ask the readers: strangely dramatic responses to mundane work events

by Alison Green on January 11, 2024

For some reason, work makes people have weirdly strong reactions to relatively mundane events — examples here over the years include an office-wide meltdown when new phones were installed with fewer speed dial buttons, or the person who threw a massive tantrum when they were told they could no longer wear pajamas to work.

Maybe you’ve had your own inappropriately intense reaction to something at work that you later realized didn’t quite warrant your response.

Let’s discuss! In the comment section, please share your stories of weirdly dramatic reactions you’ve seen people have to small events at work — the more disproportionate, the better. If someone lost their mind when they were asked to clean up their office or flipped out when bagel Tuesdays ended, we want to hear about it.

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  1. The Baconing*

    In a small office in which I used to work, we had a radio playing local stations. Usually, the station was Top 40s pop music, which is fine, but it got old for me after hearing the same songs on rotation for days on end. One day, when the rest of the people went out to lunch and I was there alone, I changed it to our classical station and then promptly got busy and forgot to change it back. One of my coworkers returned from lunch and began to CRY because they hated classical music so much but couldn’t be bothered to change the station back.

    1. Analytical Tree Hugger*

      (blinks in confusion)

      …what even…? Crying in response to music, instead of changing it (or asking if they could change it?

      I mean, I feel sad and deeply concerned for your coworker, while also being quite bewildered.

    2. Shiba Dad*

      About 30 years ago I was an assistant shipping foreman at a teapot manufacturer. We had a radio inside hooked to speakers on the dock.

      We ran three shifts. At one time we had two brothers in their 40s and I guy in his 20s on second shift. The brothers liked classic rock and hated country. The younger guy was the exact opposite.

      We suggested that they take turns – half a shift rock and half a shift country. Neither side was willing to compromise. At all.

        1. Shiba Dad*

          In the short term, yes. It eventually sorted itself out. Long story, but the brothers were MAJORLY avoiding work, and were fired.

    4. bassclefchick*

      (even MORE blinking in confusion)

      Who hates classical music that much? I can understand not enjoying it, but HATING it?!?! My petty self would be finding my CD with 1812 Overture, Ride of the Valkyries, and the Anvil Chorus on it.

      1. The Baconing*

        She called someone while she was at her desk and loudly told them that she couldn’t stand classical, that it was boring and made her sleepy, she didn’t like the way it sounded, she couldn’t focus with it on, and she couldn’t BELIEVE that it was on the radio. However, she said she knew for certain that she couldn’t change it back because she didn’t want to be the one causing drama in the office, like I, the person who changed it to begin with, had done by switching it to begin with.

        1. Expelliarmus*

          She didn’t want to be the one causing drama in the office by changing the station back, so she decided to cause drama in the office by throwing a tantrum?

          The logic is nonexistent.

          1. The Baconing*

            She was a lot. She also fell for one of those scams in which a company/person claims you can make hundreds of dollars a week by doing something via Google search if you’ll just send them $200. She did so. Of course, it was a scam so she received nothing in return, so she called Google HQ every single day for two weeks as soon as she made it into the office to try to “force Google to give [her] her money back.” She would then spend at least another hour loudly complaining to the wind about how Google should be ashamed of them itself for scamming people out of their hard-earned money.

          2. Mongrel*

            The logic is nonexistent.

            Every time I’ve heard someone say that they ‘don’t want to cause drama’ that persons is normally the one to either cause the drama or amplify and confuse an existing drama

            1. CommanderBanana*

              I feel like we need a name for this corollary, like Occam’s Razor – “the person who claims to not want drama is always the person who in fact, wants the most drama.”

      2. Bruce*

        At my school the Ride of the Valkyries was ONLY played during finals week, and then it was played very LOUD to wake people up in the morning. Playing THE RIDE at other times would provoke immediate retaliation, rising to the level of forcinging the door open and hauling the offender off to be dumped in a pond. I don’t have a strong reaction to THE RIDE but many of my fellow alums have an intense panic reaction when they hear it without being prepared…

        1. MelMc*

          I get this. My first job as a teenager the boss liked a classic country station. So very classic country that Gene Autry and Roy Rogers was pretty much all they played. I swear they only had about ten songs they played on repeat over my 8 hour shift. If I ever hear Tumbling Tumbleweeds or Clear Water again I will likely hunk out and destroy a radio.

          1. Dawn*

            Now picturing a superhero with the power to hunk out.

            You’re making him pretty. You wouldn’t like him when he’s pretty.

          2. Distracted Procrastinator*

            This reminds me of the 4 months I spent working at a tourist attraction in Hawaii. I would do the same thing if that radio played Tiny Bubbles.

            1. Jshaden*

              High school summer job working at a place that hosted company picnics. The summer the Macarena came out. Still can’t stand that song.

            2. Chauncy Gardener*

              O.M.G. Lived in Hawaii for four years. If I ever hear Tiny Bubbles again I don’t think I can be held responsible for my actions….

          3. Leslie*

            I think you mean Cool Water…”all day I face the baren waste, without the taste of water….cooool water…

          4. Reluctant Mezzo*

            Christmas music that features five different versions of “Silver Bells’ in hour will have me scrambling for some head-banger right off.

            2. Retail Dragon*

              At my job, Christmas music plays all day every day from November 1st to December 26th. Whoever selects the music at our corporate headquarters has very perplexing taste. In 2022, we counted ELEVEN different versions of “Winter Wonderland” played back to back. I would be happy to never hear it again for the rest of my life.

              1. Moosicle*

                We had the same deal at my old job, except it was six (!) versions of “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” That song is not allowed on any radio win my earshot ever again.

          5. Shakti*

            This reminds me of a job I took briefly at a fashion boutique when I was 19 and they had the same 8 songs on repeat for the whole 8 hour shift. It was horrible. If I ever hear Rihanna’s shut up and drive or the song your my satellite I feel instant rage and images of hangers with giant beads on them lol

          6. vito*

            I’ve got worse, Linda Arnold “at the dinosaur baseball game” was in the rotation at a hotel I worked at, I still have nightmares.
            It did match the theming.

          7. Mister_L*

            I worked as a guard at a seasonal fair / expo and for a week was stationed next to a ride that had exactly one CD of what google translates as folk music.

        3. Clare*

          Many years ago I made the mistake of using one of my phone’s ringtones as my morning alarm. A couple of years later, that specific ringtone was used as the ringtone for a character in a popular TV show – and all of a sudden I started hearing it in public from fans’ phones. Whenever I heard it, my brain would dump a truckton of cortisol into my body to get me ‘out of bed’. I’d hear the jingle and suddenly I’d be doused in a film of sweat, heart racing, hands trembling, panicky and mad. It was horrible!

          What, me? Not a morning person? How did you guess?

          1. BubbleTea*

            My brother got into the habit of playing a specific pop song extremely loudly as his alarm. Which was fine when he was the only person in that part of the house, but when I was back from university and didn’t need to be awake at 6am, I was incandescent at the volume. It was seriously loud, we were lucky our house was detached or the neighbours would have complained.

        4. Cedrus Libani*

          Mine is “My Heart Will Go On”. A fine song, but I was in 8th grade when the Titanic movie came out, and there was a clique of 7th graders on my bus who were OBSESSED. Every weekday morning, at way too frigging early o’clock, I would spend 40 minutes listening to them talk about Titanic. Every weekday afternoon, the same. Mostly, they were squealing over Leonardo DiCaprio, but it’s hard to fill 6-7 hours per week of airtime that way even when you are a mob of thirsty preteens. So they would belt out THAT SONG, at the top of their lungs, several times per ride.

          Mercifully, I started high school the next year, so I wasn’t on that bus anymore. If I’d had to endure another year…it was self-defense, Your Honor.

        5. D'Arcy*

          I still remember that. . . also, they did it to the alum who went to the Moon as a NASA astronaut, but the person who picked the wake-up music *swears* to this day that it was totally a coincidence and that he was not aware of the Ride tradition.

      3. Mianaai*

        Based on the other details, this seems to indeed be a case of bananapants overdramatic reaction but there’s some situations where it *could* be more understandable? I have some odd misophonia triggers, one of which is, broadly, chaotic sound. It just so happens that my brain classifies “improv jazz” into that category. It can be surprisingly difficult to explain “this is not a personal judgement on you but your music makes my teeth hurt and listening to it for 5 minutes has driven me to the brink of rage-sobbing” in a way that people accept. Especially since the onset is so sudden/rapid and it so directly affects my ability to think and express myself rationally – it’s an emotional/physiological response that bypasses the entirety of my rational thought, more like rapid onset motion sickness.

        Some folks are happy to change it when requested, but the majority of people I’ve encountered are baffled by my experience and will only change it after I’ve explained the situation to their satisfaction – they treat it as an aesthetic preference not an actual problem. And a few people I’ve encountered have, unfortunately, done the equivalent of responding by blasting Ride of the Valkries as they’re convinced that I’m just making up the problem for attention.

        1. discontinuity*

          This is really useful to know and remember. Thanks for sharing your experience.

          I’m so sorry people didn’t believe you! It’s really crap how easy it is to forget how people’s experiences can be so wildly different.

          1. Mianaai*

            You’re welcome! I think part of it is that (nearly?) everyone has some sounds that they dislike, or find annoying. So, when reaching for a point of comparison they go for “oh yeah when my spouse hums under their breath while I’m trying to concentrate, that’s pretty annoying” or similar as their point of reference. But that just keeps the situation framed as “likes” and “dislikes” and ignores the physiological response.

            Completely by accident, my spouse and I ran across one piece of music that triggered the same response in them, and… I felt bad because they had to experience the negative reaction but also it was *extremely* validating to have them be like “oh wait is THIS what improv jazz is to you? I knew that was a thing but oh god I understand now”

            1. CountryLass*

              I have a weird thing where I had a recurring nightmare a s a child, I don’t know why, even my parents can’t come up with a reason, but it was something to do with a cave, or a rock place and there was just this sound. I can’t describe it, sort of high-pitched but not, and with a low note mingling too. And every so often I come across something that reminds me of that sound, and straightaway I’m back in my nightmare… Even writing this has got my neck tensing at the back and I haven’t had that dream for years…

            2. Sasha*

              I have a similar problem—I have a phobia of something most people are bothered by. So the majority of the time I bring it up (always because there’s something scaring me or I need to avoid) someone will be like, oh yeah me too and then launch into a HORRIBLE story that makes my skin hurt and leaves me feeling sick.

        2. Properlike*

          Thank you for naming what I’ve tried to explain to people: improv jazz makes me nuts. I want to like it, but nope out after only a few measures.

          1812 Overture is okay though.

          1. Mianaai*

            Omg incredible, you’re the only other person I’ve “met” with the same trigger! And yeah, 1812 Overture is fine for me but some electronic and metal music will affect me the same way if there’s a lot of distortion. Brains are weird!

            1. Elitist Semicolon*

              Me too with the improv jazz, especially if it involves a lot of jangling around the same two or three notes for any length of time.

            2. Autofill Contact*

              My husband also experiences misophonia with mostly all jazz but especially improv. And when I eat carrots, which is too bad, because I love carrots..

            3. Phryne*

              I don’t have full out misophonia, but am (hyper)sensitive to stuff like loud noise, high temperature, bright light and I get overstimulated, and I definitively have a timer on improv jazz… I can sort of compartmentalise it like I can other noise stimuli for some time, but it is one of the sounds that makes the box overflow *really* fast.
              I only very very occasionally have a rage response though, fortunately. Generally on someone chewing really crunchy stuff like carrots or nuts in a quiet room.

          2. Cedrus Libani*

            I don’t have misophonia, but I dislike improv jazz for the same reason. Music theory nerds like my husband can hear the order in the chaos, but an untrained schlub like me cannot. It’s just noise. It sounds like someone got hopped up on amphetamines and went on a rampage in a whoopee cushion factory. The “better” the jazz, the higher the dose.

            He’s actually taught me to like heavy metal, which is the other niche genre he loves. I’ll take distortion and scream-singing all day over wildly enthusiastic saxophone fart noises.

        3. Ace in the Hole*

          I have a related problem – sensory processing issues that make many ordinary sounds, including certain types of music, actively painful. I’ve had the best luck saying something like “I’m sorry, I’m very sensitive to certain sounds and this music is hurting my ears. Do you mind [insert mitigating action here]?”

          1. Mianaai*

            I’ve had good luck when I use motion sickness as an analogy, too, for people who don’t let it drop at “I’m very sensitive…”. Which IME is a lot of people; usually out of curiosity/bafflement rather than malice though.

        4. Burbonk*

          I also have misophonia and sometimes if I’m VERY stressed out, snapping or clicking in songs will absolutely trigger a fight-or-flight response. Flight, usually, thank goodness. It’s surprisingly common in top 40 pop music. I could totally see someone crying at a specific musical style that does this to them. I will never understand the people who think we make this stuff up for attention and try to make it worse, I would never admit to having this issue if I didn’t have to!!

        5. thunderingly*

          That’s interesting. Native American flute music makes me physically uncomfortable but I have a hard time putting into words why. I play the flute and have played the flutes of various other cultures just to try, but I just have a hard time with Native American flute.

        6. SaraK*

          Hail fellow improv jazz misophonia sufferer! The misery is real! I try to force myself to focus on the musicians’ undoubted skill on their instruments but it is through tightly gritted teeth.

        7. StarTrek Nutcase*

          I don’t consider the intense dislike or intolerance to the type of music bananapants. I do consider the immediate crying and choice to not change the station or request that as the bananapants part. I have a sensitivity to certain noises that can quickly raise my anxiety super high, but in the moment I leave the room until I can approach a remedy reasonably. Just continuing to cry while being subjected to a noise/music/song is neither reasonable nor professional.

          1. Mianaai*

            Sure, there are better ways to approach the situation than continuing to cry without actually asking for a change of music. Also, The Baconing has provided a lot of additional detail to make it pretty clear that this coworker probably wasn’t having a misophonia reaction or something similar. I was partly replying because of this sentiment: “My petty self would be finding my CD with 1812 Overture, Ride of the Valkyries, and the Anvil Chorus on it”.

            It’s attitudes like this that *have* resulted in me crying in the farthest corner from a full-house stereo system because the person controlling said stereo was really really looking forward to some jazz and had previously proven to be extremely untrustworthy about any mental health disclosures. Or my old grad school officemates, who delighted in my reaction and thought it great fun to drive me out of the office by, figuratively, blaring Ride of the Valkyries at me.

            It’s obviously always best to try to remove yourself from the sound, calm down, and go back with a plan to deescalate etc etc. My point is more that having a strong negative reaction is not inherently unreasonable and that the petty drive to blare the thing causing the reaction can be truly unkind.

        8. butter rat*

          Hi! Improv jazz does the same thing to me. Do you also have the thing where static on the radio cutting in & out gives you a migraine? They feel related to me.

          1. Mianaai*

            Static or distortion noises can absolutely be a misophonia trigger for me as well but rarely cause migraines and the timeline to go from annoyance to discomfort to fight/flight response tends to be a lot longer for them than for jazz, interestingly. My brain just really really hates this one specific thing…

            I can hear a lot of high frequency sounds that others can’t, though; not quite “I can hear the electricity in the walls” but pretty close.

            1. Pixel*

              *fistbump of solidarity* I can hear ultrasonic humidifiers and the security systems at department store jewelry/cosmetic counters. And fluorescent lights. And cheap dog whistles. And loads of medical equipment. Hospitals are just audio hell for me.

              My misophonia is mostly mouth sounds, although small children shrieking will catapult me straight into stabby-killy rage.

        9. CountryLass*

          I really don’t like jazz, I find it chaotic, with no order or beat so, although I can’t say I understand your experience, I’d happily throw a radio playing it out the window for you!

        10. Chirpy*

          Yeah, when I asked coworkers if I could turn off the breakroom TV because I was having a panic attack and really needed 15 minutes of quiet, you would have thought I’d asked them to give me their whole paycheck or something. Actual screaming (which definitely made my panic attack worse).

          There’s a few people who thank me for turning the TV off because they were afraid to/ didn’t know they could, but I have to plan my lunches and breaks around the loud ones now because they will turn the TV louder when they see me, or will walk in and turn the TV on without asking.

      5. Princess Sparklepony*

        I wouldn’t cry, but I really do dislike classical music. It makes me want to either sleep or grit my teeth. I came close to failing music appreciation in high school. My best friend from high school and I both have nightmares about that class.

        And the time when a fellow classmate fed us an answer on a test. The teacher said “If you don’t get this one, I will have failed as a teacher.” You had to identify the piece, the composer, and one other thing I can’t remember. We looked at each other with blank looks and Charlotte (really sweet girl was a year below us but taking advanced classes) saw us and hissed Eine Kleine through her teeth at us. Blessing on that sweet child! We like the teacher, just not musically inclined. We did better in art history.

        1. Spiders Everywhere*

          It’s rough when it’s a “highbrow” genre of music you don’t like, isn’t it? If you say “I find death metal singing overbearing” people recognize it as a legitimate preference but somehow “I find opera singing overbearing” means you’re low class.

      6. Overit*

        Depends on the piece. At one workplace, we had 3 channels of Muzak. All were classical. One channel made me incandescent with rage. I called it the Plinky Plonky Piano channel. All of the music on that channel had piano forward music with staccato or fast melodies. (Sorry if my description is inadequate.) My assistant pointed out to me that whenever it was on, I would get agitated and terse and have jerky body movements. I tried very hard to control my reaponse to it, but it was entirely involuntary.
        So it became a rule that whenever I was in the office, that channel was not allowed. One day, as a joke, one of my coworkers turned it on while I was with a long term client. Very quickly, the client said, “I thought you get rid of that horrible music. Can you turn it off?” That made our boss ask staff about it. Turna out over half the office hates that channel but did not say anything about it and were relieved when I dis.

    6. Wendy the Spiffy*

      Nothing good can come from music everyone can hear at work, I swear. I was in a similar situation and to this day, the song “Habits” by Tove Lo about gives me hives.

        1. RVA Cat*

          I hate how the intro teases you with “Sweet Home Alabama” only slightly less than “Ice Ice Baby”‘s crime against “Under Prsssure.”

          2. Lbd*

            It totally rips off the intro to Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London.
            After hearing Pictures too many times on the radio at work, I have never wanted to go looking for anything Kid Rock did.

      3. Mim*

        “Call Me Maybe” gives me such specific old-job work anxiety, it is disturbing. I feel like this music effect is especially enhanced when it’s a genre one doesn’t listen to elsewhere, and especially when that genre is top-40 radio, where the most popular songs are played several times a day.

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          A radio network in the UK has a “No repeat guarantee” which means that no song will be played twice during the 9-5. I hadn’t really thought about why that would be a thing, but workplace radio would definitely fit.

          1. Nessa*

            I’m glad more stations have that. I believe it was a thing at one point and I’m not sure how many others do it, but I grew up with a “no repeat 9-to-5” as the stations catchphrase

          2. londonedit*

            It’s definitely not a thing on the BBC stations though – if a song’s on the Radio 2 or 6 Music A playlist then you better believe you’ll be hearing it six times a day.

            1. Jasmine*

              When TITANIC came out some coworkers and I stopped at a 7-Eleven for a coffee break. (Yeah, not in the United States.) Guess what song was on repeat and played the entire 15 minutes we were there?

          3. Mister_L*

            I think there is a radio station in my country that promises “no christmas music” in general and “no Last Christmas” specifically every year.

      4. Sara without an H*

        Many, many years ago, I worked a retail job where there was always music on in the background. That year, “The Impossible Dream,” from Man of La Mancha, was for some reason the most popular track and it came up several times per shift.

        To this day, if you want to see me turn into The Incredible Hulk, just play “The Impossible Dream.”

        (Yes, I am old.)

        1. Spiders Everywhere*

          Look up the impossible dream skit from the muppet show if you want to see John Cleese have a similar reaction!

          1. MassMatt*

            Wow, I thought I’d seen everything John Cleese has done (including The Frost Report and even some industrial training films!) and somehow I’d missed that.

      5. JustaTech*

        We used to play music out loud in the lab (corded headphones get caught on the drawer handles). This was usually fine, anyone could ask to plug in their player and there usually weren’t very many people (2-3) in the lab at any time.
        But then my coworker who was most often in the lab got on an Adele kick. Adele and Amy Winehouse and one specific Lorena McKennit song (The Highwayman). And so that was pretty much all that got played in the lab for a couple of months.
        Not the worst thing ever, and most people didn’t spend that long in the lab.
        Until one coworker had a really mindless study that required sitting in the lab for pretty much 8 hours a day.
        So one day I had some lab work to do and there’s no music playing so I ask this coworker “hey, do you mind if I put on my music? It’s got some swearing in Spanish.”
        He looks up at me, mournful as a Bassett hound and says “If it’s not Adele, I don’t care.”

        1. Luna*

          At that point, I’d just slap on some headphones and listen on my own device. I don’t overall like Adele songs myself, but I can tolerate them to a degree. And as someone who also gets on ‘kicks’ of things and can listen to the same song for hours on end, I’d at least know and have the decency to not subject other people to it.

      6. Meg*

        I used to work at a mall retail store that was very open to the rest of the mall, so people walking by could see our merchandise and get sucked in. An unmanned kiosk for a travel agent selling cruises set up right outside, and they had a small TV on the end facing our door that played a repeating video advertisement for the cruises. It was probably 25 minutes long and the end featured a montage of people having fun on the cruise while “Happy” by Pharrell played. Every 25 minutes. All day. Every day.

        We begged mall management to ask them to turn down the volume or at least flip the kiosk so it was facing away from us (store on the opposite side of the walkway was pretty closed so the wouldn’t hear it over their own music) but they were strangely resistant. I still want to punch something when I hear “Happy.”

    7. Radio Rage Victim*

      I worked in an office that was super disfunctional. There was a man who had the biggest sales account so the company felt they couldn’t touch him at all. He decided what music was played on the radio and god help you if you changed it. I got fed up one day and not only changed it but changed the preset buttons and he got so angry that he threw a stapler at me. Then the company let me go over it (which thank god, I collected unemployment and got out of that mad house).

      1. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

        Wait, they fired *you* because *he* threw a stapler at you? WTF??

        Glad you got out of there!

        1. Heffalump*

          Sadly, this wouldn’t be the first or last instance of blaming the victim in the history of the world.

    8. zinzarin*

      This is why I advocate for no music at work at all. Too many conflicting interests; you’ll never be able to please everyone.

      And I’m the biggest music fan. I’m sure that many of my friends would describe that as *the* defining characteristic of my personality. My vinyl record collection numbers in the thousands, and I’ve been to well over 500 concerts in my life (that I can document with tickets stubs; there are more that I’ve forgotten).

      But still… no music at work, please!

      1. Emma*

        Agreed! I can’t have background noise while working my brain can’t function with multiple streams of input. When people try to put music on in my workspace I just explain I will have to go to a different workstation or ask that they use headphones. I have been this was since I was a kid. I’m just noise sensitive. There is no such thing as background music to me – even if I love it!

    9. The dark months*

      On place I worked had a limited CD collection. No one could agree on a CD except for Bob Marley’s greatest hits. I don’t like Bob Marley on a good day but wasn’t willing to be the one dissenting vote. After about two months of that CD playing constantly even 25yrs later I loath some of his songs.

      1. Dark Macadamia*

        Were you the bus driver of my high school Costa Rica trip? We listened to Bob Marley nonstop, which personally I enjoyed but it was also only for a week lol

    10. iglwif*

      W O W. Look, there are genres of music I really would rather not listen to (and specific pieces of music I truly dislike) but the radio dial is … RIGHT THERE?

      This is not nearly as melodramatic, but in my first sorta-kinda office job, the summer after grade 10, I covered the reception desk at lunch and one time I dared to change the quietly-playing little desktop radio from a local country station to CBC FM (later Radio 2). When the receptionist came back from her lunch she was Very Annoyed, and changed it back with extreme prejudice and the comment, “Nobody listens to anything but country in this town, anyway.”

      Facts to keep in mind here:
      1) The town in question had (and still has) an opera company, a symphony orchestra, multiple radio stations playing various non-country genres, various string quartets and choirs and such, youth choirs and a youth orchestra, stadium concerts by many and various non-country artists, etc.
      2) MANY people in the said town did (and still do) listen to those stations and attend those performances
      3) I was born in the said town and had lived there for most of my life at that point
      4) I was (and still am) a classically trained amateur musician who at that time belonged to three choirs and two bands and was taking lessons on two different instruments
      5) Many of my friends and many of my parents’ friends were classical music nerds
      6) Many people who listen to country music enjoy other genres as well

      The level of generalizing from herself to the entire 750,000+ population of the city was mind-boggling to me.

      1. amoeba*

        Hah, the 750,000+ population is what makes this for me! Was picturing some kind of small, rural town up until there… (with a flourishing music scene though, from your description, haha)

    11. ComputerJanitor*

      We have a years-long music war at our company. The manufacturing floor has two factions: one likes classic rock and country and the other favors modern pop. Each has a massive stereo system blasting their music 24/7. At opposing ends of the same room. The facility is otherwise quiet, but the music is so loud an OSHA auditor made us require hearing protection. Whenever any restriction to the music has been proposed the majority of employees in the area threaten to quit.

    12. Kayem*

      My boss always had his Pandora station on 70s soft rock, which would be fine if I didn’t hear the same songs over and over again. Granted, I could have just asked my boss if he would change the station, but this was my first professional job after years of retail with terrible supervisors, so I was too skittish. I would rant about it at home, much to the amusement of my roommate. After months of “Lonesome Loser” multiple times a day, I finally snapped. When he was on his lunch break, I snuck into his office and seeded his Pandora station with Slayer and Pantera. Neither are bands I listen to, they were just the first things I could think of that were definitely not 70s soft rock.

      After a week of boss’s station randomly spitting out Slayer, Pantera, and similar music, my boss switched his station to 1950s oldies. But he was so sad about it and moped for days that he couldn’t listen to his favorite station anymore without devil music interrupting. I felt so guilty (and afraid I’d get fired) that I never admitted it was me.

    13. A Person*

      I was working retail in a small shop over the summer from college, and I would put NPR on to play classical music because it helped me with some studying for my music degree. I lived at the time in a place where the NPR station was split between classical music and news, and I kind of forgot about it and left it on in the background, until one day when a news story came on about a protest in which apparently female genitalia were used in protest symbols. Suddenly the store has a voice from above going on about very specific body parts that are infrequently informally discussed casually in public, using very clinical language, and I got some STARES. I just eeked out, “It’s NPR!”

    14. lilsheba*

      Ok I wouldn’t cry, but if a radio station got turned to jazz I would be upset because that is how much I HATE jazz. YUUUUCCCCKKKKK.

      1. Jasmine*

        It’s so funny to me, how people hate one kind of music. My husband has the most eclectic playlist in the world. I told him if I died, he would really have a hard time remarrying because no one would understand his taste in music!

      2. Princess Sparklepony*

        I’m not a jazz fan – so, of course, I worked in the jazz department of a major music label…. Admins can work anywhere! Great invisible benefits though.

  2. Former Call Centre rep*

    Not so much told, but more IT blocked the anime/manga porn sites on the intranet for the call centre.

    A guy straight up yelled at the sr manager.

    Also, we had a clean desk policy. This guy who had been there for like 15 years threw a fit when his funko pops of the royal family were told not to be on the desks. He called his manager a not great name, and then was walked from the bilding

    1. Casual Librarian*

      I will never forget when my workplace put in a ban on STREAMING MOVIES AND TELEVISION during work! People were trying to make the case that they could watch the entirety of Game of Thrones and not be distracted while trying to do data analysis or whatever else. They said it’s the same as music and podcasts. People will have their own opinions and experiences on this, so I’m not prone to argue this reason.

      BUT, the the reason the streaming moratorium happened was because coworkers shouldn’t be subjected to seeing *graphic* scenes playing on your monitors during work hours. People were streaming really gory movies.

      Result? Many of the streamers started working from home with decreased productivity, then were forced back into the office where they couldn’t stream, and then were PIP-ed out of the business.

      1. Hannah Lee*

        We had one employee who freaked out when Skype was banned from the workplace. He did a freak out, then retreated to try to make a business case for using it to talk with customers, to which management provided a range of other options besides skype. And so he freaked out even more … Turns out he wanted to be able to chat with his friends, and girfriend overseas all day and not pay charges on his personal phone, so the ‘talk with customers was a fake reason for his freak out’

        Management had to explain to him that while it’s fine he wanted to save some money a) he was supposed to be working at work, not spending hours cultivating his social life and b) Skype had a nasty practice of treating any server where a Skype call occurred as a node in their Skype network, so the first time this guy fired it up from his work device, Skype took up residence on several of the company’s servers and began using ALL the device resources, to host calls of random other people who had nothing to do with our company. And while IT shut it down and blocked Skype’s commandeering of the servers once they noticed, they did not want to be playing whack-a-mole with it as Skype changed things up to try to weasel in again.

        (says person who is currently using company resources to post comments unrelated to work)

      2. Sally Sunshine*

        At one point I worked at an organization that served K-12 educators. Our HR manager would put the most recent GoT episodes up on the big screen in our open plan office during lunch, which made me lose my appetite. I took to eating my lunch in a storage closet, and was lightly chided by the director for disappearing during the hour. It was a blessing when I was downsized!

        1. Hot Dish*

          So many things that are wrong… I wouldn’t want to be forced into watching it either. HR manager, yikes.

      3. lilsheba*

        Frankly it is the same as music and podcasts. I stream movies, music, tv shows, whatever while I’m working and I work just great and get all my crap done.

      4. MCMonkeyBean*

        I genuinely am more productive when streaming background shows for certain kinds of mindless work. It’s not unreasonable for a company to have a rule against it, but if they created a blanket ban because some people were streaming graphic things that’s pretty obnoxious and I’d be pissed too.

    2. John*

      It seems like losing a 15-year employee over Funko pops was not a wise choice on the manager’s part, no?

      1. AnonymousToast*

        Losing an employee who resorts to name-calling when asked to abide by a company policy is not a loss.

        1. TeenieBopper*

          Eh. Calling someone an asshole when they’re being an asshole shouldn’t be a fireable offense.

          1. Former Call Centre rep*

            Manager wasn’t an asshole. Told him that everyone else had to do clean desk policy because cleaners were unable to properly clean, option was put the funko pops in his locker every night or take them home.

            He then called her a C*** in front of the entire team.

              1. A Poster Has No Name*

                Funko Pop–they’re collectible figurine-type things. Big-headed representations of cultural icons (people, characters, etc.).

              2. Azure Jane Lunatic*

                They are collectible vinyl figurines of pop culture characters. I suspect that one might annoy both Funko Pop devotees and Beanie Babies fans by comparing the two, but they occupy a not dissimilar niche.

        2. Wilbur*

          It’s a call center, it’s not like there are customers coming in to be bothered by a messy desk. Deciding people can’t have stupid collectibles on their desk because you don’t like how it looks is dumb. I’m going out on a limb and guessing that the Royal Funkopops did not impact productivity. Not a great reaction by that employee but maybe focus on results over arbitrary measures of control.

          1. DivergentStitches*

            Now I’m just picturing the person acting out scenes with the Royal Funko Pops a la Wash in Serenity :D

          2. Former Call Centre rep*

            They didn’t but, cleaners couldn’t clean properly. He called her a C**** for telling him he can either put them away every night or take them home.

          3. zinzarin*

            From additional context provided above, it sounds like this decision *was* driven by results. The cleaners complained that the clutter on desks was making their jobs harder. If cleaning is harder, that increases costs to clean to the same level.

            Is it likely the biggest problem this particular business faces? No. Is it real, and reasonable to request? Yes.

          4. lilsheba*

            100 percent agree. It IS dumb, who cares what’s on people’s desks? Mine was always full of stuff (and is even more so at home) and it made me happy, didn’t hurt anyone, just leave it alone.

          5. Lunita*

            So there wasn’t any legitimate reason to clean the desks? At any rate, I wouldn’t regret getting rid of someone who used that word in response to this. It’s a definite overreaction and a crude, ugly word.

          6. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

            According to a reply from Former Call Centre rep* up thread, the clean desk policy was instituted because all the clutter on desks was causing the cleaners to have a hard doing their job. Sounds like a valid reason to me.

            Maybe don’t criticize things because of assumptions you’ve made about the reasons for those things? Just a suggestion.

            .

      2. Former Call Centre rep*

        If the only person in a call centre with personal items on a desk, you can’t make an exception.

        And tenure doesn’t mean anything when they call their manager a C- fil in the blanks there in front of everyone

          1. Hannah Lee*

            Yeah, this is a variation on the “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” thing.
            It’s one thing to be unhappy with a new workplace rule. (complain about it, push back on it, try to get some leeway if you think it’s unjust.)

            It’s another thing to lose your ish at work over it, to the point you’re calling someone the C word.

            The lack of emotional regulation, disrespect and crassness, as well as the poor judgement of doing it over having to put away their Funko Pops, so the cleaners can clean, absolutely warrants a Yep Bye.

      3. jtr*

        I don’t know, someone who would have a temper tantrum over desk decoration doesn’t seem to be the most stable of folks…

        1. Bast*

          While true if it were just the desk decoration, I wonder if it were simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. I agree with Radioactive Cyborg Llama that this policy is micromanaging and infantilizing and I wouldn’t be surprised if this were not the first such micromanaging policy to be passed. The reaction is extreme, yes, and not appropriate for an office setting either way, however, sometimes “the event” is really just a build up of many, many events over time until one day someone just has enough.

          1. Dulcinea47*

            Call centers had THE MOST micromanage-y, infantilizing rules of anyplace I’ve ever worked, it was really demoralizing.

            1. Orv*

              A friend worked in one. Quit after watching a coworker be fired for absenteeism *immediately after having a heart attack at work and taken away by paramedics.* Oh, and time off could only be granted the same day and wasn’t guaranteed, so it was impossible to schedule things like doctor’s appointments.

          2. I Have RBF*

            Yeah, I have always found a “clean desk” policy to be overbearing and unnecessary.

            If our cleaners are cleaning desks and can’t clean around stuff, maybe you are having them do too much. Or, you should make the policy “If you want the cleaners to wipe down your desk, it needs to be clear. Otherwise, you are responsible for wiping down your desk at the end of the day.”

            1. Bast*

              I swear all our cleaning company does is empty the trash. Smudges are still on the door, the floor still has whatever was on it the day before, and the desks are absolutely never touched. I’d love to have a company that left a sparkling desk, or heck, even just a clean floor.

              1. A Poster Has No Name*

                That’s what ours did. And then they decided not to pay for that and took away all our trash cans. Now facilities empties the big trash bins and occasionally vacuums the floors. You’ve always been on your own with your desk.

              2. Nightengale*

                Ours only generally empty the trash – and we’re a medical office attached to a hospital! I actually don’t want them to touch my desk but it would be really great if they would clean the floors in hall and the exam room and occasionally the doctor workroom as well. . .

          3. OMG It's 2024*

            I agree that a clean desk policy CAN be micromanaging and infantalizing *if it is enforced during the work day when no clients/coworkers are affected*. BUT in THIS case, it WAS affecting workers, the cleaners, and was ONLY enforced at NIGHT when the guy was at home and couldn’t see his precious FunkoPops anyway. The reaction was out of bounds and the policy to make it possible for cleaners to clean is entirely reasonable.

            1. Annie*

              I agree with I Have RBF:
              Or, you should make the policy “If you want the cleaners to wipe down your desk, it needs to be clear. Otherwise, you are responsible for wiping down your desk at the end of the day.”

              At my previous work office, we had plenty of stuff on our desks, as we, of course, were working, so had documents, engineering examples, and all sort of miscellaneous stuff. The cleaners would clean what they could but wouldn’t pick up our stuff/work and move it in order to clean.

              I don’t think having Funko Pops is any big deal and is not really going to affect the cleanliness of the office that much. Maybe once every two weeks, you have the person clear his desk so the cleaners can do a complete clean or something. But otherwise it’s just a little dust likely on the Funko Pops, and shouldn’t be any big deal. It’s an overly restrictive rule for no reason.

              1. OMG It's 2024*

                I agree with employers that THEY have the right to say “we want the office to be clean.” If people aren’t themselves cleaning the desks, they can get pretty gross. I “inherited” a desk when I took a new job after the previous person had died. It was so gross I almost barfed. It took me an entire day to clean that desk, monitor and keyboard. To the point where because he was so nearsighted there were nose prints and grease and …whatever else, on the monitor. I’m gagging just thinking about it again. Thank God I’m not there anymore. It’s perfectly reasonable for an employer/owner/leaser of the location to ensure that SOMEONE is dusting and/or sanitizing them periodically and not leave it to “if YOU WANT it cleaned….” because then there will be a LOT of desks that are never cleaned. The boss is entitled to want to have a clean office space that doesn’t encourage bugs, mice, and whatever grossness.”

                1. Phryne*

                  Yes, when we still had personal desks we the support staff would regularly find food remains on desks of teachers during school holidays, so when they would be gone for a week. And that in a building that was known to have a rodent problem… Some people are just gross.
                  Now we have flex desks, so no personal junk and clean desks every end of workday so they can get sanitised.

      4. Analytical Tree Hugger*

        Really depends on the employee. If they were amazing at their job, sure.

        I think many (most?) of us have worked at places where someone has been there a long time because they’re fine at their jobs, but not particularly special, so a new hire could be ramped up in a few weeks. Or even a little bit of a missing stair, but too much of a hassle to properly manage.

        1. Goldfeesh*

          If they were really amazing at their job, they could have thrown a stapler at another person’s head and got that person fired!

      6. FrivYeti*

        Seems like, to use Am I The Asshole vernacular, an “Everyone Sucks Here” situation.

        Company policies that ban inoffensive personal items from desks are a huge overreach, especially in a field that is renowned for burnout and stress, and I’ve never worked anywhere that had a rule like that which wasn’t also full of bees in a variety of other ways.

        At the same time, swearing at a manager is obviously a bridge too far as a response to a bad company directive; just register a polite complaint about the policy and start looking for a new job.

        1. Nancy*

          I think a lot of places started clean desk for a couple of reasons, not wanting sensitive information left out and ease of nightly cleaning. It’s easier to say nothing is allowed than to figure out where to draw the line. Besides doesn’t it mean clean up at the end of the day? So stick the royal family in the drawer at night.

        2. Annabelle*

          It’s really not an ESH situation, it’s a “one person has big time main character syndrome” situation

        3. OMG It's 2024*

          The OP made it CLEAR multiple times that this was not a “ban on inoffensive personal items”. He could have them out all day; they simply wanted the desks clear at night, for the cleaning crew to, presumably, dust or wipe them down. It’s really juvenile of him to throw a fit over putting 5 or 6 little rubber dolls or whatever the heck FunkoPops are, into a drawer at night.

          1. FrivYeti*

            The OP first made that clarification eleven minutes after my comment. While I do appreciate your immense faith in me, I’m not actually able to read comments from the future.

            I agree that with that in mind, the situation changes to “no, that one guy was just the worst”.

      7. Worldwalker*

        Ragequitting a job you’ve had for 15 years because you don’t get a special exemption from the company policy is not a wise choice.

    3. Bagpuss*

      I’m curious over the thinking behind the clean desk policy.
      I mean, we have a clean esk policy but it means that you if you see external clients in you office you need to have a clear desk and not, for instance, have other client files, correspondence etc on the desk or visible, to maintain confidentiality, and that you shouldn’t have dirty crockery or anything like that. It doesn’t mean no personal items at all .

      Maybe they found it was too hard to police if there were people with inappropriate (e.g. racists or otherwise discriminatory) items ?

      1. Former Call Centre rep*

        The cleaners couldn’t clean equipment properly with all the clutter on people’s desks,

        1. Dawn*

          And call centres are usually an absolute hotbed of recurring/rotating illness so cleaning (especially if the equipment is shared, which it usually is) is especially important to stymie that inasmuch as it’s possible to do so in that environment.

          I’ve never worked in a call centre where at least half the staff wasn’t sick on any given day, and the employees were, for various reasons, forced to come in sick anyway, just perpetuating the problem.

          One of my coworkers soaked her keyboard and mouse with Lysol every morning and I find it hard to blame her in retrospect.

          1. I Have RBF*

            Yep. One outbound call center I worked in no one had sick time, everyone was poor, so everyone came in sick. I got so sick, wave after wave. So I started getting written up for being out. I finally quit, because being sick so much made it likely I could make more money signing on a streetcorner. I had a better job within a week, still temp, but who didn’t want you coming in sick. Curiously enough, I didn’t keep getting sick there, even though it was a temporary inbound call center.

      2. MsSolo (UK)*

        Most places I’ve worked have had a clean desk policy to make it easier for the cleaners to do their jobs, and because of the risks of leaving out confidential paperwork where visitors/interviewees/the cleaners might see it.

        1. UKDancer*

          Yes my company does, at the end of the day you lock your papers away and move your personal stuff so it’s out of the way of the cleaners. It takes me all of 2 minutes.

      3. As You Wish*

        We had a “clean desk” policy at an office where all desks were unassigned – it was a flexible work model where most folks were out at client sites and no one was in every day, so grabbing a workspace was first come first served and you were supposed to leave the space neat and clean as you found it for the next person. There were lockers available for stuff you wanted to leave at the office building. Naturally 90 percent of staff managed fine with the this model but a few people just Could Not Deal. Those folks would always take the same (prime location) desk, act like they owned it, and passive-aggressively defend it by leaving their personal items, power cords, half finished work and old mugs all over the space.

        1. Zelda*

          All of this so depends on the work! I see a bunch of folks declaring this or that policy Objectively Wrong, when it depends on the work.

          Most call centers have pretty episodic work, AIUI. Once you finish documenting a call, that’s it, it’s over. There tend not to be long-term projects that would necessitate keeping papers around for multiple days or weeks.

          My work includes a lot of “rethink and rrewrite our entire approach to Work Area Blah,” with projects that go on for months. I am a messy-desk person, but my piles of stuff all have internal structure that consort with my thinking about how various parts of the project relate to each other and how far along each of them is. I would be one of those who Could Not Deal with hotdesking or draconian clean-desk policies.

          I suspect that the situation you describe is a third case, where folks may have long-term projects, but being at client sites a lot means having to take a different approach than mine regardless of hotdesking or not. It depends on the work!

      4. OMG It's 2024*

        The OP repeatedly made it clear that the items ONLY needed to be put away at night for the benefit of the cleaners. It had NOTHING to do with the nature of the work, the items on the desk or a full time clean desk policy/ban on stuff.

    4. ICodeForFood*

      At one point (back in the 1990s), I worked for an insurance company that had a re-decoration of the building, including new carpets, maybe new cubicle walls (I honestly don’t remember)… And our micro-managing VP decided that along with the redecoration, we would no longer be allowed to have personal items on our desks. We were not going ‘open plan’ we all had assigned cubicles… but he decided things would look better if we were not allowed to have family photos, personalized mugs, etc.

      1. ICodeForFood*

        My boss at the time, G-d bless her, said “Look… give it 2 weeks and he’ll forget it.” And that is exactly what happened. Two or three weeks in, we all brought back our family photos and personal stuff… and the VP never noticed.

        1. Annie*

          that’s cool, because that’s just overreach for no good reason by the VP.

          Did the VP have nothing personal in his office?

      2. CanadianPublicServant*

        Shades of Captain Holt, commenting on family photos: “If you love someone, you’ll remember what they look like.”

    5. Heffalump*

      I thought of “My employee is freezing out a manager after he joked about King Charles.” Did that employee have funko pops of the royal family?

    6. Pizza Rat*

      I hope that was consistently enforced. Years ago I worked in an office where someone was told they had to take down all of their many Far Side comics, yet the person who had Mary Engelbreit everywhere in their area was not asked the same.

    7. Dark Macadamia*

      The royal family is such a random choice for a Funko collection! I guess it’s good that they weren’t anime porn ones?

    8. Mister_L*

      Am I the only one who imagined this conversation?

      Guy: Boss, the porn sites are blocked!
      Manager: How do you know?

  3. cardigarden*

    I once told CFO at OldJob that he could pry my desk chair out of my cold, dead hands when he said I couldn’t bring it to my new office space (which was also a new space to the organization devoid of furniture) and made no promises about acquiring anything for me to sit on.

    1. Cafe au Lait*

      My coworker had a similar reaction except the chairs had already been ordered. She was so vocal about the change that my boss (metaphorically) threw her hands up in the air and gave up.

      1. cardigarden*

        My boss was fantastic about it at least: she heard what was going down and came out of her office with “what the f do you mean my staff won’t have chairs to sit on??” because CFO’s answer to me was “you’re not bringing a $1000 chair with you and I’m not spending money on something else.” (which, ???????)

        1. Analytical Tree Hugger*

          Ha, the fact that their title starts with “Chief” makes a lot of sense. Something about that level seems to correlate strongly with “lacking basic logic and common sense.”

          Oh, to be able to read minds and understand the thinking behind that…

        2. Laura*

          Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense. What CFO in their right mind would think it’s okay to not order chairs for staff?

          1. Dawn*

            Chairs cost money, staff bums come free with the staff member, and the building has a floor. /sarcasm

            Three guesses why they were relocating to a new space.

    2. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

      We had an office move that involved a switch to hotelling, and when I asked what about people with [articular chairs (which were a medical accommodation!!), I was told the new chairs at the new building would be comfortable for everyone. They also said the offices would be cleaned regularly and they are absolutely not. Punch line: we have enough office space for everyone to have an assigned office.

      2. I Have RBF*

        I got this crap at oner job when they moved us to a brand new “special” open plan, from offices and cubes. We were not allowed to take our ergo chairs with us because “the new chairs are ergonomic and fit everyone! We want everything uniform, so no personal stuff on desks, either!”

        So basically, we went from shared offices and cubes to a totally regimented, dehumanizing, uniformity is king open plan. They then gaslit people by telling them they “Were the only one to complain! Everyone else loves it!” Gentle reader, everyone did NOT “love it”, most of us hated it, and management forgot that people compare notes.

        I deliberately ignored the “clean desk” BS. Sure, I didn’t have work paper on my desk, but I had pictures, stuffed mascots, and several drinking vessels. (They particularly railed against “a forest of drinkware”, so I made sure I had different vessels for coffee, tea, and water.) No, I didn’t want the cleaners to wipe down my desk with their scented cleaning crap; I did my own once a week with stuff I wasn’t allergic to.

