A new store manager is going through staff scheduling with the floor managers. It’s his first time managing a store in a small town with just one high school where a lot of people know each other.

Store Manager: “Who is Milton? Why is he only ever scheduled to work the back?”

Checkout Manager: “Milton? Oh, you mean Milk. Yeah, he’s no good on checkout. We tried, but that didn’t work out.”

Store Manager: “Milk?”

Me: “Nickname.”

Store Manager: “Why is his nickname Milk?”

Me: “He got 2% on his final math test in high school, and since then, everyone’s called him Milk.”

Store Manager: “Okay, so no checkout. Got it.”

I work as a lecturer for an educational institution with branches all over the country. My branch is regarded as the finest in the whole organization, and this story is about the time I realized why.

Around five years after I started working there, the board of directors of our organization decided to gather all the lecturers at a conference hotel. The idea was to exchange experiences and generally have a nice time with our colleagues.

We were organized into groups based on subjects. All lecturers from different schools who taught the same subjects would be in the same groups. The day’s program would be decided by different groups: the program for [subject #1] lecturers would be set up by [City #1 School], the program for the [subject #2] lecturers would be set up by [City #2 School], etc.

My school happened to be responsible for setting up the program for my subject. We did some planning before the conference and decided that it would be a good idea to share experiences and resources and generally converse about how we went about doing our jobs. Our colleagues from the other cities thought so, too; we spent the day discussing all sorts of case studies and methods, generally learning a lot from each other.

During these talks, I realized the first reason why my branch is the best in the organization. We were discussing our methods when I showed one of my junior colleagues from another school some resources I had on my laptop. You know the sort of thing: PowerPoint presentations, written documents, spreadsheets, etc. She leaned in and studied my stuff eagerly, eventually muttering:

Colleague #1: “I don’t have anything like that.”

Me: “Well, they’re fairly easy to make, but the reason I have so much of this is that I’ve worked on it for five years.”

Colleague #1: “Well, I just started this fall, so I’ve only been working here for five months. It’s my first job, so…”

Me: “Do you want some of this?”

She looked at me, surprised.

Colleague #1: “Really?”

Me: “Uh… yeah? It’s not secret or anything.”

Colleague #1: “I can just… have it?”

Me: “Sure. What are you interested in?”

Colleague #1: “Well… all of it, but…”

Me: “Okay, I’ll set up a shared link for you. Hang on.”

I collected pretty much everything I had made for work over the past five years — PowerPoint presentations, syllabuses, and timetables; tests and evaluation criteria; collections of suitable literature complete with specific page numbers so they could easily be matched with subjects; lists of links to relevant web articles — a whole bunch of useful stuff.

Colleague #1: “Wow, this is great! This could save me a bunch of time. And it’s okay if I just reuse this?”

Me: “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

Colleague #1: “It’s just that we’re not really used to sharing resources like this. I’ve found some stuff online, but…”

Me: “Hold up. Hang on… You don’t share your ideas with the other lecturers? Why not?”

Colleague #1: “Well, it… Huh. I guess it just never really occurred to us.”

I looked around the table at the other people who taught the same subject as me. They seemed equally perplexed.

Me: “Do none of you share resources? Plans, timetables, lecture presentations, notes…?”

Colleague #2: “Hm… Not really, no…”

Colleague #3: “I guess we do sometimes… but no, we mostly just build our own stuff from the bottom up.”

Me: “Well, feel free to use my stuff. You can make changes, too, if you need to. There’s no copyright on this.”

Colleague #1: “This is awesome!”

It turned out that our branch had developed a culture for sharing information and discussing things freely while the other institutions had much less interaction between their lecturers. To me, the free exchange of ideas has always felt like a very natural thing (especially given that we are, you know, a freakin’ school), and my managers encourage it. My coworkers and I borrow stuff from each other all the time. Apparently, this wasn’t common practice everywhere in the organization.

After the conference, we heard that the other branches also seemed to have a completely different idea of what this kind of conference was about. One subject group decided to spend the day watching a stand-up comedian they had hired. A different group spent most of their time chatting and lunching. For them, this was a social event. The whole day was just spent hanging around in a hotel, socializing. In fairness, the people who attended did say that it was very nice, but it wasn’t exactly useful to their actual jobs.

