too aggressive about it — too friendly and too eager to make friends, particularly toward the younger female employees.

[Gay Employee] rode with [Creeper] once and made it absolutely clear that he would never get in the truck with [Creeper] ever again. Apparently, [Creeper] had views that were not LGBTQ-friendly, and [Gay Employee] didn’t feel comfortable or safe listening to the Bible-quote-laced diatribes [Creeper] would go on.

[Tough-Looking Employee] ended up with that job, and even he utterly loathed [Creeper] within a single trip. According to [Tough-Looking Employee], [Creeper] would talk with customers for upwards of twenty minutes at a time, aggressively pushing an invitation for them to join [Creeper]’s Bible study group. [Creeper] would then completely empty the truck, rearrange furniture, then go to the next house, Bible study invite, empty the truck, rearrange the entire truck for the newest furniture, and move on. [Tough-Looking Employee] said it was a study in pure frustration to try to get [Creeper] to knock that off, to no avail.

Finally, [Creeper] and [New Guy] left for a pick-up. They only had three houses to go to, so due to our need for coverage, both were scheduled to do a Donation Door shift in the afternoon. This was under the belief that an hour per pick-up was perfectly reasonable, plus some travel buffer time, seeing as how each pick-up was within the city limits. They turned three houses into a seven-hour trip for a few couches, chairs, and/or tables per house. 

They missed their door shifts completely, and [Assistant Manager] was forced to beg a couple of staff members to do an extra door shift to cover. Now, for [Assistant Manager], most staff would grab a pickaxe, give it a twirl, and ask which mountain she would like moved and to where. While a second door shift wasn’t something any of us liked, we would gladly do it for her. However, the point was that she never should have had to ask to cover [Creeper]’s lollygagging. ([New Guy] was clear; he wasn’t the driver, and short of bashing [Creeper] over the head and taking command of a large vehicle that he was unfamiliar with, he couldn’t do a whole lot to kick [Creeper] into gear.)

They both showed up near the end of the day, and [Supervisor #1] got into it a bit with [Creeper], basically calling him out on taking seven hours to hit three houses for a small load of stuff. He went into a moaning fit full of excuses. [Supervisor #1] told him that his goofing off was completely unacceptable before coming upstairs. She was almost to the top when both she and I (my area of sorting was near the stairwell) heard a very loud crash. [Creeper] had thrown something or knocked something over in a fit of pique. [Supervisor #1] did not go back down to investigate.

[Supervisor #1] went to [Supervisor #2] and talked to her about [Creeper]’s temper, as [Creeper] left yet again for a late lunch. On a lark, [Supervisor #1] and [Supervisor #2] went to public records and did some snooping to see if [Creeper] had any prior arrests.

Answer: Yes. He had been convicted of the rape of a fourteen-year-old girl and spent ten years in prison. He had gotten out of jail three months before his hiring.

[Supervisor #1] and [Supervisor #2] printed the information they found. [Supervisor #1] compiled the papers as evidence to give to [Store Manager] the next day. [Supervisor #2] grabbed me and told me what they had found, and I obligingly wiped the browser’s search history for them — literally minutes before [Creeper] came back from his break.

All was played cool as [Creeper] finished out his day and left. Staff were called and interviewed, and we learned all about what [Creeper] had done to make female employees uncomfortable.

He hit on me but claimed to be “a nice guy” in an incel way — describing how he was a follower of Christ and God had decreed that he deserved a good woman to be his devoted wife. (I was in my mid-thirties, but I have a baby face that makes me look like I’m in my twenties. [Creeper] was in his fifties.) I wasn’t afraid of him even before the horrible revelation, but I was sarcastically, cynically, uninterested. Unconsciously defensive behavior, I guess?

He hit on a female employee who had turned old enough to drink alcohol only a few months before. She was all kinds of “nope” about hanging out with him, too.

He even hit on one of our youngest newbies who had literally walked the stage out of high school two weeks before. She was also all kinds of “nope”.

Even the older women were very uncomfortable around him.

Anyway, the story has not yet come to an end. We’re still on the same day of the revelation that he was a convicted pedophile. We kept asking one another why [Store Manager] hadn’t done a background check!

[Creeper]’s shift ended at 4:30.

[Supervisor #2] left at 5:30.

At 6:00 pm, [Supervisor #2] called back. I picked up the phone, and [Supervisor #2] was highly anxious. She said that she had seen what looked like [Creeper], who should have left already, still in the parking lot. He was just sitting in his car for hours, staring at the building. She was deeply concerned for [Supervisor #1] and me, as we were closing the store together. Note: she did not approach [Creeper] in any way; she just left like she wasn’t paying attention and then drove home to call us and give us the heads-up. She had already called [Tough-Looking Employee]’s cell phone and asked him to stay with us all until we left the premises. His shift ended a bit before ours, but he willingly agreed to stay with us to keep us safe. ([Tough-Looking Employee] was the real MVP right there.)

At 6:15, I asked [Tough-Looking Employee] if he would go out and “look for carts” in the parking lot and just have a look-see to see if [Creeper] was still out there. [Tough-Looking Employee] caught on immediately and went outside. He came back five minutes later to state that, yes, there was a vehicle with someone in it who looked a lot like [Creeper] just loitering in the parking lot. [Tough-Looking Employee] told me that he looked at the person with the kind of “I see you, I’m aware of you, points-to-eyes-points-to-other-person” look before coming back inside.

At 6:30, [Tough-Looking Employee] went back outside to check again for “carts” and reported that the vehicle with person-who-looks-like-[Creeper] had moved on and we were in the clear.

The store shut down as usual. [Tough-Looking Employee] went out the back door first, looked around, and reported that we were still clear. We all headed for our vehicles, climbed in, locked doors, and waited for each other to pull out of the parking spots. Nobody left until we were in a conga line heading for the exit to separate.

The next day, more details came out. Apparently, [Store Manager] did interviews, but it was [Regional Manager]’s task to do background checks as the final step before hiring, which they didn’t see fit to do. 

[Store Manager] lost her s*** at [Regional Manager]; due to their negligence, this was a storm of truly epic lawsuit-and-PR-Nightmare-Fuel-worthy proportions, and the wheels were promptly turned to getting [Creeper] outta dodge. Not only was he creeping on female staff, but he was representing the company while pushing “Bible Study” on customers, going into their houses, and interacting with their families. Oh, yeah, and he was a convicted pedophile.

Thankfully, [Creeper] was let go as “Not A Good Fit For The Company”, using his tiff with [Supervisor #1] as one reason and his lollygagging on pick-ups as the second reason. We were very alert after hours for a while. Thankfully, he never appeared again after being let go.

We didn’t know or think of it then, but in all honesty, we should have called the police while he was sitting in the parking lot. His behaviors were deeply concerning, and the fact that he had been recently released from prison and was now lurking outside our workplace long after hours should have garnered a lot of attention. 

Live and learn.