      3. Clare*

        “Oh, so you’re buying one fully adjustable ergonomic chair and one saddle chair for every single employee? Wow, how generous!”

    3. Irish Girl*

      We had a whole thing when our company was phasing in new ergonomic chairs, people were trying to hide their chairs so they could keep them. None of the chairs we had were even the same and half were broken in someway and were really old and bad so it made me laugh. I couldn’t wait for them. None of these people had any high end chairs or even good ergonomic ones that were worth saving.

      1. Wendy Darling*

        I find that’s when people get the most protective of their stuff — everything is junk but you’ve found a piece of junk that works for, or is at least minimally annoying to, you, and you don’t want it taken and replaced with some piece of crap you hate. D:

        1. ggg*

          People definitely hoard chairs from the 60s here.

          Wooden desks are a hot commodity, no matter how beat up and broken, because they used to be reserved for certain levels of management and people still think they are a status symbol. But metal desks are also a status symbol that indicates you don’t care what people think.

      2. TechWorker*

        Do bear in mind that ergonomics are not the same for everyone. My coworker has an old chair (with a ‘do not bin belongs to Bob’ notice taped to the back) because his back problems mean he requires a very specific desk setup that the newer (pretty fancy ergonomic $$$) chairs don’t work with, they don’t fit far enough under the desk.

        1. Irish Girl*

          No one in my department had an ergo chair. These were all chairs that could have been from 80’s and 90’s. When people would leave, others would fight over a “good chair”. The new chairs were all the Hermon Miller Mira chairs and they even told people if they needed an accommodation how to get one. Some people had duck tape on their chairs and still wouldn’t give them up.

          1. Annie*

            My company basically has a bunch of older chairs, so you can believe when someone left the company, there was a line of people waiting for that chair if it was nice.

            People would label their chairs. I wrote my name on the adjustment handle, but when I was off on vacation, it disappeared, and I never could locate it (we had probably 100 people on the floor). Someone just took it and replaced it with their lousy chair.

            We also were all over people when they left. This one engineer had two monitors, so I claimed one of them so I could have two myself, and then had to fight with IT on why I needed both.

        2. tangentrine*

          This is me! The office I work in finally got beautiful new chairs to replace the ancient chairs we’ve had for 30-40 years. Unfortunately, they have armrests and don’t go low enough to be ergonomic for me, and this plays absolute havoc with my chronic pain. So I’ve kept my 15yo chair that I nabbed from the last time chairs were replaced in another part of the building – recently it went missing after a vacation, and I didn’t initially notice until it knocked me into a flareup. It sounds so silly and minor but it really does mean the difference between “I’m totally fine” and “I can’t do any of my hobbies and have to lie down in pain after work.”

        3. Nightengale*

          Yeah I suspect none of those even special ergonomic chairs would work for me because I need a chair without wheels. I will fall out of a chair with wheels because I can’t keep my balance if the chair moves while I am standing up. I have fallen out of one chair too many.

          I have actually carried my own personal desk chair without wheels to meetings in conference rooms after they remodeled and all the chairs were beautiful wheelie things. (I would have been happy also to just stand, kneel or sit on the floor but that apparently makes other people anxious.)

    4. FricketyFrack*

      We’re moving to a new building sometime this year and apparently all the furniture has to match now (which, fine, great, most of the stuff we’re using is suuuper old and half of it’s cobbled together from whatever people find in storage). Except they decided they were going to order new Herman Miller chairs for everyone no matter what, and when I pointed out that I have a chair that’s specially ordered to fit my height and be better for my back, they said nope, it MUST be HM, and if anyone wants anything different, they have to go through the full accommodation process with HR and see if eventually a new chair gets approved. In the meantime, we’re expected to just deal with being in pain, I guess?

      I’m going to load my chair into my car on our last day in the old office and move it into the new building before or after hours. My boss knows and doesn’t care, so I also do not care.

      1. A nonny mouselet*

        We actually had a person whose job (apparently) was to check and make sure no non-matching furniture entered the building and remove it if it had. There were also not enough chairs, no money given to buy more/replacements, and even if someone had the money to buy more, the style was no longer available for purchase.

        I say ‘apparently’ because they presumably had other aspects to their job but pretty much the only communication anyone ever got from them was regarding furniture violations. When they left, the furniture inspections stopped.

          1. Some People’s Children*

            I worked with a guy who did that. 24/7 facility so it could have been about 50 different people who were taking his chair nights and weekends including changing settings for whatever was accommodating his back problems. It would take 30 minutes every morning to retrieve it and fix the settings. So padlock and chain!

        2. FricketyFrack*

          If someone tries that, I WILL throw a fit. It’ll be a polite fit, but people will hear about it. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s super likely, because that’s bananas, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

          1. A nonny mouselet*

            That person was reported directly to one of the big bosses, so was pretty much de facto higher than most others.

            Regarding the lack of chairs: in addition to not thinking about breakage, they apparently didn’t take into account that additional people might be hired over the years, and therefore more resources might be needed.

      2. I Have RBF*

        Do it.

        I didn’t and ended up in pain, because they demanded that we all use the HM “Sayle” chairs (low end HM, didn’t fit me at all.) I couldn’t even get to surplus to rescue my custom chair, and I was bummed. I should have just… moved it myself.

        It was literally more important for management that all our stuff was “uniform” and “identical” in appearance than our actual comfort and ability to work. They wanted an open plan full of identical drones or something.

      3. H3llifIknow*

        At one of my “big 3 letter name you’d know” jobs, I asked the facilities manager if I could bring in the ergonomic chair I’d purchased to use in my private office. I have issues with sciatica, spondylosis, etc.. and the chairs they bought for 6’2 200 pound men, didn’t work ergonomically for 5′ nothing, me. A day later she came back and told me “Per the VP, no. It would be a liability for you to have a different chair.” I, bewildered, asked, “WHAT liability?” and she responded, “If you fell out of it.” It is truly one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard. I knew she hadn’t REALLY asked the VP; he’d have not cared. So that Saturday my husband and I delivered the chair to my office, and I draped a long sweater over the back of it, and used it for 8 years. She got fired for theft and a host of other infractions a year or so later. Nobody ever mentioned my chair except to praise it and ask where I got it. Petty little office despots. Sigh.

    5. Dataqueen*

      I got a special chair to fit me as a short person and I loved that thing. Right before the start of the pandemic we were planning a move to a new space and were told that only our electronics and any personal items we packed up would be brought, no furniture, and I too made a huge deal out of my chair. I emphasized that this was a chair that we had paid for specially for me and I NEEDED it. Every time we would meet with the move coordinator, I would be like “and you’re going to bring my chair, right?” and I could tell how much she wanted to roll her eyes and tell me to shut up about the chair. Then COVID happened and I haven’t been back to the office since, so I have no idea what ever happened to the chair.

      1. Prefer my pets*

        I don’t suppose you happen to remember the brand/model do you? The struggle to find chairs for short people is real!

        1. TechWorker*

          I find that an alternative solution is a standing desk that can be adjusted to be lower than normal – this solved my short person issues as I’m a normal width

        2. akabeko*

          Not who you asked, but I’m 5’1″ and got this chair for my home desk, and it’s great! It originally came with arms but I removed them and now I can sit cross legged or with my feet on the floor comfortably. (There is also a no-arms version)
          BTOD Petite Office Chair Seat Height 15.5″-19″

        3. Your Mate in Oz*

          Drafting chair or architect chair are two terms that have worked for me in the past. I have one and it goes high enough that I can sit at my standing desk :)

      2. Anon Again... Naturally*

        When I started at my current employer, they gave everyone a selection of ergonomic chair styles to test and let you keep your favorite. When we went fully remote for COVID we were encouraged to take our chairs home. I am so glad I did because shortly after that we went permanently remote and now new folks have to provide their own chairs.

        1. Phryne*

          We got send home for covid and it took my body just two weeks to break from working on a dining room chair. So the first thing I asked for when we realised it could be a while was my chair. Good thing too, as it happened we stayed at home for two years. By the time we went back everybody had lost count of what furniture went where, and I just requested a new one for work and kept the other one home as I still wfh 3 days a week. We flex desk, so when I am not there my chair lives in a corner with a not on it to keep off. Never had any problems with it. At my team there are only 2-3 people with their own chair, but on some admin departments they have literal designated parking areas for personal chairs.
          My country has pretty good laws on what companies have to provide for safe working, so my employer tends not to fight it and just provide when asked. I don’t have any conditions, just very sensitive to non-ergonomic workplaces, so after I had a muscle in my shoulder spasm up completely for weeks years and years ago I went to the company doctor to ask for accommodations and I guess there is a note on my file now cause I’ve not had any problems getting what I need since.

    6. Old Cynic*

      I sat on a carton of reams of paper once for 3 weeks after my chair broke (and came close to impaling me when it did). Our CEO personally purchased all office equipment and couldn’t make a decision about spending the necessary funds to replace my chair. Only because I was in a very visible location and guests began asking questions did I finally get a new chair.

    7. Joyce to the World*

      I had a tantrum at work once when we were given tubs to pack up our desk items for a big move. They were downsizing the cubicles and moving everyone around. I overheard the outside vendor/coordinator tell her helpers to go through everyone’s tubs and to confiscate contraband items such as power strips. I had one and it had my name written on it because it was purchased by me and only used for pot lucks. When she and her minions got to my tub and started going through it and tried to take my power strip I chewed her out and accused her of stealing. I threw a major hissy fit. I won though. My boss came to see what the commotion was and totally stood up for me.

    8. Holly*

      lol, I once quit a job over a stool. It was the best decision in jobs I have ever made. I was infinitely better off with pay and environment.

      1. linger*

        Just to clarify, this was an item of furniture, and not the other type of stool?
        Because that could well be something to quit over, depending on origin and location.

    9. MichelleMaBelle*

      I have to admit I did something similar! I was changing departments, and my prior role had been part of the c-suite, which had ‘nicer’ furniture standards than the new department. Think Herman Miller Aeron Chair (when they were very first released) vs. $40 office max cheap chairs… Since I was moving because of their reorganization plans, I stood rather firm on my tantrum hill.

      It may or may not have also been me who recommended my doctor (who signed anything for anyone) to all my new department coworkers so they could file their doctor’s notes in the official request ergonomic seating per the corporation’s accommodations process.

  4. Kimmy Schmidt*

    I didn’t witness this firsthand, but there was a story at my old workplace that someone threw a book at a colleague’s head during a (minor) budget reallocation meeting.

    1. Silver Robin*

      “throw the book at them” was not meant so literally and certainly not meant for budget meetings!

    2. Casual Librarian*

      I’ve heard tails of chair-throwing at my current job about someone who pre-dates my time here.

    3. legal rugby*

      I had a union president throw a binder at my head in my first meeting with them. I was a baby attorney and thought I was hot shit for pointing out their logic loop.

      The fully tenured professor of psychology threw a three ring binder at me and stormed out. The Union VP accepted my proposal.

    4. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      My mom was pulled in on someone’s project in the 80s, so velo binding books. They were both admins, but the woman whose project it was (not in charge of the team, just her project) had gotten behind. My mom started making books and the woman was freaking out. Mom kept making books. Woman kept freaking out. Mom kept making books. Woman threw a book at mom. Mom picked it up and put it in the pile.
      When my mom retired they created an award for outstanding professionalism and named it after her.

      2. Sharp-dressed Boston Terrier*

        Henceforth and forever, all dictionaries shall feature a picture of Mama Not-Tom-Just-Petty next to their definitions of aplomb.

      4. Mari*

        Your mom and my first Principal (when I was still in teacher training) clearly were cut from the same cloth.

        I was in an INCREDIBLY contentious meeting with parents of a student in the class I was training in, and one of the parents got so upset that he picked up the china mug of coffee he’d been given and chucked it (it was still mostly full) at the principal. She ducked (got sprayed with coffee) and the mug hit the wall behind her. Without missing a beat, she said “Is the coffee not to your taste? Would you prefer a cup of tea?” and waited for an answer like she didn’t have coffee dripping down her glasses.

        Woman was the definition of ‘cool under pressure’ – she could have given snipers lessons on not reacting!

    5. The Other Katie*

      One of my old bosses swiped a monitor and keyboard off a teammate’s desk in a rage after being told we’d miss a deadline for a day.
      Yeah, that was not the funnest job.

      1. zinzarin*

        “And now we’ll be a day and a half late, as we need to get IT in here to get Bob’s workspace set up right again.”

    6. Happy meal with extra happy*

      At my job, someone (who was known to be a bit of a hothead) threw a stapler at someone. That was the only time they had gotten violent, and it was fortunately the last straw.

      1. Pippa K*

        Men at my workplace (a university) have, in unrelated incidents, thrown a chair, punched a hole in drywall, and screamed at a coworker until red in the face. Their careers are doing fine and there were no consequences. Meanwhile, I was once told to stop having a facial expression someone thought was too negative.

        1. Stay-at-homesteader*

          I get the feeling there are gonna be a lot of higher-ed-based stories. Currently deciding which of my bananas ones meet the criteria best…but most of them honestly involve two buttheads being unreasonable, so they’re not overreactions so much as cautionary tales about tenure.

        2. OrigCassandra*

          Negative-facial-expression policing fistbump. I also got the A-word (“abrasive”) leveled at me.

          I sure do not miss that job. At all.

          1. Pippa K*

            Someday I’m going to do a feminist workplace-bullshit illustrated dictionary. A is for abrasive, B is for bossy….

            So many years of tone policing, but sadly my tone is apparently incorrigible. Defund the tone police!

            1. AnonORama*

              Unfortunately, we also know what C is for based on the story above. (So gross, and yes, way different than just cursing at someone like “that’s bullshit” or similar.)

              1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

                God I want to build on this.
                B rhymes with the times
                which…
                I explain I am not being emotional

            3. MigraineMonth*

              Ah, good old “abrasive”. The reason I now sign every email with “Thanks!”. Even the ones where it makes no sense for me to be thanking anyone.

              Especially those ones.

              1. Pippa K*

                I like “best,” which means either “best wishes” or “best case scenario, you get kidnapped by aliens and never seen again,” depending on who’s receiving the email.

        3. H3llifIknow*

          I had a male colleague lean over the desk to yell in my face and I could FEEL the spittle. I sat quietly through it though I went to my boss later and said I won’t work with that d*head again, and got moved to another program. But *I*, similar to our story was once chewed out because they said I made a face in a meeting when someone said something earthshakingly stupid. The look? One raised eyebrow at my colleague sitting across from me.

          2. Not Tom, Just Petty*

            What’s that quote from 200 years ago?
            The boy picks on the girl in the play yard. She is taken inside. He is given the full yard.

    7. Bagpuss*

      A former boss of mine threw an (A4, hardcover) desk dairy at his secretary when she asked him if he wanted her to stop putting appointments in on Friday afternoons as she had noticed he kept rearranging anything that went in to move them to other days .
      (He was senior enough that he had complete authority to say he didn’t want meetings / appointments on Friday afternoons, I can only assume he was annoyed she had noticed and assumed she was suggesting he was slacking off . Which he may well have been, but his call!)

        1. Lady Knittington*

          We will we ask him,
          We will task him,
          We will book it a-gain, gain gain.
          We will duck it
          We’ll say f*** it,
          Working with sensitive men, men, men

    8. Happily Retired*

      When I first started working in Health Information Management, aka hospital medical records, it was during the paper chart days. Two different surgeons threw charts at me (enclosed in metal binders before being moved to manila.)

      I was very happy when we moved to electronic records.

      1. Bruce*

        This is not the only site I’ve heard about surgeons throwing things at people… will have to ask my sister the ex-nurse about it…

        1. Happily Retired*

          Be sure to mention that they were in our chart-update area, after being asked to (quelle horreur) sign their verbal orders and op reports.

        2. Artemesia*

          My mother was a nurse in the 30s and early 40s. She had many stories of doctors throwing instruments in surgery. And one doctor pushed her against a wall and broke her rib — he got told he would be let go if he did it again.

        3. Dog momma*

          Some throw instruments in the OR, nothing is ever done. One called my manager ..of the ICU where all his patients went postop… the C word. She reported him, nothing was done.
          Although, he reamed out a co worker in front of everyone ( not uncommon).. she took him out into the hall & told him if he felt that was necessary again, speak to her privately and not in front of the whole team. Incredibly, it never happened again. She was an excellent nurse & he knew that.

      2. PlatypusDeniability*

        As someone who helped hospital staff transition to electronic records, this did not solve the issue. “Code Blue” was for when a patient lost vital signs. “Code White” was for when a physician became so frustrated with the new electronic record system that they picked up one of the $10,000 monitors and smashed it on the floor. (The physician was allowed to go back to the paper records, but their admitting privileges at the hospital were revoked.)

          1. PlatypusDeniability*

            Not because of the rudeness/violence/destroyed equipment (I wish!), but because it was considered a refusal to use the new electronic record system. Doctors refusing to use it endangered the hospital’s government payout for switching to the electronic record system.

    9. AnonORama*

      I worked for a partner when I practiced law who was known for throwing books or other objects at people who delivered bad news, and/or people who produced work he wasn’t happy with. He never threw anything at me, but he did once take a brief I’d written, throw it on the floor and stomp his feet on it to demonstrate what he thought of its quality.

      1. FormerLegalAssistant*

        I worked for an attorney who once threw a sheaf of papers I’d handed him back at me in my face. The reason? He had asked me to copy the pages for him, and I had, but when I restapled them I didn’t line the new staple up with holes the old staple had made. I was later told by a different legal assistant at the firm that this particular attorney always wanted new staples to be the exact same holes as the old staple. We had an electric stapler at that firm, so it was especially hard to line the holes up. I worked there two years and got pretty good at it by the end. I still do it automatically to this day even though I am positive my current boss has never noticed what method I used to join two pieces of paper together!

        At that same job, the office manager threw a pen at me when I told her I was pregnant and was going to be on leave. That was a bit more understandable because there were three women at that office of like 10 people pregnant and due at the same time, and I was the last one to tell her. She didn’t apologize, but her job was way worse than mine, so I forgive her.

    10. Morgan Proctor*

      …was this workplace an art museum? Because I heard an identical story about my old workplace!

    11. brainless*

      When I was working at a newspaper, I witnessed one reporter throw a notebook at another reporter’s face for some reason. She was always a bit of a loose cannon, but that one got her perp walked straight out, never to return.

  5. PlatypusDeniability*

    I joined a rapidly-growing company that had once (when it was far smaller) had donuts available to all staff on the one day a month that new hires start. I learned of this because the person who announced the end of Donut Day was still known as “that lady who cancelled donut day” more than *five years* later.

    1. Cranky-saurus Rex*

      We worked together! I actually jumped in to tell this same story. I was there for the announcement at an all-hands staff meeting (which at this company was held in a large auditorium) at one of the few staff meetings that the CEO was unable to attend. She proceeded to scold us all like children at the next month’s staff meeting for booing “the lady who cancelled donut day”

        1. Cranky-saurus Rex*

          Yeah, it was unfortunately a case of shooting the messenger — the “lady who canceled donut day” was just the one sharing the CEO’s decision.

          A bit more background — the tradition started when the company was a couple dozen people all in one building and it made sense to lure people out of their offices to meet the 1-2 new people. By the time it was canceled, the company was over 3000 employees, spread over ~10 buildings, and new hire orientation day was held in only one of those buildings, the one with the fewest employee offices.

          While I missed the donuts at the time (and may have been among the boo-ers…), in retrospect I mostly feel bad for the local bakeries that suddenly lost a huge recurring order!

          1. cardigarden*

            Aw man nevermind she shouldn’t have had to deliver that message if it wasn’t her policy.

        3. merula*

          It reads like the person known as “the lady who cancelled donut day” would more accurately be described as “the lady who announced the cancellation of donut day based on a decision made by others”. It’s the decision-makers who deserve the booing.

    2. Anon for this*

      Reminds me of “Sandwichgate.”

      For many years we held special events on Saturdays. Events were staffed by a pool of specially trained workers from various unrelated departments who volunteered to work overtime for it. These were at remote worksites doing highly physical, unpleasant, dangerous, skilled labor outside the normal job description for most employees.

      Because of the remote locations, we’d carpool there – meaning staff had no personal transportation, no cold storage for food, and no nearby facilities. So our standard practice was to provide lunch for event staff. Nothing extravagent… I’m talking sandwiches from the grocery store deli or similar. Cost was about $6 per person.

      New boss started. Very first event I ask her for petty cash to pay for sandwiches and she FLIPPED OUT. According to her this was horrifically unethical, misappropriation of public funds, the works. Did not pay any attention when I pointed out that this was within policy because of the specific circumstances and travel distances. Got even more angry when I told her that eliminating sandwiches would tank morale and cause people to stop volunteering for overtime, yelling that only “spoiled whiny brats” would complain about not getting a free lunch and that they should be grateful to get paid for an extra shift.

      Surprise surprise, people stopped volunteering to work event shifts. We actually had to stop holding events because we couldn’t get enough staff to safely run them. She continued to bring up how “childish” and “whiny” these people were for over a year. Never grasped that it wasn’t about a $5 sandwich… it was about the consideration and respect shown by providing for people’s needs on the worksite.

    3. survivor123*

      Fairly sure I also worked for this company. We also had the legend of Almond Milk girl who basically called the company racist for not providing almond milk in the break rooms as many Asians are lactose intolerant. This was also said in the then 5000+ employee all hand meeting.

      1. Driftless Writer*

        My friend and I still have screenshots of the Almond Milk email fiasco, saved for posterity. We’ve both been gone from This Company for a decade, but our fond memories will last forever!

  6. Bird Lady*

    In New York, the state relaxed the mask mandate, and then when Covid ticked back up again, re-instated the mandate.

    Where I worked, we still had in-person meetings throughout the pandemic once everyone was vaccinated. When the mandate returned, our Director asked everyone to comply and to wear their mask to the meeting.

    A Department Head decided he hated wearing a mask and wouldn’t do it again. So he attended the meeting without his mask. He was obviously asked to put a mask on. His reply was to stand up, toss his chair, and leave work for the rest of the day. (The meeting was first thing in the morning.)

    1. Panicked*

      Covid really brought out the unreasonableness in people. I look at my colleagues very differently now.

      1. Bird Lady*

        Agree. I got Covid representing my institution at an event, and was told by one of my colleagues it was fine and fair to share information about my husband’s health and my health to the general public. When I complained that this seemed to border illegal and unethical behavior – especially relating to my husband who is so private he does not have social media accounts – many were shocked that I thought it inappropriate and that I was to blame for getting sick. Working there we had two extremes: The first was Covid wasn’t a problem and no one was going to change their behavior, and the other was Covid was the worst thing to ever happen and you were “unclean and immoral” if you got sick.

          2. Ink*

            Unfortunately, that mindset sticks with humanity. I had a DEEPLY depressing essay assignment on how people respond to disease and epidemics, with one of the reference articles having been written a bit post-SARS. You kept expecting COVID to pop up in their list, because the same ideas and conspiracy theories carry on in startlingly consistent terms through the black death, leprosy, spanish flu, AIDS, SARS… the biggest differences were tiny changes in language and the occasional addition of another group “creating” the disease (bless the guy who thought SARS was spread via UFO, it provided much needed levity).

      3. Laser99*

        I am disillusioned now. I mean, I didn’t have a high opinion of my fellow humans before, and the pandemic laid bare all the selfishness and pettiness.

        1. Artemesia*

          This for me in the abstract — but my personal experience in Chicago is that people complied, were considerate and in my social circle people got COVID tests before coming to dinner parties and such in the early days after vaccines when we started doing so in person socializing.

          1. covidIsntOver*

            And then when you found out about breakthrough infections and Long Covid you resumed testing and caution? Oh wait. No. You didn’t. You don’t see the problem because you are the problem.

      4. Allura Vysoren*

        Same. I worked in an office where masks didn’t have to be worn if we were at our desks (in a poorly ventilated and very small office building) and there was literally no enforcement anywhere (even when it was The Law). I lost a lot of respect for a well-liked manager after listening to her have a loud conversation in the break room about how she shouldn’t have to wear a mask because it’s her health. My manager got COVID and swore up and down it was from a shared phone in the office even though he went out to lunch (unmasked) with four other coworkers, all of whom came down with COVID at the same time.

        But my personal favorite was a coworker I watched get up from her desk and walk to the bathroom with a mask looped around her wrist.

      5. Chirpy*

        Yeah…I worked “essential” retail during the pandemic…people made it ABUNDANTLY clear that my life was worth absolutely nothing.

        But also, it would be a horrific imposition if they couldn’t get one single item they wanted, and global supply chain issues/ mask mandates/staffing problems/etc were my fault, personally.

        I’m not management. I barely have authority to hang up on abusive callers.

    2. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      When our school re-instituted masking after a summer break, it was announced over email, and I heard one of our faculty start cursing loudly (in Italian, which makes it adorable) from behind his door.

    3. Our Lady of Shining Eels*

      This wasn’t a coworker, but it happened at my place of work …

      So, mask mandate everywhere in NYC. Signs in all the places, please wear a mask, etc. A patron came in, no mask. Hello, please put on a mask, if you don’t have one, we can provide you with one.

      Lady’s response was to call the police on us. I just remember the officer’s face … “Ma’am, if you don’t want to wear a mask, you cannot be in the building. Why do you want us to arrest the staff?”

    4. Earlk*

      To clarify before hand: I’m not anti-masks, I’m anti-in-person meetings when masks are needed.

      But I genuinely can’t hear what people are saying when they’re wearing masks. Find in most situations I needed to wear one like shops etc. because the questions are fairly simple. But I had a second interview that was in person following an initial Teams interview and it was a mess. The hiring manager asked me what had happened and how do you explain that masks mean you can’t hear words?

      To clarify, I could hear sounds, it wasn’t that they were speaking too quietly. I just can’t make out individual words.

      Also, before I got tested for glasses as a child I thought I was going deaf so it’s more of a can’t see the mouth thing than masks being soundproof.

      1. Phryne*

        My dad is very hard of hearing, and masks definitely are a problem. It was already hard for him to communicate in busy environments like supermarkets, but masks made it impossible. He wore them, we all did, but communication is really hard with a mask for lots of people and especially for deaf or hard of hearing people who depend on lipreading etc.

      2. Dog momma*

        That’s true. We don’t realize how much we lip read, hear tone , look at facial expressions etc when wearing masks. My husband is very HOH even with hearing aids, and had a neck of a time.

      3. Lenora Rose*

        Sounds like audio processing rather than hearing?

        (it’s an issue for a friend of mine, and yeah, covering the mouth makes it much harder for her to follow a conversation. Her hearing *tests* just fine, because hearing tests are almost always about volume, but ask her to follow words around a lot of ambient noise? She does a lot of lip reading.)

      4. allathian*

        Yes, same. I haven’t found a comfortable mask so if there’s a mask mandate, I’d rather not see people in person at all. The mask negates all the benefits of in-person meetings for me.

  7. keyw*

    We have a few people at my org who really, really, really don’t like any kind of change, no matter how small. I implemented a new, fairly simple software program last spring, and my phone was ringing off the hook with people absolutely melting down about incredibly minor things. One woman said she couldn’t use it because it limited the length of a certain text field (this was very purposeful, and she was one of the main reasons we limited it). Another staffer, notoriously petty, logged a complaint with IT that she didn’t like the font of the new software (it was literally Arial).

    1. Susan Calvin*

      Oh god, I’ve been on the receiving end of that ticket, because the look-and-feel of an application very slightly changed with a version upgrade, and she didn’t think she could look at this font all day, and how hard can it possibly be to change back? (Very.)

      1. Visually Impaired Guy*

        I complained about a font recently but in fairness it was serif-italics and that made it hard for me to read (which I knew wasn’t only me based on AAM’s wonderful and still-appreciated decision to move away from that font). When the response came back that it couldn’t easily be changed I was also nice about it, and told them that I felt better knowing that I’d at least been heard.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          Italics are genuinely hard to read! I personally really like the tone you get when something is italicised, but I can’t bear it if it’s more than a word or two and will tend to skip over it if it’s like a whole paragraph. My dyslexic students have it much rougher than I do with italics, but objecting to Arial? Come the fuck on.

          1. Artemesia*

            every time I read some smug little piece on how some 22 year old learned the office could save X$ on ink by using some skinny font, I think about all the visually impaired people like my husband and old people like me who literally cannot read a lot of these fonts well. And don’t get me started on restaurant menus for posh dark places that use coral print on tan background or yellow on orange or whatever.

    2. not applicable*

      Similar story! My workplace is attempting to adopt Agile principles, which meant moving from an inhouse database to a more mainstream one. The new database would mean that more flexibility would be possible for data entry, more opportunities for team collaboration, better tracking of report progress, etc.

      You would have thought that the change suggested you had to write the software into your will as your sole beneficiary! Reactions have been all over the map; one person doggedly refused to even log into the new software to do any work on it (I was actually hired into my position before this one to cover this person’s refusal to even try the new software, since I knew how to work with it). Others would lament the loss of the extremely limiting in house software and nitpick every single thing the old software did that the new software didn’t. Another person was known to have a hairpin trigger reaction to even the mere mention of the software; they once yelled at the current product owner of the software in a small conference room that that absolutely HATE the new software and would rather be fired than even think of using it. The current product owner was not the one who made the call either, but this person did not care.

    3. anonymized_for_me*

      I’ve gotten that complaint. The old (internally written) software didn’t find/print all needed information. Ergo, when I wrote the new version (we changed the backend, a new version was required), all needed information was printed and in a new format.

      Mind you, all stakeholders and been involved with the look and feel since the beginning. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone.

      But when it was released, the hissy fits were amazing. Someone took my code and wrote their own version that looked like the old one… and it was still missing the important information they needed to do their jobs.

      1. Artemesia*

        I remember years ago when offices in State of Tennessee were using some sort of terminal and the switch was made to desk top computers and of course new software. Some of the recalcitrant old timers hired someone to program the new system to look like the old terminals.

    4. Anon Again... Naturally*

      I work in IT for a university, and I have so many stories! About 7 years ago, our major student software suite did a huge update, which essentially took the software from feeling like it was a DOS application to feeling like it was in Windows 95. The number of people who were upset that the new version made it easier to use a mouse instead of hotkeys was something else.

      1. Dawn*

        To be fair, when you learn a hotkey system it’s usually about a million times faster than using a mouse to click on things; that’s the whole reason why professional gamers bind everything to hotkeys.

        I’d be pissed too if someone had just drastically increased the amount of time it took for me to get my work done.

        1. Anon Again... Naturally*

          Oh, the hotkeys all still worked! You just could also use a mouse anywhere you could use a hotkey, where before you had to memorize all the hotkeys.

              1. Anon Again... Naturally*

                You’re both right! I loved Colin Firth delivering the line, and when I found out it was from a song I looked it up. The song is really overwrought and maudlin, but when I was looking for a user name the idea just popped into my head.

          3. Seeking Second Childhood*

            Good compromise — I have a tendency to tendinitis and rely on keyboard commands to avoid pain.

      2. Dasein9 (he/him)*

        I once had a job where the main niche software I used underwent a similar change that really did make the job much more difficult to do. It looked an awful lot like the organization was prioritizing the training of cheaper new employees over the retention of skilled ones.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          But they said the hotkeys still worked in this case. Just that now mouse also worked, and you weren’t forced into hotkeys.

      4. Phryne*

        Oh, was it OSIRIS by any chance? Lol.
        I’ve gotten used to it now, but we had a similar change and you really cannot do everything with hotkeys anymore. And yes, the changes make the programme way more easy to use and accessible and everything, but I also have way more arm/elbow complaints now.

    5. Thin Mints didn't make me thin*

      I worked with one guy who was very quiet and competent. Then they brought in a new computer system. He went to the first day of training, went out for lunch, and never came back. Last I heard he was driving a school bus.

          1. Goldfeesh*

            If buses had seat belts there would be outright murder on the buses. I rode on the school bus in the early ’90s in a small-town school system. I guarantee one of the older kids would have used a length of strapping to do bodily harm to a bullied child/younger kid.

          2. Dawn*

            They don’t have seatbelts because they wouldn’t do anything to improve safety.

            Cars have seatbelts so you don’t go flying through the windshield in an accident.

            Buses don’t have that problem to begin with, so seatbelts would actually cause more harm than good (because they do have their own safety issues – seatbelts cause a lot of broken limbs, for example – that’s just still safer than being thrown through a windshield.)

            1. Zelda*

              The windshield isn’t the only thing you can collide with inside a vehicle. Seatbelts are meant to provide deceleration when friction fails (which it absolutely will) and prevent secondary crash, in which you collide with the windshield, the seat in front of you, the ceiling during a rollover, etc. Being a human projectile is no bueno.

            2. PlatypusDeniability*

              School buses are designed with “compartmentalization”, which means they are well-designed to protect kids in case of head-on or rear-end collision. Unfortunately, if the bus is struck off-angle or from the side, or if the bus rolls over, compartmentalization doesn’t work. Fortunately we don’t have a lot of fatalities, but a lot of injuries could be prevented with the lap-and-shoulder required by the (US) National Transportation Safety Board for all new busses.

              https://www.npr.org/2023/08/31/1195621534/school-bus-crash-ohio-seat-belts

          3. I'm on Team Rita*

            I’m told the seats in school buses are made to break in a certain way in crashes. Somehow this is safer than seat belts for those particular vehicles, and if there were seat belts smaller children would be crushed by the collapsing seats. I have no personal experience.

          4. Dog momma*

            In NYS, you’re only allowed to ask students to buckle up. You cannot force them or buckle them up..husband was a bus driver for special ed.

          5. Lenora Rose*

            My understanding is that they considered it and it wasn’t actually as much of a safety need as it would be in a car.

    6. Decidedly Me*

      Customer story, rather than coworker, but we made a slight change to how something looked in our app and it overall went over fine. A year later, a long time customer was asking for a larger discount on top of his already large discount and started rattling off all the things he didn’t like about our product. One of the things he mentioned was how a certain feature was broken and had been for ages. This was the change we had made. He said since it looked different, he assumed it was broken and never actually tried using it as usual or reaching out to support for help…

    7. Never Surrender*

      As someone who’s name starts with th letter i, I would have complained about the new font. Sans serif fonts should be banned from the planet.

      2. Dawn*

        Serif italics are just straight up bad, though, especially as the font of choice to be used throughout an application. They’re straight up unreadable to a lot of people.

      3. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

        This reminds me of the comment from someone on another thread who didn’t know that llama was spelled with two L’s.
        My mom’s name was Ila Capitola , and I’m soooo happy she gave me a “normal” name, that has a “normal” shortened/nickname.

        1. Heffalump*

          The one-l lama,
          He’s a priest.
          The two-l llama,
          He’s a beast.
          And I will bet
          A silk pajama
          There isn’t any three-l lllama.

          –Ogden Nash

          1. I'm on Team Rita*

            In the book of Nash’s poems I used to have, Nash noted that someone wrote to him suggesting a bad fire is called a “three alarmer”. In a northeast USA accent that’s “three a lama”. Nash said he stood corrected. Classy and funny reply.

    8. Catwhisperer*

      Maybe this is petty of me, but I rather enjoy it when people complain about changes made to prevent them from doing something undesirable. Usually because the change comes after repeated requests for them to stop doing what it is they’re doing.

    9. Carrie Oakie*

      I have coworkers like this who get mad at me for changing software that we don’t even make – I’m sorry Smartsheet or Monday added a new feature that’s more efficient than the ten step way we did it before!! LOL

      My favorite was a coworker friend who REFUSED to upgrade their OS, Microsoft Office and iTunes, because they didn’t like the look/where the buttons were/upgrading everything no else with the new OS. I secretly celebrated the day they had to get a new computer because that meant they FINALLY had to use the new versions and omg you’d have thought the world ended!

    10. Penguin Tummy*

      someone phoned up to complain that the new roster system log in page was pink, and could it be a different colour, because they didn’t like it. The colour was set by the software vendor.

    11. StarTrek Nutcase*

      It’s the tiny things that can cause biggest problem. Decades ago, pre-computers, white-out in bottles were a thing for secretaries (4) in my university department. A coworker lost her mind when university supply ofc refused to provide a department more than 6 bottles/month. She went to our dean to complain she couldn’t do her job with only 6/mon (though her share was really 1.5). Our dean kicked her out, our dept chair kicked her out, and she continued to scream daily until finally one professor bought her a half-gallon jug (who knows where he got it, none of us knew that size existed). She hid it, never shared, and it somewhat reduced her complaining.

      1. But…*

        Ah whiteout. Another thing I’ll have to explain to my kids one day. If you put it on too thick, it took forever to dry and then was hard to write on. We thought that the invention was whiteout tape was a real advancement for modern civilization.

  8. Halloween crimes*

    Boss sent a scathing company-wide email that only a few people dressed up for the office Halloween party. Thought it showed people did not have enough company spirit. There were no external clients or any public facing work that day so it was just about showing the boss our spirit.

      2. Jam on Toast*

        Next year, I would be dressing up as Bob Cratchit, the poor downtrodden clerk. And maybe see if I could get someone to come as Marley’s Ghost.

      3. Ellis Bell*

        I want a description of what you had in mind with that Ferrina. The picture you evoked for me, is a grey shroud with a lot of office debris pinned to it; leftover half doughnuts, dusty paperclips that got turned out of a forgotten pen cup, the tannin stained teaspoons that’re always in the kitchen sink, a chocolate box with nothing but empty wrappers in it and that rogue piece of tupperware from the office fridge with something unidentifiable inside.

        1. owen*

          i would go with the ghost of company morale = absent

          “what do you mean, pto? i was there all day. i was dressed as the ghost of company morale. surely you saw me, our morale being so visible and all!”

      4. JustaTech*

        I have done a group costume as “Ghosts of [Our Department] Past” – ie: everyone who had quit our team.

        Someone once dressed up as “The Elephant in the Room” – our pending sale.

      1. anotherfan*

        our go-to for non-Halloween participation as journalists was “I’m going as a reporter” or “I’m going as an editor.” The newest one was “I’m going as a serial killer. They look just like everybody else.”

  9. Aerie*

    I worked in a small office (less than 10 people) and we had a very small kitchenette – mini-fridge, coffee maker, microwave, sink, and a cupboard for storing mugs. In the mini-fridge we had a Brita pitcher for drinking water. People were pretty good about refilling it throughout the day, so it was rarely empty.

    A new hire thought this was absolutely barbaric. He regularly ranted about how unhygienic Brita filters are, how they stop working if the filter ever gets dry, and we needed a proper water cooler. He created a petition (again, in an office of less than 10 people!) to get us all on his side. I think this was happening as I had one foot out the door so I went ahead and signed on, but had no idea if the petition was every brought to the person who could actually make that decision. But right after my last day they moved to a slightly larger office. I went back to return some equipment and the first thing this (now former) co-worker showed me was the new water cooler.

    1. Skitters*

      Too bad he didn’t see what I saw. Once in my physical therapist’s office I was getting a drink of water and the water delivery person was changing out the bottle and I looked into the machine.
      Daphnea, I saw multitudes of Daphnea just living their life and pointed it out to him and he tagged and took the machine. I never got that cup of water! Nasty!

      2. Dasein9 (he/him)*

        I just googled “Daphnea” and the search result images have a strangely harmonious mix of water fleas and Parisian fashion shots.

      3. Artemesia*

        Reminds me of the day I idly cleaned the nozzles on the coke machine at the greasy spoon where I worked — and discovered enormous pads of mold growing in every nozzle. I have never bought fountain drinks since.

        1. Anone*

          omg, gross!! for what it’s worth, every place I’ve worked at has required the complete removal of the nozzles for cleaning and soaking every night

        2. Lenora Rose*

          I’m not *as* worried about this at most chains where I know there are regs from all levels requiring frequent cleanings. I’m more concerned, sadly, at the sort of small local restaurant I otherwise prefer.

          I also almost never drink fountain drinks anyhow.

    2. Bumblebee Mask*

      This totally reminded me of a situation that happened back when I first started working professionally in HR. We moved to a brand new building. When we moved they got rid of all the water coolers. (I learned later because all the new sinks and water fountains had filters already). A guy filed an OSHA complaint about his unsafe office building with no water filters, and OSHA came and investigated! We were north of Los Angeles, in a suburb, not on some rural well system. LA water is fine. Nobody batted an eye when we were in a brand new building that was still half under construction and so we were freezing all winter because not all the exterior walls and windows were in yet on the other side of the building. But no water coolers was the breaking point.

      1. Dawn*

        In OSHA’s defense, “they came and investigated the complaint regardless of whether it ultimately had merit” is exactly what you want to hear.

        1. Bumblebee Mask*

          True enough. I just remember being shocked that OSHA came because we didn’t offer water coolers anymore. Also, being the early years of the dot.com boom where companies were basically the wild wild west, we did end up having several OSHA violations around our recordkeeping, but I, a lowly little HR assistant, had nothing to do with that, until I was assigned to do the recordkeeping and learned quickly about OSHA 3000 logs.

      2. Blarg*

        I worked at a building where the tap water was yellow. Looked like someone had peed in it. They insisted the water was fine, but no one wanted to drink it. So we all joined “water clubs,” where you paid a few dollars a month for access to water coolers.

        I worked for the county health department.

        Also, there were rattlesnakes in the basement of the other building. Eventually we all moved into one building where the water wasn’t yellow and there weren’t literal snakes’ nests.

    3. Generic Name*

      I’ll never understand the mindset of starting a new job and immediately complaining about something relatively minor, and clamoring to get it changed right away. Like, maybe just lay low for a month or two before you foment a rebellion? I used to work with a woman who had several small issues she got all het up about. She just couldn’t believe that we used Brand X of notebook when Brand Q was obviously and objectively so much better. Our data collection SOP was to take data and notes digitally, so notebooks weren’t really necessary anyway. There were a couple of other similar type things she railed about that I’ve forgotten they were so minor. She quit in a huff about 9 months later.

  10. Gingerbat*

    I was working at a small non-profit and we were having our office (located in a historic house) painted. It was a big job, think lots of workers, scaffolding and drop cloths everywhere, so slightly disruptive, but we all had individual offices with doors that closed and a liberal WFH policy. The VP of advancement came in one morning and went absolutely bananas about the inconvenience. She screamed at the workers and demanded that they turn off their radio and move out of the way so she could use the main stairs (where they were actively painting) to get to her office instead of the back stairs (which were not being painted). She also demanded that they move their work van from the front of the building to a parking lot on the next block so she could park her car there. I felt so bad for the guys who were just trying to do the job they were hired to do that I went around and apologized for her unhinged behavior. (This was not out of character for her and the main reason I left that job after less than a year)

    1. Bruce*

      Good of you to apologize to that crew… expecting contractors to turn off the radio must have been a shock to them! (kidding, but almost every crew that has ever worked at my house has had a loud radio playing all day)

      2. Gingerbat*

        They were not pleased! And the music was not even loud or disruptive, just your basic classic rock.

  11. Long Time Lurker*

    I managed an office where we had been the only tenants in the building for a few years. We had offered free coffee to our employees from the building cafeteria, which was on top of the free coffee (basic Keurig as well as machines offering fresh ground and fancier coffees) available 24/7 in multiple break rooms throughout the office.

    Eventually two other companies moved into the building, and leadership decided to end the free coffee in the cafeteria. (This was alongside some other changes as a result of the new tenants.) The response from a handful of employees was extreme. Multiple emails, an attempt at a petition, people cornering me in the hallway for explanations and giving me proposed new systems for allowing the free coffee- someone even brought it up at a town hall. Whenever I pointed out that there was still free coffee everywhere in the office, they would insist “it’s not the same!”

    1. DanniellaBee*

      Coffee from a Keurig tastes very different than regular brewed coffee. I personally cant stomach that coffee and would have been one of the rioters.

        1. Momma Bear*

          It sounds like it wasn’t removed from the cafeteria, just no longer free. We have a café in the building. If you want free, you use the Keurig. If you want to pay for something fancy, you go to the café. It’s a choice. I might not have been thrilled, but I wouldn’t have gone all torches and pitchforks about it.

          1. Ellis Bell*

            “the free coffee (basic Keurig as well as machines offering fresh ground and fancier coffees) available 24/7 in multiple break rooms throughout the office.” You could get a variety of types of free coffee from the break rooms, you just couldn’t get it from the cafeteria any more.

      3. Annabelle*

        But there was other types of coffee available, including for free (if I’m reading it right?). And even if the other coffee wasn’t available for free…okay yeah it is frustrating to lose a free perk especially if the alternative is one you don’t like or can’t use. But like, some people have war in their countries, Brittany.

  12. Jane Bingley*

    I was once helping tidy our printer room during a quiet season. I found a printer cartridge from 1994. This was 2017. It had moved offices at least 4 times. It was only compatible with a printer that we did not own and was no longer manufactured.

    I took a photo for the laugh and threw it away. The secretary found it in the garbage, took it out, put it back, and scolded me for being wasteful.

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      Hopefully, the next step would be taking it to the dumpster directly (or surround it by stinky food waste)

    2. FricketyFrack*

      That secretary would get along great with my boss. I like my boss a lot but the only times I think I’ve ever *really* made her mad is when I suggested that we could get rid of a ton of stuff in our storage room because so much of it is stuff we literally can’t use it anymore. Every time we get a new employee, they see the state of the room and want to tackle it and I have to tell them it won’t work and not to bring it up because it won’t go well.

      1. Beth*

        I took immense glee in purging our software archive of ALL the old formats, including, I kid you not, an 8-inch floppy disk. Plus all the software that was compatible with Windows ME, XP, etc.

          1. AnonORama*

            I don’t remember ones that size, but I had a job in the late 90s where our computers were hooked to two sizes of disk drive for the two sizes of disk available at the time (smaller than 8″). We did get our boss — not an early adopter of any tech, and still mostly using a typewriter — to understand that you couldn’t shove the larger disks in the smaller drive. But she thought it would be fine to put the smaller ones in the larger drives, causing many jams. The rallying cry to come deal with it was “[Boss] put it in the wrong hole again!” (Thinking about that makes me cringe, but it was 25 years ago in a public health nonprofit where everyone was super irreverent, so the folks involved thought it was funny. Even the boss, usually.)

          2. Artemesia*

            When I retired I threw out about 5 different types of storage from computers over the years including those 8 inch floppies. Yes, a bit of a hoarder I’m afraid — but not mice.