I hear things are a bit better at the other branches now, some ten years later, but the board of directors still considers my workplace the “cherry on the cake”.

About a decade ago, I moved from one coast to the other for work. My cell phone provider didn’t have great coverage in my new location, so once my contract was up (after about two months), I switched providers.

All was well until about four months later when I got an email from my previous provider telling me I owed them almost $400. Confused, I called them up.

Representative: “I see here that you ordered a [Smartphone].”

Me: “What? No, I didn’t. My account is closed. It’s been closed for six months.”

Representative: “The item was ordered from your account and shipped to [City in my previous state].”

Me: *Annoyed and in disbelief* “Are you telling me that your company accepted an order from a closed account and shipped it to a state that your own records show I don’t live in anymore?”

There was a long pause.

Representative: “Okay, you don’t need to worry about this. We’ll take care of it.” *Click*

Sure enough, I never heard about it again.

I live with my mother, and I cook for both of us most of the time. However, on this particular evening and after a long day at work, neither of us has the will to cook, so we decide to order sushi. I open the take-out app on my phone and select the options we want. It’s 7:00 pm, and the order will arrive around 7:45 pm, so we wait.

Around 8:00 pm, nothing has arrived. I call the restaurant, and they tell us the driver just left with our order; he should arrive in around twenty minutes. We wait some more.

At 9:00 pm, still no food. I call the restaurant again, and they say the driver is two streets away. Fifteen minutes later — yes, for two streets — the delivery guy is at the door. He gives me our order without an apology for arriving so late, and he leaves.

I check the bag, and our desserts are missing. Again, I call the restaurant.

Restaurant: “[Restaurant], good evening!”

Me: “Good evening. I called you twice tonight to enquire about our order for [our address]. We finally received it, but we are missing the desserts.”

Restaurant: “Our apology for the inconvenience. We’ll remove the price of [desserts] from your next order.”

Me: “When will the delivery person arrive with them?”

Restaurant: “Look, we’re not gonna send him out again just for some desserts.”

I start to lose my cool.

Me: “No, I disagree. I paid for those desserts, and I want them delivered.”

Restaurant: “We understand that you paid for them, which is why we’ll remove the price of the desserts from your next order.”

Me: “No. The delivery we expected for 7:45 pm arrived an hour and a half late, we were missing items, and now you’re telling me you’re not going to send what was missing? There won’t be any more orders from our end.”

Restaurant: “Well, you did order from [Delivery App]…”

Me: “Are you saying it’s my fault?”

Restaurant: “No, that’s not what I meant.”

Me: “Do you really think it’s acceptable? The order arrived more than an hour late, half of the order is missing, you are refusing to send the rest of the food I paid for, and I am somehow responsible for this whole fiasco because I ordered through [Delivery App]. Is that what you are saying? And you expect me to order from you again?”

Restaurant: “Sorry, ma’am, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Me: “Wrong. You can send what’s missing.”

We went back and forth, and they ultimately refused to send the rest of my order. I placed a scathing review on the page of the restaurant.

Another hour later, the delivery person called me. He had forgotten the desserts in the back of his car, and he offered to deliver them.

The desserts were ice cream mochis — left in a car on a hot summer evening for an hour. I declined.

For decades, my wife and I kept extended warranties on our appliances such as our refrigerators and washers. Whenever we booked a repair from the company that we purchased the appliance from, they always asked which time slot I wanted: either 8:00 to 12:00 or 1:00 to 5:00. No matter which time slot I chose, it seemed that I was the last stop in the time slot I chose, so I’d wait over three hours for them arrive.

We had a new refrigerator that needed a third repair within the first year we purchased it, so it qualified for the lemon law, and we were entitled to a new appliance at no cost. Per procedures, they sent a technician for this repair, and after looking at my fridge, he ordered parts for this repair to be sent to our address.

In the meantime, we received our brand-new replacement fridge, so the service representative called and asked if they could pick up the parts for the repair that had already been delivered to our home.

Me: “Sure. On Friday, I will be home for thirty minutes between 8:00 and 12:00, and for thirty minutes between 1:00 and 5:00. So, what time period would you like?”

The line went silent, and then she hung up. They never picked up the parts, ever.