          3. HexagonRuler*

            Those 8″ floppies are now quite valuable because some people are trying to keep old expensive and very specialised equipment that uses them going (Think million dollar MRI machines or industrial lathes).

            Last I heard they are worth something like $20 each on from a specialised reseller.

        2. Introvert girl*

          Somewhere in the beginning of the 21sth century when I was at university, we had a professor that forced us to send in our paper on a floppy disk. Not through the online system of that university, but on an actual floppy disk. Remember, most laptops didn’t have a floppy insert back then. It was so hard to meet her expectations. Students were looking for old computers. They would bring in their work on a laserdisc to put it on a floppy. And she was a professor of Communications!

          1. Mad Harry Crewe*

            That’s horrendous, I was in college around the same time and we submitted everything on paper, or by email, depending on what it was and the professor’s preference.

          2. brainless*

            I worked at a company that was still using 3.5″ floppy discs to hard code captioning on video. The owners of the company had scored a great deal on these old ass machines. When it seemed we’d bought out every computer store of it’s floppy discs, we switched to thumb drives. We easily could have been uploading files to a server.

          3. Autofill Contact*

            This tracks. I had an intern in 2010 who was a Comms major. We asked her to design a power for an event and she had zero desktop publisher skills- their curriculum had then learning to make graphics on a poster board like it was a 6th grade science fair.

        3. JustaTech*

          *whispers* We have an instrument that still requires a 3 1/2 floppy to work (because it can’t be connected to the internet, so it’s the only way to upload the controls).
          It will be obsoleted in a few months, and I will miss it.

    4. The OG Sleepless*

      My husband is a bit of a pack rat. He owns a small professional firm. He closed his office and moved it home in 2019. I had to persuade him to get rid of a BUNCH of obsolete printer cartridges and 3.5″ floppies. (We actually ended up keeping some of the floppies just for retro appeal.)

    5. EvilQueenRegina*

      Sounds a bit like my family. My grandad, for some reason best known to himself, held on to a can of Carling Black Label lager, best before November 1982. After he died in 2013, and the siblings (Mum’s the oldest of 3) were sorting out the house, middle sibling threw it away. Youngest sibling kicked off about this because he thought it should have been kept. Seriously…a can of lager 30 years past its best before date?

    6. RLC*

      Years ago, whilst I was cleaning out MY OWN OFFICE, my predecessor (retired) wandered in and began to dig through my trash bin and retrieve items he thought I should keep and use. I was astonished. Dude, you don’t work here any more and you can’t control what I throw away!

      2. Autofill Contact*

        Was this a university? We have some emeritus professors who haven’t been to campus in 4+ years whose offices are mausoleums. If we tried to disturb them, they would most certainly emerge from the shadows to tell us we can’t throw stuff away, they might need it.

        1. Ink*

          My high school somehow had/has that problem! The last chalkboard and VCR in the building are in the classroom of a much-beloved history teacher. The building’s been added onto and renovated a billion times, and he must have ad some pull with someone, because he had an “office” that’s actually a classroom-sized room that connects to the classroom, with no way to access it via the hall. Both crammed with all sorts of things on huge shelves and hung on the walls with barely a spare inch. He retired a few years ago, in his seventies. The room might have a whiteboard now, idk, but the rest remains… because his replacement is his son X’D

    7. Government person*

      Years ago my team moved to a different part of the building. Some of our assigned desks were cluttered with a type of machine nobody used any more (not a fax but you’re in the right ballpark) so I said boss, we should get rid of these. Oh no, said he, we might need them.
      Months later I visited a fellow govt facility; their head office with a big shiny reception lobby. There was one of the machines – in a glass case as an exhibit in their mini museum of old-time govt equipment!
      Boss was convinced after that.

    8. CountryLass*

      I took the opportunity (in 2020) to stop using the handwritten ledger for payments brought into the office, that the previous person who dealt with the banking INSISTED had to be used, as well as handwriting it on the form for Accounts, then in the paying in book, scanning a copy of the form, saving a copy of the computer and posting AND EMAILING it to Accounts… And putting it into the Banking binder.

      She was not happy, but I pointed out if she wanted to sit and write in all of the cheques that we had received over the 4 months we had been WFH she could feel free, however I would not be!

      I snatched the opportunity to get rid of archaic practices that even Accounts said they didn’t know why she did it, but were too scared to challenge her on. She had been with us for about 40 years and even some of the Directors decided it was just easier to let her do her own thing…

    9. MonteCristo*

      This reminds me of the two year project I had where I transferred into the maintenance storage crib of a company that was 60 years old and tried to reduce their obsolete parts list. There were parts for machines that had been decommissioned and scrapped 40 years ago, and they still had parts hanging around, like lots of parts. The maintenance guys ended up squirrelling most of what we “scrapped” into random hidey holes they had around the facility (it was 2M sq ft, so lots of space). At least we got it off our books and out of the inventory system, but it was ridiculous how attached they were to every dang thing in that crib. Also trying to transition these guys from a paper ticket system to a tablet system was another major trial.

    10. Kayem*

      I once had a project manager who was horrified when she overheard me telling another coworker that I did a massive purge of all my cables at home. She railed against how wasteful it was and how I’m going to regret it throwing out all those useful cables. No amount of explaining that I didn’t actually need eight firewire cables for a single device, nor did I need a dozen SCSI cables when I no longer had any SCSI devices stopped her from complaining about it all week.

      She called herself the Cable Lady had three eight-drawer filing cabinets filled with antique cables. After my cable purge, she would periodically pop into my cubicle, smugly inform me that someone had just asked her for an obscure cable that only she could provide, and then condescendingly ask if I needed one because I “foolishly threw away useful cables” and can’t possible be productive without one. The “obscure” cable was always a standard printer cable. No one in the office had their own printer, we all used the industrial networked behemoths. Until my transgression, no one even knew she had this massive collection of cables. Everyone thought the filing cabinet contained project files.

      Epilogue: She retired and we got a new project manager. She went looking for critical project files in the cabinet of cables, only to find mass after mass of a tangled web of deceit. She immediately had facilities deliver a big recycling bin and dumped all the cables. Office lore has that Cable Lady found out about it and sobbed about how they cruelly discarded her legacy, but I was not there to witness it.

    11. SafetyFirst*

      The correct response is to superglue it to her desk.

      Not really. But I can live vicariously through thinking about someone doing it

  13. magpie*

    There was a mug cupboard which contained a selection of mugs. A couple of people had mugs with names on them, but most people just grabbed a random mug. I was always first in because of my flexible hours, and I tended to grab a red mug with flowers on just because, you know, it was visible? Often at the front of the cupboard? I mean, it was quite a nice mug?

    Turns out it was the favourite mug of the uberboss of one-fourth of the (global) company. She came and hunted me down and shouted (actually shouted, really stressed out) at me for using her personal mug (I was a mere editor). And then, at every single opportunity thereafter–when we happened to meet in the kitchen, at every editorial meeting–she made a reference to how I had used her mug, or she hoped I wasn’t stealing someone else’s mug. And when I left the company, at my leaving do FOUR YEARS LATER, she presented me with a mug that was similar to her original mug. Which, I have to say, I do not use because it makes all hot drinks taste of gibbering irrationality.

    2. Cei*

      she presented me with a mug that was similar to her original mug
      Lol. She thought you were the one who was obsessed with the mug and couldn’t live without it.

    3. Canadian CPA*

      Dear Lord, that’s unhinged. We have personal and non-personal mugs at work, but if I see someone using my personal one I just politely let them know that those aren’t for all. And then never bring it up again.

      1. Random Bystander*

        It’d make sense to me to not leave the personal mug in a place where the non-personal mugs are stored.

        1. Momma Bear*

          This. I keep my personal mugs in my office. Old office had mugs for all, but they were company logo mugs, which made it clear that they were for everyone. End of day you were asked to please put it in the dishwasher so they could be washed and fresh for the morning. I still didn’t put my personal mug in there.

        2. Teapot Connoisseuse*

          I used to ensure people wouldn’t steal my personal mug by rarely washing it (my boss adopted the same approach). As I drink only tea, this had the added advantage of building up a nice layer of tannins that gave the terrible office tea some flavour.

    4. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      magpie, I hope for all our sakes that you share your excellent writing skill with the world in some way. “It makes all hot drinks taste of gibbering irrationality,” is BEAUTIFUL.

      1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        LOL imagine Anna Wintour drinking from a mug. She probably has whoever took over Andre Leon Talley’s job pour things directly into her mouth from the bottle like a cherub.

        1. Madame Arcati*

          Drink? Nah she absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and sniffs a breath mint once a fortnight.

    6. Cookies For Breakfast*

      This reminds me of the person who called me out in the middle of the office for using her personal mug – a standard IKEA mug with no markings or personalisation, of which there is more than one identical copy in the kitchen. I need to remember to share the story on the next related prompt!

      Also, everyone, please, if you are so keen to bring personal mugs to the office, then make them recognisable or store them somewhere not public.

    7. Annie*

      Although I do love this story, especially your last remark, I think it was kinda cool that she actually bought you a mug that looked the same as her original mug. Maybe she could have done that in the first place four years earlier, so you both could have the same mug and not be deprived of the taste of gibbering irrationality!

    8. TinySoprano*

      The head of music when I was in high school had a favourite mug like this, to which he was irrationally attached. Two of the other music staff conspired to steal it and send him ransom photos once. They ransomed it for two large packets of Tim Tams.

      He never found out who the culprits were, and when he got it back he wore the mug ON A LANYARD around his neck for the rest of his teaching career.

    9. MonteCristo*

      I don’t understand why people don’t just keep stuff in their office if it means that much to them? I brought my own mug to work, but it lived in my office and I just carried it to the breakroom to get a drink.

  14. OneAngryAvacado*

    At my first job at an extremely toxic start-up (I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any other kind) my old manager used to take any sign that you wanted a life beyond the company as a horrific betrayal. A few examples: asking if I could step out early of the mandatory Friday evening book club earned me a half-hour lecture; a colleague who couldn’t attend the post-board room meeting dinner because of serious conjunctivitis was bawled out because she wasn’t committing to the team; people wouldn’t be hired because they came from a culture where they wouldn’t join in with company beers, etc. It was a hot mess.

    All unfortunately standard stuff for that sort of company. But my favourite was the time Manager went into a massive sulk and pretty much refused to speak to anyone throughout the afternoon, because some of us suggested that the Bear Grills’ outward-bound TV shows could very well have been edited for dramatic emphasis and probably the guy wasn’t in as serious danger for some of his more death-defying stunts as appeared. Apparently because Bear Grills is a Christian, even *suggesting* that a fellow Christian could have so much as tampered with the truth was massively offensive to Manager, and to his faith, and for us to even bring it up was akin to slander.

    (The funniest thing I found about that was that I was a practicing Christian at the time, and other non-Christian colleagues used to come up to me and ask if Manager’s unique brand of weird, co-dependent, gaslighting, I-sleep-in-a-single-bed-because-I’m-saving-myself-for-marriage-and-tell-my-colleagues-about-it-readily, born-again-evangelical deal was common in my community.

    No, friends. No, it isn’t.)

      2. OneAngryAvacado*

        This was also a guy who didn’t believe in leaving drinks because ‘we shouldn’t be celebrating people leaving the company’; bitched about the person whose job I was filling (on my first day!) because when she broke her leg so seriously that she needed a cast+wheelchair combo, she didn’t try hard enough to get back to work; while goofing around drunk pushed an employee off their bike so she had massive bruising all over her face; and I’m sure was fired for one of two reasons:

        1. secret affair with/sexual harassment of a younger female employee who he managed (after insisting on no work relationships and trying to quash her pre-existing relationship with another co-worker)
        2. trying to convert someone he managed while they were stuck in a car with him

        Even Westboro Baptist attendees had nothing on this guy!

        1. Richard Hershberger*

          Is this in a North American context? I suspect not, if only being “leaving drinks” would be an unusual construction in American English. It is the combination with insisting on company beers that jumped out at me. A generation back, an American Evangelical would be strictly opposed to alcohol: hence the jokes about Baptists passing one another in liquor stores. The fashion has changed a lot, but it would strike me as odd to actually insist on drinking. But this was always an American thing. British Evangelicals, I am given to understand, always thought it an odd idiosyncrasy of their American counterparts.

          Either way, the sexual harassment/affair totally scans.

          1. OneAngryAvacado*

            I’m British and this was a British company; the manager was Australian! (Which might give you some context as to why drinking was such a big part of his/the company’s ‘culture’.) From a few conversations we had I think he’d originally converted in one of the big mega-churches with USA origins, which is reportedly known for bringing over quite a lot of the unsettling American Evangelist into its international church plants.

            1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

              I hope your boss was not Scotty from Marketing! Commiserations from the Antipodes.

          2. Dawn*

            Sounds more like – to me – a North American context with a writer whose English was not learned in North America.

            1. Dawn*

              Sorry Avacado, I missed your reply there when I was writing mine. My bad!

              Strange to think of such weird hardcore evangelical Christians anywhere outside of America, honestly.

              1. OneAngryAvacado*

                Yeah from my experience they’re far less common (I’m always aghast at some of the stories that pop up here, because I just can’t imagine that happening here – not to say we don’t have our own brand of obnoxious religious types, but they seem to tend towards more ‘respectability politics’ types rather than ‘would picket a funeral at the drop of a hat’) and tend to congregate (lol) around churches whose ‘parent church’ is Hardcore American Evangelical and exported a lot of their values.

                1. Dawn*

                  Heyyyyyyyy so THAT’S where that word comes from! lol

                  I absolutely get it, I’m Canadian so I’m in the same boat where I’m aware of the American Evangelical types but they don’t pop up here very often, and, uh, yeah. It’s remarkable, to put it mildly, what those people will get up to.

              2. Irish Teacher*

                While they may have different flavours, so to speak, you get the extremists anywhere. I once worked with a woman who was Catholic rather than evangelical, but bizarrely over the top. She got in a long argument with other members of staff about the Da Vinci Code which she thought was threatening people’s faith and commented, “well, if you want to take your theology from Dan Brown,” because clearly, watching a fictional FILM means you believe everything in it is true scholarship. Or…something.

                More problematically, she raised a stink about girls from the neighbouring girls’ school (we were a boys’ school) being allowed to come in and do a survey about students’ attitudes to LGTB+ rights because “children shouldn’t be exposed to sexuality too early.” This was bizarre because…a) the survey was only done with our senior students, the youngest of whom would have been 15, an age at which students are most definitely aware of sex and b) there was nothing in the least “sexual” in the survey anyway. It was stuff like “how would you respond if a friend told you he was gay?” “would you feel comfortable letting your classmates know if you were gay?” etc.

        2. Tatiana*

          ‘we shouldn’t be celebrating people leaving the company’: The head of my former agency would not let us circulate a “Goodbye and Good Luck” card for people who left. Because apparently they were betraying the agency?

          Very little at that job made sense to me.

      1. Sharp-dressed Boston Terrier*

        Truth! I mean, really, how could the Bible not be improved with a book titled “Bel and the Dragon”?

      4. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        Actually a lot of evangelical, creationist types will tell you that the apocryphal books are Satanic or written to test our faith, like fossils and the moon landing.

        1. Rex Libris*

          …And totally not just left out because they didn’t agree with the religious doctrine of the 4th. century Catholic Church.

          1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

            SURELY NOT. Those people were beyond reproach! … You know, right up until whatever schism you agree with decided to break away, at which point those same people became agents of the devil

      5. KeyokeDiacherus*

        Of course not, it’s apocryphal!

        Seriously though, unless it’s a part of the Bible that is regularly covered in a sermon, a significant portion of Christians (and note this is probably true of many faiths and their holy texts) will probably never have heard of it. It’s generally only religious scholars who learn about that sort of thing.

      6. Richard Hershberger*

        Honestly, it would not surprise me in the least if they had not in fact heard of the Apocrypha.

    3. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      My brother’s ex non-ironically gave him a jean jacket button that read “currently seeking a country to rule.”
      This guy. This guy right here is Eternal Leader of the Spotless Mind.

    4. Anastasia Beaverhousen*

      There is a zero percent change I am participating in a book club at work. lol. You can yell all you want I am not going to be there.

      2. OneAngryAvacado*

        It also was mandatory that each one of us would take it in turns to present on a particular book, and that book *had* to be one of those management/mindfulness/lifestyle books that we could use to improve the company. Reader, this did not make it any more appealing.

    6. Don P.*

      “people wouldn’t be hired because they came from a culture where they wouldn’t join in with company beers”

      Sounds a liiitle big illegal-ish, if “come from a culture” means “has a religion”…

  15. IRageQuitThatPlace*

    Last company: Right after the first layoff that division had ever had it was announced that the usual extravagant employee and +1 Saturday night holiday party at the very nice resort in town would be replaced with a lunch provided on site during the workday, just for employees. Just for that year following the layoff.

    Someone was *very* upset that +1s weren’t being included so they could be “thanked” for supporting the employee all year for all the hard word work they did away from home.

  16. Snarkus Aurelius*

    A friend of mine is an attorney at a big time law firm. The offices are set up such that past reception, there’s a long hallway with attorney offices on one side (with windows) and doors to the big conference room on the other.

    The firm purchased new chairs for everyone. The chair delivery guy, ***who is not a law firm employee and thus doesn’t know anyone***, showed up after 5 PM to make the switch less disruptive. But this being a law firm, plenty of people are still around at that time.

    Delivery guy starts with the first office he sees and works his way down to the end. One of the partners was *IRATE* that he switched an associate’s chair before hers! And she went on about it for days complete with emails to the partners. Keep in mind the associate, who wasn’t even there during the switch, possessed her new chair about 10-15 minutes longer than the partner did. Partner insisted the switch should have occured by seniority even though the offices were mixed and the delivery guy doesn’t care.

    I argued that partner clearly didn’t have enough to do!

      2. ampersand*

        Do unhinged people get law degrees or does law make people unhinged? A little of both? It’s interesting how so many law firms seem just absolutely bonkers.

        1. Bast*

          Both, but the different is that people who were already unhinged are generally less tolerable and refuse to acknowledge their own unhingedness, and the ones who have acquired it after practicing law tend to be a little more self-aware and apologetic for their “moments.”

  17. Engineer*

    I worked an internship for only 4 weeks because of this outsized reaction.

    A rectangular cafeteria table was rotated. That’s it. It went from being perpendicular to the cabinets to parallel.

    Holy mother of breakdowns, batman. A team lead came in and saw it and completely lost his mind. I’m talking screaming, ranting, mugs thrown against the wall, holes punched into the wall, all the tables flipped over, just absolute violent meltdown. All because the one table rotated was his favorite table and now the flow of the room was permanently ruined.

    We were not allowed to evacuate the office during this, nor were we allowed to call the police. The company issued no statement afterwards, and the team lead was back at work the next day. I quit two days later.

    1. Margaret Cavendish*

      That is…remarkable. It’s kind of the Platonic ideal of Alison’s prompt – the most extreme reaction, to the smallest possible change!

      1. Engineer*

        Yeah, there’s a reason why that memory’s stuck around so clearly, because it was the most dramatic overreaction I’ve ever witnessed – and I used to work retail on Black Fridays, so I’ve seen some things! But in a way, I’m glad it happened, because it clued me in to how toxic that company was before I was too invested.

        1. allathian*

          When I was a student I worked retail in a higher-end department store for about six months. Not quite Harrods, but there were rules about grooming. It’s the only time I’ve worn anything approaching heels at work (2 in, the lowest they allowed without a medical certificate), never mind a uniform that for women at the time included a skirt and hose (now women are allowed to wear slacks and flats). I liked being able to use all of my languages at work, and for the bonus I got for having the flags on my name tag (8 percent on top of the basic pay for every additional language).

          During Christmas sales, the store was packed with customers. Lots of jostling and elbowing around. Once a couple of fairly wealthy women (I assume because they wore fur coats and hats) got into a literal fistfight over something utterly mundane, like nylon hose that was on sale. I had to call security to break up the fight after one scratched the other’s face, and the women were perp-walked out of the store. I quit after that Christmas season and went back to the chain of grocery stores I’d left when my old store closed. Sure, the pay was considerably lower and I had to deal with intoxicated people trying to buy alcohol and getting mad when I refused to sell it to them (drinking age 18 here, I was 20 at the time), but in general the customers were much more pleasant to deal with than at the department store.

    4. GIF*

      To be fair, I used to see reactions like this all the time. When I taught kindergarten.

      (We did evacuate the room when it got to this point, though.)

      1. uncivil servant*

        Even my 2 year old is now only pointing to the corner of the room where the Christmas tree was once or twice a day to blame us for taking it away.

        (Having a toddler really makes you realize how much bad adult behaviour is just someone with more cunning, language skills and strength having the emotional response of a toddler.)

      1. Engineer*

        Technically, probably, but if we had called the cops I don’t think that’s a charge that would have been levied. Obviously I’d call these days, even with police response being what it is, but as a 20 year old surrounded by other early and mid 20s coworkers, we all just sort of froze.

      1. D. B.*

        And yet, it’s the LACK of reaction by management that makes it truly shocking. One guy has a serious anger problem, OK. But his bosses hear that he trashed the whole cafeteria over nothing, and they’re like *shrug* ???

        1. Engineer*

          He either left after his meltdown or was asked to leave for the day. But yeah, I got a pretty good look at how management handled things – or didn’t, in this case – and realized I needed out.

    10. I'll call the cops*

      I was once told not to call the police when someone at work pulled out a knife. I looked right at the person who said it, and called the police anyway. I stared at her throughout my conversation with the police and I gave them her name when they arrived as someone who should give a statement. She said she hadn’t seen anything, and I overheard and told them, “She was right there! Why is she covering up for the attacker?” I actually didn’t know why, but was so frustrated by her in general that I really wanted her to have to face whatever it was. I found out a month later that the man with the knife was her nephew.

      1. JustaTech*

        A coworker of mine was once fired from her night-shift Denny’s waitress job for calling 911 for a guy who had been mugged and seriously injured.
        The guy staggered into the Denny’s and the manager was all “you can’t call 911, we’ll get sued!”. As the guy was bleeding all over the floor she called 911 anyway.
        The manager screamed, cried, and after the ambulance left, fired her.

        The next morning (as soon as the day manager arrived) she was called with deep apologies and begged to return.

        1. A Poster Has No Name*

          Thought they’d get sued? What on earth for?

          If anything, not calling 911 is more likely to lead to a lawsuit, if the man suffered a worse outcome because of it.

      2. Engineer*

        I was only 20, and it was both my first internship and first white-collar job. Shock and inexperience kept me from calling the police anyway.

    11. Annie*

      Holy crap, that’s absolutely craziness!! He couldn’t just rotate the table back to where it was?? haha. Good thing you got outta there quickly.

  18. E*

    Back when blue tooth speaker headsets were still new, there was one mid manager level guy that walked around the office loudly talking on his all day long. After a few months of this, he was in a meeting that included the C suite when his phone rang and he answered on the blue tooth. The company VP got up, walked over and gently removed the headset then turned around and flung it into whiteboard on the other side of the room where it shattered into pieces. It was awesome! Mostly because Mr Blue Tooth thought he was more important than he was. (VP did personally replace the shattered headset)

      1. Katie A*

        Nah, it’s definitely over the top. It’s also crappy behavior that people here wouldn’t usually celebrate.

        Yes, it’s appealing because we’re meant to dislike Bluetooth guy for being extremely obnoxious and annoying (because he was!). That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a story about a C suite member getting upset with someone below them in the hierarchy and responding to that feeling by taking something off the person’s body, then throwing it against the wall hard enough to break it.

        1. MicroBioChic*

          It’s the kind of thing I would find delightful in a fictional setting but would make me very uncomfortable to witness in real life.

        2. E*

          As much as the entire office loved that the stupid headset was in pieces on the conference room floor, it was a highly inappropriate move by the VP. He felt bad about it, apologized and replaced it with a nicer one. This also happened to be during a time when the company lost a huge contract and was laying off 2/3 of the employees so fuses were short.

        3. zinzarin*

          This, 100%

          Bluetooth guy is annoying. C-suite executive committed the actual crimes of assault, theft, and destruction of property.

    3. WellRed*

      I’m going to laugh about this the rest of the afternoon: he did what so many of us fantasize doing!

  19. GeorgeFayne*

    I was once training some staff members on a new system/process and we happened across an error. Something in the system had been deleted when it should not have been, and when we found out that it had been deleted “Alex” loudly questioned who in the world would do something “so stupid”. I had Alex pop into the logs to see who had deleted the item and … it was Alex. I quickly said “Oh, yeah, that happens sometimes by accident. Let’s talk about how to fix it-” and got no further. Alex stood up and hurled insults at me for somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes in front of the rest of their department who I was also training. I was apparently doing a horrible job and was too demanding, didn’t communicate well, and was expecting too much of them (even though I was being very lenient due to the learning curve in starting a whole new system, or at least that’s what I was TRYING to be).

    Alex was just unhappy in general and I happened to balance the very last little pebble onto the edge of their sanity – sending it hurtling over the side – but it was incredibly jarring and so shocking that I just stood there and let them scream at me until they were done and I could slip away to my office.

    Oh, and yeah – they kept their job. I’m still not sure how that part happened.

    1. Liane*

      Something similar happened to my friend Galahad a few years back. Galahad, who I believe was a Claims Analyst at the time, was asked to run a training because the original trainer was ill or something. The other two involved people, both senior to Galahad, were Morgan le Fay and an HR rep who called herself “the Dark Angel of Unemployment” (I know, not exactly professional).
      Morgan disliked Galahad, even though he was not her report and their work didn’t overlap much. So when Morgan discovered Galahad doing the training in the conference room, she pitched a screaming fit and would. Not. STFU. It was so loud that people down the hall called HR. The Dark Angel shows up to drag Morgan off for a chat, which seemed to scare her into behaving for a while.
      No, she wasn’t fired. Galahad told me it was widely believed Morgan “knew where all the bodies were buried, probably because she helped bury them.”

      1. casey*

        The Dark Angel of Unemployment!!!!! I am having a psycho moment on the train right now from laughing so hard.

  20. Drago Cucina*

    One library director was known for her inability to make decisions mixed with her OCD. There was the two week discussion over which new toilet paper to buy for the staff restroom.

    We once shared that we could never take advantage of office supplies sales because she didn’t like the copy paper. She gave permission to order what ever paper was on sale. A week later she walked in the office holding two sheets of copy paper. They were both 24#, 100% bright. Because they were from two different brands there was a very slight variation. She forbid us from ever mixing brands of copy paper in the machine. We considered it a win.

      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        I was going to add this because it just happened this morning. We are hybrid and the holidays, so a coworker just opened the hand made card I’d given her for Christmas (cards are my hobby, I give them to people who’ve asked in the past to be on the list.)
        She was complimenting me. I said I’d spent three weeks and one component took “half a season of a reality show.”
        Her deskmate said, “oh hahaha! Are you OCD? or just a perfectionist?”
        I wish I’d channeled Alison and said “what an odd thing to say.” but I choked and just said, “No. I made 4 dozen in this style. For Christmas.”
        But just her going to a mental disorder as a joke. I wanted to ask later if she understood what she was saying, But she is already my BEC because she starts EVERY request or conversation with
        I’m so stupid, I can’t remember how to/don’t know where to/I didn’t do
        So maybe this is my outsized reaction. Because I want to tell her to shut the hell up!

        1. kiwiii*

          one of the things i had a Big Conversation about with a new coworker was her tendancy to start with “I’m so stupid, x reasonable request” and i was like “you need to stop, it’s jarring to see stuff like that all the time in a professional atmosphere”

      2. Annabelle*

        “ They were both 24#, 100% bright. Because they were from two different brands there was a very slight variation. She forbid us from ever mixing brands of copy paper in the machine.”
        That isn’t “picky” though, that is definitely some kind of pathological nonsense though (ask me how I know)

      4. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        I don’t see why you’d read it that way. One of my best friends has pretty severe OCD and is open with her work about what accommodations she requires and that she’s open to feedback if something she does causes a disturbance. Nothing in Drago’s message suggests it wouldn’t be an actual diagnosis.

      5. Drago Cucina*

        I truly wish it was her only formal diagnosis of which I was aware.

        When I became director I had to be clear that staff were not required to disclose their or family medical history because of staff curiosity.

    2. Drago Cucina*

      Oh, this is bringing back a rush of paper related memories. There was paper plate gate. We were having a major fund raiser with area restaurants providing tastes of food. 30 tastes of food adds up! We had paper goods provided.

      People were throwing away their paper plates after each taste, so we were quickly running low. Not a problem. I had plenty of extra plates. Only they were suddenly all missing. I grabed one of our aides, gave her money to run to the store and buy plates. Problem solved? No.

      It turned out the director had hidden all the extra plates so we could have them for other events. I took ownership for sending out for more plates. We heard about it everyday for weeks. She bullied the aide about it so much she quit.

    3. Name Under Development*

      The former president of the community college where I used to work was known for his extreme attention to detail. 2 short examples: He could tell that the carpet in one section of a building was 10% thinner/lower grade than another section just by walking on it (holy princess and a pea Batman!), and he made the janitors swap trash cans in a classroom because the 2 trash cans in the room were slightly different dye lots.

      1. Worldwalker*

        I can understand that. Not necessarily condone it, but certainly understand it. The trash can thing in particular would hang around the edges of my consciousness and itch no matter how much I told myself that this is not something that bothers normal people. Some people’s heads are just wired up that way, and I’m thankful that I have such minor manifestations.

        1. allathian*

          Cool if you notice details, not always so cool if you can’t switch it off.

          One of our graphics designers sees colors in Pantone code. He can literally look at any object with a fairly uniform color and tell its Pantone code without effort.

  21. Just Want A Nap*

    In the weird nebulous not-quite post-pandemic times, after returning to office, I had a virtual client training, and was stuck in my cubicle for the duration. My computer lacked speakers, so I put my headphones in to listen to the training.
    My grandboss saw me and lost his absolute mind, screaming at me that headphones were unprofessional, and how dare I wear headphones while working, and that he was going to write me up for this behavior. My direct manager defended me from a write up but getting screamed at was my line.

    I found a new job, turned in a “My last day is Friday” notice, and left.

    1. Sparkly Librarian*

      …what.

      Is this an industry that doesn’t use computers much? Does the grandboss listen to meetings and such on an open speaker? Does the office not provide headphones as part of standard supplies and equipment? It’s just so out of sync with any modern office setting I can think of.

      1. Lime green Pacer*

        The only thing that kind of makes sense is that grandboss though headphones were only for listening to music.

  22. Dr. Rebecca*

    I’ve posted this before in a different context, but:

    I was working in a factory when my dad had a heart attack. Our neighbor found him, called emergency services, then called my cell phone. One of the company owners drove me to the hospital.

    Next Monday I came in to a new policy: no cell phones on the shop floor.

    2. Wilbur*

      That’s a wild choice. Especially since you know people are not going to follow it. The factories I’ve been in have a “Cell phones in designated areas”, but the designated areas are where the operators sit to monitor to process most of the time.

    4. thatoneoverthere*

      This sort of happened to me too. My parents were in Florida, for a business trip that my mom attended. She was able to bring my dad and he could attend events in evening with her. My Dad was/still is an avid cyclist. He brought his bike with him to ride during the day. He ended up crashing and somehow one of the EMTs got a hold of me. I tried to get ahold of my mom for like an hour. I called her, the hotel, her assistant back in her main office, a friend of hers at work. Finally, she was alerted and went to be with my Dad at the hospital.

      The next day, I was asked why I was on a personal call for over an hour. I explained and was still written up.

      This was also the same place that gave me shit, for having surgery for a miscarriage, going to the ER in the middle of the workday bc said surgery wasn’t a success and I was hemorrhaging at work. After the miscarriage thing, I marched into HRs office and yelled that she better get my exboss under fucking control, or I am quitting and hiring a lawyer. Might have been all the hormones, but I was grieving and PISSED.

          1. thatoneoverthere*

            Haha sorry! I had to wrap up my comment quick to get to a meeting! Basically HR told my manager to back off and gave me all the time I needed to heal. I switched departments shortly after. I left about a year after that.

      1. Dr. Rebecca*

        He is, thank you. Full recovery from the heart attack, and 20-odd years later his cardiologist has bumped him to visits every 5 years instead of yearly.

    8. allathian*

      This is obscene and inhumane. I’m so glad your dad’s fine now (saw your other post before commenting).

  23. CookiesBoss*

    While I was at the beginning of my career, I was working for a catering company as an assistant manager. We were catering for a pretty big company, where we would serve lunch on one station, and have a buffet-style on the other one.
    On the buffet, one of the most popular items was the sushi platter. We couldn’t refill it fast enough!
    One day my company decided to switch the trays we were using for the sushi, from rectangular green ones to circular red ones. Mind you, the only thing to change was the trays, the sushi (made in the house by our licensed sushi chef) didn’t change a single grain of rice.
    OH – BOY!
    People in that company went bananas over that (or, should I say, sushi?).
    We received complaints, people refusing to eat it, people telling us it tasted differently. When we explained and swore that the change was approved by their company as well because the new trays were cheaper, prettier, and easier to recycle, hence lowering their catering expenses, almost nobody was convinced.
    A woman stopped me and tried to explain to me for 20 minutes that the colors of the trays would impact the taste.
    I suggested to my boss to order the next batch of trays from the same company, but requesting them as greenish and as rectangular as possible.
    It worked. The sushi-gate was over, and so was my patience with that particular branch of Big Company.

      1. Margaret Cavendish*

        Seriously. Imagine using all that drive to be a force for good in the world, rather than to complain about the colour of your sushi trays!

      2. Worldwalker*

        No kidding! I can’t find that much energy for, say, my actual birthday! I need some of that.

    3. And I'm the alchemist of the hinterlands*

      This is my favorite so far. The *color* of the TRAYS made it taste different? I just love humanity sometimes.

      1. Worldwalker*

        Well, to some extent that’s true. The reason the classic diner “blue plate special” was on blue plates was because the customers would eat less of it.

    4. BlushingCrow*

      Color does affect taste, but unless you are trying to eat the trays, it really should not matter!

    5. Ellis Bell*

      This is what I came here for. Trying to serve sushi on circular red trays instead of green rectangles, you crazy bastards. Didn’t you even consider that those colours and shapes are, like direct opposites? What are people supposed to even do with that?!

  24. anononon*

    Fairly recently I had two no-shows at a mandatory training course, and when I chased up the participants afterwards I discovered that one was off sick that day (fine) but the other had (according to her manager) refused to attend the course because she ‘did not appreciate the short notice venue change’.

    The ‘short notice venue change’ in question was our training admin updating the calendar invite a few days in advance of the session to let people know that the course was being held in Training Room 2 not Training Room 1, because Training Room 1 was having some IT equipment fixes. there was also a sign on the door of Room 1 saying ‘IT cabling in progress; for [course] please go to Room 2 next door’

    The rooms are identical, and next door to one another – both on the ground floor, with no access differences. They have the same chairs, the same tables, the same projector… it’s just that the door to Room 2 is about seven steps further along that Room 1.

    1. TheBunny*

      I’m snort laughing at this. While drinking coffee. Clearly my fault as I KNEW one of these stories would be amazing.

      1. Anononon*

        Apparently so. We have some, er, issues with that particular team, shall we say!

        My admin has invited the no-show to the next available session, which is going to be in Room 2. I guess we’ll see if it’s some kind of Room 2 phobia…

        1. allathian*

          Were there any consequences for this employee? Skipping mandatory training for a trivial reason like this should have some consequences. I certainly hope there are if she refuses to attend the second training (unless she’s sick or something).

          What an …odd hill to die on.

  25. Jester*

    I worked for a company for three summers. The first year, there were no summer Fridays. The second year, we could pick a handful of half-days between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The third year, the powers asked if we wanted to continue the half days or if we wanted to just early every Friday for the summer. Same number of hours for both options.

    People started campaigning for their preference like we were voting for the president. There were lobbyists and deals being made behind the scenes. It was the only topic of conversation for the week between the email announcement and the time the Google form opened. Fortunately, the topic was dropped pretty quickly after the vote. We got leaving early every Friday.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I might be in the minority, but since this was a scheduling issue, I don’t think it’s an outsized reaction. It seems pretty standard to me. (But I come from a pro labor union family, so it could be my upbringing.)

  26. Liz W.*

    EHS made the perfectly reasonable requirement for pants only on the production floor. I sat down in my boss’s chair and cried for 30 minutes because I couldn’t wear skirts anymore. Note: I rarely ever had to go onto the production floor and already kept a pair of can get dirty work pants in my desk and the change did not affect me. Bless my boss.

    1. Plebeian Aristocracy*

      It takes a lot to tell a story like this about yourself. Good on you for owning up to it, and seeing it for what it was. And a funny story to boot.

      1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        Six months living in the UK and I will compulsively say ‘trousers’ for the rest of my life.
        It can even read differently in American English if you choose to interpret it as “pants and only pants.”

        1. Don P.*

          I have known Monty Python for DECADES, back from when I lived IN ENGLAND in the early 1970s, and it’s only about 5 years ago that I learned that in the Lumberjack Song, when he sings about “suspenders and a bra” the “suspenders” are what we’d call “a garter belt” in the US.

      3. Kiwi Leslie Knope*

        I worked for an American lawyer in London once who told me a story of when she first got to London, and was working at a place where they had a rule that women weren’t allowed to wear trousers (yes, super sexist). One day she complained to a group of British colleagues, “I can’t believe they don’t let me wear pants here” and wasn’t sure why they all looked so shocked and confused.

      5. londonedit*

        Yeah I had an immediate mental image of everyone walking around wearing nothing but underpants…

    3. Minimal Pear*

      I worked somewhere that required pants only at all times for all staff. I was an office admin who NEVER went on the factory floor, and if I did, I knew it was happening days in advance. I’m also curvy and prone to weight changes, and I have unusual proportions. I basically didn’t own office job appropriate pants before I started that job, and I probably ended up spending half the money I earned over the job continuously shopping for pants I could wear to it. Then they laid me off for being disabled (probably).
      This is all to say I completely understand why you would cry, and I think I teared up when they told me about the policy.

    4. Dawn*

      Took me way, way too long to realize that “pants only” didn’t mean “shirts off” in this context

  27. Bread Crimes*

    In my first job out of college, I filled orders and answered customer email for a small online store (back before everyone and everything had an online store). I was an enthusiastic but merely adequate employee, one of two working under the manager for the online store side of the company, who reported to the president. After I’d been there for about a year, and business had expanded somewhat, my manager explained to me that she needed an assistant manager, and was thinking of hiring a new employee for that position. That is, rather than promoting me and hiring a new employee to take over my job.

    I ended up sobbing wildly and gasping through my tears about how this was terrible, it meant no one believed I was any good at my job, and how could I possibly work for a complete stranger hired in to boss me around? It didn’t make any sense! How could she do this to me? How could I stay in the job if she did this? Why didn’t she like me? I thought we were friends!!!

    She was very kind about letting me cry it out and making sympathetic noises without giving an inch. And she never brought up my reaction later, for which I am grateful as well.

    …the new employee was fantastic, far better at the job than I ever would have been, and I still think of him fondly. I would have been a terrible assistant manager: I was unmedicated and very bad at organizing things without someone else giving me the structure and direction.

  28. kchb*

    I worked at an office in a major city that would, like most places in major cities, have the occasional visit from a cockroach. When this happened, everyone would kick into high gear like it was a Oceans Eleven or something – not due to the cockroach itself, but because there was one person who worked there who would LOSE THEIR MIND about any sort of mitigation efforts. My boss would wait for a day when this person was out of the office, and then give us the go-ahead, and we would hide roach traps in the backs of closets (again, not for safety or so they were out of the way, but so this person wouldn’t find them). If/when they learned that there were traps around, they would rampage through the office demanding to be told where each one was so they could get rid of them, snapping and yelling at everyone.

    I never knew what exactly the problem was – they had a lot of vague but intense hangups about chemicals (and were definitely at least antivax-curious). But god it was so stressful.

    1. The Baker's Fife*

      I would appreciate that type of trap laying to be done when I’m out of the office, but I sure as Shirley wouldn’t go around trying to find out where they are. Ick.

    2. MissCoco*

      I was at an externship site (graduate school for an healthcare field) and had almost the opposite experience.
      There was some kind of large centipede in the office so I grabbed some paper towels to squash it. One of the staff shouted “NOOO!!” from across the office as if I was planning to feed the bug to a small child and leapt up from his desk wielding a spray bottle of 70% ethanol. He proceeded to create a “moat” of ethanol around it while explaining to me that “this way it can’t escape” which was true, however, we then had a large centipede trapped inside an even larger puddle of ethanol in the middle of our waiting room. Luckily no patients had to be subjected to this! When he left for lunch I picked up the centipede and dried the floor. He was not happy when it was missing on his return.

  29. Juicebox Hero*

    My boss is the queen of making mountains out of molehills. Just off the top of my head I can remember being read the riot act for putting the wrong paper in the fax machine, submitting a report that I’d forgotten to copy double-sided and wasting paper (ironically, if I’d recopied it double-sided and submitted that, therefore wasting even more paper, nothing would have been said), asking for a malfunctioning adding machine to be replaced, and she’s just snarly, impatient, and absentminded in general.

    The capper was shortly after I started this job and got some serious malware on my probably 8 year old computer that didn’t have any kind of antivirus software installed. She tried the one trick she knew and gave up in a huff when it didn’t work, and then left for the day. Since I can’t do my job without the computer, I managed to fix it myself. She never bothered to tell me that she’d called our computer guy (we’re a very small office with no IT) who seemed happy enough that he didn’t have to bother fixing anything.

    She called me AT HOME and tore me a new one for wasting Computer Guy’s time and we still had to pay for the service call and I don’t even remember what else.

    I told our overboss the next day and I don’t know what he said to her, but she first avoided me and then was very, very nice to me and a couple of weeks later was back to her normal grumpy self. She certainly hasn’t called me at home since.

  30. Sloanicota*

    Meta comment: reading the previous version of this (the one linked in the post) a lot of the reactions to seemingly small changes were about workers feeling like their individuality or very small pleasures were being taken away to make them more drone-like or conformative … I’m thinking of the animated add-on someone had put on their home screen, the prescribed email signature (this one actually bugs me too TBH) and anything about what people wear to work. Then there’s another category of food related grievances that I’ve noticed before haha. People are weird about food at work. I assume there’s some deep psychological factor at play there.

    1. Ms. Norbury*

      So true! I also see a pattern emerging of (usually) one person wildly overreacting to very small, low-impact changes, which is… baffling. I know some people have a hard time dealing with change for a host of reasons, but having a public tantrum at work because, say, someone changed the brand of tissues available in the office is wild. I wish I could understand the rationale because I find that fascinating.

      1. Sloanicota*

        I know for me personally, it’s sometimes because pleasures at work can seem small and far between (this is a sign you’re probably not in the right job, TBH). If you hate your open office and your daily tasks are boring and your boss is a jerk, so all you’re holding onto is that one little indulgence … and then some person in a position of greater power tries to take it away from you for seemingly no good reason … also, once you’re miserable, you can *retroactively* decide those nice tissues are the only luxury that means anything to you only once they take it away …

        1. JustaTech*

          It can also be a sign of serious stress.
          In college it was not uncommon for someone to loudly lose all grip on reality about the tiniest possible thing right before finals.
          As an example, someone once tried to get me sent up before our disciplinary board (a very big deal) because they didn’t think I had used the right method for emailing some of the dorms to ask them to return my dorm’s forks. (We were the only ones with a kitchen.) They said I was “trying to subvert school processes” and on and on (I hadn’t and I wasn’t).
          It was all very stressful for me, over a single email that could have just been ignored/deleted.

    2. JTP*

      As someone working in brand management, I don’t understand the opposition to prescribed email signatures for work. Love bright pink Comic Sans 24-pt font? Use it for your personal email. Why do you need to do it at work, too? Especially when it cause so many issues? (See Allison’s post “what’s the weirdest/most inappropriate email signature you’ve seen?” from January 2023)

      1. Sloanicota*

        This is my personal hang up, but I dislike that my company forces us to put both pronouns, a land acknowledgment, and a bunch of other stuff (including promotional links) in our email signature – I think it looks super messy and scattershot. Plus, I’m uncomfortable with my pronouns and it makes me feel icky to be like YES I AM GIRRRRRL gender me gender meeeee … But I recognize it’s supposed to be inclusive and I’m the one making it weird (and that most people who object to pronouns are doing that out of anti-trans animus so I’m not in good company).

        1. PlatypusDeniability*

          This! If your company actually cares about trans issues (not just performatively), it should *not* force you to define your pronouns when you are uncomfortable doing so. That’s not okay, and you’re right to feel that it’s not okay!

          If you want to put your pronouns as “none”, “use my name”, “she/they”, or not offer any pronouns at all, those should all be options.

          As long as you don’t flip out when *other* people offer pronouns and consistently use the correct ones with all your colleagues, I don’t think you’ll be mixed up with anti-trans people.

        3. Dawn*

          I work in customer service and I (with my manager’s explicit permission) only use the seasonal Pride logo on my email signature and include a land acknowledgement.

          Speaking of overblown reactions…… well, suffice to say we like to give the customers plenty of rope to hang themselves with sometimes.

          I won’t repeat those reactions here because they’re not the funny kind you want to tell stories about. But my goodness, if you really want to see people absolutely melt down over something insignificant, go find the tiniest rainbow flag sticker you can find and put it on a store window somewhere.

          1. Caro*

            I worked in a small library with 9 branches. One summer, our reading challenge platform gave people a reward that said “Congratulations! You read during pride week.”
            One patron complained that her child was being exposed to sexually offensive material. (One!!) Our library does not control the platform, but the reward was part of a “Holiday” package of award stickers. We could not delete that sticker by itself, so our administrator deleted the entire Holiday rewards package.
            The child was 3 years old.

            1. Dawn*

              Fortunately, this definitely would not happen where I am, but I’m so sorry to hear that you’re somewhere that it can and does. And that lady stinks. Her poor child.

      2. allathian*

        I hate having anything except my name, title, role email, and team/department as an internal email signature, and those excluding the role email (we only serve internal clients) and including my phone number and employer for the rare external email.

        My employer does provide templates for email signatures, but thankfully they haven’t forced us to use them. I don’t want any graphics in my sigs, those were popular when my employer first joined the WWF Green Office program (ah, the irony) and people wanted to use the logo in their sigs. Never mind any mission statements, etc., especially for internal emails.

    3. The dark months*

      Such a good point. My coworker and I were part of a seasonal work crew that worked along side and were supported by the very small group of well entrenched full time staff. We started saying ‘change is hard’ in reference both to ourselves when we needed to be more flexible in our own work and especially when talking about the full time crew. They did NOT like change but deserved a bit of grace because they would ultimately come through for us. Eventually.

  31. anon for this*

    Office-wide seat reassignment was announced. In front of 50 people, one person stood up and announced,

    “I MUST sit by a window! I am a CREATIVE PERSON!”

    (To be fair to her, the seat re-assignment was handled in a weirdly over-dramatic and secretive way by management for reasons that never became clear, and colleague was going through a divorce and very stressed. And I’m not entirely sure she wasn’t on coke at least some of the time. Fortunately, someone who was feeling less dramatic about it all offered to swap with her.)

    1. Some Dude*

      A friend requested a desk change to a window seat when it opened up at his work, and it became a Whole Thing about how he only got the seat because of his White male privilege and how deeply unequitable the whole thing was. Literally all that happened was a seat opened up and he said, hey, can I move my desk there?

      1. ferrina*

        That’s a bit more complicated than it first appears. Women and POC are often rebuked for self-advocacy. A woman/POC and a white man can say literally the same thing in the same tone to the same person, and the woman will be labelled “needy”, the POC will be labeled “angry”, and the white man will be labeled a “go-getter”. (multiple studies done on this- exact words vary, but the overall message is the same)

        Now imagine that repeating over the span of a lifetime. Thousands of replications of the same message.

        Who is going to be more likely to ask for what they want? The white man that has been praised for his self-advocacy, or the woman/POC who has been rebuked for their self-advocacy?

        Your friend didn’t do anything wrong, but I’d encourage him to think about the societal systems. If he wanted to do right-er he could have said “hey, what’s the plan for the desk? I’d love to move there, but how are desk preferences prioritized? Is it by seniority?” (i.e., advocate that there be a system and not leave it up to Whoever Asks) It can feel weird, but this kind of advocacy helps.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          This is why I am glad I work somewhere that this is laid out for everyone.

          But I also worked somewhere that had nearly floor-to-ceiling windows on the 5th floor where the CSRs sat. You learn who’s afraid of heights pretty quickly in that situation. (Luckily, someone is always willing to trade.)

        2. Abogado Avocado*

          Sorry, but I (a very liberal cis-gender female who also has been a union officer) disagree. Many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder and may have other good and valid reasons to ask for a seat by a window without beginning a floor-wide lottery. Seeking to elevate a low-stakes action to high-stakes behavior isn’t helpful to those of us who have been fighting for equal treatment and equity for decades.

        3. Dog momma*

          Oh come on! If he’s the only one that asked if he could move his desk to that area, I don’t see the problem. If multiple people asked, then it should go by seniority, which happened at my last awful job…wasn’t awful bc of that, but how much time ya got. lol lol!

    2. Sloanicota*

      Oh man, cubicle seat assignments are a huuuuuuuge deal. And HRs that want to pretend it’s no big deal and we should all be adults about it aren’t doing their own cause any favors when they are secretive and illogical in the way they do the assignments, as it only results in a widespread belief the higher-ups play favorites. The difference between being a cubicle dweller in the middle of a terrible open office vs one by a window is, in my experience, night and day. It’s also tough as this is increasingly an accommodation requested by everyone with everything from ADHD to social anxiety to seasonal depression.

      1. KaciHall*

        being in a cube away from windows helped my attention span so much. I can’t imagine being near a window would HELP my ADD.

      2. JustaTech*

        One time HR tried to re-do our seat assignments after a major re-org and for some reason decided to move me from sitting with my team to halfway down the room into the area of another team to sit with my least-liked colleague. (He sat down there because that had been his cube before he was moved to my team.)
        I flatly refused (no one was taking my cube), my boss backed me up and that was the end of that.

        Years later after a renovation we were told to pick our own desks. Most people said “I’m going to sit about where I used to sit” and that was fine, but Betty decided she didn’t want to sit down by me anymore, she wanted to sit by the kitchen and get more light. Now, part of the renovation meant taking out the cubes and now there was a *lot* more light, but Betty wanted to sit facing the windows. So she goes down to sit by George and face the windows. This lasts maybe 4 hours before the light is too much and Betty puts down the shades. George puts the shades back up. Repeat for the rest of the week with crying from Betty and silent teeth grinding from George.

        Finally Betty moved back to our end of the floor where she could have her back to the window and there was a support pillar blocking some of the light.

        So, picking your own seats is better, but know what you want!

    3. Jack Straw from Wichita*

      The last bit of this story with the coke comment took a turn and literally made me snort/laugh ouut loud. I’m working in-office today and someone from two rows away came over to see what was so funny. Time to share the AAM gospel!

  32. HonorBox*

    Had a coworker who HATED the new cologne our board president wore. Like HATED it. For context, this coworker wore strong perfume herself that most of us disliked, but just let it go. But when the board president would come in the next couple of times, she would slam her door, which was right across the hall from mine. I actually found it funny, told the board president and the next couple of times he came in, he would poke his head in her office to say hello, and he confided in me that he added a couple extra sprays just to mess with her.

      1. allathian*

        Yeah, this. I’m glad my employer is reasonably scent-free in that only cologne and perfume are banned, as is applying scented lotion during the workday. Scented shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizer that you apply at home are fine. Scented laundry detergent is also perfectly fine.

        The petty person in me wishes that someone had called her out on her hypocrisy, even if it’s very difficult to do that and remain professional, so I guess it’s just as well nobody did.

  33. Crazy coworker*

    At my workplace, a coworker got fired after two weeks.
    Here’s what happened
    – was 2+ hours late every day (except day one) in a position where you need go be on time
    – making racist comments about Middle Eastern men
    – lying about being able to speak Spanish (despite being born/raised in Central America). This is a large part of why she was hired
    – making comments about coworkers’ uteruses
    – saying my boss can’t fire her because my coworker is old enough to be my boss’ mom

      2. Jack Straw from Wichita*

        As someone who had her uterus removed (thanks, cancer), I’ll say you might be surpised how often it comes up. I typically go the shock and awe route, spoeaking overly loud volume saying something like, “I don’t even HAVE a uterus anymore, Bob. They took mine out BECAUSE I HAD CANCER. Why do you ask?”

        1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

          My favorite response is, “Nobody wanted to have kids with me, Darlene.” And just let it hang there.

          1. Slow Gin Lizz*

            I do the opposite. I say, “I couldn’t find anyone worthy who I wanted to reproduce with.”

            1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

              I used to do this, Slow Gin Lizz! I stopped because some busybody took it as a challenge and gave me a lecture on how I’m too picky.

              1. Calamity Janine*

                alternatively this is when you up the ante to silly degrees.

                “i have not found a suitor worthy of my challenges to prove he is fit to be my beloved. instead he always fails the riddle and then gets executed by the monarch for his failure. yes my middle name IS Turandot, however did you guess?”

      3. Cymru*

        Asking things that generally amount to:
        -what’s in there
        – why isn’t something in there
        or
        telling them what should be in there, or what they can and cannot do with a uterus.

  34. TheFruitPenguin*

    I’ve worked for the same place for a while and a long time ago it was a tiny company of 250 people. We are wellness-adjacent so didn’t have vending machines with snacks but did have free fruit. The fruit was a real boondoggle as when it was delivered the mailroom employees walked the cart around to hand it out. In other words if you weren’t in good with the mailroom team you also didn’t get any fruit.

    The fruit was discontinued during a financial crisis for the org and it was like a bomb had been dropped. So much agita. And it came up for years… 8 or ten years in internal surveys.

    It has never been renewed.

    1. Chocolate Teapot*

      A previous company did a regular fruit delivery with the fruit available at 10.00 downstairs on the reception desk. People would start assembling a few minutes before but it was usually fairly civilised.

      One morning a co-worker and I went down to collect some fruit. My co-worker took 2 pieces as her husband worked in our team too.

      The receptionist went ballistic and shouted at her for taking an apple and a banana. It wasn’t the only time he had been difficult.

  35. NYWeasel*

    I worked in a local news station for a few years, and was responsible for a lot of the on air graphics. One day we were celebrating a milestone anniversary of one of the most beloved anchors—seriously we all loved her as much as the viewers did—and I was given a massive number of extra graphics and animations to make on top of the usual workload. Halfway through the day, the producers for each of the newscasts confirmed that they weren’t going to use one minor insignificant asset for the celebration, so I killed it from the delivery list.

    I was sitting there during the 6pm newscast, feeling very proud of how my graphics fit into the big night when the phone from the newsroom began ringing. On the line was Fergus Shorttemper, the newsroom director best known for having to hang artwork over a hole he’d punched in his office wall.

    “NYWeasel, why isn’t there a (unneeded graphic) in the system? Wasn’t that on your list?”
    “The producers told me it wasn’t needed.” I replied.

    Fergus inhaled for a millisecond and then let loose berating me about this missing graphic and how unprofessional I was. I don’t remember everything he said but the rant ended with “I hope you’re happy because you’ve RUINED (Beloved Anchor)’s special night!!!”

    The joke was on him, as first, Beloved Anchor (who was unaware of what Fergus had said to me) called me up to personally tell me how touched she was by the lovely graphics, and how it completely made her night. But second, it was that night when I snapped and ended up applying for the job that set me off in a completely new, much happier direction. And he ended up stuck with a designer buddy of his that didn’t even know photoshop.

    Oh, and no one EVER asked to use the missing graphic.

  36. Funbud*

    Old job had a once-a-month bagel club. Members contributed to the cost and then took turns buying the bagels. This involved my dept and a smaller dept across the hall; about 35 people total.
    One designated Friday, a manager from the other dept forgot to pick up the bagels on his way in and couldn’t get away from the office until almost ten o’clock.
    By then the bakery at the local supermarket was almost out of bagels so he ended up with a miscellaneous assortment of mostly rolls, muffins, even a couple donuts. He brought it back along with the usual cream cheese & butter.
    Oh, the outrage, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth that ensued! This was unacceptable, an outright failure, a major topic for (prolonged) discussion & analysis, critique & condemnation.
    It ended with said manager dramatically quitting the bagel club via an overwrought email sent copy all to both depts, both bagel club & non-bagel club members. Hurt feelings lingered for months!
    A few years later, we moved to a new building. My manager quietly ended the bagel club.

    1. Bagpuss*

      This reminds me of a coworker who was furious over free pizza.
      Our office at the time was next door to a branch of a big pizza chain. We had a fir amount of parking, the pizza place had very little. We turned a blind eye to their drivers using our parking as long as they didn’t block anyone, and they used to give us free pizza from time o time (probably when someone cancelled after they started making it? I don’t know.)

      Anyway, one day they came round and gave us some free pizzas which both had mushrooms on them. This one person went off because she didn’t like mushrooms , it wasn’t fair that she couldn’t have any pizza because it had mushrooms on .. literally shouting and weeping . She knew that the pizza wasn’t an official work pizza , andthat none of us had had any say in what the toppings were. It was . . odd.

      1. t-vex*

        Our HR director headed off a potentially similar situation quite nicely one time. A shoe company awarded a free pair to all of our employees as a thank you, and everyone was asked to indicate their preferred style. On delivery day HR lady said “Some of the designs don’t match what was expected but they’re free and we’re gonna be grateful.” Zero drama ensued.

  37. Anon for obvious company*

    Maybe not as dramatic as most, but here goes.

    My company is trying to be an industry leader and announced two things. Every employee gets 25 vacation days, and event-based bereavement leave is replaced with 10 days per year of compassionate leave that can be used for a wider variety of things.

    I was amazed at how many people were upset by this, but really one coworker in particular. She was upset that 8 years from now she won’t get 28 vacation days even though she gets more now. And she’s upset that if she has 4 immediate family members die in the same year, it will be less overall because it previously would have been 3 days bereavement leave for both, which would be 12 days total instead of the cap at 10 now.

    She also thinks it’s silly that we can use compassionate leave for a pet dying, and constantly “jokes” that she’ll by 10 fish and kill them on different days to get 10 free vacation days. Oh, and she’s a manager so I feel bad for her direct reports who take this leave.

    1. i like hound dogs*

      She sounds awful. Some people’s default response is to complain.

      Your company’s policy sounds awesome! I would greatly appreciate having a day or two off for pet bereavement leave whenever my next one leaves for the great beyond. As it is, I’ll probably use a vacation or personal day to avoid being a blubbering mess at work.

    2. Sloanicota*

      I loathe people who would rather lose a good thing themselves than see someone else “undeservedly” get something. And it’s so common! The dog in the manger.

      1. Snarkus Aurelius*

        I worked with a woman who intentionally sabotaged flex time in the summer so we all lost it permanently.

        Except senior staff still had gobs of PTO so they’d still take Fridays off but as vacation.

        She didn’t care.

    3. ferrina*

      This person sounds absolutely awful. And bad at math.
      “If I have 4 relatives die, I get less time in that year than the guaranteed 10 days every year”

      1. Anon for obvious company*

        No, the math checks out. Under the old policy she would get a total of 12 days for the 4 events, instead of the new policy with max 10 total for the year.

        1. ferrina*

          Only for the single year. How many years does she expect to have 4 relatives dying? And is she the murderer?

        2. S*

          To be fair, unless they have a simply enormous family and a high attrition rate, they’re going to come out ahead with the ten days/year after a few years.

    4. Hotdog not dog*

      This is nuts! I would be thrilled if I never needed a single day of bereavement leave for the rest of my career. It’s great to have it, but better not to need it.

      1. Not that other person you didn't like*

        This. 2022 was the year I had to email HR and ask whether bereavement was per year or per event. They were very kind and yes, the benefit was generous. But I’d still rather not need it at all.

    5. emmelemm*

      The amount of bad karma she was inviting with these proclamations is alarming.

      (Yes, I know that’s not how karma works.)

    6. Clare*

      If your pet dies I’m authorising whatever leave I can get you at whatever company we’re at. Bereavement, sick, annual, wfh, unpaid, “Whoops looks like you have ‘offsite’ training tomorrow, guess you won’t be in”, whatever. You’re not coming in that day unless you say “Yes” to “Stay home tomorrow unless you’d like to come in for the distraction”.

      People beat themselves up a lot over pet deaths because pets are completely reliant on them in a way that relatives usually aren’t – so anything that happens to the pet can be catastrophised as “my fault”. Losing a fish really can cause some people more trauma than losing a Grandparent (trauma, not loss), and it’s usually the more conscientious and hard-working people who are most affected.

      1. Not Australian*

        Yipes, I got shouted at for coming in late one day because my cat was actually dying. I told them I’d be in when she no longer needed me. 30+ years and that still rankles.

  38. Lilac*

    I work at a university. I recently attended a work event on campus that had an open bar with beer and wine. The event started at 5:00, but they weren’t allowed to serve alcohol until 6:00 per university policy. No big deal…or so I thought. Nearly everyone I talked to at the start of the event complained about it: “Ugh, I can’t believe they’re making us wait until 6:00 to have a glass of wine” or “This is the boring part of the event – I can’t wait until 6:00” or “I bet you’re wondering where the drinks are – don’t worry, they’re putting them out at 6:00!” I never brought up the lack of alcohol, so all of these comments were totally unprompted. I get that work events aren’t everyone’s first choice for how to spend their evening, but jeez!

    1. Batman*

      Possibly I’ve worked in universities too long because this felt like a normal reaction to me. Or, well, not normal, but completely to be expected. (I’m guessing these were faculty. It sounds like faculty.)

    2. Bloops*

      I can totally believe this. When I was in grad school I helped run an annual department event that was held on a Friday afternoon and had food and drinks. The first year I was involved me and a few other students had taken over from another group who had run it for several years in a row. One piece of institutional knowledge that was not passed to us was that we needed the dean’s approval to serve alcohol at the event. We found out the day beforehand, and they were away on travel so we couldn’t get approval in time. The beer and wine we had purchased was held for a different event, so no issues there. But world got out that there would be no beer and it was SO poorly attended. Note that this was an event focused on celebrating research accomplishments, not purely a social thing.

  39. Volunteer Enforcer*

    My manager announced that we were moving from Zoom to Teams. I announced I was beyond angry as Zoom is way better than Teams and why fix what isn’t broken. I said this once in a calm tone of voice, which may explain why I wasn’t fired and I can use this manager as a positive reference.

    Recently, we changed visitor sign-in sheets to something more data protection friendly. Externally I was calm. Internally, I seethed and stressed, thinking how much extra work that would add for me, I don’t get paid enough to put up with this, and why fix what isn’t broken.

    These were both at my current job.

    1. Sundae funday*

      I am 100% with you on Zoom over Teams. I think I have an emotional connection to Zoom because we had to learn so much about it over Covid. Can you trauma-bond with a software?

    2. Filosofickle*

      OMG this is going to be me. I’ve heard we’re moving from Zoom to Teams and eventually Slack to Teams as well. And honestly…this might be the straw that breaks the camel’s (my) back. It sounds like an overreaction but this will negatively impact my work all day every day. I hate Teams so much.

      1. Chauncy Gardener*

        My company is moving from Zoom to Teams and oh.my.goodness.let.me.count.the.ways.how.much.I.hate.Teams!!!!

        The only saving grace is that I am leaving soon. Woot.

    3. KarenK*

      My organization has done the same thing, and it’s not been a smooth transition. Most of us hate it, but we’re going along.

    4. Charlotte Lucas*

      We use both, and I definitely prefer Zoom. Like so many MS products, Teams tries to do too much and ends up being clunky and confusing.

      I also find the Zoom interface more visually pleasing and user friendly.

      1. Ama*

        My work tried to get us to move exclusively to Teams when we shutdown the office for the pandemic but it ends up being for internal use only because none of our external stakeholders use Teams and hated having to download an additional program so all public facing virtual events or meetings with our outside colleagues end up being on Zoom.

        I actually think both of them have strengths and weaknesses (Teams’ chat functionality is WAY better in my opinion) but I also totally understand why Teams isn’t appealing to a lot of people.

        1. Busy Bee*

          I think Zoom’s chat works better because I can easily chat privately with anyone in the meeting vs. only being able to chat with those within the org I work for, even though outside people can join in a Teams meeting. But I definitely agree that they both have different strengths.

        2. dot*

          My work switched over to Teams but the way ours is set up we can’t use it to interface with external groups (outside of virtual meetings). Even though we work onsite with a subcontractor who also uses Teams. So all communications still go through email or in person/virtual meetings, when it would be sooooo handy to be able to chat with them. Idk if that’s something that’s possible but I sure wish it was setup that way.

    5. I Have RBF*

      I’ve used Zoom and Slack, and I’ve used Teams.

      Teams just sucks, IMO. I would be upset at downgrading to Teams.

    6. Other Alice*

      Teams sucks. We used to have Zoom and Slack but we moved to Teams because “it’s already included in office365 so we’re saving a lot of money” or something like that. This was 6 months ago and I’m still complaining about the switch in the pettiest possible way… However…

      I have a glitch where Teams will randomly decide to show me as Offline. IT is unable to solve it and says it must be something to do with my network, which is blatantly untrue because while I’m “Offline” in Teams I’ll be doing work that requires me to have a stable internet connection. I’ve come to the conclusion that this glitch is a blessing that allows me to work without being interrupted, as being Offline means I don’t get pinged for new messages and people will just assume I’m on PTO and either wait or send urgent requests to someone else. Thanks, Teams!

    7. Autofill Contact*

      We announced they were ending support of our enterprise Zoom licenses to move to WebEx and Teams. Enough people refused to transition that I can still pay for Zoom Pro for $19/yr. Completely worth it.

  40. Nanc*

    I’ve shared the story of the wicked finance lady and her bread pudding issues, but that does not compare to the epic tantrum when they changed her from a dot matrix printer to a laser printer (this was a long, long time ago!). There were complaints, memos, union meetings, a special meeting with the Mayor and City Council. Several months later the purchase of the envelope printing attachment was approved and installed and her electric typewriter was retired/snuck out over a weekend. Then there was the WordPerfect mail merge training . . .

    2. BecauseHigherEd*

      I LOVE the bread pudding story! I saved your recipe and I’ve been waiting to make it! My husband and I always talk about that now.

  41. I don't miss retail*

    I used to work part time in a liquor store for a few years. I had a coworker who was less senior to me in the job and I once politely asked him if when stocking 6 pack bottles in the fridge to make sure the handle was facing outwards to make it easier for customers grab (as some 6 packs didn’t have a handle on both sides and were super annoying to get out of the fridge if the handle wasn’t there). I’d noticed him stocking the 6 packs backwards several times before I made what I thought was a pretty reasonable request and something that’s really easy to do.

    He did not take it well. I could tell for the rest of the shift that he was annoyed that I had asked him that and then he didn’t talk to me at all for 3 weeks (he had previously never stopped talking during our shifts together, so I didn’t mind really) until I took some time off for the holidays and when I got back he had been fired.

  42. That Coworker's Coworker*

    K-cup recycling: our company had collection boxes for used k-cups, that got mailed somewhere for recycling. Then there was a cost-savings plan implemented in which the boxes disappeared and were replaced with devices we were supposed to use to cut the lids off the k-cups, and separate them into aluminum, compost, and plastic, all to be recycled separately. Then the compost got moldy, the local waste district wouldn’t accept the plastic for recycling, and somebody cut themselves on a k-cup dissector. Then there was an all-office email announcing the boxes were back… and decreeing that we were never to speak of the “unfortunate interlude.”

    1. ThatGirl*

      There were no meltdowns related to it, but we had those k-cup collection boxes for awhile and they attracted flies.

  43. Pangolin*

    I used to be an admin assistant and my main job was to arrange training courses. When we did training in a city which didn’t have one of our offices in, we would use a hotel chain. We changed the hotel chain we used after having too many issues with our original one. The new place was better in lots of ways, but it only offered pastries with tea and coffee during the morning break – in the afternoon it was just little packs of biscuits with the hot drinks.

    I let all our trainers know about the changes and how it would affect them – I didn’t think to mention that they would be getting only one round of mini pains au raisin a day rather than two because it truly did not occur to me that it would be an issue – there were still two tea breaks.

    One of the trainers emailed me 16 times in one afternoon, during training he was meant to be delivering, on realising that he wouldn’t get his second pastry, and didn’t speak to me for weeks afterwards.

  44. SopranoH*

    Last year, our software had a surprise update that significantly changed the appearance and made some minor changes to the functionality. Perhaps, because I had not been there long, it didn’t really bother me, and I liked some of the improvements.

    Well, all hell broke loose. There were multiple hours long Teams meetings, and we are not a meeting heavy group. There was a sense of panic and more than one person said we’d never be able to do our jobs.

    I pretty sure no one even remembered what the old version looked like a month out.

    1. allathian*

      Sure, but often giving people the opportunity to air their frustrations helps in getting over the unwelcome change faster. I bet that without the meetings, the grousing would’ve continued for longer than it did.

      I absolutely detest change for its own sake, and I’m very much an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” person. But I know from experience that if I’m allowed to grouse a bit about whatever the change is, I’ll adapt to it much faster than if I don’t get that opportunity. Sure, I’ll get over it sooner or later, but if a 2-hour meeting lets me air my grievances with no repercussions, I’ll take it.

      Particularly if the meeting also gives me a good idea of why the change is necessary if I haven’t seen its advantages yet myself.

      I’m not unreasonable, and I don’t get bent out of shape over every minor Teams update. I definitely don’t get upset if I can see the benefits of the change immediately. As much as many people hate Teams, until we got it a few years ago we had to use Skype, which I never really got to terms with. I’m also much happier with SharePoint than I ever was with the buggy proprietary intranet we had before that. Learning the new systems took a bit of effort, but unlike some cowoerkers I was never frustrated with that because I could see the benefits of the change.

  45. Problem!*

    We had a Popcorn Incident where someone burnt a bag of popcorn in the break room microwave immediately before a very very high up person was about to come in to visit. Management implemented a rule that anything that had the potential for a lingering strong smell needed to be microwaved in the cafeteria and not the break room microwaves. This was not an unreasonable request. No foods were being banned, people just needed to be reminded to use the common sense and courtesy expected in a shared space.

    Some people were straight up offended by having to walk an additional couple minutes to the cafeteria (you know, the entire room devoted to preparing and eating food) to warm up their lunches. Someone replied all with a diatribe about how the policy was racist and they’d be contacting a lawyer. Again, the policy was enacted because of *popcorn* not something like curry.

    1. Jonathan MacKay*

      I had my own microwave incident that just led to my immediate manager and co-workers teasing me for quite some time – if you come in during the winter with a bag of Mcdonalds, and you want to warm it up in the microwave – check for Ketchup packets in the bag first!

      Since it was literally a fire, I could’ve been in far more trouble than just being mocked!

    2. D. B.*

      I’d say the policy itself was a bit of an outsized reaction. You have one fluke accident, and they respond with a new policy that is very broad and open to interpretation (and thus conflict) and yet would not have prevented the incident! (Because popcorn doesn’t create a strong lingering odor if you prepare it correctly!)

      1. Artemesia*

        It got banned in my workplace the second time someone stunk up the entire floor by burning it — it is such a gross smell and it lingers. I don’t think banning it is unreasonable.

    3. Anita Brake*

      I love it…paying for a lawyer to ensure one’s rights to smelly food aren’t violated.

      “Let’s get Orville Redenbacher on retainer NOW!!”

  46. Some Dude*

    I don’t know if this counts, but I came across an email that a former colleague sent to HR because their food was thrown out of the fridge during a monthly cleaning despite being labeled. We had done a training on approaching management with curiousity and with the goal of learning, so the entire memo was passive-aggressively in that style – “I am very curious why my food was thrown out when it was clearly labeled. I’d love to learn why you ignored my label and threw out my lunch.” It was a long email, and this colleague was notoriously always behind in their work, so it was extra funny to me that they spent an hour writing it when they could have been doing literally anything else.

    3. Olive*

      This happened to me (AND I KNEW WHO THREW OUT MY LUNCH KYLE), so I sat down on the floor in front of the refrigerator and cried.

      In my defense, I was 7 months pregnant.

      1. i like hound dogs*

        I probably would have done the same, perhaps even while not-pregnant.

        My husband once at a slice of pizza that belonged to me. I was looking forward to it for lunch. I forgave but I didn’t forget. This was 15 years ago.

      2. Not that other person you didn't like*

        I kept my office job throughout my pregnancy (literally, I was at work on Friday and had a baby on Saturday) and I was always starving. I was an eating machine (I was also underweight and my OB was like “eat all you want!”) so I’d bring in bags of food and store them in the fridge (with my name). Well, one day someone opened my stick of butter (with my name on it) and helped themselves to a couple of pats. And I completely LOST. MY. SHIT. Cue full on angry and very loud rant about someone stealing my butter. I was unhinged. I was not OK. Admittedly I was also hugely pregnant, which is no excuse, but I think most people thought it was amusing rather than appalling because of that, so I didn’t get called on it.

    4. MagicEyes*

      I’m a little bit sympathetic to this, because one time when I was in grad school, someone cleaned out the fridge without notice and threw away half of a Fresh Samantha bottled smoothie. I was very poor at the time, and it was a rare treat for me. I put a note on the fridge, but no one ever apologized or bought me another Fresh Samantha, which is what I really wanted. It is not okay to throw out everything in the refrigerator without giving people some warning.

      1. JustaTech*

        One time I accidentally threw out a coworker’s lunch during our fridge clean out.

        In my defense, the fridge clean out had been announced a week in advance, then two days before, then the day of, with ample opportunity for folks to grab their lunches out and hold on to them for half an hour while we cleaned, and his container was not marked in any way (no name, no date, old yogurt container).
        I felt terrible and offered to buy him lunch from the fancy bakery downstairs, but he said no and was even more difficult for weeks afterwards.

        After that I refused to do any fridge clean outs – I would clean the fridge if someone else emptied it, but I wasn’t going to be responsible (as the most junior person) for throwing anything away.

        1. AcademiaNut*

          That’s kind of the point of fridge clean-outs, though – there’s lots of warning so people can label/remove their food, and anything left gets tossed. You don’t *want* the cleaners having to open every container and make a judgement call about whether the food is still good, and it defeats the purpose if you just leave all the unlabelled food in there in case someone still wants it.

          And having someone’s unlabelled lunch get thrown out tends to be wonderfully motivating to everyone else, so they actually do deal with their food properly.

        2. CrabbyPatty*

          I, too, cannot handle the responsibility of fridge cleanouts. We do them here monthly and I will help, but I will NOT make decisions.

    5. Laura*

      This is why you do clean outs at the end of the day on a Friday. That’s why my company and I honestly don’t know why you would do it in the middle of the day

      1. KrazyKat44*

        That’s not always possible. Yes, Its the most ideal when working a 9-5 like job, but there are a lot of jobs where there is no ideal time.

        I work in a 24/7 manufacturing plant. Line operators work 12hr rotating shifts, even when stuff is marked and dated its still possible to have good food be put into the fridge after. either someone buys it from the vending machines or they come in on overtime.

        Its suppose to get cleaned out every Sunday night by a lead though it often goes undone, usually due to short staff. They tried the labeling thing in my old area and it still lead to issues; though likely cause is 8 lines sharing 3 fridges and that’s not including the office personal that has to use them on day shift.

        TLDR; there is never a good time to clean the work fridge. especially in manufacturing.

  47. Stuart Foote*

    A few of us were chatting at the office later in the day, and the CEO came over and asked me for an update on a project I was working on. I made a joke along the lines of “Was I supposed to be working on that?” and then gave the update (which was mostly a positive one; no bad news). The CEO was extremely upset that I’d joked about this, so I ended up hearing about it from at least four other senior managers. Thankfully the rest of the project ended up going okay, but apparently he is still not happy about that joke.

    1. i like hound dogs*

      Definitely an overreaction, but I have to say that I don’t really like jokes like this, either. My husband frequently answers serious requests for information with jokes and my son and I both hate it (we are not humorless drones, just tired of 30+ dumb jokes per day).

      Now, one joke like that I could let go.

      1. Stuart Foote*

        Yeah, I really don’t blame the CEO for being annoyed (and wouldn’t do that again), but I didn’t think it would blow up to the extent it did.

      2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        Same — I ask a question, husband makes a goofy answer thinking he’s all cute, and I stand there staring at him because I ASKED THE DAMN QUESTION FOR A REASON AND I NEED THE ACTUAL ANSWER PLEASE.

        2. allathian*

          Oh dear, I dumped a former boyfriend pretty much for this reason. Sure, we had other issues like he was very conflict avoidant and I get over things much faster if I get the opportunity to close the argument and move on fairly quickly, leading to a vicious circle where I tried to provoke him into arguing with me and he gave me the silent treatment. But his constant jokey responses to my serious questions when we weren’t fighting were the last straw.

          That said, I find the CEO’s annoyance a bit extreme because Stuart Foote didn’t make him wait or beg for a serious answer (as far as I can tell from the comment). But if the standard reply to a serious question is a joke, the CEO’s reaction would be more understandable.

      3. Salsa Verde*

        My partner does this constantly, and on some days, it’s enough to bring me to tears. Just. Answer. My. Fucking. Question.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Unless you doggedly stuck to the joke and refused to give a straight answer, that is very very weird. It reminds me of that company were all jokes were banned.

      1. Stuart Foote*

        Yeah, the entire time joke to straight answer was like five seconds…it’s not like he was left hanging for the actual answer. Like I can see how it was annoying but the answer was given quickly and it wasn’t a protracted process.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          I think it’s far more annoying for people to make a huge deal out of small pleasantries that isn’t to your personal taste. I think most jokes kind of follow the construction you used, so it’s really weird to me that he didn’t know how to roll with it. It’s a bit like those people who get offended about being asked “how are you?” or about being subjected to small talk.

  48. Jonathan MacKay*

    I worked for a distributor in a niche product market as a warehouse worker after being laid off from my manufacturing job during the pandemic. On my last day, I got into an ‘argument’ with my supervisor that led me to commenting out of frustration – “Maybe we should consider today to be my last day.” It was taken as an immediate resignation, and not a comment that came out of stress. The argument itself was, frankly, very dumb – as I was being asked to go and grab the “Two-stepper”, and, seeing as I was unfamiliar with the term (apparently part of his regional dialect), and his continued insistence in using the term and my sheer idiocy for not knowing said term led to him aggressively throwing boxes around (in my general direction, but not at me). That was the trigger for my comment.

    What he was calling a ‘Two-stepper’ was what I would call a ‘Step-stool’ – literally a two-step mini-stair. Sure, I can see how his term for it applied now, but with the whole thing blowing up like that, it’s not as though I had time to think!

    This is the same place that wanted to change the details of country of origin for shipments going into the US. The stuff came from China, but they wanted to claim it came from Portugal – (which arguably, it certainly could have prior to being used in manufactured goods from China) so instructions were given to remove or conceal anything on the boxes or skids which might indicate Chinese origin. (I’ll admit to intentionally missing a few!)

    I was unemployed from Feb to Apr – when circumstances led to me being hired where I am now – They had hired someone else for my role, but that fell through unexpectedly the day before he was supposed to start – so the job posting went back up – I had a zoom interview on Wednesday, in-person interview on Thursday, and found out I had the job before I even got back home!

    1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      That seems almost pathologically rigid on his part, to not be able to say “you know, the thing you unfold and step up onto it? like portable stairs?”
      And then to throw boxes around? And lying about imports? Yeesh. I love that you got a new job so quickly, and I hope it’s grand.

      1. Jonathan MacKay*

        I’ll say – it’s been 2 years already, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon. I was completely upfront about that part of my long-term goals is the completion of a certificate in Human Resource Management, and a transition into that field – I have one more course to go at this point, which should be finished by the end of April. At the very least, I expect to finish out the year, but I’m at least going to start looking for opportunities to get started in that field soon. Ideally, I’ll find a way to do both – HR part time, and this full time.

        Even 20 hours a week where I can fit them in would add up to quite the income boost.

    2. Don P.*

      I’m pretty sure I’ve had corporate policy training where “let’s relabel the imports” was a test case for “when do report a problem up the chain”.

  49. BaroneCroquette*

    I’m Italian, and my manager took it as a personal affront that I did not particularly like Domino’s pizza. He would send me articles about people liking it, how well the business was doing, how Italian pizza was not that good, and so on. It was… intense.
    (I never disparaged that brand or anyone who liked it, he just happened to hear me chitchatting with a colleague about ordering some pizza, and me suggesting a different brand).

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        Didn’t Domino’s have a whole ad campaign a few years ago where they admitted that their pizza wasn’t very good and that they were redoing all their recipes?

        And, no, it is not that good.

        1. KaciHall*

          their pizza isn’t very good. however, their marinara cheese dip with bread bites are absolutely delicious. especially after an evening of bowling (and drinking.)

      2. Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws*

        “And I have ARTICLES. Yes, that is PLURAL. To PROVE IT TO YOU.”

      3. The Peach*

        Domino’s scratches a particular itch and can be very yummy. But it’s more of a pizza-like product than a true Italian pizza.

        1. Calamity Janine*

          exactly! as somebody with affection for Dominos pizza, this is a very silly debate.

          it’s the difference between a costco hot dog and a gourmet venison sausage. or some box mac and cheese, compared to proper fettuccine alfredo. they’re all good! they’re good in different ways though, and that’s the joy of them. and this means that liking the trash food is absolutely acceptable because you like it for what it is, not for being a pale imitation of the real food.

          if this dude simply accepted that he liked trashy American pizza and an Italian doesn’t have the same fondness for it, same as how you can be fond of sesame chicken but know it’s Chinese-American takeout genre instead of authentic Chinese cuisine, he’d have been able to make like Elsa and let it go. instead he decided to really show his insecurities and ironically turn a thing nobody was really judging him for (enjoying greasy pizza) into something everyone was correctly judging him for (being a nasty little weirdo about it).

    2. Some Words*

      I can’t remember if it was a comedian or a friend who said “Dominos is the pizza you get for people you hate.” I still endorse that statement.

    3. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      You mean you don’t like undercooked dough with smears of flavorless crap on it? HOW DARE! :)

    4. Jonathan MacKay*

      The funny thing is – Domino’s turned out to be the shared favorite pizza of my parents – and they were both under the impression for most of my childhood that the other hated it.

      Give me the local corner pizza place any day, though!

  50. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

    The phone meltdown is one of my favorite all-time AAM stories.

    I have no spectacular stories… the most drama I’ve encountered involves a student-run magazine that I’m the staff advisor on — not even one of the editors or contributors. I’ve received a few emails, “I’m completely disgusted by this issue… Please remove me from the email group, I no longer wish to receive these emails.” Lol, the email is campus-wide, the only way to remove yourself from the all-campus list is to quit…or better yet, just don’t click the link to the magazine website and delete the email. I had one student editor write a 1,000 word email about how a decision by a top member of the administration (not me) to make a slight change before printing…along the lines of changing 1 single word in an essay…would somehow ruin his future as a Thought Leader. To be fair to the student, while his email was way over the top, the Administration edit, and refusal to back down, was very much petty and only amounted to a style preference, and not like protecting the university from scandal.

  51. TypityTypeType*

    I have a story of a management underreaction!

    I used to work at a music magazine, with a lot of the sort of eccentrics you might expect to meet working in editorial at a music magazine.

    One day Pop Tarts were added to the lineup in the vending machine. Yay! People would warm them up in the break room toaster. But such was the culture — very casual, but very demanding — that people would put their tarts in the toaster, then run back to their desks to get whatever work done they could before the Pop Tarts popped.

    It doesn’t take long to toast a Pop Tart, but it proved impossible to get anyone to check the toaster setting before running off. It took *three* Pop Tart fires (thankfully all minor) before management banned not Pop Tarts, but toasters. And put in a toaster oven.

    Well, you can imagine how it went when people who could not safely be trusted with toasters were provided with a toaster *oven.* The break room was gutted within days. After that, they only let us have a microwave.

    I loved that job.

    1. ExAdmin*

      Oh man, I have sympathies as I thankfully didn’t start a fire and didn’t leave my Pop Tart unoccupied, but it fell apart in the lunchroom toaster and I had to unplug it and take it apart to get the rest of the Pop Tart out. Pop Tarts are hazardous.

    2. Dinwar*

      I started a (very small) fire in a microwave. I was drying soil, using ASTM guidance (so like an official, legit method), which was the safer option because it didn’t require a hot work permit like the normal method (which involves a camp stove and a skillet). I guess some of the rocks in the soil were too close together and the container I had them in caught fire. I put it out, got a different (non-flammable) piece of equipment, and the only thing really damaged was my pride.

      The next day the client walked in for a meeting and I had to explain why there was a lingering smoke smell in the room. He got a good laugh out of it.

      1. KB*

        I tried to microwave a cup of tea at work, as I usually did in the afternoon. I remembered the teabag, but absentmindedly forgot the water. Surprisingly, microwaving a teabag for over a minute ends up smelling amazingly like marijuana! Luckily I didn’t get fired. (This was in a government contractor facility.)

    3. SarahKay*

      At a previous job I asked if we could have a toaster for the canteen for general use. (There was toast available during the breakfast period but the catering team were the only ones with access to it, and it wasn’t available at other times.)
      The HSE/Facilities manager declined my request, and then explained that in one of her previous jobs someone had burnt the toast so badly it had actually burst into flames and set off the fire alarms, causing a full-site evacuation.
      All of which was made worse by the fact that a VP was visiting that day.
      HSE manager told me very definitely that that was the day she decided never to have another uncontrolled toaster on any site she worked HSE. Honestly, I didn’t blame her; I think I’d have felt exactly the same.

    4. Choggy*

      We have a number of labels on our toaster oven to make sure it’s off, unplug when not in use, etc., I wish one of them was “clean up after your food messes”. The toaster has so much crud on it, I would never use it. I seem to be the only one who takes the trays out of the toaster to dump the piles of crumbs, good thing we’ve not had any fires.

    5. slashgirl*

      At my smaller school we have a day care/after school program that rents a room in the building. They have been banned from using a toaster. Not because they burn it and set off the fire alarm, but because it sets off the fire alarm every time they use it–even just for lightly toasted bread. Fire alarm, which means the building has to be evacuated and checked.

      We discovered late last year that the pre-kindergartner room also can not use a toaster. They set off the fire alarm as well. Building have to be evacuated and checked. We just got cafeteria service this year and either she’s not toasted anything or the fire alarm doesn’t go off when they do.

    7. Might Be Spam*

      For some reason he couldn’t explain, my (then)husband put a cherry pop tart in the toaster and then left the house. The pop tart got stuck and burst into flames. Fortunately the toaster was next to a tiled wall that didn’t burn, and I heard the toaster buzzing. I got to it before the cabinets caught fire, but they were pretty charred and needed refinishing.

  52. Juicebox Hero*

    My sister’s company had Strawgate. The company is trying to reduce their carbon footprint and part of the change was switching to paper straws in the employee’s cafeteria. No problem, right? People still have their straws, there’s loads less plastic waste, they’re compostable, right? WRONG! A Fortune 500 company staffed with educated adult professionals started acting like toddlers whining because they couldn’t have a cookie.

    There was backlash. There were angry emails. There were people grabbing up all the regular straws and hoarding them. There was angry gossip.

    In an attempt to placate Team Straw, they switched to compostable plastic straws which should alleviate the issues with paper straws, and they’re still compostable, right?

    WRONG! The compostable straws were too fat. They were too thick. They weren’t bendy!

    The company basically said the hell with it and got rid of straws completely, opting instead for recyclable sippy-cup type lids you get on takeout coffee for all beverages, and bring your own damn straws if you need them. Of course people flipped out over that, too, but the company hasn’t budged.

    My sister takes lunch every day and doesn’t use straws, so she found it all very funny.

    1. PepperVL*

      I wouldn’t throw a fit about it, but I’m with your sister’s coworkers on paper straws. They taste terrible and disintegrate both in my mouth and in the drink. I prefer my beverages free of paper pulp, weirdly.

      2. HexagonRuler*

        I was in a French ski resort last summer, and the mountain top restaurant was serving drinks with pasta straws. Basically like a long bit of macaroni.

        To me this is such an obvious idea that I wonder why it is not far more widespread. The pasta feels much better in the mouth than paper, won’t go soggy unless you leave it in a drink for hours (or put it in a hot drink), and are obviously fully biodegradable, so that if thousands get discarded into the snow over the winter, they will be gone in under a week once the snow melts.

        1. Cat*

          Gluten? (Educated guess)
          I don’t remember the details, but I do remember some infographics when banning straws was initially becoming a big thing about how there is no one size fits all solution, for legitimate reasons…

    2. Butt in Seat*

      Ugh, I HAAAAAATE the feeling of paper straws on my lips. But I would just use a cup without a lid rather than complain (however, I would also politely point out to the ADA coordinator that having plastic bendy straws available as a disability accommodation for anyone who needs them would be a good plan).

    3. ferrina*

      Paper straws are terrible. The compostable plastic ones are just fine though!

      I’m totally on the company’s side for not providing straws. Folks can bring their own straws if they’re so picky.

    4. Banana Pyjamas*

      Paper straws are disgusting. The paper flavor overpowers whatever you’re drinking, and they get soft. Starbucks very temporarily changed to paper straws, they didn’t last long. They changed to some recycled straws that crack somewhat easily but have significantly less flavor.

    5. Stretchy McGillicuddy*

      i have seen ads for pasta straws and I really like that option. i know it doesn’t work for ppl with gluten allergies but it could also be an option that is made available.

      1. Steve for Work Purposes*

        Except then it’d also cross-contaminate anything they came into contact with. They’re fine for home use but in a communal canteen environment it’s too risky. As a celiac, if the communal ‘morning tea/coffee/drinks’ station we have at work introduced those I wouldn’t feel safe using any of the stuff around it and if I was at a cafe with those I’d walk right back out. I agree that paper is a bad idea too but compostable plastic is a good alternative and a lot less risky.

        1. amoeba*

          At least in our canteen, that would also be right next to the pastry and, well, actual pasta they serve – so not sure how the environment could be safe in the first place and how the pasta straws would make it worse? (Probably I’m missing something!)

    6. GoryDetails*

      Heh! I don’t have strong feelings about straws myself – seldom use them anyway. But some straw-using friends of mine got handsome titanium straws for Christmas at a gathering many years back, complete with a cleaning-brush. I never heard whether they used them. In an office setting I can imagine the fancy straws just disappearing one day, or someone neglecting to clean them to the point of “ick”, but if I did use straws regularly I’d enjoy pulling my own personal titanium one out of my bag and deploying it in my beverage.

    7. miseleigh*

      The town outlawed disposable plastic straws, lids, and takeout containers for restaurants. This included the cafeteria in our office. The backlash was huge when the straws at the soda fountain disappeared – it was weird how many people blamed the corporate office (for a town ordinance?!) and everyone had Opinions on what the company should do about straws and lids.

      It went on for weeks, until management tried to fix it with new company-branded swag for every person in the building – a reusable 16oz. hard plastic cup, complete with straw and lid. Even then, many people accepted these begrudgingly, gathering together to grumble about washing cups and lament the lack of bendiness in the straws.

      I still occasionally heard angry muttering for at least a month afterwards, whenever someone forgot their reusable cup at their desk and had to get their soda in a lidless disposable cup.

      I’m quite happy with my cup, it’s been my water cup for seven years now. Maybe I should thank the whiners for complaining so much! Though I think most of them are retired now.

    8. Drielgalad*

      Straws just aren’t needed for any beverage less thick than a milkshake, for any person above kindergarten age without a specific condition that makes drinking more difficult. When I stopped using them years ago, it started weirding me out that in the US we’re offered straws incessantly, as though we all still needed sippy cups.

      (If you’re worried the cup is dirty, I would say that if your concern is valid, you probably shouldn’t be eating in that restaurant in the first place, because if the cup’s not clean, neither is a whole lot else in that establishment.)

      1. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

        Straws are a disability accommodation for people who have trouble lifting and holding a full cup or glass, for reasons including but not limited to arthritis and some neurological problems. It’s not just one specific condition that makes drinking more difficult.

      2. KrazyKat44*

        I don’t think its a matter on if the cup is dirty or not. After all, coffee stir sticks are usually unwrapped and people use them (wooden sticks where I work).Its like others have said its often from a disability issue.

        I don’t have a disability but I like to use straws when I’m at a restaurant. Now, to preference this, I live in the Southern US, where if you order a drink its likely going to have a mountain of ice in it. I have very sensitive teeth and I’ll be so distracted by the pain I cant enjoy my drink.

        If I’m at home or fill my cup from the soda fountain myself its fine. I can control the amount of ice, and thus how cold my drink gets, or keep ice from pressing against my teeth.

        I dislike paper straws with a passion but will still use them if no other option is available, like at The Mellow Mushroom (pizza), but id be fine with a non plastic alternative that’s safe for others too.

    9. allathian*

      I’m in the EU, and plastic straws and disposable utensils have been banned for a few years. I hate paper straws, too, but compostable plastic straws are fine.

      Not that I use straws unless I get takeout and drink my soda in the car.

      My weirdest “straw” related incident happened when I was a student and our advanced French class took a field trip to France (we organized a party at the student union to pay some of the costs). I don’t remember where it was, but one night we went to a fondue restaurant that served wine out of baby bottles to avoid spillage. Sure, the tops of the bottles were cut off to make a bigger hole, but it was still weird. And no, wine doesn’t taste the same out of a baby’s bottle as in a glass.

    10. technos*

      Reminds me of the Fork Woman.

      One day the disposable silverware in the break room changed from white to brown and one of the saleswomen freaked. For two days she told anyone that would listen that the company was doomed (doomed I say!) because they’d ‘given in to the tree-huggers’ and replaced time-proven plastic with ‘that useless biodegradable crap’.

      Once people started telling her they didn’t want to hear about the damn forks again she moved on to email, exhorting her department to show their support for the previous cutlery by stopping by her desk to sign a petition.

      No one did of course, at least with their own name. By the time I snuck over to put down ‘Alfred E. Neuman’ I’d been beat to the punch by Mickey Mouse, Bart Simpson, and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

      The final straw was when she brought it up in a meeting with the CEO, claiming she’d heard from lots of people about how crappy the new silverware was, that people were saying they’d had spoons start to dissolve in their coffee, how someone in the warehouse got cut when his knife broke off applying cream cheese to a bagel, and that she personally had a fork throw sparks when she accidentally microwaved it.

      Which was funny, because as the VP of services explained moments later, the only thing that had changed was the color. The vendor was out of white when she ordered.

  53. WalnutWhip*

    A senior colleague absolutely lost it about our office photo. We were gathered outside the office and he was standing at the back, but the [professional] photographer couldn’t see him and asked him a couple of times, very mildly, if he could perhaps move to the front. The second time he flipped, shouted ‘Right, that’s it, I’m leaving!’, and stormed back inside the building. This incident is one of several reasons why, when I am trying to remind my husband who this person is when I am talking abotu colleagues, I call him ‘Man-baby Dave’ [not his real name]

  54. Miss Chanandler Bong*

    I get chronic migraines. When I was working my first office job, the lighting was very old and was giving me migraines, so as an accomodation, the light over my desk was turned off. The lights over everyone else’s desks remained on.

    The coworker at the next desk to me one day brought in the most obnoxious lamp that shone all the way down the hallway and was directly in my eyes. She claimed she was experiencing eye strain because the light over my desk was turned off. Even though our workspaces were easily six feet apart.

    They ended up moving me to another area.

    Same coworker also told my boss that I was on Facebook all day instead of doing my job. Thankfully, my grandboss hated her and didn’t believe her when my actual boss had a very over-the-top reaction to that as well.

    1. Lights camera action*

      Funny, I was just thinking about sharing an inverse version of the same situation. I worked in an office where there was a bank of three or so cubicles with some EAs working at them. Around the corner were more cubicles assigned to other staff. But the lighting for both sections was controlled by the same bank of switches, and these EAs would chase you down and go absolutely apoplectic if you ever turned on the lights. They claimed there was “too much glare” and so the rest of us had to work in the dark and/or get desk lamps. Which I suppose was fine once you realized what was going on – but inevitably everyone would make the mistake at least once of turning on the light switch and getting a hysterical and angry talking-to! I am sorry to the OG poster, but I would not have tolerated if they also insisted that I could not have a desk lamp.

  55. Hawthorne*

    We had the office water fountain wars. We installed some new water fountains about 5 years back–ones with filtered cold and hot water, for cups/bottles instead of the drinking fountains we had before. They have a small tray beneath where you fill your cup/bottle but it says on the machine, “No drain”. The tray is just to catch small drips or whatever. Fine, we were good with that.

    We must have had someone new start or something about a year and a half ago or so because we started coming into the tray FILLED with coffee creamer. It was gross looking and I’m not sure how it was emptied (if facilities dealt with it or what), but every morning we would come in to more. I’m one of the first in the office, and I didn’t really start noticing until a couple of my coworkers absolutely lost their minds.

    Coworker A took it personally, and we came in to a sign taped on the water fountain in all caps, “CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF. YOU’RE AN ADULT. THIS HAS NO DRAIN.” Kind of aggressive, but whatever. We weren’t surprised that it was this particular coworker. But it had no effect. Every morning there was still dumped coffee and creamer in it.

    But then, one of the people in my department, Coworker B, took it beyond personally. Like it was THEIR PERSONAL water cooler or something. They started putting signs up ALL OVER the cooler. To the point where it covered up the buttons where you pressed for water. They were all to the effect of, “YOUR MOTHER DOESN’T WORK HERE” in 72 pt font followed by “THERE IS NO DRAIN IN THIS UNIT. STOP DUMPING YOUR GROSS COFFEE.” And of course, it was still ignored.

    So then Coworker B cut out foot prints out of printer paper and TAPED THEM TO THE FLOOR leading up to the cooler, and in front of the cooler as if to tell you where to stand. There was also a foot press from COVID times when we didn’t want to touch things other people touched with their hands. A foot print was taped to that too. And, still ignored! There was still creamer and coffee.

    It came to a head where Coworker B brought in one of those cameras you mount to your porch to check for porch thieves. Incidentally, I was the one who had actually given it to them, when they were having issues with their neighbor harassing them about their dog (that’s actually an entire OTHER story of bizarreness). So they put the camera on the water fountain. They didn’t actually connect it to anything, but they put it on there as . . . some sort of warning? I don’t even know. But when I saw it I KNEW that IT was going to have a problem (we’re a large enough company with our own security systems and servers and all sort of proprietary stuff).

    Sure enough, the camera disappeared. And Coworker B was ranting about how the person who was dumping the coffee had stolen it, and was saying, “They stole [my name]’s camera! That’s so messed up.” I didn’t care because I had given it to them with no intention of receiving it back. I knew it was in IT’s office because they’re the only ones who would have done that. And, surprise surprise, IT returned the camera to Coworker B and told them to knock it off, that it was a security issue, regardless of if the camera was turned on.

    At this point, I think enough people had complained to our boss (including me) that all of the signs disappeared, and so did the foot prints, and all that was left was a sign saying “No Drain”. And then, another person was like, “Oh our sister company used to have this problem. Just put some paper towels in the non-drain and people will realize there’s no drain.” And we did that. And voila, the issue was gone.

    This went on for weeks. It was insane. I like to think the culprit knew who was losing their mind and just kept doing it to piss Coworker B off, because they’re not super well liked in the office. Exactly for this reason. I never did learn who was doing it, but it’s never been an issue again.

    1. ferrina*

      Honestly, this would bother me too.
      But I probably would have taken the (mildly) more reasonable approach of just getting in the office insanely early and staking out the fountain until I found out who was doing it, then politely informed them that there was no drain and they needed to dump their coffee in a sink (or whatever).

      1. amoeba*

        Yeah, like, honestly, I’m floored by the audacity of the original perpetrator. Wtf, this is disgusting, the poor people cleaning it.

  56. Tinkerbell*

    The intranet at my public library (accessible to employees but not the public) had a number of useful and not-so-useful links on the default homepage. One of these was a link to a daily library-themed webcomic called Unshelved (which I highly recommend – it’s good even if you don’t work in a library!).

    For whatever reason, the comic was removed from the intranet homepage temporarily. IT was so overwhelmed with calls and support tickets they couldn’t get anything else done for DAYS. They eventually put it back up. (And I messaged the author of the webcomic to let him know how popular his comic was – he was tickled!)

      1. Bibliothecarial*

        He has another one! Librarycomic dot com. It’s different than unshelved but very funny. The artist is Willow Payne. Still has book reviews and even a books podcast.

  57. Essentially Cheesy*

    Some of my coworkers are being oddly weird/upset because I am tentative about going to our holiday party on Saturday. It’s bowling and food and I’m sure it will be fun. However, our area has the forecast of us getting 9-10″ of snow between Friday and Saturday. I don’t understand why I’m being crazy but people are acting like I am.

    1. Essentially Cheesy*

      Now there is discussion about rescheduling or cancelling the party. No decision yet.

      FTR I suggested rescheduling the party on Tuesday based on the weather forecast.

      I am feeling way too annoyed about this on so many levels. I totally understand why some people might go bonkers occasionally.

      1. Essentially Cheesy*

        Ah it has been rescheduled to Saturday. Blizzard conditions predicted now. I guess that’s what it took instead of foresight from silly me.

        1. Hi-C*

          Those sample people probably complained when schools made the decision to close the day before a storm too! People get so upset that schools plan ahead, giving parents time to plan ahead, and preventing accidents on the road.
          BTW, I’m guessing we live near each other based on cheese, bowling, and the upcoming forecast. hehe.

    2. bowling for snoop*

      My bowling and food work party is Friday night, also in a snow zone, so I don’t think we work for the same company, but my boss has also been extremely weird about people not going. It’s outside work hours and was announced late enough that several people had plans already, or work shifts at their other jobs. No need to panic and interrogate us about what needs to happen differently next time to entice everyone to go …

  58. CattyDoja*

    My theory on this is that “feelings don’t go away, they either come out straight, or they come out crooked.”

    We’ve tried to eliminate feelings from the workplace. But people have them anyway, and with no way for them to come out straight, all this drama over small matters is them coming out crooked.

    1. Filosofickle*

      “If you don’t have your feelings, your feelings will have you” is another one I’ve heard

  59. JustKnope*

    I used to manage the editorial calendar for the all-employee newsletter. I was way too young and inexperienced to manage all of the politics that went along with that (but my department was a clusterfudge at the time, so alas, there I was, 24 years old managing content that was going out to 30,000+ employees with very little leadership support). I was SO emotionally invested and thought of it as “my” channel. One call in particular, a colleague got on the phone and told me (rather than asking) about content that *would* be going out in the newsletter and when. I was so angry I hung up the phone and started bawling in front of my teammate. Mortifying.

    1. ferrina*

      No judgement here. Managing internal communications and coordinating stakeholder that have no interest in being coordinated with is hard. You pretty much have to go full Vetinari.

  60. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

    Probably not the class of some of these, but a former colleague was told to write a memo to document the result the leadership had come to. This colleague disagreed with the decision and so wrote the memo in a way that completely undercut the point they actually wanted AND introduced legally wrong/problematic language. Instead of his manager telling him to knock it off, I had to rewrite the memo about 6-8 times to see if we could get him on board. They finally not only unassigned him but banned him from the case.

  61. Sprigatito*

    I was working at a smallish 911 dispatch center, where the desk configuration had us all sitting clustered really close together for better communication. One day the center director sent out a policy update saying that we were going to go “scent free” in the center, because someone had requested a medical exemption due to strong scents causing her migraines – per the policy, we didn’t have to, say, start buying scentless laundry detergent or body wash, but we weren’t supposed to wear any additional perfumes or strong-smelling lotions, that kind of thing. Not terribly onerous.

    One of the dispatchers promptly threw a screaming fit in the middle of the center, declaring that nobody could stop her from wearing her favorite perfume whenever she wanted to, and when she showed up for her next shift you could smell her from a hundred feet away because she had apparently bathed in said perfume in protest. I don’t even get scent-triggered migraines and found it completely unbearable.

    I believe she was pulled aside for a chat with the director because the Stink Protest didn’t continue, but she did keep bringing in those nasty strong Victoria’s Secret lotions and applying them multiple times during her shifts and glaring at anyone who looked at her while she did it.

    1. Some Words*

      I work with some of these walking stink bombs. They’re shockingly hostile and dismissive about causing physical distress to a number of their co-workers.

      1. Sprigatito*

        I personally love experimenting with scents – AT HOME. Where it DOESN’T BOTHER OTHER PEOPLE.

        I am seriously baffled by someone who is aware that they’re causing pain to another person and yet dig their heels in because I WANNA.

        (Of course, I have a number of stories about the dispatcher in question acting like a spoiled toddler and never facing consequences for it. Like the time she brought her dog in to hang out with her during an entire graveyard shift because “it got anxious being alone for too long” despite the objections of the other people working, it pooped under one of the empty desks and she didn’t clean it up, and….nothing happened.)

        1. Siege*

          I mean … that’s honestly most people. I’m at high risk for COVID. Everyone swore up and down they would mask at a Christmas house if I joined them. My sister in law sent a text explaining that she thinks there are very high “personal costs” to masking, and guess who was the only person masking? But I did slip a corsi-rosenthal box on them so it was okay.

          And aside from COVID, the number of people who INSIST on doing their thing even when asked not to or given an explanation why/who it harms is way too high.

    2. Lily C*

      She sounds like the opposite of a woman I worked with for a while. On her first day she marched around to everyone’s desks in our corner of the floor and loudly proclaimed she was sensitive to strong fragrances and that if we had any lotions or creams or perfumes we should toss them immediately. And then she introduced herself. As far as I know, no one in our corner actually wore perfume or regularly applied hand lotion while at work. While I’m happy to avoid strongly scented things (some brands give me headaches, too), it would have been nice to at least get a hello, my name is, I look forward to working with you before being preemptively accused of causing health problems.

      Turns out the accusatory introduction was an indication of other behaviors that made her time with our firm rather short.

    3. nekosan*

      As someone who gets scent-triggered migraines, ugh. Reminds me of the time i asked someone in the workplace if she could maybe please reduce her perfume, since it made me ill. Instead she started spraying it directly outside my cubicle to “prove” that i didn’t react to it.

      She was pleased as punch, until it came out I had documented the days/times she sprayed (she only did so when i had stepped away from my desk) and the number of sick days i had to take each time to recover. She got a talking to.

    4. MagicEyes*

      My horrible ex-boss would slather herself with an extra-noxious Bath and Body Works lotion in the office, right before meetings with me. I never told her that it gave me headaches, but I think she sensed it somehow.

    5. Jackalope*

      I’m astonished at how people react to being told they can’t wear strong scents in public. I generally consider commenters on this blog to be kind and thoughtful, but I remember one discussion on this issue. Some people said that they have severe and even life-threatening allergies to certain scents, and a few people responded (in the context of anaphylaxis, mind you) that their right to wear whatever scent they wanted was more important than the right of other people to be able to breathe and not die. I kid you not.

      1. allathian*

        Yeah, I remember the same discussion, it was awful.

        That said, scent-induced migraine can be almost as horrible as anaphylaxis, even if it’s unlikely to kill you. (If it’s bad enough, it might make you suicidal, though.) I had migraines regularly in my teens, long enough ago that there were no migraine-specific medicines available. The first time it happened, my parents returned from work to find me on my knees on my bed banging one side of my head on the wall hard enough to potentially cause a concussion. I found my one-sided migraine so intolerable that the only way to deal with it was to bang the other side of my head on the wall so that it too would hurt. I later got a diagnosis and got told to basically take ibuprofen as soon as I felt the first symptoms (including at school, there was no monitoring of the medications that students took when I was at school). Thankfully my migraines tapered off in my early 20s and now I get one maybe once or twice a year.

  62. Not Your Trauma Bucket*

    Pulled in to help out on a project for a completely different part of the company – just as extra hands. Asked for a project plan – even a loose, informal one – and the leader of the project had a TOTAL MELTDOWN that derailed the entire thing. The project still hasn’t been completed.

  63. JustaTech*

    When our building was renovated there were a lot of changes to the office spaces specifically, and the lab teams were not consulted or informed about these changes until we were ushered into our new desks.
    There were legitimate complaints (there was no storage for lab books, which we are required by law to keep), and general complaints (open plan office for most, glass-fronted offices for some).

    And then there were the name labels on the offices. An order was given from on high that anyone who had an office had to have their degree as part of their label. So, where before it was “John Doe, Principal Scientist, Analytical Development”, it was now “John Doe, PhD, Principal Scientist, Analytical Development”.
    Everyone lost their minds that their *hard earned* doctorate degrees were now on display. You would have thought that having a PhD was some kind of shameful secret and not, you know, an accomplishment and part of why they had that job. (Not a job requirement, but helps.)
    Granted, no one ever calls anyone “Dr Doe”, except maybe when introducing them to C-suite or outside vendors, but I was amazed that my boss and his peers were so upset and offended that their title was on display.
    (I was a little salty that I was *not* allowed to put my degree on my name plate, but I have a desk in the open office and a Master’s not a Doctorate.)

    So my boss’s solution to was to type up a bunch of alternate name labels for himself that say all kinds of silly things.

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      One thing that happened in a new lab where the actual users were NOT consulted is a support beam right next to the lab bench. This caused serious work around in the way work flowed in that area. (Small scale production starting at one end and being finished in a large water bath. )

    2. Artemesia*

      There is a strong reverse snobbery in Research One academic institutions. EVERYONE has a PhD who is a professor or researcher — and it is declasse to use the title. That is left to people with degrees from diploma mills or third rate schools. So being forced to show the title in a culture where that is viewed as pretentious is going to irritate people.

      1. technos*

        I worked at a tiny hobby company where everyone (besides myself and the magician) could legitimately be called Dr.

        Even the receptionist had a Ph.D from Harvard.

        The only person who actually used the title was the sales-weasel with a Divinity degree from some bible college I’d never heard of.

    3. Your Mate in Oz*

      One of the lab techs when I was doing postgrad had “Bob Smith, Associate of Professors” on their door for years. It was the same style as the official ones and likely came from the same place. But then one day an Official Pronouncement Was Made. No Such Foolishness Is Permitted.

      Shortly afterwards I had a summer job “supervising a warehouse” which was quite literally to supervise a building. Be there for deliveries, essentially, but because I was the only one there I had to be a supervisor not just a minion. But the company I worked for had a policy that supervisors must have offices, and labels on the office door. I couldn’t find a restriction onn the label contents.

      I was “Broompusher’s Mate Second Class Bob Smith”.

  64. No good deed*

    At my very first job out of college, I was assigned to assist a much more senior colleague with her work tasks during a busy period. I emailed to let her know that I would be supporting her on day X, as per our boss’ request.
    The colleague sent back a seething reply with our boss CC’d in letting me know that she needed HELP and not SUPPORT, as she is not disabled. I went to cry in the bathroom.

    1. Kaysong*

      Wow! I would never have guessed that “supporting” someone meant they were disabled. I hope your boss told you to ignore her.

      1. Dhaskoi*

        Depending on where you are geographically ‘support’ is an official term for the aid provided to people who are differently abled. If you’ve worked in the field that can be the first pace your mind goes when someone says ‘support’.

        Still an overreaction.

        1. Nightengale*

          Definitely not where I am geographically – I am disabled (not differently abled), most of my friends are disabled and my professional work is with disabled children. If someone told me they were going to “support” me in a professional capacity, I would definitely think of administrative work to free me up to do more professional work.

    2. Good grief Charlie Brown*

      If someone did that to someone in my team, I’d un-assign the helper. I’d have to let my boss know about it for the inevitable meltdown from the senior colleague in response to getting neither help nor support, but I wouldn’t risk putting someone new to the workplace into that situation.

      1. Artemesia*

        Yup. that is the right course of action here. Assign the OP to someone who appreciates the support. And this is a great example of how euphemisms corrupt the language.

  65. Dulcinea47*

    Oh man. I have multiple stories but most of them are about the same person.
    Many years ago, I shared a work phone with a coworker who made and received a lot of personal calls. This didn’t bother me much as I rarely needed the phone.

    One day, out of the blue, coworker tells me that she’s been getting a lot of hangup calls AND HAS CALLED THE POLICE about it. As she describes these calls it’s pretty apparent that they are pocket dials- this was in the early days of cell phones when it was really easy to accidentally make a call. The police weren’t very helpful, go figure, poor coworker was so put out by this. Some of the pocket dials were coming from my bf at the time, but her whole point seemed to be that this was a HUGE problem and it was all my fault- I should magically control what’s happening in bf’s pocket while he’s at work.
    I barely said anything during this whole interaction, just listened to this tale of woe… finally I said, very calmly, “I think you’re overreacting.” This, my friends, was so offensive she barely spoke to me for two to three YEARS, I kid you not. Fine by me. (I also switched desks soon after this.)

  66. Save Bandit*

    I was an executive assistant in my first job out of college, and one of my admins was horribly toxic in many ways. The general rule of the office was that everyone should wash their own dishes (no dishwasher) and that myself or the other assistant would empty the drying rack at the end or beginning of the day. At the end of one day, toxic boss left his coffee mug in the sink, and (still eager to please for some reason) I decided to wash it for him since it was the only thing in the sink. The next morning he came up to my desk and very aggressively asked if I’d washed his mug. I answered that I had, and he went BALLISTIC about how now his coffee will taste different, he never washed that mug, I shouldn’t have touched it without asking him first….to put it as mildly as possible, ICK in every way.

    1. i like hound dogs*

      Then … why did he leave it in the sink? Not saying that people should expect others to wash their dishes, but a sink is … where dishwashing happens? He sounds like a real nutter butter.

    2. Banana Pyjamas*

      At my first job they kept the office around 64 degrees. As a hot chocolate drinker this meant that the top of my cup often had crusty spots by the time I finished. Sometimes they scrubbed off, sometimes I had to put soapy water in the cup to soak. I would go back and wash it on my next meal/break. Other coworkers also did their dishes on their respective breaks. For the longest time it was fine. At some point the main admin decided to start doing dishes without telling anybody. I didn’t know who was doing dishes, but I would have said thank you, but I’ll do my own. Instead she got so angry about doing OTHER people’s dishes (WITHOUT ASKING OR BEING ASKED) that she decided to go to the grand boss. The grand boss called an all staff meeting and led us to the kitchen sink like naughty puppies about to have our faces rubbed in it. They were very condescending about how we’re all adults here and can’t we do our own dishes. The tone really rankled. It got heated when the admin accused us be being sexist because we made her do the dishes. Two of us spoke up because we had, in fact, been doing our dishes until they started disappearing from the sink. We pointed out that we never asked her to do our dishes, and she didn’t actually need to do our dishes. I ended up backing away as much as I could because two bosses, the admin and coworker were all raising their voices. The coworkers near the door quietly went back to their desks during the shouting. All over some mugs. I started using the disposable cups instead, because it wasn’t worth the drama.

    3. OMG It's 2024*

      I’ve worked on so many DoD programs where these old guys seem to take a lot of weird pride in the fact that “my coffee mug hasn’t been washed in 20 years” and the brown discoloration is somehow like…patina? or the seasoning on a cast iron skillet? I use cream and sugar so MY mug would become a science fair project after 2 days but these guys went YEARS. But, if you don’t want it washed, you don’t put it in the sink is pretty much a “DUH” moment! It’s like he was SETTING someone up for a good ol’ talkin’ to! What a jerk.

      1. Banana Pyjamas*

        Gross. It reminds me of the office coffees. At multiple jobs I was the only person who cleaned all the removable components and scrubbed burned coffee from the pots. At one job someone would even brew a second pot from the previous grounds. I shudder.

  67. New Utahn*

    I recently moved to Utah for work, and the culture shift is… a bit intense. Apparently, when my office put a coffee maker in the break room for the first time, an employee threw an absolute fit about it. Anyone who he saw drinking coffee he would tell them that they were terrible sinners, etc. Whenever coffee was brewing, he would stand just outside the break room loudly complaining about how he could smell coffee and how it was religious discrimination that he had to smell coffee. The break room was on the other side of the building from his desk, he absolutely had to go out of his way to smell this coffee! Luckily he’s retired now lol

    2. Fitzie's chew toy*

      Fellow Utahn here. This does not surprise me at all. I taught for over 30 years; we never had a coffee pot in the faculty lunch room. I always brought a thermal mug of coffee from home. A few students said the smell “bothered” them. I responded with “the teacher death stare.” Nevertheless, I loved teaching and loved those squirrely teenagers.

  68. YikesOnBikes*

    Paraprofessional quit her job (totally normal!) but then kept coming in just to do the parts of the job she liked, and had a MELTDOWN when she was told to stop because she doesn’t work there anymore.
    Rants on facebook, rants on her personal blog (linked to from her FB) and on and on. The drama went on for months, if not years.

  69. Drama Llamas*

    Once my boss had a bloody nose and was screaming that she needed a tampon. She yelled at me because I didn’t have one with me at that exact moment. Then made some remark, “If Jane was here, she would have one.” (Then go ask her?) Someone was finally able to procure said tampon and my boss sat there with a tampon shoved up her nose for the rest of the day.

    1. Feen*

      It would never cross my mind to use a tampon for a nosebleed… not sure if I’m impressed with the idea or horrified at the mental image! Maybe both!

      1. Parakeet*

        It can work quite well as long as it’s not one that’s too big for your nostril! Gets suggested in first aid classes sometimes for situations where standard pinching your nose and leaning forward isn’t working (I am both somewhat prone to nosebleeds and have also done and taught a lot of volunteer first aid). But if you don’t have a tampon handy, there are, after all, other options, so I’m not sure why the boss in this story was so invested in this particular remedy.

  70. Brian*

    I complained to my principal there hadn’t been toilet paper in most of the bathrooms for days and he cussed me out…on a playground full of kids. Ah, private schools…

  71. overcaffeinatedandqueer*

    Pretty stupid, but whatever. I actually couldn’t believe how much this bugged me.

    One of my early jobs out of school. I was doing OK and had a language skill that was in demand at the time.

    It was in a high-rise. My direct manager smoked and would go all the way down a few times a day, which ate up time and was not healthy. I rolled my eyes and figured that meant I could get some down time every hour or two for a few minutes to stand up, get steps, stretch etc. I was also losing weight at the time, so my health was feeling a priority.

    This was never a problem until one morning when I also had my period, and, ahem, had to be away from my desk a bit more to tend to things. Then I received an annoyed email about “exercising during work hours” from Smoking Manager.

    I felt absolutely furious, but kept it mostly to myself other than bitching to a friend privately, and replying to the email, ccing grandboss “got it, will be at my desk more, sorry, also not feeling great today. But if taking breaks is a problem, shouldn’t you also avoid smoking?”

    So I lost my little exercise breaks, BUT the company also started barring smoke breaks and setting our building key cards so we could go to a gym belonging to another nearby facility in the high rise. If I couldn’t take a minute, he couldn’t either.

  72. Yarnspider*

    So, at one of my old jobs, there was one lady who would disbelieve anything even a little bit improbable, and would throw full-on tantrums over it.
    As an example, during lunch break I mentioned that some scientists had put a hamster wheel out in the woods, and all the local creatures came and interacted with it. She didn’t believe me, so I brought up a video of it (assuming it was just a cute thing to share.) She watched the video, declared “That’s FAKE!” and stormed out of the breakdown.
    Same coworker cornered me at my desk to accuse me of stealing her candy bar. I didn’t, and told her so. She stomped around for the next hour, threatening to “check the tapes”. (The owner claimed that he had hidden cameras all around the office. He had difficulty operating the copy machine, so I highly doubt that he actually did. It was a very dysfunctional workplace, and I’m glad I don’t work there anymore.)
    She also yelled racial slurs at the copymachine. As far as I know, she’s still head of client services there.

    1. Csethiro Ceredin*

      She sounds unhinged and infuriating, but I have to admit I’d have to go to my office and laugh myself silly if someone yelled racial slurs at the printer. What race did she attribute to the copy machine??

      1. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

        It’s, uh, not unheard-of in some parts of the US South to call machines which are black in color the n-word. The remote control is the one I’ve heard most often, but also paper shredders and, apparently, printers.

        1. Elle*

          Typically I thank people when I learn something new from them but… I’m in such shock to learn this. Machines that happen to be black. Get called the n word. Oh my god. The racism is somehow less surprising to me than the pure stupidity of it?? (Obviously, pure stupidity is often not a turn-off for many racists.)

          2. allathian*

            Was the copier made in Japan? (I’m old enough to remember a time when Japanese goods were considered to be poor quality. The actual quality wasn’t all that bad, but the perception only changed with the personal electronics revolution in the 80s and 90s.)

          3. linger*

            That was my first guess, because calling photocopiers Japanese is Canon.
            But at the point you’re hurling insults, it’s mostly because it’s a f(rustrat)ing photocopier, not because of its point of origin.

  73. That Coworker's Coworker Again*

    Company-wide email with photograph of single plastic fork left in conference room. Not just an all-office email to the office containing said conference room, which would have been a bit over the top, but company wide to those in offices in other states.

  74. BofA on the Sofa*

    At my husband’s work (a sub sandwich restaurant that has a lot of turn over of employees) a guy got fired for stealing from the tip jar & generally poor attendance & poor job performance. A couple of days later he came in on a Sunday at 7:30 p.m. with his “lawyer” (some guy wearing a suit with no ID) who threatened the assistant manager with some kind of legal action for the firing & to get the worker’s last paycheck. 1. Of course he was going to get his last paycheck- it’s the law & this business has no intention to steal from past workers. 2. A guy who worked at a sub shop has a lawyer on retainer? 3. Your “lawyer” came with you on a Sunday night? 4. Why would you want to get a job back that you don’t regularly come to anyway?

    1. i like hound dogs*

      “Hey bro, you busy Sunday night? Okay, cool. I need you to pretend to be a lawyer to go intimidate people at my previous place of employment. No, it’s fine that you’re not actually a lawyer, just wear any sort of suit and that’ll be close enough, lawyers always wear suits.”

  75. But Not the Hippopotamus*

    when I had a grade school kid, they sold scout cookies… to their teachers and classmates. the method was to place an ordinary pay on delivery. except my kid was being bullied by a teacher, so we removed them between ordering and delivering. this meant I had several hundred dollars worth of cookies that I paid for and wasn’t being reimbursed for (I could have dealt with it, but I didn’t want to deal with the bully). so I brought them to work in batches over a couple weeks and left them in the communal space with the typical email to all the staff on that floor.

    someone got mad that I brought the cookies the second time. I was making them fat/eat cookies. they are too good. I need to stop bringing them. note that there was a constant trickle of treats all the time. apparently though, I should have known not to bring scout cookies because they are “too good”

    1. Nanc*

      Who among us has not crushed a sleeve of Thin Mints during snack time? A sleeve is a single serving and besides, Scout cookies contain no calories as they are fund raising food . . .

  76. Cactus Lady*

    My work blocked my dogs daycare website because I was “spending too much time on it” (ie, often opening it to adjust his daycare days because of work obligations, then forgetting it was an open tab).

    I also had a boss once who stopped speaking to any of his employees who gave notice. I left 4 years ago and he hasn’t spoken to me since. None of his former employees are ever able to use him as a reference, even those of us who thought we had a good working relationship (for example, my role was slated to be eliminated due to Covid cutbacks. And he still stopped speaking to me when I found a new job).

    1. perstreperous*

      I managed someone whose entire management team stopped speaking to them after they gave notice … taking resignations as a personal affront was par for the course at that company.

      (I found out years later that management were measured, among about 1,742 other measurements, on retention of staff – a resignation affected bonus and, possibly, salary).

  77. Chocolate Teapot*

    Thankfully my workplaces have not been too bonkers but there was the former co-worker who complained there were no leftovers after a big executive meeting due to extra last minute attendees.

    She had nothing to do with the meeting.

  78. honeygrim*

    Six months into my previous job, and I had not witnessed the infamous temper of my coworker Martha. One morning, when Martha was out, another coworker, Julie, and I discovered that we needed to make an urgent change to an entry in one of our databases: the issue wasn’t serious but needed to be taken care of quickly because it was preventing Julie from doing one of her major tasks. Martha typically made these kinds of small updates, but a big part of my job was managing this database, so I was also authorized to do this task. Since she wasn’t available, I made the change and went on with my day.

    The next day, Martha came to my office, stood in the doorway (blocking me from leaving my office), and yelled at me for fifteen minutes for doing HER job. She was the one who made those tiny edits in the database, not me! How dare I try to take her job away from her. On and on and on, while I tried desperately not to start crying just from the shock of having this woman screaming at me, and tried to figure out why I was getting yelled at for doing something in the database that was my responsibility in the first place. My boss stood behind Martha the whole time, stunned into silence. Eventually Martha ran out of steam and walked away.

    An hour later Julie emailed me to warn me that “Martha’s really upset about what we did yesterday.” I responded, “Too late!” Julie then congratulated me for going a whole six months before getting screamed at by Martha. Apparently it was a record.

    1. Kaysong*

      That’s disturbing. I wish the answer was your boss fired her but it doesn’t sound like that was in the cards.

  79. daffodil*

    I was a grad student at a large state university. As a budget-cutting move (?) responsibility for supplying dry-erase markers shifted from physical plant, tied to classrooms, to departments, tied to instructors. If you’ve ever met a professor, you know that we can be a forgetful bunch, which meant some folks left markers behind, others walked off with them in pockets. Because of the university size, the classrooms were not often close to department offices. This led to a truly absurd economy of marker borrowing, stealing, and absconding. Once another TA walked into my classroom in the middle of a student presentation, grabbed one of MY markers out of the tray, and left! I was simultaneously furious and well aware of the absurdity of the situation.

    1. Delta Delta*

      I taught as an adjunct at a university for one semester. I didn’t get any sort of onboarding or training, so I had no idea about logistics. I brought my own dry erase markers, just to be on the safe side. Turns out the classrooms all had chalkboards. But no chalk. One especially sly student was able to heist a box of chalk for me out of some room somewhere (no idea how he did this) and I carried it around in my bag all semester.

  80. Llama Lover*

    I work in health care, and our patient safety office had their own bootleg logo. When I, as the brand manager, told them they needed to retire it and use the main hospital logo, I was told I was literally killing patients because now no one would read their stuff without their (horribly designed) bootleg logo. As it just so happens, my computer bar code ends in 007, soooo……

  81. Keymaster*

    There was a ticket in the IT call queue that had beenescalated up to management because the tier 1 and 2 techs had gotten an absolute earful from the user and were refusing to deal with it any longer.

    We’re talking the user throwing insults, accusing us all of crimes both printable and not, threats and such.

    What was the reason?

    We’d blocked Facebook. That was it. There’s no business reason to access that site (trust me, our company does not rely on advertising or selling to the public at all). Tier 1 and 2 had asked her for what reason she had to be needed to access it and that’s when she’d blown up. How DARE we! We were stifling her freedom of speech! (we’re not in the USA), we’re stopping her from contacting her children (your phone still works!) etc.etc.

    The result was: she was banned from calling IT. If she needed to log a call then someone else had to do it on her behalf. And we contacted her manager with the full logs of everything she’d said.

    On paper this seems a bit tame, but the insults she was throwing were exceptionally vile. At one point she’d broken down into screaming sobbing at the poor helpdesk tech.

    2. Annie*

      Now I’m curious: Aside from having no work-related reson to be using Facebook, did that person have an emergency contact that was more responsive on Facebook than regular calling/texting, had message delivery delay problems with regular calls/texts, bad cell signal but good Wi-Fi, etc?

      Just trying to rationalize the irrational, that’s all!

  82. ANONTrainer*

    I was a corporate trainer for medical management software. I was conducting a training class, a nurse was unhappy that she was being forced to learn and use new software. She literally threw her training materials on the floor, she stood up and stomped her feet, and yelled some guttural noise – like a 3 yr old having a tantrum. Once I picked my jaw up off the floor, I picked up her binder, shoved it into her hands and held the door open for her to leave. I have never seen an adult behave in such a way.

  83. Heffalump*

    Some years ago, I started a new job as a typesetter. “Hortense” was the lead typesetter by virtue of seniority—first among equals, as it were. I was swing shift and she was day shift. Sometimes we had F2F contact when I came on, and sometimes we wrote each other notes. Email was some years in the future at that time.

    The typesetting system used codes analogous to HTML codes. For example, [LL1706[PT10[LS12[FT104] meant line length 17 picas 6 points, point size 10 points, line spacing 12 points, and FT104 stood for the particular font. At one point we got a new system made by the same vendor as the old one, and there were a bunch of additional codes.

    One night I used some of the new codes, known as “formats,” in a type job I was doing. After all, the capabilities of the new system were meant to be used. Getting the most out of a given software package is how I roll, and in my previous experience, the reaction from my peers and manager had been neutral at worst, “Way to go!” at best.

    When I came in next day, Hortense pulled me into a conference room and ranted at me for 5 minutes. “We. Do. Not. Use. Formats. This is the way we’ve always done it.” Of course, “This is the way we’ve always done it” is normally a cliché. I was blown away to hear someone actually say it seriously.

    A few weeks later I used some other codes called “counters.” (I’ll spare you the technical explanation.) After all, Hortense had said formats were off limits, but not counters. Next day I came in to a vehement note that began, “Never, ever, for even one second, use formats.”

    This turned out to be only the first of many obnoxious things she did. She quit a couple of years later, but during that couple of years, she was the archetypal missing stair. I was glad to see her back, and I wasn’t alone in this.

    1. OrigCassandra*

      This sounds like Penta! Was it Penta?

      Gosh, I kinda miss Penta. Absolute beast of a system, but it made beautiful pages.

      1. Heffalump*

        Compugraphic. Until I got to your “beast of a system,” I wondered if Penta was another AAM name, like Fergus, for an obnoxious coworker, and you were referring to Hortense. Now you have me wondering what Penta was like.

  84. JTP*

    I work in an in-house marketing agency for a B2B financial services company. When I started, there were very few processes set up, we were more “order takers” than marketing consultants with expertise. The company started growing a lot, positioning ourselves as experts. Execs hope, in the future, to bid for government contracts. We know that involves a lot of recordkeeping, so as we were changing our department culture, we also implemented a lot of new processes, including using a project management site, putting project codes in our disclaimers, tracking our time, etc. I was used to it, having worked in marketing in other regulated industries before.

    We brought on someone new as we were implementing this change, and OMG. She complained about EVERYTHING related to this site. WHY does she have to upload files to this site. WHY does she need to add this code. WHY does she have to add comments. WHY does she need to track her time. Someone would explain that this is part of being in a regulated industry (her previous job had been designing greeting cards or something) and working with government contracts. And the next week, she’d be complaining again.

    And anytime the site owners updated any part of the interface, it was the end of the world, she needed to relearn the whole system all over again. A friend of mine on the workflow management team would direct message me to look over a training document (since I was a “power user” of the site) to make sure she had my team’s work flow processes correct, and she’d ask if it was written in simple enough terms for Complaining Coworker to understand.

    Complaining Coworker was let go during a reduction-in-force layoff.

  85. AnonAnon*

    I managed a couple small law offices as a part of larger state agency. We had to let a probationary support staffer go because she refused to support all but one of her assigned attorneys and instead watched TV at her desk when she wasn’t supporting her preferred attorney.

    Two of our other support staffers who were friends with this woman were very mad about the dismissal and made their displeasure known in no uncertain terms. I obviously didn’t discuss details of personnel decisions with them, but let them have their fits and moved on.

    Not terribly long afterwards, I had to discipline our paralegal in that one office (one of the two who had a fit about the termination) over a repeated issue that was becoming a problem. It was literally either a verbal or written warning. Nothing major. No impact on annual evaluation or eligibility for an annual raise.

    She quit effective immediately with a really snotty email.

    Our office was union and the collective bargaining agreement allowed people 3 business days to rescind a resignation. She did and came back to work on the fourth day. And then she threw an everloving fit that, per HR suggestion, the time she’d been out had been marked as AWOL because she quit and she wasn’t absent. No discipline tied to it. Just how the time was coded.

    I calmly explained that yes, she quit. Because she quit, she couldn’t use vacation time to cover the absence. The only other option (per state personnel rules) was to treat her return to work as her being a new employee, onboarding her again, and restarting her yearlong probation period. That would mean that rather being in a protected union position, she’d be at will for a year. I didn’t think she’d want that.

    After confirming with the union rep that I was 1) correct and 2) being pretty nice about the whole thing all things considered, she accepted the AWOL time coding. But she was pretty snippy with me for a while and our relationship was never the same. When, a few years later, she submitted her notice of retirement in a similar fit after not getting her way with something, I just quietly held my breath until the 3 days had passed and I could safely tell her no, she couldn’t take it back if she changed her mind.

    From what I hear from people I know who are still friends with her, she’s a much happier person now that she’s retired. I wish her all the best…far from me.

    1. AngryOctopus*

      We once had a contractor who, when she got upset about something, just kind of refused to do anything for a week or so. Her name wasn’t an author on a paper (but was in acknowledgements)? No experiments for a week (for the record, she did one repeat experiment for the paper, so the non-authorship was 100% valid). Guy she liked hanging out with was fired (because he barely did any work)? Nothing for a week. It was fascinating.

  86. TheBunny*

    Years ago, an employee came to work, noticed an issue (I’m intentionally being vague here because the reason is even better after you know all the reactions) started yelling, dramatically cleaned off her desk (think sweeping all the items off of it into a box) and declared she couldn’t work in these conditions any longer.

    Her issue?

    The coffee pot was empty…and currently in the process of making new coffee…so her wait was minutes at best.

    To this day I refuse to believe that was her only reason for quitting. But we never saw her again and she did quit to HR, but they never shared if she had another reason.

    1. juliebulie*

      Empty coffeepots and empty paper trays are the two most frequent things that people flip out over, in my experience.

  87. sub rosa*

    A former colleague of mine actually picked up his inbox and threw it AT the HR chief, who had come in to his shared office to tell him he needed to stop doing something that was, effectively, time card fraud.

    (Colleague felt that being an hourly employee was beneath him, so he subverted the system every chance he got.)

    (Nope, he wasn’t fired, probably wasn’t even disciplined, for that. He did later get terminated, but that’s another story.)

  88. Ama*

    Well perhaps it’s time for this story again (I think I’ve shared it in some of the food story threads).

    I worked as the main office admin for a grad school years ago. Our building was an old brownstone and some of the kitchens had been kept because we had our own cafeteria (our building was really far off main campus) and also regularly hosted public lectures in the evenings with a small reception. When we had one of these receptions, we regularly put the leftovers back in the kitchen near the lecture hall and then our cafeteria chef would reuse them (it was mostly cheese and fruit so sometimes she’d just set them out at lunch and sometimes she’d work them in to what she was making). But everyone in the building knew those leftovers were in that fridge and though we suspected people were helping themselves if they were working late, at least they were getting eaten.

    Until the morning I came in after the lecture to find someone had taken the cheese plate out for a snack and neglected to put it back in the fridge — it was crawling with ants (that particular kitchen had a terrible ant problem which is why we only stored food in the fridge), so I dumped the whole thing in the trash and went to tell the chef there would be no leftovers from the lecture for lunch service.

    I got back to my desk not even 10 minutes later to find a scathing email to both myself , my direct boss, and the Dean from one of our postdocs, lecturing us on “wasting food” by throwing all the leftovers in the trash — I can’t remember the exact wording of the email but it also pretty heavily hinted at the fact that he was probably the person who had left the plate out in the first place. With my boss’s permission I used my best passive aggressive politeness to reply to him noting that we totally agreed that food should not be wasted but unfortunately *someone* had left the plate out on the counter the night before for the ants and it was now a health hazard and could not be reused with lunch service as was our usual plan.

    He did not respond to that.

    That was the incident that prompted the Dean to have a ID card lock installed on the kitchens so only the admins could enter (he wasn’t happy about the wasted food, either, and decided that the postdocs had lost their right to the leftover snacks if they weren’t going to be more careful).

    1. Stevesie*

      We had a similar email meltdown when our facilities guy accused someone of using all the ice. Turns out the ice was covered in someone’s diet coke and had to be thrown out (one of those dispensers that empties into a bucket). Facilities guy was notorious for his unhinged accusatory emails.

  89. Knope*

    One night after work my coworker swapped her computer monitor for another coworker’s monitor that was much, much bigger (this second coworker had a graphics-centric job that required a larger monitor, whereas the “thief” did not). When confronted, this coworker denied taking it at first, but as it was VERY obvious that she had taken it she eventually said she had permission from our boss to make the swap. Our boss insisted this was not the case, and said coworker was ordered repeatedly to give back the stolen monitor. And she just refused. HR got involved and still she wouldn’t budge. The HR process was moving slowly (weeks at this point), so one night a couple people stayed late and just swapped the monitors back (my coworker locked her door each evening so getting in to do this was not easy or else I suspect this would have been done earlier). When coworker came in and saw what had happened she was furious. Screaming. Crying. Bad mouthing all of us to anyone who would listen. Ultimately she quit and spread tales of her “unfair mistreatment” throughout our shared professional circles. It’s been years since this happened and sometimes I still encounter people who know her (wildly inaccurate) side of the story and she’s managed to convince people that we’re monsters.

    1. Raida*

      I’m shocked it took that long.
      In my office one of the IT managers would have just walked up, locked the computer, and taken the monitor mid-work.

  90. Bookworm*

    I was an intern at an office and someone apparently borrowed someone else’s ice pack. It is unclear why it was so important (Injury, critical for a food item even though we had a fridge/freezer that worked perfectly fine?), but the owner had a meltdown, sending a multi-paragraph rant email about how it was their ice pack and that this was completely inappropriate.

    I don’t remember the text but it was very clear this person was extremely upset and felt genuinely and utterly wronged. It seemed like this was some sort of disruption to their routine they couldn’t stand or maybe a last straw of some sort (again, I don’t know the details, but that best describes the emotion and energy behind it).

    It was bad enough that my fellow intern, who I believe also did not know the details, remarked that sheesh, “I’ll go ahead and buy a replacement” if it meant that much to our co-worker. Item was returned, there was a short note and a thank you, it was all a simple misunderstanding. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The unit that housed my internship was sold not long after so perhaps this was a sign of the place (I had only been there for around 3 months when the ice pack briefly disappeared).

  91. Random Academic Cog*

    We have a monthly committee meeting that is mostly faculty, with a few admins, and a couple of community members. Pre-Covid we always fed them lunch. One of the places we used for catering included a cookie with the sandwiches, but not with the salads. A professor who ordered a salad also took a cookie. The last professor who’d ordered a sandwich came in and threw an actual tantrum because he didn’t get a cookie. Someone who hadn’t yet eaten their cookie offered it to him, but he turned it down. The erring party was apologetic, but to no avail. Dr. Tenured Professor stayed, but visibly pouted through the entire meeting. We never again ordered meals that didn’t come with a cookie.

    Some time after that we had a delivery where the delivery driver forgot to leave the cookies. Imagine our panic. So I walked over to the cafeteria (~7 minute walk) and bought enough cookies for everyone with my own money just to avert the drama.

    1. i like hound dogs*

      Omg. That is truly bonkers.

      Not the same, but this reminds me of a time at my old job (boutique ad agency) I’d worked there only a couple of weeks, and it wasn’t uncommon for vendors to bring food gifts that were then set out in the break room for everyone to enjoy. So, one day, a vendor brings in cookies, and an email goes out, like, hey, help yourself to cookies! The cookies were giant and delicious. I took one back to my desk and enjoyed it thoroughly. Later I noticed that others were cutting the cookies into very small slices and everyone was eating only a tiny portion of a cookie each. I felt like the biggest a-hole and shrank down in my chair in shame thinking of others seeing me house a 10-inch cookie on my own.

      In my defense, I was pregnant at the time, and also I really like cookies.

      1. Jezebella*

        nah, that performative “I’m only going to eat a smidgen of this snack so that everyone knows I’m not a piggy” is annoying AF. People are entitled to eat the whole damn cookie. Especially pregnant people.

      2. AngryOctopus*

        The only reason to slice cookies into smaller pieces is to be able to try as many cookies as possible.
        I would have zero shame in anyone seeing me house a 10″ cookie (or two, because let’s be real, I have an unlimited capacity for sweets). Food is there to be eaten! You did nothing wrong!!

        1. i like hound dogs*

          Ha, thank you both. My husband also supported my eating of the cookie. I think I just worried I’d misread the snack culture and made a dumbass of myself, but probably nobody even noticed. Or they did but didn’t care.

    2. Charley*

      To be fair, I hate it when places do that. What’s with the assumption that if I want a salad, I won’t want a cookie? Feels like a weird diet culture thing. I support your new policy of patronizing caterers who give cookies to all :)

  92. HigherEd Mgr*

    I work on a college campus, and my building is located on a large hill. The classroom section of the building is built into the side of the hill, and the area for admin and faculty offices is in a tower that starts at the top of the hill. There is a utility/fire egress door located conveniently at the contact point between the tower and top of the hill, not generally used for public access. Before school/campus shootings were so common, this door was kept unlocked and used frequently. Then around 2005…

    Someone decided to keep that door locked for safety purposes. The faculty who used it regularly lost their minds; petitioning the chair, sending nasty emails, and railing against the injustice of requiring them to use their building key to open this door. (Everyone is issued an exterior door key as part of their onboarding key set) There were even discussions at faculty governance meetings about the decision to keep this door locked…

  93. Ally McBeal*

    This isn’t exactly mundane, but an HR rep at my last job told me that she had to call in the president of one of our unions for a disciplinary conversation about his sexual harassment. During that meeting, he doubled down and started sexually harassing HER, saying she couldn’t talk to him about SH when she was dressed so sexy. Then he lied to our stakeholders about being unfairly targeted because he was union president. Some of our stakeholders were his victims and obviously didn’t believe him, but others swallowed it and kicked up some minor & fleeting trouble for us.

    I just couldn’t believe that someone would be so stupid as to sexually harass the HR rep who was reprimanding him for sexual harassment.

  94. Slinky*

    This just happened to me today! I added one person to a meeting we’re having to talk about maybe hiring an intern. I let one person know. I received a long response about how this project is a point of contention, that another employee (who recently left the organization) didn’t want them doing this work, and that it should be done by researchers and not the employee (although it is the employees’ job). Attempts to get clarification were ignored and I was told to talk to an entirely different employee, who responded by putting a recurring meeting on my calendar for the rest of the year. In response to adding one person to a meeting to talk about a hypothetical internship.

  95. Kay*

    Our organization holds an annual event where the summer interns make presentations on their projects. It’s always a nice event and people from the colleges and the community are invited. The interns’ supervisors are expected to give pretty detailed feedback on the presentations and the interns’ overall performance. One year a new administrative assistant ordered appetizers from a different vendor and there was no cheese tray. A supervisor who had worked with multiple interns came in as the event was starting, looked at the food, loudly exclaimed, “WHERE IS THE CHEESE WHEEL?” and then stormed out and refused to participate when he was told there was no cheese. We had to scramble to keep the interns calm and get them the paperwork they needed to satisfy their internship requirements. A few of us still use “cheese wheel” as a code word for “I’d like to leave this meeting”.

    1. MagicEyes*

      Out of all of the horrible people in these stories, I think this supervisor is the worst. Yes, cheese is good, but don’t torture your interns because you didn’t get any cheese at one event. Cheese is plentiful and not expensive.

  96. commentarian*

    One of the reasons I quit my last retail job was because while on a lunch break, I witnessed one of the store managers have a full-blown temper tantrum, complete with swearing and screaming (!), because Panera forgot to give him his dressing for a salad he’d ordered. He followed up this tantrum by calling the Panera and insisting that they mail him a gift card (!!) for the cost of his order (!!!) because he couldn’t go back pick up the dressing.

    After he got off the phone, he looked at me and asked if I though he’d been too harsh to the Panera employee. I responded with something vague but non-affirming and he followed up with me two hours later (!!!!) to ask AGAIN if he’d been too harsh.

    This was part of a larger pattern of behavior, but this specific incident really sticks out in my memory.

    1. allathian*

      I mean what did he expect? For you to tell him that yes, you though he’d been too harsh, and risk being fired for it? I mean, really. Some managers seem to be completely unaware of how power dynamics affect their reports.

  97. Shiba Dad*

    Many years ago I worked in the warehouse of a now defunct retailer that had 17 stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. The corporate offices were attached to the warehouse. The company was owned by a family. The patriarch (the owner), his wife, and his three sons were involved in the business.

    The office staff often ordered at for lunch. The first week I was there they ordered pizza. The patriarch of the family was in his late 50s and absolutely lost his shit because he they got thick crust pizza and he wanted thin crust. He complained about it for roughly five minutes straight.

  98. Burned to a crisp*

    Everyone in our building received an email that one of the stairwells would be closed for a few days for maintenance. I was lucky enough to be answering phones for the front desk when one of the building’s inhabitants, whose office just so happened to be next to this stairwell, got said email. He called and hollered at me for a solid 10 minutes about how this was a huge fire hazard and we would “ALL BE BURNED TO A CRISP” because of this stairwell closure. I politely listened and described to him the location of all the other exits he could use in case of a fire. I failed to mention that the closure was actually so they could investigate a potential gas leak, a far more serious fire risk than having to walk a few steps farther to get out of the building!

  99. AmberFox*

    Someone I worked with once chewed me out for saying, “it’s a black box to me.” He apparently had never heard the term and clearly thought that I was being rude by either not explaining what a black box was the first time I said it or by even using the term in the first place, by the way he started aggressively demanding to know what that meant and telling me I was mocking him (I was definitely not!). I’m still not sure if he thought it was some sort of horrible slang or what.

    This was the same guy that:
    – Would message you and say, “Can we talk about X?” and then when you got on the call with him, he’d go, “OK, one sec, let me bring the client on.” Constantly.
    – Literally told one client, “This is exactly the same as what we did yesterday; I don’t know why you don’t get it,” in an angry voice while I was on the phone with him.

    2. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

      I know someone who does that! If she doesn’t know a word, she’ll accuse people of either saying it to embarrass her or show off that they think they’re smarter than her. And, like, we work in a university and it would literally be words like antithesis and glib.

  100. not applicable*

    There’s a saying here where I work that “words matter”; if you use the wrong homonym or choose a word that has even the slightest bad connotation in anyway, you risk being raked over the coals.

    Once, I was presenting to a customer a finished product, just to get their approval on our release of the material (mind you, they have already had a chance to go over the package before this meeting in front of other big wigs!) This was a smaller project in comparison to other efforts that we had going on at the time. Think months long projected finish vs yearslong for duration.

    I, being young at the time and fairly fresh in the industry, had put into one of the documents that this was “merely” an addition to an already existing project. This wording had been vetted by someone who was going to be the face of the document, and I thought all was well; I wasn’t intentionally minimizing the work that we had done, but I thought it would accurately represent that impacts were not going to be earth shattering.

    The customer did not share my sentiments; once one of them had caught the wording, they would not drop it for the rest of the hour long meeting. They repeated over and over with such snideness that though I had done a good job, this was “merely” an addition to what we had. To the document owner’s credit, they took those jabs with grace knowing that they had had the opportunity to correct it and didn’t, but I still felt bad that they were getting the heat.

  101. Cookies for Breakfast*

    Years ago, when an old employer’s office lease came to an end, they announced they’d be moving to a very prestigious location in the heart of the city centre. The new office would have much better facilities and a state-of-the-art design, including our very own cafe!

    Everyone was delighted and excited, apart from me. The move would mean I’d lose the biggest perk of the job, which was a 20-minute door-to-door walking commute, and have to use expensive, overcrowded peak-hour public transport again. But hey, I told myself eventually, that’s life. Good things come to an end, and so on.

    Building works dragged on in the new office, so the move happened much later than announced. The delay was definitely over six months, possibly even a whole year or more. To me, every additional day was a gift. Once they locked in a final date, I had accepted my luck had come to an end. As I needed to go see part of my team abroad, I figured I could book the trip for the week of the move, so I could put it off just a little more. And then, The Email hit my inbox.

    The Email came from the office manager. Imagine it as something like “Great news! You’re one of a pilot group we’ve chosen to move into our fantastic new office a week early, so you can try it out and give us all your feedback! Come see me to get your pass! We bet you’re very excited!” .

    The office manager and I would became friends later on, but at that stage, I didn’t know her well enough to ask her to count me out without any “she’s not a team player” comments spreading. I also knew that all my early feedback about the new office would likely be coloured by my feelings around the commute, while the company expected everyone to be suitably upbeat. So, after a spot of cursing under my breath at my desk, I did what every mature, sensible adult would do: booked the work trip for the exact week the pilot group would change offices. Then I replied to The Email:

    “Hi, OfficeManager, thank you so much for thinking of me! I’m afraid I won’t be available on that week, as I’ll be on a work trip. I wanted to let you know right away, so you have time to replace me with someone else. Great work on the office move, wish you all the best!”.

    She may or may not have seen right through it, but by all standards, it was better than being dragged to the new office kicking and screaming. The place turned out to be okay. The commute was such a predictable circle of hell, I was already working from home 3 days a week before the pandemic even started. Sure, there were big pros to working so deep into the city centre – but now I’m almost fully remote in my current role, travelling in on a regular schedule is the one thing I don’t miss.

  102. Throwaway Account*

    This is a longish story about how my (toxic and conflict-avoidant) managers overreacted to me. At least, I think they overreacted. Which is funny because they never really manage at all, so this attempt to “manage” was a real surprise. And it is pretty ridiculous, though I don’t know if that comes through in this post.

    Background: I worked at a place that has a toxic, mean-girl aesthetic as the management style (but they didn’t seem to know until recently when an exiting employee sent a municipality-wide email accurately detailing racism by the management team and many other management issues set off a bit of a firestorm).

    Anyway, it is Fall 2020. Our workplace was back to work in the building in May 2020 but without the public. Yes, we were back in May 2020! We were told it would be safe because we would all have to wear a mask all the time. It is one large cubicle room with just a few cubicle walls.

    In September 2020, the day after I returned from a COVID leave, I was asked to join a meeting with my manager and the director of the whole organization to talk about my extreme fear and overreaction to COVID. They had seen my “COVID isolation bubble” at work and were very worried about me. I cannot get a word in edgewise to ask what the heck they mean. They keep talking and go on and on about my extreme fear.

    Here is what happened (intoned in the mechanical voice of a Reddit TikTok video):
    -May 2020, I arrived for the first day back to work from our COVID closure to find the manager without a mask. I asked her to please wear a mask. This is evidence of my fear.

    -June 2020, there were just two of us in our side niche of the cubicle area, and we sat as far apart as we could, but my coworker said she realized she kept getting too close to me, so we had some fun measuring the distance (we had little to do!). The coworker put a Post-it on the floor 6 feet from my chair as a reminder to stay that far away. But the coworker kept kicking the post-it note away. I made a joke, found some colorful printed duct tape, and made a 6-foot half-circle around my chair. My bubble begins!

    -July 2020, the cleaners asked me to move my trash can so they don’t have to get it from under my desk, so I moved it closer to the entrance to the area, which happens to be the edge of my tape circle. My bubble grows!

    -August 2020, I was required to leave work because someone in my home had COVID. They wound up hospitalized but quickly recovered with just one complication and are fine now.

    -September 2020, I returned to work from COVID leave. I saw two chairs inside my tape circle. One is my old chair, and the other is a new chair that was ordered for me while I was out (yay!). There is a note to choose the one I want and to keep both chairs there until the facilities manager returns to get the extra one. So now my tape circle bubble is surrounded by a small trash can and a desk chair.

    My manager must have decided that I built the “barricade” AFTER I returned from COVID leave. We had the meeting, and I listened for what seemed forever to them both go on and on about my extreme fear, justified they felt, by my personal experience with COVID, but still not OK, and they needed to help me. How could they help me?

    I finally interrupted and asked if I could talk now. I told them the tape was a joke and had been there since May. The basket was placed for the convenience of the cleaning staff, and the chair had been there a day and was waiting for the facilities manager to get it. The whole meeting sort of deflated after that.

    My old coworkers still laugh about it. When they are not crying because they still work there.

  103. Stevesie*

    I had an office where we went from two floors to one (after layoffs, so moral was already not great). This meant about 50 people sharing one set of bathrooms. Women’s room had three stalls, Men’s had two urinals and one stall, and there was one private unisex bathroom that also had a shower (that as far as I know was used maybe twice). There were slightly more men than women in the office, but as more men typically “camped out” in the lone Men’s stall, it created a long queue of men waiting around the bathroom area for that stall or the unisex room to become available. Multiple inappropriate emails were sent telling the fellas to limit their toilet time and get off their phones, which they added that men should learn to get over being pee shy if they only needed the bathroom for #1.

    I personally got upset when they started telling women to not use the unisex bathroom because we have more stalls. While true, there are a ton of reasons why women should have the same access to this! I quickly sent an email back to the facilities guy saying basically you can’t tell women they can’t use that bathroom. I mean, certainly there could be non-binary or trans people that prefer this (and potentially aren’t “out” at the office). Also sometimes periods are messy and need to be addressed in a private room with a sink. People with digestive issues, etc. Anytime I suggested that we replace the urinals with toilets, men lost their minds at the thought, despite none of them (presumably) having urinals at home.

    Eventually we moved to a new office space that by some odd quark had 2 Men’s rooms (both with urinals) and 1 Women’s room. Unsurprisingly, no one complained.

    1. allathian*

      Not a strange quark, but an odd one? Love the typo!

      Our offices are going to be remodeled next summer, and well have to crowd into one floor instead of two for a while. Won’t be too bad, because we already have a very liberal WFH policy and it’ll be vacation season anyway.

  104. It doesn't matter*

    When a previous office switched from Groupwise to Outlook, you would have thought we were being told to use carrier pigeons. One person was particularly upset they couldn’t figure out how to use different colors in their email messages anymore and sent an email about it. They were in IT.

  105. Hey Ms!*

    Probably not mundane for other educators here, but asking someone to get off of their phone for 10-15 minutes usually results in threats, violence, and aggression.

    My first rule when you walk into my class is to take your earbuds out and to put your phones away. Look at the board and do the bell-work. I have to stand at my door to greet everyone, so I cannot see if they are doing the work until I walk back in.

    Some days I let it fly, especially if we are doing independent work and they are listening to music while working. Sometimes I need to actually teach, so I ask them to put their devices away. I have to ask repeatedly. After several asks and reminders, I then will take their phone and put it on my desk–where they can still see it–and give it back to them at the end of class. The amount of times I’ve been cussed out, threatened, grabbed, or have been subject to just general non-stop distracting mumbling and talking is countless.

    Once I took a phone from a girl after asking for 20 minutes for her to pay attention (because of course she would then ask ‘what are we doing’ after I have explained it several times) and she grabbed me so hard with those nails that she drew blood.

    She was literally just scrolling on TikTok.

    Their reactions show me that these phones can be addictive and bad for the brain.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      My favourite comment when dealing with phone confiscation is “Oh my GOD, it’s my MUM, I have to answer messages from my own MOTHER”. Funnily enough it’s never a parent who’s trying to reach them in the middle of the school day, but it turns out to be another pupil on Snapchat. Seriously though when you’re dealing with a combination of kids + rectangular dopamine delivery devices, it’s like trying to take down Dracula. We tried a number of different approaches including a ten second rule to put it away or you get a negative behaviour point, and not even that level of strictness worked. The only thing that has is the phone has to be off and away or it’s taken away on sight by a senior teacher to be collected at the end of the day. It’s like if they have it on at all, we’ve lost them. Weirdly, I also worked at a school were kids were allowed to use their phones all day as part of the lessons and that worked really, really well.

    2. H.Regalis*

      My team got kicked out of pub trivia once because one of our group had invited a couple old friends of his and they Would. Not. get off their phones, even though the MC announces about a dozen times a night, “No phones, tablets, or devices of any kind.” We were not happy. He never invited them again.

  106. Jennifer Strange*

    I was in a semi-professional production of The Sound of Music (we got paid, but very little). During the wedding scene the director told the nuns he wanted us to all focus on one area in the back of the theatre while singing a portion of our song. One of our ensemble nuns became enraged that the director dared to direct her, saying “He can’t tell me where to look! What if my character motivation is to look over here instead?” (which, oh, honey, that’s not what that means).

    She also mentioned to me how annoyed she was one of her college professors had assigned her to write an essay about a director of her choice, stating it was a stupid assignment and why would she care about that. The class in question? Directing 101.

  107. But Not the Hippopotamus*

    The work I do involves writing computer code. There are various development environments for this. I worked at a place where some people used Preferred Env. But a couple folks with different coding backgrounds could not get it to work and used Other Env. Apparently, nobody was tracking that the Preferred Env licenses were about to expire and they weren’t budgeted for. This caused a discussion of what was best for the group overall since one was free and the other would have to revert to the free version… and how much training could be supported,etc.

    First two comments were stuff like Preferred Env is good at this, but Other Env has this other thing. Then the third person said something to the effect of, “If we can’t stay with Preferred Env then we are Bad people and I will consider resigning because…” and basically yelled at everyone for entertaining the idea that it wasn’t clearly superior. The meeting derailed. Factions were had.

    This resulted in multiple meetings and a whole lot of time wasted with people feeling attacked (first two who spoke) because they had dared go along with the possibility of changing.

    It was the start of a decent into banana-land.

    In the end, no training was provided and everyone used what they wanted…. unless they had to work with the third person. Then they used Preferred Env.

      1. Bruce*

        I’ve never been a professional coder so I just putter along using vi, but recently I was looking for something that would let me select and edit columns… so I looked at emacs.
        Did not find it very intuitive. It seems really powerful but wow the learning curve was too much for a dabbler like me. My case is looking at logic test vectors that can be huge files with columns of 1 and 0, when I’m desperate I import them into excel and use formulas to extract the exact column I need to look at… not pretty, but that is where I’m at after 40+ years in my checkered career…

        1. I Have RBF*

          I use nano, so I am the third side in the Vi vs Emacs wars.

          I will pull complicated or positional stuff into a spreadsheet to analyze too.

    2. king of the pond*

      As someone who went to college for programming, this absolutely tracks. Professors and students fighting over IDE/environment preference was real and constant. I was an undergrad teaching assistant for my uni’s version of Programming 102, and my boss/professor’s solution was probably the best: the class uses {insert IDE}. If you really want to use something else, you can, but you’re entirely on your own. Course staff will only help you/provide support with issues if you’re using {class IDE}. This was perfect because the occasional Jimmy Neutron would just use whatever they want with no issues, but the sheer majority of the class would stick to {class IDE}, letting us easily provide tech support when something inevitably misbehaved.

  108. urguncle*

    My first job was at a call center that was dominated by men. Think like a group of 150 people and maybe 20 of them were women. When I first started, the only women’s bathroom was in another building, so a bathroom trip was a literal hike. After our stats came back one month and every woman was told that they needed to cut their bathroom time down by a factor of about 5, someone finally realized it was because all four bathroom facilities in that area were men’s. So one of 4 bathrooms was switched to a woman’s bathroom and the men threw a fit about it. One just kept using the women’s because it was his favorite bathroom. It was another 6 months before they even gave us sanitary napkin disposal in that facility. For six months, we threw used pads and tampons into Jimmy John’s delivery boxes lined with trash bags that went underneath two stalls. Absolutely foul.

    1. amoeba*

      Did you work at NASA in the 60s? (That’s literally a plot line in “Hidden Figures”, isn’t it?)

  109. Wilbur*

    This isn’t the most dramatic, but I used to break things professionally. One test, which was run infrequently, broke cast or forged widgets that were typically several inches of steel thick. It required 700,000 lbs to do this. There was a mens bathroom right next to the test stand, and the safety team asked me to close this bathroom just in case a hunk of steel went flying (which they occasionally did) and broke through the cinder block. Didn’t think it would be a big deal, as there were many other bathrooms that were more convenient for everyone to use. Turns out a few office workers would travel past the larger, newly renovated bathroom in the main office area to use this bathroom together. They seemed confused by my signage and caution tape I’d put across the door and would try to use the bathroom anyway. Safety team asked me to move the testing earlier in the day to avoid this-no problem. Moved testing up to 7-730 AM before most of the office workers got in. This caused a huge issue, because one of the instrumentation guys had a routine where every morning he would enter the building. He would walk past the bathrooms by the entrance. He would walk past the office area with their nice bathrooms. He would walk past his lab and go straight to this bathroom. The thought of using any one of the 4-5 other bathrooms in the facility was unacceptable, so he made a big fuss and I was told I needed to complete all my testing before 7 AM so he could have his morning constitutional in his favorite bathroom.

    1. Jezebella*

      I really enjoy your job description. I feel like breaking things professionally could be a whole lot of fun. Or maybe I’m just having a Day.

  110. BellyButton*

    I LOVE ask the reader days! Thank you all in advance for your amazing stories and giving me something to do other than my job. ;)

  111. HowDoesSheDoItAll?*

    The on-site cafeteria was closed for remodeling for almost a year. When it reopened, I overheard a colleague, Jimmy, complain that he went down for lunch but was told the cafeteria closed at 1 p.m. (I’ve worked here for 20+ years, and the cafeteria has always closed at 1 p.m.)

    Our manager stopped by Jimmy’s desk to talk about an assignment, and Jimmy said, “Wait a second, I’m writing an email to complain that the cafeteria closes at 1 p.m. I don’t know who to send it to, but I’m writing it anyway. Not sending it.” Then Jimmy goes on an increasingly loud rant about how he’s tired of eating food from the grab-and-go coolers offered as an alternative. (The company does provide several microwaves to heat up lunches.) Jimmy ended his rant with: “I just want a hot lunch! Why can’t I get a hot lunch?!”

    Now whenever I’m having an adult tantrum in front of my husband, I end my tirade with: “I just want a hot lunch!”

  112. Catabodua*

    I’ve shared this before, but so glad I get to share it again!

    The office fridge was completely cleaned out once a month. As in, anything in there got thrown away, drawers were pulled out and scrubbed (special job that the cleaning staff were paid extra for). There were signs put up on Monday that this Friday was the clean out day. This was a KNOWN THING. It’s not like it was the first time. Like, when the cleaning staff showed up on Friday around 3 they made an announcement to go get your stuff. Many people would hop up from their desk and run in there to get their item.

    Coworker Elizabeth, drama llama extraordinaire, who regularly called out sick on Mondays and Fridays, left a Tupperware container in the fridge that week. She had called out sick that Friday. As per standing orders/policy, it was thrown away on Friday by the cleaning staff. She then called out the following Monday.

    Tuesday afternoon she realized that her Tupperware container had been discarded. The level of freak out that followed, I’m really not sure I can give it justice. Screaming WHO STOLE MY TUPPERWARE!! When someone tried to point out that Friday had been a purge day, she just kept screaming at them about theft, the amount of disrespect she was subject to, threats to call the police to report the theft. And to be clear, not at any one person, just her rambling around the office screaming her head off at no one in particular, but really being vile if anyone tried to engage with her.

    HR was useless at that place, so they tried to get her to come sit in their office to talk about it, calm her down, but she would be in there for a moment, then start her rambling again.

    I think she finally ran out of steam after about an hour, and everyone was just ignoring her by then anyway, and changed to screaming about how she couldn’t work like this and stormed out. She showed up at work the following morning and acted like nothing had happened.

    And, as far as I could tell, no consequences for this behavior.

  113. LCS*

    Our SAFETY rep lost his mind on me, yelling, screaming, f-bombs, called me a c***, door slamming, the works, and then refused to conduct required safety training for my crew that had been scheduled for that afternoon. Why? Because I asked him to please wear the required PPE inside a zone clearly marked as PPE required. Apparently only he should remind folks to follow safety rules. Still boggled about that one!

    1. Retail Dalliance*

      Tell me this person was fired over calling you a c***! Someone at my workplace called someone’s mother that word and was fired (it took management 6 weeks of agonizing over the decision to fire, but it was eventually done).

      1. LCS*

        I think it was a contributing factor to the fact that he’s no longer around, but this was one of many examples that led to an on-again, off-again series of stress leaves and PIP’s that took almost another 2 years after my incident to get any full resolution. Not that it excuses it but it’s a very blue collar environment and even ~10 years ago when this happened, norms were pretty different vs. now in terms of what we’d accept behaviour/language-wise in the field, as long as it didn’t escalate to anything physical.

  114. CatLadyvNoseyNelly*

    My manager does some of the supply ordering for our smallish office/manufacturing plant. The garbage can in the bathroom was breaking, the little foot pedal to lift the lid was coming off daily and wouldn’t stay on. It was also a little rusty and that bathroom has the possibility of being used by visitors so I went and priced them out and chose an inexpensive one similar in size. I may have chosen a specific vendor so the office Nosey Nelly would see it and potentially complain but I assumed that’s all that would happen. Boy was I wrong! Nosey Nelly was nearly in tears over this new garbage can! She said we didn’t need a new one and the old one could be fixed and that our current trash bags don’t fit in it. Oh the horror! Sanitation said the current garbage bags fit just fine and she pouted about it for days! I wonder what she thought of the new microwave I had ordered because the old one HAD A HOLE IN IT!! I guess I’ll never know!

  115. Nom*

    Once I worked with a colleague on one of our software tools. He had a fairly common last name, that, when shortened, could be a sexual term (think “Dickson”). Once he needed to share his password with me so I could log in as an administrator. His password was based on his name, so was something like “jdick123”. My boss tried to report him to HR for sexually harrassing me.

  116. Cactus_Song*

    Had an absolute nightmare of a boss some years ago who had terrible temper. I was trying to verify the new business credit card over the phone for a purchase he requested I make immediately. But the business zipcode wasn’t working. He had recently moved to a new house, so I asked him for his new home address zipcode thinking he may have accidentally put that one on the card instead. He refused to give it to me and insisted it was the business address zip. I tried again and again, the person on the other line said that the business zipcode isn’t correct.

    I went back to my boss. He was far more annoyed than anyone should have been, so I tried to be as gentle as possible when explaining that, again, the business zipcode isn’t work, could it possiby be under his new home address? He yells at me to figure it out. I go back to my desk and pick up the phone receiver (and it’s wireless, I should mention) to try one more time with this very patient person on the other line.

    My boss comes storming out of his office, grabs the phone from out of my hand, SCREAMS his new home address zip into the receiver, throws the receiver into the wall just above my head and storms out.

    In hindsight, I should have walked out right then. But I was already deep in the process of job searching and knew that in 2 months, new job or not, I was leaving. So I stayed. But Christ, what an asshole.

  117. Indigo64*

    Our lease was coming up on our office space. Our workforce had tripled in size since our lease was last renewed, so even though the space was beautiful, we’d outgrown it. Someone from the main office in another city flew in lead the office search. She decided real estate downtown was too expensive, and we should move to the suburbs. Half our office does not drive, and the new office was not accessible by public transit. She spent a week trying to prove it really was accessible before the Big Boss stepped in. She did eventually find a space downtown. Everyone hated it. It was far from city center in a “bad” part of town, with a strip club across the street. The space itself was not good- it’s best described as “open concept hell”. The admin desks were in the cafeteria. No cubes, everyone sits at long tables, and the 3 offices all went to HR (for good reason!). Office manager spent months fielding complaints, the move was the sole topic of lunch conversation. The 5 year lease was signed December of 2019, with a move in date of May 1, 2020. We all went remote in March 2020, and the company decided to make everyone permanently remote in 2021. I go into the office once every 6 months for meetings, and the company rents a meeting room, since there are no conference rooms in our space that fit more than 5 people. The actual office space has 6 hot desking spaces set up, with everything else in boxes in the corner. So much political capital spent on a space we never used! Our lease is up next year, last I heard they were planning to close the physical office in our city and continue to rent meeting spaces as needed.

  118. I'm just here for the cats!*

    So I wasnt the employee but a customer who had an employee blow up at me. I was at our local walmart shopping with my mom. For weeks the the music in the store was unusually high. Higher than any other time. Both of us have worked in retail and can usually tune music out. But this was so high that at times we could hardly hear each other and would talk in the other person’s ear just to better hear.

    This went on for weeks. We were in one of the isles and my mom said I don’t know why it’s got to be so loud. I wish they would turn down the music.” She was talking to me. There was a Walmart employee who turned around, came over to my mom and blew up at her yelling “We can’t turn it down, it’s broken!” and then stomped off. We were not talking to her. We were not complaining or being rude to anyone. Just made a statement and she acted like we came up and yelled at her.

    1. Akcipitrokulo*

      not the right thing to do,but I can understand the frustration when a worker can’t escape it…

      1. I'm just here for the cats!*

        oh of course! I’ve been on the other side and I understand how annoying that could be. We just found the whole situation so odd, especially being that she was even able to hear us over the music!

  119. Say Cheese!*

    I overreacted once when working at an elementary school (not faculty). They were putting together a video for the year-end assembly and I was suddenly asked to say something to the kids on video. No advance notice. I hate pictures (both moving and still) and declined the impromptu request. The person recording tells me that “I have to!” (not in the please-will-you way; she scolded me). I became visibly angry and although I remained calm, I said absolutely I don’t have to and I will not be participating! *Awkward silence from everyone in the room.* Here’s the kicker: I am currently helping put together a fun Valentines project at my new job and it requires getting a photo of everyone. I declined to be the photographer, but my photo will be used. :-)

  120. CherryBlossom*

    I’m currently dealing with this now. As the office manager of a growing start-up, I’ve taken over the office lunches, which used to be decided by consensus. After a bit of grumbling, most people have let it go. Except for one woman.

    She is DISTRAUGHT that I no longer order from her favorite places. She’s cornered me in the office, spammed my slack DMs with a spreadsheet of restaurants she likes, tried to go above me, complained to leadership, and eventually resorted to making her own rogue lunch orders, causing a big headache for me.

    I took TWO restaurants out of rotation, and only after multiple cancellations and missing items. Sorry I only order from places that actually deliver the food we ask for, ma’am. (Except I’m not sorry at all lol)

  121. H.Regalis*

    I’m a software developer. We were all working over the weekend for a go-live, and had a group chat on Teams so we could coordinate all the steps we had to do.

    Someone put a message in the chat to hand the process off from Team A to Team B so the latter could do their part. One guy from Team B called me and was livid that the message about this was in the chat instead of being texting to him personally. He was going to bring it up to his manager, and have them bring it up to at the other managers in the weekly manager meeting, and on and on. It wasn’t worth arguing about, so I just had him give me his number and then texted him when I had to hand the project over to him later on in the day.

  122. Crazy Times at Bananapants High*

    This is a bit of a long one, because every crazy response elicited a bigger, crazier response.

    Tom has his food warming up in the microwave, and has walked off for a moment while it’s heating up. The timer goes off, Jerry immediately pulls Tom’s food out, and puts his own food in, starts the time, and also walks off. Tom comes back and finds that his food is not completely warm, stops Jerry’s food, takes it out, and put’s his food in. Jerry comes back, sees what has happened, and starts shouting at Tom for touching their food. Tom shouts back at Jerry for touching his food in the first place. This escalates into an all out screaming match between the two – mean while management is trying to get the two to stop shouting at each other. Tom screams that he can’t take this anymore, he quits, grabs his stuff and walks out. Jerry then also says he’s done, grabs his stuff and walks out.

    CUT TO THE PARKING LOT – Tom is waiting for a ride to come and get him, and has some of his stuff on the ground next to him. Jerry comes pulling out, swerves towards Tom, not hitting him, but running over his coffee mug that is sitting on the ground. Tom calls the policy to file a destruction of property complaint over a $15 coffee cup. Police decline to report to the scene.

    Jerry calls management later that day, and says that he does not quit, he just got worked up, and that he’ll be back in the morning. Management goes to HR, and HR begins the internal process to terminate an employee, but even in this situation, that requires some time (it would have completed before the end of the next day, but terminations require a few sign offs). Jerry reports to work the next morning, but reads the tea leaves, and leaves “for lunch” and never returns.

    2. Paris Geller*

      OK, I think this one takes the cake. I don’t know if anything else on this thread can top this one. I will be thinking about this for years to come.

  123. Corrigan*

    At my old job, our department had a QI person who essentially went mad with power. She enjoyed telling everyone what they were doing wrong. To add to that, she always made it a point to tell the three senior llama groomers that we were not “managers” because manager was not in our title, even though we managed different parts of the office workflow. Why were we invited to the office wide management meeting? If people in training could review “with the manager” who was the manager? Obviously not us. It was exhausting.

    She decided that she needed to know everything that everybody ever said because it might related to QI. To that end, she demanded that we add her to the llama groomer Teams chat. Note that she was already invited to our department meetings where policy changes or other major issues were discussed. There were several other people in our office who weren’t in that chat…because they weren’t llama groomers. It just wouldn’t be relevant. We had another llama groomer who complained about the amount of chitchat in the llama groomer chat and requested two different chats. I took this as an opportunity and left the old chat for random chitchat for llama groomers and made the new Teams chat for solely procedural work related issues and added the QI manager to this.

    She responded with “I’m still waiting to be added to the other chat.” I told her this wasn’t happening and she started ranting and raving at me that I was purposely excluding her from the llama groomer chat, what were we talking about that she wasn’t allowed to see, I’m trying to undermine her and keep her from doing her job…it was really quite the rant. She didn’t care that I told her that she was getting exactly what she wanted, access to our discussion of work issues. Eventually I told her that since she wasn’t a llama groomer by title, she really didn’t need to be in any of our chats and she should be grateful that I allowed her into that one. Somehow, either one or both of us stopped responding, but it was bizarre to me that someone was that worked up about not being allowed into the Teams chat of a separate department.

  124. Scribe*

    I work in higher ed which is the land of Strangely Dramatic Responses. One of my favorites happened many years ago when the parking company decided, after many years, that they would no longer reserve an entire floor of the parkade for us as not enough people had purchased parking passes to justify it. Mind you we could still purchase passes and could still park in the parkade. One faculty member sent an all-staff email complaining bitterly about this decision and while I wish I could remember it in its entirety, it did contain the phrase “this is the greatest threat to education that we have ever faced” (because maybe it would take you an extra minute to find a spot when you got to work).

    2. Bumblebee*

      That reminds me of another Higher Ed Strangely Dramatic Response. On the day of Obama’s first inauguration, we showed the inauguration on a number of TV’s throughout the Student Center I was in charge of.

      One of the poli-sci faculty kept asking me to broadcast it on the big pull-down screen in the large main stage area – and I would have loved to, except that it wasn’t a TV, it was a screen-and-projector unit, and so many people were online that CNN kept buffering and it would have just been frustrating for everyone!

      I redirected him to the numerous other areas he could watch, and he just kept saying, “I don’t know why you won’t turn the TV on over there [on the big screen that isn’t a TV]” and when he finally realized it wasn’t happening, he screamed at me “You will regret this for the rest of your life!”

  125. Retail Dalliance*

    I work as a teacher in a small high school. During midterm exams and final exams, the department whose exam is that day is responsible for bringing in “refreshments” for the faculty who have to proctor the exams. For example, if the science exams are on a Thursday, the science department brings in bagels/pastries/donuts/coffee/juice for everyone else.

    One day two years ago, the administration emailed everyone to say they were providing 100% of the refreshments during the midterm exams in January, to boost everyone’s morale during the COVID era. The faculty assumed that meant “administration will fulfill this obligation forever, for the rest of time.” (Note: faculty here DOES see it as an obligation that someone provides these food items…not a favor, or a benefit, but an obligation.) When final exams rolled around in June, math was up first…and the math department did not bring in any refreshments. The administration had intended their favor to be a one-time thing (but didn’t communicate that well, or at all!) and math teachers didn’t bring anything in.

    People STILL talk about it. “Do you remember when the math department didn’t bring anything in? Nothing at all?!?!?!?!?! NOT EVEN COFFEE?????” They say it as though acknowledging a grim, shared trauma we all endured together. The poor math department has a seriously dinged up reputation from Final Exams Week 2022.

  126. Csethiro Ceredin*

    Our bank once told us that if we do X the whole company bank account will be frozen, which did happen once and was obviously a huge problem. So we told staff they couldn’t do X anymore (it wasn’t a regular practice, just something that came up occasionally and had a marginally more inconvenient alternative).

    Cue tears, rage, demands for a meeting with the COO and CEO, “why weren’t we consulted??” and so on for THREE WEEKS from two staff members. I’m still baffled about this; they were consulted about what to do instead and it’s like getting mad about gravity. We didn’t have a choice. ??

    1. JustaTech*

      You would be amazed the number of people who have complained to me about gravity – a combination of “why is this thing heavy?” – “because that’s how much it weighs?” and “Why is the flow so slow?” – “Because that’s as fast as gravity will make it go.” (And no, I’m not going to give you a machine to make it go faster, you mess up often enough at this speed!)

  127. DameB*

    Back when the internet was still new, I worked at a newspaper. One day, a coworker and I had a conversation (I thought it was a conversation anyway) over whether or not we needed to use a colon or a semi colon for a particular headline. Our manager happened to be strolling by and I said “Hey, Eric, can you cast the deciding vote? Eddie and I can’t agree.” (I honestly don’t remember which position I took.)

    The coworker did not speak to me again for the whole time I worked there (another 18 months). If I called the office and he answered, he’d say “Hang on” and put me on hold until someone else picked up. If I asked him a question, he’d just walk away. Emails to him went unanswered. When I mentioned this to my crappy manager, he shrugged and said “that’s just how Eddie is.”

    I left that job for many many reasons.

  128. Irish Teacher.*

    I have a coworker who, a couple of years ago, went on a rant at a staff meeting because…the school’s past pupil union had some golf thing (might have been a fundraiser), a couple of teachers went to represent the school and…he had to cover a class for one of them. This was at the time he is supposed to be available to cover classes for absent colleagues, Yeah, it was the last class of the day so he could have gone home had nobody been absent that day, but…there is a set maximum we have to do each year, so if nobody had been absent that particular day, it’s quite possible he would have had to stay on another week.

    He went on a rant about how they shouldn’t have been allowed to go and he was being taken advantage of and was never doing anything else for the school. He then proceeded to raise objections to everything the principal was planning, to the point that when she admitted he was correct about something, he then changed his argument to demand something more. Think, “the next staff meeting will be 2 hours long.” Him: “According to such a circular, it should only be an hour and a half.” Principal: “OK, I’ll check that…Yes, actually, you’re right. So we’ll just make it an hour and a half.” Him: “Actually, I don’t think we should be having a meeting at all that week. You haven’t given us enough notice.”

  129. Pumpkin215*

    This is incredibly stupid on my part, however more than 10 years ago, I was LIVID that IT took away the ability to read/respond to work emails via cell phone.

    How was I supposed to read emails over dinner? On vacation? While in meetings? I was angry I was losing the option to be plugged in ALL of the time. It took a co-worker to point that out to me that there goes the expectation of 100% availability.

    It really was a blessing in disguise. My original reaction makes me laugh today but I was so angry. How dare they stop me from rolling over in the morning, reaching for my phone and start responding to work emails? What am I supposed to do now? Get up like a normal person and eat breakfast?

    Today, I have a different job with a work designated phone that never stops. I guess I got what I wanted, but now I’d rather not!

    1. Retail Dalliance*

      I will now begin praying every single day of my life that my work removes my ability to access my gmail on my personal cell phone. You are blessed!!!!!

      1. Purpleshark*

        I have this option at my job however I will never ever put my work email on my phone. When they take over payment then I will use it for work purposes. Until then my technology is mine not for office use.

        1. Dinwar*

          I’m not quite that strict. I have a few OSHA apps on a tablet that I’ll use for work, and a database app. But NO WAY I’m putting my work email on there. First, it’s too tempting–I know me, I’ll be more “always on the clock” than I am now (which is saying something). Second, companies put seriously invasive software on your devices when you give them access. I’ve seen too many people get burned that way. I’m not opening the door, inviting the vampire in, and offering up my neck!

          1. JustaTech*

            Yeah, my company says if you want work email on your phone you have to let them install something to remotely wipe your phone in case it is stolen. No, I’m not going to let you have the ability wipe my personal phone.
            If they want me to answer emails at all hours they can buy me another phone.

    2. Lizzianna*

      A few years ago, we had extra security added in that made it much harder to access our email via the web on a non-official laptop or phone. I was so mad – how dare they make it harder for me to check my email when all I have is my personal computer! Now, I laugh because, if I’m somewhere without my work computer, it’s because I’m not working. I have an out of office directing them to someone who can help for a reason.

  130. 653-CXK*

    At ExJob, three things would get the office drones agitated:

    1. Layoffs. Even the mere mention of changes would put the rumor mill into hyperdrive and generate the inevitable question – “are there going to be layoffs?” That question was answered last year when company outsourced its operations and everyone lost their jobs; however, it did give some people fed up with the capriciousness of our QA department the ability to tell them to get bent (QA was losing their jobs also).

    2. Parking. When we moved from the large building to a smaller building across the way, no less than an hour of an update meeting was dedicated to parking.

    3. Hoteling. When they began offering WFH in 2016, some employees were allowed to do so all week, and the only time they were required to show up at the office was for all-staff meetings, which required people to sign up for hoteling spots. Whenever an all-staff meeting was announced, all of the prime hoteling spots were gone within five minutes. People were complaining about being in a far-flung spot as opposed to being in their usual hoteling spot, and some went to far as to reserve their favorite spot weeks in advance so no one else would get it.

    There were also hoteling spots in the old building, in different departments, and some one flight down from the bus stop, or right next to the cafeteria. You bet I took advantage of it.

    1. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

      They announced that my company would be moving offices from Midtown NYC to Greenwich Village in 2 years. I sat just a few yards away from the reception desk. Gloria the Receptionist was beside herself about the fact that her commute would change and she’d have to take a different subway and have to ride another 10 minutes and and and and and. She discussed all of the details of the commute she would have two years from now to anyone who would listen.
      It would die down for a few weeks, and then someone would bring it up again. And then it would get re-hashed.

  131. Oops*

    While at work one day, I found out my grandma had passed away. (It was expected, and I would be flying home that night too be with family.) A couple of hours later, a customer with the same full name as my grandpa came into the store. My grandpa had passed away a couple of years earlier and had a very common name (think John Smith) that I routinely encountered.

    The guy said his order was screwed up. Normally that would roll right off my back and I’d work to fix it, even if the problem was his fault, but instead I burst into full-blown, snotty tears and ran off to the break room. My coworkers didn’t know about the name coincidence or my grandma’s death and hadn’t heard the conversation, so when my boss saw me crying, he marched into the showroom and told off this poor customer who was only trying to get a problem with his order fixed. The guy must’ve thought we were all bananapants.

  132. DameB*

    Back when the Internet was new and shiny, I worked at a newspaper. One day, a coworker (Ed) and I were having a conversation (I thought it was a conversation anyway) about whether to use a colon or a semicolon for a headline. Our manager, B, was walking by and I said “Hey, B, can you please cast the deciding vote?” B agreed with me, not Ed.

    Ed didn’t speak to me again, for 18 months (the rest of the time I worked there). If I called the office, he’d say “hang on” and put me on hold. If I asked him a question, he’d turn an walk away. Emails were forwarded or ignored.

    When I talked to my manager about this, he said “That’s just the way Ed is.” I left that job for SO many reasons.

  133. UKDancer*

    Many years ago the company I worked for then decided to stop using WordPerfect. It was being removed from our desktops and we were to use Word in future.

    One of our colleagues was furious and really kicked off at everyone, complained at all the meetings with management, sent emails to the whole company complaining and once it was removed tried to download his own version of WP which crashed everyone’s conputers and annoyed our IT people.

    I mean I agree with him that WP is a better product but his reaction was extreme.

    1. Lizzianna*

      I have coworkers who still complain about switching from Word Perfect to Word. Our agency switched some time in the 1990s.

      1. Paralegally Blonde*

        The only thing that got my old lawyers off of WordPerfect 5.1 and into, I think, version 9 was Y2K. Boss actually stamped his feet when I suggested we upgrade. Our IT guy managed to convince them that 5.1 wouldn’t be able to calculate dates properly and would crash if they didn’t upgrade from ten-year-old word processing software before that. When I left four years later, there were still no plans in Legal to migrate over to Word like the entire rest of the company, because it was superior for legal document drafting, allegedly (I’ve drafted a lot of documents in Word just fine). I wonder if they’re using WP 2021 today?

        1. Jezebella*

          I deal with some Old Skool Law Offices that are Wordperfect 4 LIFE. They’re not wrong: Wordperfect was a superior product. But that ship has sailed. If you send me WP docs I’m gonna be salty.

      2. UKDancer*

        Sounds about right, this was about 2000 I think (it was my first white collar job post university). The company had been asking people to move to Word for a while but they’d now decided to delete WP.

        I remember asking my boss if this was normal and he gave me some very useful advice on how to ask for things most effectively and why throwing a tantrum rarely worked.

    2. DameB*

      OMG. You’ve reminded me! When I was working at a magazine in the mid 90s, we were still using XYWrite word processor. This was a program that was so old that it used command lines and commands were like “t” to print (t for type, you see). It couldn’t run on a newfangled computers that used a mouse and one coworker, D, who had been on staff for 30 years, refused to learn to use a mouse.

      When the company couldn’t find new computers that didn’t use a mouse, we had to upgrade and D THREW A FIT. They had to send her to New Horizons for training on how to operate a mouse THREE TIMES, if I remember correctly.

      1. Jezebella*

        I still recall vividly my suspicion and dismay at the advent of the mouse. I got over it (obviously) but I was not pleased with the advent of the mouse and the GUI. I wanted my c: prompt dammit.

      2. JustaTech*

        My favorite “learning to use a mouse” story comes from my childhood.
        This would have been in the mid-90’s, and my grandmother was visiting. She was a very accomplished typist, but at the time did not own a computer (I don’t think).
        My younger brother (~7) was proudly showing off some new computer game and they were playing along when the game sped up and using the keyboard wasn’t fast enough. “Use the mouse!” my brother shouts excitedly.
        “Where’s a mouse?!” my grandmother screams.
        (She had it all figured out the next day, and was a proficient emailer until she passed away at 98.)

    3. Can't Sit Still*

      Oh, you reminded me of the epic tantrum when we updated from SuperCalc to Excel. Holy moly! That was absolutely wild! We had dueling financial statements for months! It was completely absurd.

      By comparison, the tantrums over WordPerfect to Word were pretty restrained.

    4. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

      I was a macro queen with WordPerfect for DOS. I could make that program sing and tap dance. When my library decided to switch from WordPerfect to Word, I was fine with switching because WordPerfect for Windows was just a Word wannabe in my opinion. Some of my fellow librarians held on tooth and nail to WordPerfect (the library said they wouldn’t pay for updates and IT wouldn’t support it after the switch), with one keeping it until she retired several years later.

  134. desk platypus*

    One time we had an IT guy in our department doing some equipment swapping. It gets noisy because stuff needs to move off desks, setting down electronics, moving wires, etc. Not an every day thing and it was only for a few people. But one coworker thought the noise dragged on for so long and so loud she couldn’t stand it. (I’m super sensitive to sound myself, but seriously, it was actually pretty contained.) She put on her headphones while grumbling about the noise but we thought her whining would be done.

    A couple minutes later she starts SINGING. Quiet at first, just mumbling, and then absolutely belting out what sounds like church hymns. The worst part is she wasn’t a good singer, at all. Horrified looks were shared and one brave soul went over to say, uh, could you maybe not? She pitched another fit saying she couldn’t concentrate, what else was she supposed to do? She wouldn’t listen to other people chiming in that her singing was actually way more distracting. Eventually she got so frustrated she went back to silently listening to her music, fuming. Amazingly, our manager never spoke to her about it but this coworker had a LOT of issues so it was the lowest priority.

  135. Lizzianna*

    Years ago, we moved to a new building. It had some kind of environmental certification. I don’t entirely understand why, but we were told we could no longer have small appliance at our desks (space heaters, water kettles, etc.). The only exceptions were small lamps and personal fans. We had a well appointed break room with most things that were banned from individual spaces, and room to store small appliances that weren’t provided by our office. I didn’t necessarily agree with the hard stance, but government space rules are weird, and that’s one of the quirks of working in a government-owned space. For most of us, we rolled our eyes and moved on with our lives.

    One of my coworker had, for years, kept a toaster at his desk to toast his morning bagel. He was told he could not have it, it would need to be moved to the break room. He refused. It went back and forth with facilities and his supervisor for months. From what I heard, it escalated to a formal letter of reprimand for insubordination. Honestly, if he’d just kept the toaster in a desk drawer while he wasn’t using it, facilities wouldn’t have noticed and it probably wouldn’t be an issue, but he insisted it needed to go on top of his desk, in a spot that was visible when you just walked by.

    1. Retail Dalliance*

      Ohhh my god this one is amazing. I can 100% see that happening where I work. Technically we aren’t allowed any appliances either, but more than 90% of the employees are breaking that rule at any given time. (I personally have a mini-fridge and a hot water kettle so that I can make pour-over coffee at my desk, but neither is ‘legal.’)

      I would love to think of myself as a mature adult human who would be fine if management ever cracked down on this rule (that technically has always existed but just isn’t getting enforced) but I would be mighty salty. Miiighty salty.

      1. Random Dice*

        I just bought a nice water kettle and let everyone use it in the break room.

        I was happy, anyone else who needed hot water was happy…

    2. JustaTech*

      Toasters seem to be a major point of contention.
      Years ago we closed our second office in our city and moved everyone to the science building. The other office had been way up a major high-rise (this is relevant).

      One morning not long after everyone had moved over a senior coworker came out of the lunch room all flustered and asked what had happened to the toaster. I went and looked and lo! both the toaster and the panini press were gone! Now, this was an issue for my coworker because she wanted to make her breakfast, but it was an issue for everyone because those were not company-supplied appliances, they were stuff folks had brought from home.
      So I go and ask facilities if they know what happened to the toaster and panini machine. “Oh, those aren’t legal in this city. Against fire code.”
      Really? So, it being a slow day and me being in A Mood, I went and looked up the fire code for our city. It says nothing about toasters in office buildings. So I keep looking (and email our safety person, to see if this was coming from them). And I finally find a “tenet code” for the high rise we had just left, that said no toasters or microwave popcorn, because setting off the smoke alarm in a 45 story building is a Big Deal.

      As best as I can tell one of the folks who had come from the office in the high rise had seen our toaster and either thought that they were banned by the city because they weren’t allowed in the tall building (by building management) OR they were mad that we (and now they) got a toaster and bullied the head of facilities into getting rid of them.

      So I emailed the head of facilities with all the city fire codes (and cc’d the safety person) and magically the next day the toaster and panini machine were back.

      Moral of the story? Don’t tell me it’s against regulations if you don’t have the regulations to back it up because I will check.

  136. Dinwar*

    I keep a container of pretzels on my desk, mostly because I like snacks but partially because it encourages people to come to me and chat. You’d be surprised how much you can learn and figure out during those random chats. These are bought on my dime, and I’m the only one in the office with a public snack bin.

    One day the pretzel jar was empty. I went to a store and bought some random pretzels, figuring that for $3 I’d try something new. One person object to it every time he came to grab some, and to this day he’ll make comments about how I need to buy “the good pretzels, not that random crap you got that one time.” I informed him that next time he could buy his own snacks. And to his credit, he did start occasionally buying pretzels when the bin went empty. So his initial reaction was unreasonable, but he corrected it.

  137. Purpleshark*

    I had a coworker who would miss a lot of work. It was talked about, grumbled about but no one confronted her until someone did – no not me. The nature of our work means we have to be present to do it so, there is no way to work from home. I do know who did this and it was the secretary in charge of recording and submitting leave slips. She placed a leave slip in the offenders’ office mailbox and this wingnut went ballistic. She stomped down the hall slammed the form in front of the front office secretaries eating lunch, and demanded to know who put it in her box – no one answered her. Following this – her office is directly next to mine – she slammed the door to her office (our shared wall shook with the force) and proceeded to throw a tantrum a 2-year-old would envy.

  138. The Baker's Fife*

    Once I told my boss that I learned a lot while working on a new-to-me project. She got really upset and gave me a “Needs Improvement” on a annual review point because “this isn’t a job where you learn. If you want to learn anything, save your money and go to an institution.”

    1. The Baker's Fife*

      To add a cherry on this irony cake: I worked in an education department of the organization.

    3. JustaTech*

      We once had an entire department get dinged on their engagement survey because they said they were excited to learn new things for a new project. Somehow that got translated to “not engaged”.

  139. Bruce*

    My story is not an example of real over-reaction, but instead someone who managed to keep it together while being on the edge: I was working at a smallish company, some of us came in at 6 AM to avoid traffic. We would make the first pot of coffee extra strong to help get going.

    One time I was at my desk when our very tall CEO looked in over my cube wall:

    “Bruce, did you make the coffee this morning”
    “Uhhh… Yes, yes I did…”
    “Did you make it REALLY STRONG?”
    At this point I noticed a bit of a quiver in his face….
    “Uhhh… Yes, I did…”
    “DON’T DO THAT!!!!”
    and he stomped off to get some decaf and try to calm down…
    I spread the word that we needed to ease up on the black tar going forward…

  140. Seriously?*

    When I was a middle school teacher, I had a large trash can in my room. We would often do projects that generated a lot of trash, so it was needed. One day I came in and it was gone! Vanished! Replaced by 2 small trash cans. And I – lost it. So angry. Threw a fit. Got my big can back the next day.

    Now, were there other frustrating things going on with Leadership that were making my life difficult as a teacher that I could do nothing about? You bet! But by golly, no one was taking my trash can from me!

  141. Quantum Possum*

    The two that I remember most clearly:

    -A woman who punched her boss in the back of the head over not being allowed to take leave.

    -Two guys who got into a fistfight in the parking lot over a slide in a PowerPoint presentation.

  142. The Curse of the Zoom Meetings*

    Two of my former grand-bosses/co-CEOs of the company got in a fight about the new logo redesign during an all-hands Zoom meeting. They started screaming, one was near tears, and the other ended the entire meeting, kicking us all off the Zoom. Later in the day, I got an email that the next week’s all-hands Zoom was “postponed”.

    1. Kimmy Schmidt*

      Did they ever reschedule it and un-postpone it? What was the logo outcome? Did someone win or did they compromise? This is the kind of drama I live for.

      1. The Curse of the Zoom Meetings*

        Apparently neither of my grand-bosses spoke to each other the rest of the day after the fight. They finally resumed the all-hands meeting two weeks later when everyone “cooled down.” In this meeting, both the grand-bosses muttered non-apologies, basically saying “I acted this way because Other CEO did first”. The logo redesign never happened because they couldn’t agree on it. As of today, the company still has the old logo (and both co-CEO’s are still in charge). I will say my grand-bosses were competent, experienced, and well-respected in the field individually, and always treated employees well…but working with *each other* was like mixing water and oil.

  143. CubeFarmer*

    During late 2021, I asked a colleague if he would please put on a mask when we would be in close proximity to each other. This would need to be about a five minute interaction. Not only did he get VERY angry at the request, his response killed several years of rapport we had established. Like, dude, I wasn’t asking you for a kidney–just wear a mask for five minutes so I don’t get my elderly parents sick during the upcoming holidays.

    He left the company and moved far out of state not long after, and to this day I am still perplexed about his reaction.

  144. Paralegally Blonde*

    We got new furniture at my office. As I was under a desk hooking up computer peripherals, I asked my colleague to pass me the computer’s speakers so I could plug them in. She replied that she was too busy and couldn’t lift that much weight anyway (they’re what, 12 ounces?). What was so pressing that she couldn’t just pass me speakers, so I didn’t have to crawl out from under a desk just to have to crawl back under again? She was flipping the pencils in her pencil cup so the point went the “right” way. I told her that if she wasn’t going to help set up the new office, she could just go home for the day. She threw her keys at me and stormed out. I’ve never seen or heard from her again.

  145. Widget Lady*

    20-cough years ago, my summer college job was working the overnight shift at a manufacturing plant. The break room was a small room smack in the middle of the assembly line floor. Rumor had it that one time the vending machine didn’t dispense someone’s chips and they were so incensed that they got in their forklift and drove it straight through the vending machine. This lore was passed to all of us wide-eyed, temporary college workers like a warning: not all of your coworkers are ok, beware!

  146. Karma is my Boyfriend*

    Boy howdy do I have one—it resulted in a written reprimand too!

    I worked with a sector of the military as a civilian employee. I was a project manager, overseeing design and construction projects. I was assigned all of the “high visibility” projects, as the role I was in just always had overseen those projects. Somewhere along the line, supervision wanted to spread the wealth, mostly so the younger officers could get these projects on their resumes. Whatever. Except one officer thought he was running the only project I kept. We also had a history of not seeing eye to eye. So I went over to his desk (located right outside supervisor’s office) and was like “hey, there’s been a mistake, this is my project?” except he kept interrupting me so I kept getting louder and he was like “quit shouting” and I was like “quit interrupting me!” And it all culminated with me shouting “fine you can have the f*#king project then!” He then wrote a formal letter to my supervisor about me swearing at him (in an office with a swear jar that the boss pre-paid inti because he swore so much) and how much it offended him. so i got written up. however, years later, i cannot recall who really got to keep the project? nor why it was so important for mw to keep.

  147. Margaret Cavendish*

    This was not a single dramatic reaction, but an extremely slow and boring one – but still, an outsized reaction to a very small change.

    The question at hand was whether we should start inserting separator pages between print jobs, to protect client privacy. Not a big deal overall, but it does require at least a quick discussion about the pros and cons.

    Reader, it took TEN HOURS of meetings. Ten – yes, ten – hour-long meetings, spaced out over several months. The meetings were attended by five managers:
    ~Privacy (reasonable)
    ~Two program managers (reasonable, because they’re the ones doing the printing)
    ~IT (because IT would be configuring the printers)
    ~Facilities (because Facilities would be relocating the printers if need be)

    Plus me, a lowly analyst in the privacy program, who was only there to take notes. And actually I don’t know if they ever came to a decision, as I left the organization before the meeting series was concluded. For all I know, they’re still at it, eight years later…

  148. Dawn*

    This one is relatively recent and it’s absolutely going to be identifying if my managers are reading the comments here, but I find it pretty unlikely any of them will be.

    So I work as part of a team that I was new to last year – currently I’m the senior person on that team as my former colleagues who were there when I started have moved on to other opportunities.

    However. For a while, it was just me and Amanda, who had been there for a fair while. By the time it was just me and her, I was fairly well-settled; I daresay I was probably performing a little better than her in all honesty because she was ready to move on – her least-liked tasks would often go unfinished and get passed on to me (I don’t think she realized I noticed,) and a number of corners were being cut. No shade; that’s just sometimes how it goes when someone has outlived their role.

    Anyway. To be clear, Amanda and I were peers. She was the senior person on the team, and I respected that, but she had no actual authority over me. So, on to the strange response. One of our responsibilities was (and is) responding to customer feedback surveys where the customer has requested a response. Note that the tab on the website used to send these in is labeled “Feedback” – this will become relevant later. Those surveys can range anywhere from a short novel to a blank survey with just a number score. So, sometimes you’d get War And Peace on a customer’s experience (usually when they were upset) and sometimes you’d get “10/10, no notes”. But they still requested a response, so we still sent one.

    That said, I didn’t want to waste too much time on the 10/10 no-text surveys – in fact, the majority of those customers selected that they wanted a response by mistake and didn’t expect us to follow up with them at all. So I pulled a boilerplate “Thank you for providing your feedback, please follow up with us if there’s anything else” from our templates. I would doubt that the vast majority of responders even read the response. It was just for the sake of pointing out to them, hey, if you actually wanted something, we don’t know what, please let us know.

    A neat feature of our survey response system is that once you have responded to something, you’re “subscribed” to it. Most of the time this means nothing, but if anyone else in the organization interacts with that survey subsequently, you’ll get an email notification. This can be useful! But I noticed an unusual trend with these; on several of the blank surveys to which I had sent a generic, “Thank you for your feedback” response (and thus marked them as closed,) Amanda had followed up the next day and sent a second response, which was substantially the same.

    I brushed it off and figured that she’d just responded to them again in error, although we really don’t want our customers getting spammed because they sent us feedback. But after the third time, I braced her (thank you for equipping me with the tools for this, AAM,) and asked: Hey, what’s up? Several times, you’ve responded to one of these blank surveys that I’ve already replied to and closed out.

    And, I kid you not, Amanda says to me, “Well, you sent the customers a reply saying, ‘Thank you for your feedback.’ There was no text, so they didn’t actually provide feedback. So I sent them a second response correcting that. Moving forward, can you please go into the boilerplate and edit out the word ‘feedback’ if the customer hasn’t submitted any?” And I tried to reason with her, I said, “Well, they sent it through the Feedback tab and assigned us a number score, which is still feedback, even if it isn’t explicitly in words,” and she tried to argue the point with me. Seriously argued; she was incredibly bothered that I was saying “feedback”. (This was likely symptomatic of other issues she was having and was more of a BEC moment and an attempt to flex authority on me that she didn’t actually possess, in retrospect.)

    And so I ended up having to pull on my AAM-won skills and say, “I understand where you’re coming from, but that’s ridiculous, and I won’t be doing that, no. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, and I will take responsibility if any customer complains that I thanked them for their feedback.” She backed down with pretty bad grace, and left that position shortly thereafter, but I will never, ever forget the day Amanda cornered me and demanded I edit out all instances of the word “Feedback” in my replies if the customer hadn’t responded in actual words.

    1. Margaret Cavendish*

      “I will take responsibility if any customer complains that I thanked them for their feedback.”

      I love this!

    2. Dawn*

      She also – in a department of two people – went into the Outlook settings and put her name (and only her name) in the shared email signature.

  149. Pineapple Air Fresheners*

    I have shared this before…

    I worked with someone once that had an intense allergy to all things with fragrance in them. Thus the office adapted a policy that no one could come to working, wearing perfume, cologne, body spray etc. We also couldn’t keep scented lotion at our desk. This was fine, and tbh I liked bc I am not a big fan of perfume. This person took it a little extreme. She complained about people’s deodorant choices, the shampoo/conditioner, everything. HR told her they couldn’t police people’s deodorant choices and that was that.

    A few months later, a woman that sat by us had a nasty cough. The woman with a fragrance allergy was also a huge germaphobe. She complained incessantly about her coughing (pre-covid). She eventually resorted to spraying an essential oil concoction in direction when the coughing lady, made any noise. They eventually got into a heated argument over this. Literally screaming back and forth with another in the middle of the office. Fragrance woman was asked not spray anything at anyone, by HR. Please don’t ask me why essential oils were ok for her, bc I don’t know lol!

    That same week, we were given a Pineapple Scented Air freshener (for cars) as part of a new sales thing going on. I am not sure why anyone thought this was a good idea, since the fragrance issues were such a big deal in the office. We were instructed to NOT OPEN IT AT THE OFFICE. The next day the Fragrance lady, claims she can smell the pineapple air freshener at her desk. Her entire desk was cleaned out and scrubbed from top to bottom. The next day she could still smell it. Maintenance brought fans to air her space and air purifiers were purchased. She could still smell it, so they dismantled her desk and found 3-4 air fresheners shoved in crevices. She left and never came back. They never caught the culprit, but everyone had a good idea about who it was.

    That place was batshit crazy banana pants.

  150. Halloweenie*

    I’m very aware of all the issues of Halloween costumes at work so I really try to make sure I’m not crossing any even remotely offensive boundaries. I dressed up as a pinata one year and carried around candy in my pockets and a small kid’s plastics bat. If people ‘bonked’ me with it, I tossed them a piece of candy. I got pulled into an office by a coworker and received a LENGTHY verbal in-my-face tirade about how I’m endorsing domestic abuse against women and how I’m a massive hypocrite because I say I support women in our field but this obviously shows how much I don’t. I haven’t dressed up for Halloween at work since.

    2. MagicEyes*

      I love this costume idea, and I will be stealing it. :-) I did a Magic 8 Ball costume one year, and it was a blast!

  151. Cacofonix*

    I led a team to implement highly configurable software, so went through a process to include everyone who would use it in a detailed process and configuration requirements exercise, followed by testing and adjustments to make sure they had input into how it would be used. There were two employees who resisted the whole way, but we calmly addressed every concern and rarely had to escalate. Set up was so flexible, execs mandated that we would not be allowed to customize it.

    When there was one week to go live and all tests finally passed, these two stepped up their efforts. They complained that due to configuration they wanted that there was an inevitable 2 lines of white space on one screen. They wanted it gone or they couldn’t do their jobs. At all. We offered slight changes to approved configuration which they flatly refused, also a deal breaker. We ran successful time, efficacy trials. Nope. Last options were to accept or customize, which we weren’t allowed to do. They escalated fiercely. We had to do a cost analysis for customization- $150k to do it, retest everything, business interruption due to delay, retraining, and that’s not including retest/fix every time there was a software change in future. All this presented to executives.

    They approved.

  152. TJ*

    I started work at a place where I received document files in both MS Word and WordPerfect, but I had only Word installed on my computer so I couldn’t read anything that was sent to me in WordPerfect. I asked our IT manager to install WordPerfect on my computer so I could read those files, but he said huffily said no, he was not going to do that.

    Since I was new I didn’t want to raise a stink but I needed WordPerfect to see what these people were sending me, so a few weeks later I asked again, and again he said no, in a bigger huff than before. Every few weeks I would do this, and everytime I asked, he said no in a way that made it clear that he was the boss, that he was in charge, and that he would decide what would go on my computer. He never explained why, he just said no.

    Finally, after about six months, I complained to my manager and told her that I can’t work with what many of these people are sending me because I don’t have the proper software, and our IT manager was not letting me get the proper software. He called me a few hours later and told me I can’t have WordPerfect because the organization decided not to support the software anymore so we would use only Word. The people who used WordPerfect were holdovers who refused to stop using it, but they would have to eventually when their licenses expired.

    It took six months and management intervention before he finally told me what the reason was, and it was a perfectly reasonable explanation. But the explanation was that it was a policy, it was not the IT manager making a decision and telling me what to do, and an early introduction to what a dysfunctional, at times sociopathic, bully he was.

  153. Kit Franklin*

    Okay, here is my internal drama. My boss decided we needed a logo for internal documents. He offered a cash prize; I normally did all the graphics work so I thought I would submit something though it wasn’t my best effort since I was expected to but it was fine for someone else to win. I won, got no prize money, but at least it was over. Years later, we get big money from a benefactor, my boss decides we need a sign in the shiny new building. I keep everything so my Adobe Illustrator files were converted to CAD files, and an expensive though beautifully fabricated sign was made of sandblasted glass and brushed stainless steel. I had to do some alterations since only certain fonts were allowed that were owned by the university. The sign now covers a wall, is roughly the size of a large dinner table, and according to university rules, will be there for the next 150 years. Ironically, we lost the funding so it is a reminder of my boss’s hubris. I hate the sign, I hate that I didn’t get paid, and I hate that it will outlive me.

  154. Yup!*

    One co-worker was allergic to fish, and if someone forgot and heated something in the microwave, she would turn into Mr. Hyde (and somehow also have 0 allergic reaction). Slamming doors, stomping around, refusing to speak with people, banging things on her desk. She could have just spoken to the boss or sent an email (we were a small office) but it turned into a HUGE temper tantrum and made open-office working very difficult.

  155. nekosan*

    The brand of instant hot chocolate packets in the break room was changed. One person sent a company-wide email complaining about the “brown water”, which sparked a huge flurry of emails for a day or two. HR eventually stepped in to tell people to stop, due to the volume and frequency of emailing. (I think the brand was switched back? I didn’t care so I don’t remember.)

    1. Lexi Vipond*

      The coffee machine at my old work would start making brown water instead of hot chocolate from time to time, until someone was brave enough to open it up and poke in the funnel bit with the handle of a spoon until the chocolate powder unclogged. I don’t remember any emails, though, just everyone telling each other that it’s making brown water AGAIN.

  156. AngryOctopus*

    My old job laid off the entire research staff, except for one division they were trying to spin off/sell off. This mean that we were under the WARN act, and ALL contractors were required, by law, to also be laid off. One of the contractors was So Upset by this that on the last day, when we were having free lunch and time to say goodbye to everyone, she went to our department fridge and stole everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Frozen meals from colleagues in the remaining division. Any lunch bags left. Half a stick of butter and some bread that the Ops manager used for toast in the AM. All the RealLemon/Lime packets that were kept next to the water machine. Teabags. All of it.
    The kicker was that she wasn’t part of the department that was kept, so she would have been laid off regardless!

  157. Washi*

    I worked at a Jewish organization that would provide a magnificent spread of bagels and lox at the all-hands meeting each year. Until one year there was no lox and it was literally the ONLY thing a anyone could focus on. Anywhere you went in the room, you could hear whispers about the lox, people were poking into closets trying to see if someone had misplaced it, and I’m told that in the usual survey after the meeting, the #1 piece of feedback was outrage about the lack of lox.

    As I had been looking forward to this lox feast for weeks, I wholeheartedly participated in all the above. The next year, the lox was back.

    2. fhqwhgads*

      No lox for a roomful of Jews with bagels isn’t mundane tho. I’m a vegetarian but I’m not shocked at this reaction in context.

  158. Anonymoose*

    We had a young (fresh from college) employee who was let go. He went out to the parking lot, threw down his company logo jacket, and then drove his car back and forth over it a few times before skidding off. The windows to the parking lot are visible to a large section of the office, so several employees and managers got to watch this fit of pique live.

  159. H.Regalis*

    Two stories from the public library:

    Story 1 –
    I worked in circulation at a large public library. The department was split into two sections: Front desk and the basement. Management had sent out a reminder memo that was something like, “Don’t forget to put XYZ items in the XYZ bin, and ABC items in the ABC bin. Thanks!” which was only applicable to the front desk, but the memo got sent to both sections.

    The basement people FLIPPED OUT. How dare the boss send them a copy of the memo correcting them for something they don’t work on?! Upstairs fucked up, not them. The basement people work harder than anyone else in the building, and this is the shit they have to put up with?! On and on. It was just wild.

    Story 2 –
    The basement people also do mail delivery. Most people will also deliver empty bins to other departments who need them because they’re doing the rounds anyway so why not, although technically it is the other departments’ job to come get the bins. One day someone from Other Department called the basement to get some bins sent up. The basement person who answered the phone told them off and hung up. It snowballed into a huge thing where the managers from circulation and all the other departments had to have a meeting to resolve the consequences of Bin Gate. Afterwards, the basement people were convinced that they had sufficiently intimidated all the other employees into never messing with them again, like they were the biggest guy in the prison yard.

  160. Stephanie M*

    Our cleaning crew was….not the best. The building is old, and county owned and staffed, even though my employer is just a tenant, not government at all. There was a dead cockroach one morning behind the kitchen door (which usually remained propped open, so you wouldn’t even see it in most cases). It became a standoff where the office manager wanted to see how long it would take the cleaning crew to notice it and clean it up, so she refused to say anything to them or do anything about it. The standoff ended when somebody who wasn’t aware of it cleaned it up, and oh! the ranting was epic.

  161. BecauseHigherEd*

    At my old company, the office managers would get a cake whenever someone had a birthday. This was accompanied, of course, by the birthday song over lunch. Extremely run-of-the-mill–so much so that many people (like myself) often forgot it was A Thing.

    Well. One year, my ne’er do well coworker Fergus scheduled a three-week trip to Brazil to go to Carnival during his birthday. Sure, fine, whatever. But then a few days before he was set to leave, Fergus asked when his cake and birthday celebration would be. My boss, somewhat surprised, said there hadn’t really been a plan for him to get a cake–he was going to be gone for three weeks to celebrate his birthday, after all. Fergus had a TANTRUM. I don’t know all the details, because this came out in a closed-door meeting that included HR (!) but he expressed his deep dissatisfaction at the complete unfairness (!) of his not getting a birthday cake.

    The day before his departure, the boss went to the grocery store and picked up cupcakes. If I remember right, he was very reluctant to share them with everyone else. I only thought about this recently because I was chatting with my former boss and she said, “Do you remember the year we forgot your birthday? You didn’t say anything at all! Maybe you should have been more like FERGUS!”

  162. Lights Out*

    I worked in a large open office space (30-40 people). There were no cubes or walls, just a bunch of desks situated around the room. There were also a lot of windows in the space, so there was a good amount of natural light coming in around the perimeter of the window shades were open, which they weren’t always.

    Every morning there would be a battle for control of the overhead lights. Some people didn’t want them on at all, but the center of the room was too dark with out them, some people wanted all the lights on, but other people wanted it darker especially in the morning. People would come in past the light switches in the morning and change them to match their preference so all morning the lighting changed constantly.

    One day one of my coworkers lost it. They were typically one of the first people in and I guess they thought that meant that they should get to set the lighting for the whole office. Anytime anyone turned the lights on they’d get up and turn them off. They did this all morning until they eventually stood up and went on a diatribe about how they liked it dark in the morning and no one should mess with the lights because there was plenty of light to see. This person happened to work in a corner and so had a ton of natural light at their desk.

    We all just kind of let it go, but the next day one of the managers announced that moving forward the central row of lights would be left on while the perimeter lights would be off and we weren’t allowed to change it.

  163. Samantha Parkington*

    I was in a leadership position at a large firm that had a department with a very outdated name; imagine “Goats and Llamas”, but they had stopped handling Goats twenty years ago. It caused a lot of confusion, more so because they predominantly used an acronym “GAL” that no one else in our industry used. So people would ask what GAL stood for and I would have to explain that it stood for Goats and Llamas, but we didn’t handle Goats. I proposed changing the name and even came up with something that would keep the acronym, “General Administration – Llamas.” You would have thought I was demanding people’s first born children. The senior member of the department sent me a manifesto e-mail at 3 a.m., rambling about the important historical association of the name and ended it with, “This is a hill I will die on.”

    I never succeeded in getting the name changed, partially because it turned out that department signage was basically secured to the walls with industrial cement adhesive and we would have had to chisel them off.

  164. NMitford*

    Forty years ago, I worked in fund raising at a college affiliated with the Lutheran Church and was on staff when the college celebrated its centennial. A Lutheran-affiliated insurance company, apparently as a matter of policy, gave the college a gift of $25,000 with the restriction that it be used to fund events in celebration of the centennial. The goal was to spread the word about Lutheran colleges and their contributions to society. Thus, a number of centennial events were planned, one of which was to have fireworks on the football field and invite the entire community — alumni, faculty, staff, students, neighbors, local clubs and organizations — you name it. The famed Grucci family was engaged to provide $5,000 worth of fireworks and, let me tell you, $5,000 bought you a darn good fireworks display in the 1980s. The college was on the highest hill in town, the fireworks were seen all over, and it ended up being a great way for the college to reintroduce itself to the neighbors.

    One faculty member was outraged that the $25,000 was restricted to what he perceived as a serious of frivolous social events and maddened beyond reason that one of those events was fireworks. He claimed to anyone he could about it for weeks leading up to the events and shot off memos to everyone in administration and academic leadership about his displeasure.

    For some reason I, as the director of the annual fund, was the lucky recipient of a very detailed memo, the premise of which was that the $25,000 should be divided among the 37 or so tenured professors (it was a small college), giving each one $675, because THAT would be a cause for celebration.

    1. AnotherLibrarian*

      Having worked at a small private religious college (though not Lutheran) when it celebrated it’s 175 anniversary, I have been a party to a nearly identical frustrated series of diatribes by irate faculty who do not seem to understand that gifts from donors are sometimes restricted to specific causes (or can’t wrap their heads around the idea that marketing the college means hopefully more students which in turn means the school gets to stay open.)

      1. NMitford*

        Yeah, this was a college with, at the time, declining enrollment. Smart marketing was what eventually saved it.

        1. Generic Username*

          My favorite kind of professor? The kind that complains that their school doesn’t award enough financial aid to current students while refusing to share updated contact information about their department’s alumni with the Alumni office because “you’re only going to ask them for money.”

      2. JustaTech*

        Yeah, I know a donation to the general fund would be most useful to my college, but dang it, I want my name on a plaque on the wall!

        (For the longest time I thought that funding a chair was about literally giving a chair and not paying the salary of the chair of a department. My mom is in higher ed fundraising.)

  165. Lab Boss*

    Summer Camp Story: We used to play a game among the workers with a small padlock, someone would sneak up on you and lock it onto a loop of your backpack (or possibly a belt loop) and you would wear it until you found out who had the key, by asking around at meals. It was this goofy little pastime, nobody really cared. Until someone did. A 19 year old got locked on his belt loop and immediately melted down- screaming that the lock would damage his pants (it wouldn’t), and that he was being harassed for being the only person there from out of state (he wasn’t), and that he was going to go to the kitchen and cut his belt loop with a kitchen knife and make the camp buy him new pants (he didn’t).

    Of course the keyholder immediately came and undid the lock, but his tantrum was so severe that we were forbidden from ever playing the lock game again. The part that made it all wild was that this guy had previously been a keyholder, AND had previously been the one to lock someone else, so he had no problem with the game, only with it happening to him. Unsurprisingly he had a pattern of explosive emotion and it eventually got him fired for doing it at a camper, but the lock game stayed dead.

  166. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

    You’d think people would be happy about a monthly fridge clean out policy after a milk container that expired a couple YEARS prior was found in the back (along with some other nasty things).

    But you’d be wrong.

    3. I DK*

      I once cleaned out our overstuffed fridge at work and found an unopened bag of salad mix … well, what I thought was salad mix was just a puddle of disgusting brown water in the bottom of the bag. Though no one objected to me throwing it away.

  167. TheBunny*

    I’m snort laughing at this. While drinking coffee. Clearly my fault as I KNEW one of these stories would be amazing.

  168. Embarrassed Intern*

    Many years ago, I was an intern at a small company in a rural town in Virginia. One day, what tiny shreds of professionalism I had at that time did not wake up with the rest of me and I wore shorts to work, despite the fact that I had never seen any of my co-workers wear so much as a pair of jeans.

    The director of my department called me into her office and told me that my attire was unprofessional. I apologized and never did it again.

    At the end of my internship, the VP over the department was telling me what a great job I did and came by to encourage me to apply for a full-time position. I had already decided (for other, bigger reasons) that this company wasn’t for me, but I chose this moment to be petty and tell him that I felt like the company culture was too “stifling” and used the director telling me I couldn’t wear shorts as an example. He just chuckled awkwardly and said something about clients coming into the office…I don’t recall his exact response because I was busy processing the “did those words really just come out of my mouth?” feeling.

    Now I work somewhere that it’s totally normal to wear shorts to work in the summer, and yet I still cringe at my behavior. If anyone involved in that situation is currently reading this, I apologize and promise I am better-behaved now.

  169. PBP*

    I’m the original poster of the phone melt down story and honesty, I find it amusing how many people could relate! I have, since posting the story, moved to a different job (same field tho) and my favorite thing was walking in and seeing the office uses the same phone system as my old one! I told all new coworkers about speed dial story and amusement was shared all around. They really don’t use the speed dial buttons here and this building is multistory and a lot more people so they tend to use the phonebook option!

    There were a lot of other stories from old job that might make your brain melt. If anyone couldn’t figure it out, I was head of IT for the building (like I am at new job too) and people are just… scared of new things to an alarming degree. Or just straight up had no idea how anything worked and wasn’t willing to try to learn.

    My favorite was when a former coworker asked me if I could make an email send faster. She sent an email to someone and the person hadn’t gotten it yet. So she thought I’d somehow get the email to move faster. Sure, I said and then waved my hand in the air and poof, email went faster.

  170. Coco Nuts*

    I get really dry hands in the winter so I bought a multipack of hand cream from a store I like in an after Christmas sale and separated them and put them places I’d need them (purse, desk, nightstand etc). They were all pretty normal, light, inoffensive scents, or so I thought.

    I brought the coconut one to work and the first time I used it a coworker seated next to me started to freak out. She explained that she was allergic to coconut and the scent of my lotion was abhorrent to her. I apologized and immediately offered to go try and wash it off in the bathroom and told her that I would obviously swap it out for another tube.

    She told me not to bother on the washing up but that she’d appreciate if I never used it again, which of course I had no issue with. I even went out and bought additional hand cream that was unscented to make sure there were no issues, and swapped out everything else at my desk for unscented options just in case. Every time I used a product my coworker would dramatically sniff and say loudly “that’s not coconut is it??”

  171. NotARealManager*

    A co-worker had a mug with a self-deprecating remark on it. That was just their sense of humor and we work for a casual company so no one had really even noticed it before (or cared if they had seen it). When New Boss started, Co-worker was instructed to go into the parking lot and shatter the mug because New Boss did not like the attitude of the mug. Co-worker complied, but was obviously upset about the experience.

    When New Boss left the company, Different Manager replaced the mug for Co-worker and everyone has continued to not notice the mug except those that remember the smashing of the original.

    1. Dinwar*

      That boss was unhinged. If my boss told me to smash personal property I’d politely inform him of where I’d stick the shards, sideways. He can tell me not to bring it into the office. I’ve done that, with a gas can that had some crass statements inked on it. But the idea that one’s boss has the right to destroy one’s property–or to order it destroyed and expect compliance–is insane. I agreed to exchange labor and knowledge for money; I did not sell myself into slavery, nor did I release ownership of so much as a paperclip of my personal property.

  172. 1000Oysters*

    Many years ago, the administrative assistant made up the yearly phone directory. She had been doing this for years, with few changes in staff in my department. The directory was set up by department and then alphabetically by last name within that department. This particular year, my department got a new member with a ‘B’ last name. The directories were printed and distributed. One person, who had been at the top of the list because their last name started with a ‘C’ lost their damn mind. Apparently, they had been under the impression that the list was in order of seniority/importance (which still wouldn’t have put them at the top of the list but whatever) and had never noticed the alphabetical nature of the list. Someone suggested maybe the list should be in numerical order by extension. That was no good because that would put this person even further down the list! So, directories were reprinted with every other department in alphabetical order but our department had this person at the top and then alphabetical. Also, we had to rearrange our phone extensions so this person had the first one, numerically. This person retired 3 months later.

  173. Hoobert Heever*

    Not mine, but told to me by the person it happened to:

    CIO is hosting a meeting with senior members of his staff, reviewing a new strategy.
    Door opens.
    In walks Very Successful Salesman, holding a roll of toilet paper.
    He stops, throws it at the CIO’s head, and yells “I make too much f’ing money for this company for you to buy 1-ply toilet paper.”
    Then he turned and walked out.
    Believe it or not, they upgraded the TP after that.

  174. Snarkus Aurelius*

    OMG my ex boss had rampant anxiety. Everything she was involved in took three times as long, and she was constantly cracking under the slightest pressure.

    In her defense, I think she tried to get help. Except it backfired big time.

    We had to evacuate the office due to the fire alarm. Whatever. When we came back, she noticed the fire doors automatically closed and she needed to know why. Why did the doors closed? What made them do that? Was it smoke? Who oversees the fire doors? Do they know the doors closed on their own? What if the doors closed but there wasn’t a fire? Could the doors closing hurt someone? Etc for hours.

    Her curiosity lasted longer than the fire evacuation itself.

    You can figure out what happened when the printer jammed the following week.

  175. Murderbot*

    I once impersonated an augmented human security consultant on a ship transporting people who were on their way to a miserable planet where they were contracted to work for 20 years under slave-like conditions, because it was better than starving to death on their home planet. Turns out humans get really short tempered when they are being taken away to do hard labour for no pay. Go figure.

    Anyway, you would not believe the fights they started all the time, which I (their friendly security consultant) had to deal with. I tried to cut them some slack, because, you know, slave labour. But the screaming match when someone had left a cracker wrapper in the sink was un.be.lievable.

    Humans. I don’t get why anyone would want to be one.

      2. cityMouse*

        Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells; first book is All Systems Red.

        I read it during the pandemic. When I got to the end of the first book, I went back to the beginning and read it again. And again. And again, until book 2 was released.

        Murderbot is awesome.

  176. Dovasary Balitang*

    I shared this story before, but I will never forget the coworker who got really mad and faked heart attack symptoms because two other coworkers went out for lunch without her.

  177. olusatrum*

    I used to work in a miserable little office where they smooshed a few of us analyst types in with the call center in a little windowless bullpen. There were maybe 12-15 of us, and a lot of animosity between the analysts and call center folks. For a while, the owner was replacing the office chairs, but they would only replace one at a time, with a few weeks in between. The result was MONTHS of drama about the chairs: who “deserved” a new one, who was lording their new chair over the rest of us, etc.

    One day, I was one of the first people in as usual, and some of the chairs had been moved around to different desks. I assume the evening crew borrowed some after most of us had left the previous day. I’d received a new chair by that point, so I retrieved one from a different desk and went about my day. No work got done that day because everyone was too busy sniping at each other – interpreting the moved chairs as personal attacks motivated by seething jealousy, deliberate sabotage, pretty much a hate crime, etc. etc. etc.

    The new chairs weren’t even good!

  178. Thistle Pie*

    Preface: I work for a very small, rural town, with a very low tax rate and top-tier services because the region’s largest business is located here. While the other towns around us are barely scraping by, driving 25 year old DPW trucks, and are run by volunteers, we offer almost every service for free or minimal cost. We are the envy of our neighbors, but residents tend to take it all for granted.

    Story: The residents of Town have had free, unlimited curbside trash pickup since the dawn of time AND a free annual bulky waste curbside pick up day. Week after week and year after year, residents were putting out more and more trash. Sometimes mountains of trash bags. It became very clear that since other towns charged for trash pick up or they had to *gasp* pay for their trash disposal and bring it to the transfer station themselves, that our residents were inviting their friends and family to bring their weekly trash to their house and dispose of it in our town. Other folks, would drive through town on their way to work on trash morning, and just leave their bags at the end of a strangers driveway. This resulted in the town’s trash hauling bill to skyrocket. The waste haulers had to send trucks back to make more than one trip and the rates of recycling were extremely low, which could result in fines for the Town.

    The government officials brought in a local Trash Professional aka rational person to try to help solve this problem, who brought up the implementation of a trash sticker program where the town creates stickers to put on your trash bag and if your bag doesn’t have one, it doesn’t get picked up. In most places these stickers cost a few dollars. The idea is not only that the program isn’t just hemorrhaging money, it’s also that when people have to pay per bag it keeps randos from bringing bags in, and people put out less trash because they are held responsible for it. It also incentives recycling because that stays free.

    The officials decided that going from a free-for-all to paying for trash was too much for residents to handle all at once and they didn’t want to deal with a revolt, so they opted for free trash stickers, thinking it would be more palatable. People. Lost. Their. Minds. We had angry letters, scathing social media posts, accusations of being fascists. Pure chaos. Officials implemented it anyways. We are now several years into the program and waste hauling costs are down significantly, recycling rates are substantially higher, and most people seem to have forgotten that we ever did it differently.

  179. Regina Phalange*

    I got a job as the office manager for a disorganized but seemingly friendly contractor. My then-husband, who had tax experience, also agreed to come in on a contract basis to clean up a back tax situation, which was outside the realm of my capabilities.

    About a month into working there, my husband and I had taken lunch together, about five minutes later than our normal time (usually from 12 to 1 pm), because the boss needed our help with something. On our way back to the office, my phone rang.

    It was 1:02 pm, and the boss was LIVID that we were late getting back from lunch. I told him we were pulling into the parking lot, and reminded him that we had left late so we could help him find his files.

    He started shouting, loud enough for my husband to hear, that leaving late for lunch didn’t mean I could just “come traipsing back in whenever the f*** I felt like it,” and that “anybody with half a brain” would have known that without having to be told, and that I, personally, was exactly what was wrong with the world these days, etc., etc.

    We were walking back inside at this point, and my husband calmly and quietly said, “We quit,” and gathered up our things. It’s the only time I’ve ever left a job with no notice.

  180. Parlez Vous Francais*

    I worked for a company that would sometimes have to make products that would have languages other than English printed on them. We were once moving the production of a product from location A to location B and I was overseeing it (I worked at location B). This particular product had some French printed on it.

    I saw a picture of the part and using my high school French I immediately declared that the French was wrong. I sent several emails to the design/production team at location A saying that the French needed to be reviewed as it was wrong. I was told that it was approved by the customer and it was good. I doubled down and pushed back insisting that it was wrong and we needed to have our French sales guy needed to take a look. I was again told that that wasn’t necessary and the French was correct and it was approved.

    It took several rounds of back and forth emailing with me becoming increasingly more aggressive before I realized that the French in the picture was indeed wrong… but that the picture I was looking at was a sample that had been made at my location as a print test, not an actual product picture from Location A.

    I quietly sent a “my bad” apology email to the production manager at location A and then just kind of sunk into the shadows.

    1. Heffalump*

      Some years ago I saw a box of some kind of over-the-counter pills at the drugstore, with a “Spanish instructions inside” banner across the top. I called the toll-free number on the package and suggested that this line was aimed at Spanish speakers and should be in Spanish. The woman laughed and said, “You’re right, and what’s funny is I’m in charge of marketing to Spanish-speaking markets.”

      This won’t be news to anyone in Europe, but when I spent 3 weeks in the UK in 1991, I found that products were often labeled in all the languages of the (then) EEC. The package often said, “Made in EEC,” no indication of what country. For some inexplicable reason, the fact that “parranajogeeli” is Finnish for shaving gel has stuck with me.

  181. We are all annoyed*

    I said that I wanted to shoot my computer with a toy ray gun because I was so annoyed.

    We are paying for a computer program to give information to customers in English and Spanish. The Spanish part is not working properly. The vendor suggested that maybe the Spanish-speaking customers wouldn’t mind. I think that they would object to getting a call that says, “Your appointment is tomorrow at (incomprehensible location) at (incomprehensible time)”. The time was being read as 14, colon, 15 instead of 2:15 in the afternoon.

    1. borealis*

      That’s legitimately annoying! “Maybe the Spanish-speaking customers won’t mind”, because they all speak English really, they just have this cute pretend language that they like to use among themselves. Grrr.

  182. Fork In The Microwave*

    I was doing some temping in a cubicle farm kind of company right after college and to improve morale corporate set up a little coffee station alcove for us with a microwave and coffee pot. This area was buffered by about 10 empty desks on all sides so the nearest person was “Carol” and she was about 50 feet away from the alcove. I was next to Carol. Every time someone used the microwave she’d get angry and start muttering. I thought it was because the microwave was loud or because people getting up and using it was distracting her or something. The microwave mysteriously broke. We didn’t have one for a few weeks. We got another one. That one mysteriously broke. We got another one. Carol sat next to me seething while they set it up, muttering angrily. Nobody used the new microwave all day but she spent all day staring at it and muttering. Finally she got up and PUT A FORK IN IT and turned it on.

    Turns out Carol had been having a very heated email exchange with people in HR and the exec team because she thought microwaves were toxic and caused radiation sickness and didn’t want one near her. Idk why they kept replacing the ones she was obviously breaking. My temp contract ended shortly after so I never got a resolution to whatever was going on there but watching someone my mom’s age angrily start a fire in the office is a memory I won’t soon forget.

    1. BellyButton*

      My favorite thing about Barb is she seems to think being allowed to participate without contributing made her some kind of special being, when really it just reinforced her being a giant ass.

  184. The OG Sleepless*

    During a phase of remarkable passive aggression at our place, I picked up a llama medication one day and found that someone had stuck a label on it from the label maker: USE AT X DOSAGE. All of our llama groomers know the dose for this medication. Who stuck it there, and why? I’m sorry to say that I went a little nuts. I printed labels with “duh” type facts about almost every llama med we have, stuck them all to the bottles, and sent a photo with an all-team email with the subject line “Thank YOU, Captain Obvious.” In it I asked people to stop leaving passive aggressive notes everywhere. I did get gently spoken to about using all of that label material, but nobody ever copped to making the original label.

  185. Yogurt Thief vs. Newbie*

    I worked at a job that had a Yogurt Thief. If your yogurt was visible in the fridge, there was maybe a 30% chance that someone would take it. Annoying, but most people just kept their yogurt hidden in a plastic bag. Then a new employee started and her yogurt was stolen. She went *ballistic* and started searching everyone’s garbage cans for signs of who took her yogurt. Then she pulled the boss’s assistant into her office and complained for over half an hour that she couldn’t believe someone would take her yogurt, she’d never worked in a place where someone would do something like that, what sort of monster place was this?

    The assistant offered to go to the convenience store across the street and buy her a replacement yogurt. The new employee said it was fine, she’d… taken someone else’s yogurt from the fridge to replace the one that was stolen. The assistant explained to her that she had become the yogurt thief. Flustered, the new employee accidentally knocked over a full cup of coffee on her desk. She watched it pool out onto all of her papers, then turned to the assistant and said “clean that up” and left her office.

    The new employee did not last very long.

    1. GoryDetails*

      This needs to be a pitch for a new sit-com. (OK, maybe just a skit on Saturday Night Live, but *something*!)

  186. Scylla*

    At my old job, a company of about 30 or 40 people mostly in our early/mid 20s, about 6 of us went out to lunch one day at a nearby restaurant. We paid for it ourselves, we didn’t go past our lunch hour, it was a relatively casual sit-down place- in other words, an all-around boring lunch. But when the CFO (also the CEO’s wife and the only HR we had) found out about The Lunch, she pulled us into her office one by one to yell at us.

    Apparently, we weren’t allowed to do ANYTHING outside the office unless every. single. person. in the company- including the c-suite executives- was invited too. I asked for clarification and yes, that included casual work lunches, informal happy hours, a few of us hanging out for drinks at a coworker’s cramped apartment on a Friday evening- every employee HAD to be invited. The 65-year-old CEO, the VPs, the supervisors, EVERYONE.

    I still remember her glowering down at me and saying “This was DEEPLY unprofessional behavior. I hope you had nothing to do with…THIS.”

  187. No name for this*

    Anonymous for this because it’s so specific, anyone who went through it will know where I work.

    We had an executive that could not tolerate the blinds not all being set at the same level. It’s a 3 story building with sunlight impacting computer screen visibility on three sides. It also impacts the office temperature by increasing temperature significantly when the sun comes around. People who sit by the windows often raise them and lower them throughout the day.

    Maintenance went around and set all the blinds to the same height and we were directed not to change them. Ever. Obviously, we continued to adjust them to maximize comfort and the ability to see our computer screens. He was so upset about this that he ordered maintenance to go through and cut the strings on all the blinds (more the 100, at least) so that we couldn’t reach the strings to adjust the blinds. It took several months to play out and everyone wondered why an executive was getting involved with such a ridiculous thing.

    The joke was on him. We are an engineering company. On the first day that the blind strings were cut short, several engineers cobbled together a tool that could reach up and grab the rings that were placed on the short strings, and the blinds were all adjusted to our comfort again. I just wish I could have seen his face when he drove up and saw his complete and utter failure.

    1. GoryDetails*

      “The joke was on him. We are an engineering company.”

      I laughed at this line for quite some time! Way back in the day I worked for a lovely computer company in the northeastern US, with both hardware and software product lines, and staffed by some of the most brilliant, quirky, and innovative engineers I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. I don’t think they had to go rogue very often, as back then most of the management was of the same ilk and didn’t attempt to enforce draconian measures on them (especially nothing as ludicrous as “all blinds must be at half-staff at all times”, yeesh), but they did get veeeeery inventive when they wanted to.

  188. hbc*

    We were changing over suppliers for things like toilet paper, entry mats, and such. There was some discussion between the few people arranging this about whether we needed to buy those mounted toilet seat cover dispensers or people could just grab them out of the cardboard container they came in.

    During some informal polling, there was apparently a misunderstanding that the question was whether there would be toilet seat covers at all. One guy lost his mind over it, another went all White Knight because this was an “attack” on his direct report, and that’s how I ended up with two grown adults in my office yelling at each other about thin pieces of tissue paper. The phrase “You don’t get to tell me where to put my bare ass!” was bellowed. The fact that they didn’t know they were in violent agreement on what should actually happen was just the icing on the cake.

    1. BellyButton*

      “You don’t get to tell me where to put my bare ass!” should replace “you’re not the boss of me!” LOL

  189. Caz*

    The building where I worked was being refurbished, which for much of it was a fresh coat of paint on the walls for the first time in 20 years. Our staff car park was small – just 15 spaces allocated to staff, more than twice that to visitors. The contractors negotiated access to three spaces, for their vehicles and a skip. They stayed absolutely religiously to their allocated 3 spaces, it was never an issue. A member of staff screamed about them taking up “half the car park”.

  190. Anonymous because yikes*

    I worked at a nonprofit for a number of years and my first office was across from two older white men who were…not good at their jobs and particularly creepy. Two outsized reactions from these two (honestly, might have just been the one guy but they’re both etched in my brain as almost one person): the first, I was on a massive deadline and one of them walked into my office to ask me to please help him merge cells in excel (for the 4th time that week) and I very nicely said “I’m sorry, I don’t have time right now, however, you should be able to google for a tutorial that will help!” And he lost his mind.
    The second instance I was coming in early, and I very obviously had headphones in (brightly colored, wired headphones). In the hall, one of them said “good morning,” and I responded back but quietly because I don’t do mornings and I hadn’t even made it to my office yet to drop my bag and drink some coffee. He spun around and started screaming at me in the hallway about how he’d said good morning.

    One of them was let go a few months later – I mentioned that second interaction to his manager who I was on good terms with because I was so shaken up by how quickly he snapped at me and went way off his rocker. The other one, about whom rumors swirled for years about inappropriate behaviors, hung around for a couple more years. I ended up having to have a conversation with HR about some of the things I’d experienced with him after someone else made a report. They finally got rid of him in a reorg but oooof. Glad to be out of there!

    1. Annie*

      Not sure why it was necessary to mention their race in your story.
      Would you have mentioned their race if they were black?

      1. allathian*

        Because older white men are more likely to get away with outrageous behavior due to their privilege than anybody else.

  191. BofA on the Sofa*

    At a Special Ed preschool, the old boiler/ furnace system didn’t always work correctly and some rooms get hotter than normal & some get colder than normal. The janitor decided teachers couldn’t be trusted to set the thermostats at normal temperatures in their rooms & installed plastic lock- boxes over all the thermostats in the building, so if we needed a thermostat adjustment we had to go to her. One Day 1 of this, a Special Ed teacher complained her classroom was too hot & she couldn’t work like this & YELLED at the principal & went home for the day. She didn’t call a sub or anything. Her room temp was 72 or 73, so a little warm, but nothing outlandish.

  192. Caz*

    The Kettle! I can tell you about The Kettle…
    For context, I live in the UK, and all the stereotypes about how we, as a nation, live on tea are accurate. Except when it comes to me personally, I don’t care for tea and, as a result, don’t *get* it.
    I was working in a health centre. We had one kitchen which was kitted out probably much as your home kitchen is – sink, microwave, kettle, all domestic level appliances, intended for maybe a family of 5, instead being used regularly by maybe 50.
    The kettle broke one morning, around 10ish. It fell within my remit to get a replacement. No problem, I said. I’ll go out at lunch to get one, I said. I had three separate visits to my office within the next 20 minutes from people asking me whats happening with the kettle, when are we getting a new kettle, am I going to get the kettle, where is the kettle? Another 10 minutes and this had escalated to I should really get TWO kettles, not because we had space for two in the kitchen – we did not – but so we would have a spare for next time.
    I went out to get the damn kettle. People were most unimpressed when they realised I was going to, inaccordance with the instructions written for their safety, boil it and discard the water TWICE before I let them use it, adding precious seconds between them and their caffeine fix…

  193. Rainy*

    Some years back, I had several meetings with someone who wanted to do something that was 100% not allowed by the terms of his contract and furthermore would endanger his visa when he was inevitably caught. I told him he couldn’t and he kept scheduling meetings with me trying to get me to say something that sounded like Yes if you were standing far enough away. When I said I wasn’t going to have any more meetings with him if this was all he wanted, he threw a tantrum so magnificent in its scope and volume that I could see my colleagues gathering in the hall outside my office trying to figure out whether or not I was in danger, and then demanded to know the name of the person he needed to bribe to do what he wanted. I told him that things don’t work that way, kicked him out of my office, and reported him.

      1. Rainy*

        As far as I’m aware, he was not. I suspect he was warned about the ragemonster behaviour though, because that was really unacceptable and might have cowed someone else.

  194. Nope Nope Nope-Ity Nope*

    Pre-Covid, the law office where I worked was very much a butts-in-seats type of environment for everyone except the big boss. We never knew what time he would get to the office on any given day, how long he would stay, or even if he would show at all. One time, during a cold snap, one of the paralegals turned the heat up to about 68 when she came in that morning. Personally, I was happy for once not to be running my space heater and wearing a knit hat at my desk to stay warm. But big boss rolled in about noon, apparently straight from a “hot shower,” and completely freaked out that it was “sweltering” in the office. He ended up rolling his desk chair outside of the front door, running an extension cord outside all the way from his office, and “working” with his laptop in his lap. He loudly exclaimed to passerby that a business owner should be able to expect his own office to be a comfortable temperature. I thought the offending paralegal was going to get fired, but this eventually blew over. I do still have the picture I snuck through the glass door of big boss rubbing his temples while sitting in his fancy chair on the concrete.

  195. The Other Sage*

    I have two!

    Story 1:
    ———–
    Some time ago I had a coworker with beautiful long blonde hair. When I was having a bad day he came to the office with newly cut hair: it was short now! For some reason this almost made me literally cry. The only reason I didn’t was that I somehow managed to pull myself together, but I was really close to it.

    Story 2:
    ———–
    The second one was about how I needed to call some helpdesk service because of a work related problem. I was new in the company, and I had this coworker who insisted a lot that I use the landline network on my assigned phone. Only that I didn’t have a telephone assigned and I would have to go to the admins and configure it. I didn’t mind just using my own mobile phone, and I didn’t see neither the benefit to get my own landline telephone nor the problem of just using someone else’s assigned phone. So I asked him why it was so important. He started to yell to me about how this is how things are properly done, including hitting on the table with his fist.

    This was the same guy who once told me in a paternalistic voice with which button to start my computer when it is on the docking station (you have 2 options there). When I asked him why he also started to yell a non-answer to me.

    I never saw him behave like that with one of my male colleagues, and never in front of others.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      When I was training a class of about 50 new employees, I also cut my long, blonde hair (for donating). Apparently, I should have warned them first, because much of the morning ended up being about that. (No yelling, and the only crying was some tearing up in private when someone told me how much the donation meant to them because they had lost their hair as a young teen.)

  196. BellyButton*

    I bet this was a woman going through menopause. You’re hot all the time and the hormones makes us rage. I feel her pain. ;)

  197. pH 7.0*

    I work in a lab and there are processes that are expensive and time-consuming. As such, whenever we have a fire drill we are told the date and time. The day of the drill, I’m in a lab with two other coworkers. The alarm goes off at the designated time. Coworker #1 and I start removing our lab coats and get ready to leave. Coworker #2 flings off her coat, throws her arms up and starts running down the hallway in the wrong direction while waving her hands. She looks back, sees us going towards our evacuation route, turns around and runs past us while still waving her hands. Again, we all knew this drill was happening. It was not a surprise and it was annual, so she’d done this drill many times.

  198. Kiwi Leslie Knope*

    When I was a junior analyst, the report coversheet we had to use looked like it had been designed in the 80s and was laid out badly (with not enough space for some things, too much for others, and a couple of outdated acronyms). I had a go at modernising it and my team lead agreed we should use it but that I needed to get sign off from the other teams. I would note that other than the outdated acronyms, I didn’t change a single word on the form, or the order of fields; just made it a more sensible layout and more modern look. It took me over three months to get sign off to use it, including from other areas of the business that occasionally signed something off on it. Even then, the first day it was taken to the manager to sign off for one particular section he absolutely lost his shit and ranted at the poor analyst who took it up for at least five minutes. Eight years later they are still using it so it can’t have been that bad!

  199. Steph S-G*

    I work with an individual who needs a lot of attention. This person was complaining and sad when I took down all the Christmas cards! she insisted on keeping them.
    After removing all the Christmas decorations and tree, I streamlined and removed a large standing lamp. I was told I was “mean” even though the lamp was in my area and not in the coworker’s domain.

  200. iglwif*

    At a previous job, I accidentally became responsible for the unbelievably boring monthly staff newsletter, and a designer colleague and I decided we would at least try to make it look nice and have fewer grammatical errors. (The content came from various department heads.)

    One November we put a photo in our own department’s section of some of our staff dressed up for Halloween. It was a great photo of half a dozen people looking cheerful. Nobody’s costume was NSFW — no sexy french maids, no realistic zombies.

    The CEO first tried to make us take the photo out, and then insisted we create two separate versions of that month’s newsletter — it was okay for staff to see the Halloween pic, but he was convinced the company’s board of directors, to whom he sent each issue, would be appalled by a photo of staff wearing costumes on work time.

  201. Not Again*

    Once was an admin at a deeply dysfunctional small law firm (about 15 employees). Office manager was frustrated that people weren’t cleaning up after themselves/making a new pot, when they got coffee. She spent over an hour going office to office and quizzing each employee on his/her coffee consumption at work, Then she drew up a chart listing the coffee drinkers as well as the various times of day when they would get their coffee. People who had more than one cup a day were marked with an asterisk. She also created a list of the non-coffee drinkers. Then she printed multiple copies of these lists and posted them all over the kitchen and break room. Notably, she did not take the step of just asking people to clean up after themselves/make a new pot of coffee if they finished the last one.

  202. My Boss Threw a Fit when I suggested We Hire Someone with Prior Office Experience for an Office Job*

    I worked in a tiny department that was very high up in a pretty large (5k+ employees) organization. Our department consisted of four people – My boss (head of the department) a director, myself, and an admin. We served the entire organization and were responsible for several time-consuming, but not difficult functions that really should have been the responsibility of other departments in addition to some other very important functions that were a natural and necessary fit for our office. Unfortunately, because my boss was new to the organization and saw some of these functions as a way to ensure regular positive interaction with the head of the organization, there was no effort to get those time-consuming and not-really-our-job functions appropriately reassigned. Thus, much of the work we really *should* have been doing was either delayed, hurriedly performed, sloppier than I would have preferred, or not done at all.

    We were all drowning in tasks and overwhelmed, and my boss was unsuccessful in convincing the head of the organization to give our department additional budget money for another position similar in level to me to ease the workload; however, the organization had a program where we could hire college students, and the pay for those students would come mostly from another part of the organization, and we would only have to cover 25% of it from our own budget. At a staff meeting, the four of us discussed taking advantage of this program to get some assistance with the overwhelming workload, which was comprised of many time-consuming tasks that were not very difficult and didn’t require a ton of critical thinking skills, but needed to be done regularly.

    After we posted the position and received several applications, we met again to discuss the applicants. I mentioned that I would prefer an applicant that had at least *some* office or reception-like experience and experience working with computer files on a network drive, even if only for a few months rather than someone who only had baby sitting or stocking merchandise on their resume. My reasoning was that we needed someone to help take a load off of our plates quickly, and having to teach a never-worked-in-an-office-environment-before student could actually increase our workload while we got them trained up on new skills and general office knowledge that most office workers already have. I was also concerned that, by the time we got them to the point where they would be successful on their own, if they graduated, we would have to find someone knew and start the process over without getting much benefit for our department. From my perspective (which I thought was shared by all in the department) weren’t hiring college students to be benevolent – we didn’t have the bandwidth for that; we were hiring them because they would be cheaper for our department through this program and they were better than nothing. When I mentioned that we should focus on applicants that have some kind of prior office experience and my other two colleagues agreed, my boss flipped her lid. She started yelling aggressively that the three of us were being elitist with a tone of “you should be ashamed of yourselves for suggesting that” and “how dare you”. The director and I kept casting sideways “Is this really happening?” glances at each other while she ranted. This was by no means the first time she exploded over something relatively benign, but it was one of the most over-the-top tantrums I’ve ever seen from a leader and about something that I thought we were all in agreement about, considering the way the proposal for this solution came about in the first place.

    I also got yelled at by her within the first month of her hiring (I was at the organization before her) for sending someone a handoff e-mail regarding a project I had been about to start but that she wanted to take the lead on. Apparently it was undermining to say “Hi Sally, I spoke with My Boss about this project and she is eager to take the lead on it, so she should be reaching out to you soon to discuss X, Y, and Z.” (I cc’d my boss on that e-mail, which is how she knew about it. Why would I cc her on an attempt to undermine her?) In addition to that, when our Director resigned and put in a two weeks notice, she tried to make things easier on us by sending a lot of her project information to the person in the organization that was the most natural interim fit so he could maintain those projects while her replacement was hired (hiring is notoriously slow in my industry). When My Boss found out, she terminated the Director in the middle of the Director’s notice period for undermining her by thinking ahead about the continuation of the some important projects. Although the Director should have definitely discussed that handoff before doing it, the termination seemed an excessive response. There were so many inappropriate responses and reactions….

    My Boss’s management style/personality was so emotional, volatile, and aggressive that I had to switch to a new organization after a year and have had to spend a lot of time deliberately stopping myself from dwelling on my interactions with her to save my own sanity. I am pretty confident that her behavior stemmed from her own insecurities and frustrations with leadership, for which I tried to have compassion for about a year, but she didn’t do herself any favors by being so controlling and quick to highly-emotional responses over trivial details or comments.

  203. Veryanon*

    Before my current job, I worked for a company where the Director of HR (my direct boss) was a raving lunatic. She had this bad habit of throwing tantrums in the middle of our open work space like a toddler whenever she was unhappy about something.

    One day my team had been asked to process a termination for an employee in a state where final paychecks were required immediately upon termination by law. Since I was still pretty new, I didn’t realize that the person’s paystub would be uploaded to their payroll portal as soon as the check was processed, so I didn’t know to tell IT to block it until the person had been notified. And yes, unfortunately, the person saw their paystub before they were notified that they were being terminated, which obviously was not ideal. As soon as I found out, I let my manager know that this had happened, and before I could even draw breath, she had stormed over to my cubicle, standing two inches away from me, SCREAMING in my face that this was not acceptable and what was I going to do to fix this going forward?????? I was so shocked that at first I couldn’t even respond. But I took a moment to gather myself and interrupted her mid-rant to tell her, very quietly, that I couldn’t understand her when she was speaking to me in that tone of voice and I would get back to her with a solution as soon as I had one.

    Needless to say, I left that job as soon as I found something else. It was, hands down, the worst place I’ve ever worked in my career.

  204. Kayem*

    The chaos over the office phones is hands down one of my favorite work stories ever. I’ve read that one so many times because it’s just so delightful!

  205. Abundant Shrimp*

    I’ve got to come clean. Back in the very early days of my job that included on-call support, I got a page (yes, this was back in the days of pagers) after hours about an issue with a new time tracking app that we’d been told would only be a P3 or P4 call and never an after-hours one. They mistakenly set it to P1. I called tier 1 helpdesk back and screamed(!!!) at the poor guy. I said things like “NO NO NO!” like he was a dog who’d pooped in my living room. He handled it very professionally and I never got in any kind of trouble for this. Never did it since. It was almost 24 years ago and I still think about it at least once a month and die inside of embarrassment. I am so sorry, Tier 1 guy whose name I don’t remember, I was an inexperienced glassbowl but I learned quickly.

  206. ConstantlyComic*

    I work for county government. Back in 2020, the county’s finance department overhauled their cash-handling procedures, making it so that instead of any staff member being able to handle cash and only having to fill out one report at the end of the day, we had to have a designated cash handler and fill out a report every time that the cash handler changes. It later turned out that they wanted much less detail in the handoff reports than they want in the end of day report, but they didn’t bother to tell us that until 2022. You would think that the simplified handoff reports would be a relief to my coworkers, right? Well, you’d be wrong. I was pushing really hard for a streamlined process that incorporated everything that the finance department wanted and nothing else, and I had to pitch a tent on about every molehill imaginable. In particular, one lady still insists on writing the word “FINAL” in huge letters on top of every daily report, even though it’s now the only one of that type that we do. I guess she things that finance is too stupid to realize that the only cumulative report we’re sending them is the final one.

    1. ConstantlyComic*

      I should mention that I am not immune to the blowup, as I have had a conversation bordering on a shouting match with this coworker over her writing “FINAL” on the report, as I view it as completely unnecessary and her only defense is “what if we get audited”.

      1. ferrina*

        In her defense, I have worked with colleagues (including in Finance) who would be that dumb. I also have a tendency to be careful to indicate which information is final, and I’m picky in who I give non-final information to. Precisely because I’ve had colleagues (again, including Finance and including VPs and C-Suit) take preliminary information that was HEAVILY marked as preliminary and subject to change and treat that information as though it was final. Including sharing with the Board of Directors and with external stakeholders.

    2. ConstantlyComic*

      There was actually an update just today about the money reports! One of the things everyone insisted on keeping was a single color-coded signature sheet in an awful peach (originally needed because we were filling out multiple iterations of that sheet a day, now the only one; I hate it because we have to make 3 copies of it, which is a waste of ink and looks awful). Well, we’ve got new printers and they don’t copy the color of the paper when you make copies with them. I’m really hoping I can leverage this into finally getting rid of the peach paper.

  207. Bast*

    Two Incidents come to mind.

    School Incident: Before the professor came into class, a student removed a pencil from his desk, wrote with it, and placed it back on the professor’s desk. Professor comes in and his pencil was not in the exact same spot as he was expecting. He lost it. Took the pencil, snapped it in half, threw it across the room, stamped his feet, and told everyone to get the eff out of the room, class was canceled.

    Work: Boss had promised everyone a half day on Christmas Eve, but failed to clarify what, exactly, a half day meant. At noon, someone dared to bring it up to him and remind him that he had told us previously that we could have a half day on Christmas Eve. He denies ever saying such a thing and states “maybe” we can get out early “if” the workload is low (it was; most people did not expect us to be open) to which she replies that she had invited family over to celebrate, that Christmas Eve was a big deal in her culture, and that she needed to start cooking. She asks if he is not going to give her a half day as promised, if she can just take the rest of the day and use PTO…. He LOST IT. Accused her of calling him a liar, and told her if Christmas Eve was so important to her to just leave and not come back. He then proceeded to stomp out of his office and yell if anyone else wanted Christmas Eve off, they were free to leave and not come back. It doesn’t end there. He created a whole narrative about what a terrible, awful employee and human being she was that he’d bring up anytime anyone mentioned her name and took any opportunity he could to bash her. She was a fairly average employee who didn’t cause issues, so I found his efforts to bash her months and years later even more concerning than the incident itself.

    1. borealis*

      Ooh, I was preparing for the second one to be an anecdote about a Scandinavian colleague raging diacritically because they didn’t get Christmas Eve off (it is a much more important holiday than Christmas Day in this part of the world!)

    2. Kayem*

      I had a high school teacher (Bob) like that. Students used to move the stuff on his desk or shift everything a centimeter over and he’d grill the class until someone confessed. We all thought it was hilarious. One day, a new teacher borrowed a textbook off Bob’s desk and plopped it in Bob’s inbox instead of the designated textbook spot. When no one in class confessed to the transgression, Bob marched to every classroom and grilled each teacher until he found the culprit. The new teacher then got a righteous scolding that could be heard all down the halls.

      I later learned this was some kind of rite of passage for new teachers. The newbie would be asked to get something from Bob’s desk for whatever reason, then asked to return it. The only time a new teacher wasn’t fooled was the fresh out of college algebra teacher who was an alum of the high school. She knew better than to fall for it.

  208. Icy anonymity*

    We had a person in our office who was a real jerk. She was notorious for yelling at people for anything that annoyed her or that she perceived as making her job harder, and her direct manager was totally and completely spineless, so her reign of terror was unchecked for many years. She brought her lunch to work every day in an insulated bag with two icepacks, put the icepacks in the freezer when she got to work, and put them back in the bag at night to take leftovers home.

    One day, for some reason, someone took her icepacks out of the freezer and set them on top of the fridge. No one knows who or why to this day.

    Jerk colleague pitched the biggest fit I’ve ever seen. She charged up and down the halls of our suite, accusing and interrogating. She sent MULTIPLE all-office emails. She had a closed-door meeting with our director about it. She threatened to go to HR if the miscreant did not confess and repent. She brought it up repeatedly in staff meetings over the next few months. No one ever confessed and eventually she stopped mentioning it except occasionally in conversation.

    A couple of years later, at the last holiday party before she retired, in addition to all the usual holiday party stuff it was announced that there would be a celebration of jerk colleague’s career in honor of her retirement. One of the usual holiday party entertainments is a Yankee Swap, and someone’s contribution to the Yankee Swap was a prettily-wrapped box. Inside it were two ice packs. The person who unwrapped it pulled them out, said “Oh, it’s ice packs,” and then in a moment of understandable if extremely unfortunate humor, turned and said to the jerk, “These must be for you!”

    Reader, the *look* on her face.

    2. And I'm the alchemist of the hinterlands*

      That is beautiful.

      I have a similar story. I worked at a large community center as a teacher, and we shared a communal kitchen with one of those huge industrial fridges with several departments. One woman in another department was breastfeeding, and kept the milk she pumped in a cooler with little ice packs in the fridge. One day inexplicably someone took out one of the ice packs. We never found out who, but she was convinced it was one of us preschool teachers because they were small ice packs “perfect for little boo boos” in her words. She brought it up every time she saw me. We referred to her as ice pack lady until she quit.

  209. An Australian In London*

    One time in an Australian office section was being refurbished. There was a clearly marked zone of decommissioned furniture and office equipment that was to be removed. There was no possible doubt – everything to go had a special sticker on it, and everything with the sticker was going to be taken to landfill.

    I found in this huge pile a pedestal fan and a small sofa. They had the stickers. There was no possible doubt that they were intended to be removed.

    Over the weekend I took both items to my desk area where there was plenty of room for them. No-one’s space or passage was infringed upon. The magic stickers were removed.

    Monday morning there was an uproar. Everyone near me demanded to know how I had been granted special furniture that no-one else had. Complaints were made to my boss, to my grand-boss, to my great-grand-boss. Two people were so upset they left work early. One person maintained the fortitude to remain at work – but threatened to resign unless either they were given the same furniture or mine was removed. I was summoned in front of four different managers (the three aforementioned plus the Facilities Manager) to explain where I had “stolen this unauthorised furniture from”. My explanation was flatly disbelieved.

    The kicker for me was when I was told to get rid of them. I asked how should I do that? Answer: take them to the pile of furniture to be taken away and get two of the special stickers!

    I again said that’s where I’d gotten them. Didn’t matter. People were so upset that I had them that the furniture had to go. I said I would engrave both items before returning them to the removal pile, and I wanted a guarantee in writing that if the items were found in use anywhere in the building, including the Board of Directors, the “thief” would be similarly reprimanded.

    They (of course) refused, so I said in that case I would be keeping them. I did indeed keep both items, and kept my job as well.

    1. And I'm the alchemist of the hinterlands*

      The things people decide that really matter are so fascinating. Good for you for keeping them!

  210. Can't Sit Still*

    Long ago, I worked at a company that was in a rural location. We were the last in the county to get fiber optic cable to replace the copper phone lines. As a consequence, we would be moving away from having a switchboard to employees and/or departments having their own phone number. Our corporate phone account included voicemail, too. This was a catastrophe!

    I have literally no words to describe what happened when people found out about voicemail. The screaming and crying, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! The corporate account included unlimited voicemail boxes and management was completely horrified at the very idea of individual employees having their own phone number and voicemail box. (It was very important to emphasize the box part of “voicemail box”.) How would they control every second of each employee’s day if they had unfettered access to their very own phone line, and gasp! A voicemail box! Employees did not, absolutely did NOT, want to check voicemail – not that they were wrong. (That company didn’t allow employees to have email until well into the 21st century. I imagine the hysterics over email were similar.)

  211. Corrigan*

    Oh I just remembered one. At the time I was running the process for people to apply for internal funding for research projects. When I started, all deadlines had been on Fridays, which made no sense to me because nobody was going to look at it until Monday. So I made all of my deadlines on Thursdays.

    I once had a guy send me a scathing, ranting email about how he couldn’t be expected to meet weekday deadlines because he had meetings and other obligations during the week. He said my deadlines should be on weekends (when I’m not working and would not be able to field last minute questions, or do anything with the received applications). He even asked why a particular deadline couldn’t have been the preceding weekend (i.e. earlier) because that was better for him. I asked him why he couldn’t complete his application over the weekend even though that was a few days before it was due, and he said “You just don’t understand.”

    1. ferrina*

      I’m a little confused about why you made the deadline on Thursday. What did that solve? Usually people look for deadlines to be EOW- it’s just easier for them to remember.

      Of course, this guy’s response was pretty ridiculous any which way. Demanding you make the deadline earlier because he couldn’t turn his stuff in early? Huh?

  212. Elle Woods*

    One of my former employers hosted a summer softball tournament for employees. The team I was on played in a rec league in the suburbs and signed up for the company tourney for fun. We wound up losing the championship game to a team of IT guys who took themselves VERY seriously. One particular player (“Chad”) was so intense that he yelled at a teammate (“Steve”) for dropping a fly ball. This went on for 10 minutes. Steve finally told Chad to f*** off, got in his car, and headed home.

    The Monday after the tourney, the daily all-employee e-newsletter included a blurb about the tourney and which two teams played in the championship. The editor also thanked all those who participated. I didn’t work on the same floor as Chad but one of my rec league teammates did. Chad was so upset about the tourney blurb not naming each individual on the winning team that he called up the newsletter editor and read her the riot act. She reported him to HR who opened an investigation into Chad’s actions. He got written up and ordered to attend anger management classes.

    That was the last softball tournament the company ever hosted.

  213. Jim The Wonder Dog*

    I witnessed someone let out what can only be described as a guttural wail when told of a minor snag in a project that was outside of everyone’s control (think enhanced cyber security requirements leading to an additional review). She wasn’t responsible for this, it wasn’t in her area, she wasn’t being blamed, but she was somehow absolutely devastated. When someone asked if she was ok, she started sobbing and ran out of the room. No one ever mentioned this in her presence again and the project proceeded mostly on track.

  214. Ladycrim*

    I saw someone throw such a screaming tantrum that she was sent home to calm down because the sandwiches for her meeting were ordered from a different restaurant than the one she wanted.

  215. cleo*

    When I worked in higher ed, my dean called me in to her office on day to get my opinion on something. The mailroom had delivered a large box meant for one of our computer labs to her personal office and she was SO MAD. And she wanted me to agree with her that this was completely unacceptable.

    She was so mad that it was pretty clear to me that it wasn’t about the box – the box was just the most recent annoying thing in a long month of much bigger and more genuinely upsetting and annoying things that had been going on and somehow it was the thing that sent her over the edge.

    If I could time travel, I would go back in time and tell her that yes, it was ridiculous and why didn’t she run out for a quick coffee while I called facilities. But I wasn’t that quick on my feet so instead I kind of stammered something sort of conciliatory out. And then she called facilities, with steam still coming out of ears, and I just excused myself.

  216. Butterfly Counter*

    I was on the undergraduate committee of my department one year and we helped figure out the curriculum for the next semester for the head of the department to schedule. It was decided to do a bit of a mix-up because the oldest tenured professors were only teaching their very small, niche classes and the younger professors were taking on 100% of the large required classes and not able teaching anything to their areas of expertise.

    So, with the head of the department’s okay, it was recommended that the three oldest faculty teach at least one lower-level class a year (one class of the four they’re required to teach) in order to free up some of the electives for the other faculty as well as give all students in our department a chance to learn under and work with all faculty, even the most senior. The head of the department scheduled this along with the department’s advisor (a staff member low in the department hierarchy). Our committee considered it a win-win for students.

    Well. I could hear one particular faculty member screaming at the advisor about having to teach Intro from a closed door down the hall. She ended up going home early that day and the faculty member still had to teach Intro. He ended up actually enjoying teaching it the next semester, but never taught it again until he retired a few years after that.

  217. girlie_pop*

    I used to work on an in-house marketing team, and we produced a wellness newsletter that was sent to our clients and employees. It was really bland stuff: tips on how to get more steps in or be safe on walks or runs when it’s dark, a healthy recipe, and usually a summary of an interesting recent study related to health. All of the content was provided to us by another team, and we just copy edited it, laid it out in a nice format, and handled distribution.

    One month, we featured an article about a metastudy that found that, essentially, there is no amount of alcohol you can drink that doesn’t have adverse health benefits. The study was published in a credible medical journal, it was in the news a lot at the time, and it’s one I’ve seen cited a lot since it was published. Not to say that no peer-reviewed article in a medical journal wasn’t ever a crock, but there wasn’t really any reason to think the findings were bunk.

    When we published the newsletter, we got a weirdly aggressive email from a random team member in another office that said, basically, “This kind of thing might fly in *notoriously conservative and religious state we live in*, but it doesn’t anywhere else.” None of us really knew this team member because she worked in a satellite office in a different state and on a team we didn’t really interact with, so none of us really knew what to make of it. I forwarded the email to the team member who wrote the summary, and he provided a really thoughtful, well-reasoned response explaining the credibility of the study and even providing a link to the original paper so she could read it for herself.

    The complainer responded with an email that was so aggressive, condescending, and rude that I was honestly shocked. She argued about the semantics of the original study (even though we didn’t write it?), questioned all of our credibility, and, in so many words, told us we were all idiots who didn’t know what we were talking about. It was years ago, so I don’t remember the content of it word-for-word, but I remember it being the kind of thing that pretty much stopped work in our little grouping of cubicles because it was just so weird! She also, for some reason, CC’ed her boss (who wouldn’t have had any say in what our team did) and one or two executives for some reason?

    We didn’t respond because we honestly had no idea how to, and a few hours later, each of us got a phone call from her boss apologizing and telling us he directed her to lay off and not email us about our newsletters ever again. The next time he visited our office, he apologized again and seemed as baffled as we were. I don’t know what her deal was, but at least she let her boss in on what she was doing and he handled it for us!

  218. Funfetti*

    I’ve been at my historic non-profit (HNP) for almost a year and this past December I was part of the holiday party planning committee. A role I’ve done before and typically don’t mind because events are my profession.

    With different orgs, I know holiday parties can be “a thing.” I’ve been at tiny places where we had no money and just did a dessert competition potluck (fun!) to giant places with cash up the ying yang and giant open bar (also fun!) And middle places with sad only one appetizer and sadder only one drink ticket (less fun).

    At new HNP, I’m in a senior role so happy to spend some capital on upgrading the caterer and increasing the budget. Everyone rejoices!

    We’re doing a walkthrough confirming all the final details such as the caterers bringing individually wrapped cookies at the end for everyone to take home. One of the members on the committee goes, “And don’t forget the to-go boxes.”

    I stare dumbly. “To go boxes? Like at a restaurant?” And she finishes “Yes for people to take all the leftovers home.” She leans in ominously. “And if you don’t do it, people will freak out.” Apparently the org has been underpaying people for so long and were really crappy about furloughs during the pandemic that people would “get theirs’ by taking every ounce of free food possible. Either the caterer would provide the boxes or people would BRING THEIR OWN. And then there was a race to who would be first in line at the buffet. It got so bad, with being gone within 30 minutes of the event, they had to start implementing a system like in kindergarten “all J names can get in line.” And because the org had been so cheap too, there really wasn’t enough food for leftovers too so people got real mad.

    Happy ending – because of the upgraded caterer and increased budget as well as deciding to treat everyone like adults – there was plenty of food at the holiday party AND for leftovers. So much that the caterer sent me home with four trays. My husband and I feasted on appetizers throughout the week.

    Now I want to buy branded Tupperware as org swag to hand out at the next event! Might as well lean into the culture.

    1. BellyButton*

      Firstly, I love when people give a newbie a heads up about the secret unwritten culture rules. Secondly, you have to get branded Tupperware.

    2. The Prettiest Curse*

      In my previous nonprofit job, because our trainings were for a notoriously under-paid group of people (childcare workers), we’d always over-order food and have takeout boxes for leftovers. The staff got to take any leftovers that the training attendees left, and everyone appreciated the free food.

  219. CanAussieMom*

    I was part of the management team at a company along with multiple colleagues and there were natural crossover points for our work. Once, our Boss/Company Owner asked me to follow up with a colleague about a particular project that was mainly his area but did touch mine as well.

    I was working from home so I emailed the guy.

    The Boss called me an hour later and said that my colleague was over the top angry about my offensive email and he was going to quit. The Boss asked what I’d written so I sent it to him and read it to him out loud. Word for word I’d written “How’s it going?”

  220. nora*

    Two stories come to mind.

    First: circa 2008, I was temping in a large office owned by a European conglomerate. The head of HR for that division was a monstrously evil person who bragged about how she absolutely refused to allow her teenager even the slightest amount of privacy. One day a Head Honcho from Switzerland was coming for a meeting. The week before that HR Head was seen walking around removing every colorful thumbtack from all of the bulletin boards on the floor, including a very charming little smiley face in a break room. She then sent an absolutely unhinged email dictating that only white and clear thumbtacks were to be used, preferably only one color per board, and NO SMILEY FACES. (The kicker: Head Honcho entered the building, walked five steps from the elevator to the board room, left after two hours, and didn’t even use the bathroom.)

    Second: winter 2018, I’m working in a small nonprofit in a fairly remote area with bad roads. Most of the staff live 20-30 minutes away at least, and almost all are in jurisdictions/school districts other than where the office is located. It was a fairly bad winter for our area. The weather policy at the time was “if YOUR school district is closed, you can work from home; if it’s delayed, you come in when the delay ends.” The problem with this was that sometimes one neighborhood would get 3″ of ice while 10 miles away they’d get 5″ of snow and 20 miles away from there they’d get full sun. Weather is weird. So if the employee’s district was open but the office was a sheet of ice, that’s an issue. One manager asked if we could change the policy to “if YOUR OR THE OFFICE’S district is closed/delayed…” The CEO immediately flipped her wig and revoked the inclement weather policy. No more WFH. No discussion. And she wouldn’t write it down so the folks who missed the staff meeting were all in danger of being written up for violating policies they didn’t know about.

    And that’s why I left nonprofits forever.

    1. Cat*

      I hope the former teenager is far away from their egg donor and has access to a competent therapist.

  221. Teapot Librarian*

    I (white female) was the manager of B, a Black male. B has a reputation for being difficult and extremely resistant to change. I provided some feedback to B on his work product, and he emailed me a multi-paragraph response in which he stated that my feedback was tantamount to lynching.

  222. CoffeeCoffeeCoffee*

    Years ago, I worked in fundraising at a small university. The job was very standard 8:30-4:30 every day; but the expectation was one day a year (literally one) all staff had to plan to work 8:30 to 7:30 for the school’s annual gala, which was on campus and always on a Friday. The date was chosen a full year out and we got nine thousand reminders about it. We had one employee, D, who requested that day off the week of the event because he wanted to “try her hand at bartending” at her boyfriend’s bar. Our boss told her no, but he was willing to let her leave at 5pm. Instead she quit on the spot, then while we were at the gala, she came back to our office (as seen on security cameras) and destroyed every potted plant in the office and stole every stapler and all of the paper out of the printer. Still the weirdest over-reaction to be asked to work 30 minutes of overtime I’ve ever seen.

  223. PleaseNo*

    I had this just happen a few months ago.

    My boss sent out a poll in Teams about Movies You Liked. We could vote for other peoples’ entries and/or add our own.

    People campaigned for their choices like it was an election for the sanitation commissioner.
    People made judgments about the movies that had the most votes and the ones that didn’t have any. Votes were changed willy-nilly.
    Work was put aside as people sat in their chairs debating what made their movie better than the others’. Some conversations fell just short of a screaming match.

    After the 3-day period, the vote closed and … that’s it. There was no point to the poll. My boss was “just interested” in what people watched. :/

  224. Former medical assistant*

    This happened at my first job out of college 15 years ago when I worked as a medical assistant. We had fewer back office workstations than assistants and one day I got stuck making (confidential) phone calls at the front desk. This was a huge HIPAA violation but that’s another story. I was playing on my phone (not great, but I was young and had never had coaching on professionalism) while ringing a patient and the office manager came by and YELLED AT ME in front of the full waiting room of patients, then pushed me out of my chair and took it because “someone more important needed it.” All of this was caught on that patients voicemail, and I had no chair to sit in the rest of the day. I almost quit but it was the worst of the recession and there were no other jobs in my area.

  225. BellyButton*

    I was working for a very conservative tech company, in a very conversative state, in a very male dominated industry. It was A LOT. I was conducting unconscious bias training to a group of sales leaders. One of the studies I sited was from Harvard Business School. It is a well known study and well respected. This director started asking how these people were qualified to run and report a study of this kind…
    …
    So I asked “Are you saying that you, a *insert tech field job* know more about unconscious bias than (named all the experts who conducted the study) at Harvard?”
    …
    He then changed his line of questioning to attack me and MY credentials. “How are you qualified to teach this or to even assesses that this study is relevant to us.”
    I answered “I am not going to waste time convincing you that my education and experience qualify me to do my job. The CEO hired me, why don’t you go ask him why he hired me.”
    The guy threw open the door, muttering under his breath, and went straight to the CEOs office. I later heard from everyone in the area that he screamed at the CEO that he hired some “little feminist” to push out all the white men. He apparently kicked the trashcan when the CEO told him to leave.

    Please don’t forget that women are too emotional to be leaders. :P

  226. Former Curator*

    I have a bit of a different one, but here goes.

    Context: I used to be a curator in a very small local museum. I was lightly overseeing a board member/volunteer who was doing a project – mounting a very interesting textile artifact – which we were going to turn into a small exhibit. Alas, the exhibit label she wrote was missing a big part of what made the artifact interesting.

    I suggested she correct the exhibit label, and she:
    * Stormed into the office on a day I wasn’t there and yelled at my boss, the Executive Director, that I was “TOO YOUNG!!!!” and almost took the project home (the artifact belonged to the museum, so it would have been theft).
    * When we sat down to see if we could come to a resolution, she accused me of taking over her project (I didn’t), sending rude emails (they weren’t), and plagiarism (when I tried to show her what a corrected label could look like).
    * Went to the board president and demanded that she could have her own office, pick her own projects without any input from me, the Curator, and never have to talk to me again about anything.

    When the board refused her demands, she quit the board and said she was writing the museum out of her will. Since she had donated the mount and we didn’t want her to have anything she could hold over us, my boss got me to detach the artifact from the mount. Ten minutes with my embroidery scissors and the project – which took the volunteer tens of hours of painstaking work – might as well have never taken place.

    All because I suggested a wording change.

  227. TrixieD*

    About four years ago, we were experiencing, um…misuse of the restrooms. I frequently encountered toilet paper strewn across the floor (usually with waste-related adornments on it), clogged/overflowing toilets, missing hand soap (yes, people will steal a container of Mrs. Meyers hand soap if it’s not nailed down), paper towels on the floor *near* the trashcan (but God forbid, not in it), etc. It was amazing how many people would come to me (as the office manager) and alert me to issues in the ladies room…also amazing how many people misheard office *manager* as office *janitor*. No one in the office would cop to having contributed to the mess, so I decided it was due to the homeless population that sleep near our building. After several weeks of messiness and the potential for catching diphtheria from using the loo, I received approval from my boss to contact a locksmith and have coded locks put on the restroom doors.
    OH. MY. GAWD. You would have thought I had murdered our CEO. There was mass hysteria in the office as people complained in our staff meetings for MONTHS about the horror of needing to memorize a four-digit code to use the facilities. Emails were sent around the office, and one person even went so far as to post the code ONTO THE BATHROOM DOOR to avoid the drudgery of remembering it.
    After one of our directors had a damned meltdown in a staff meeting about it, one of our accountants spoke up, and said that since she frequently works evenings and weekends in the office by herself, the code helped her to feel safe when using the restroom. Just that one person’s remark quelled the protests from others.
    Everyone shut up after that.

  228. Moo*

    About 20 years ago, the CFO of our 200-person company sent a company-wide email complaining that we were using too much milk. We’re an engineering company so within 5 minutes someone had done the math and worked out we were using a tablespoon of milk per person per day.

    Cue *weeks* of milk-themed practical jokes, which went down very well with everyone in the company – except the CFO.

  229. Nanananabirthday*

    Last job, one of my coworkers was joking around with another coworker whose birthday was that day. Birthday coworker didn’t want to make a deal of it, actively didn’t want to be sung to but was resigned and fine with the teasing. Company president overheard the singing and threw a fit that this person was being sung to when we hadn’t sung to the last person whose birthday it was and how unfair that was.

    Keep in mind we did monthly treats to cover all the birthdays, everyone who had a birthday got mentioned and everyone got the treat.

    The two coworkers had a forty five minute closed door meeting with the president, then the rest of the staff got to attend a two hour meeting about how we were going to sing happy birthday to everyone, moving forward.

    I opted to refrain from mentioning that we had staff who due to religion didn’t recognize birthdays, since his birthday month had just passed and I hoped it would calm down by next year.

    The singing lasted only the next two birthdays before quietly dying.

  230. Not Jen from The IT Crowd*

    I’ve got a couple, one of which where I was the unreasonable one!

    It was my first Saturday job when I was at college, and I’d proven myself reliable and effective on the shop tills so was given extra responsibility to keep a specific area of the shop stocked. One day in the store room, I was compacting the empty boxes and putting them on the trolley of empty flattened boxes when a much older colleague, who’d been there a very long time, had a go at me and said I was doing it wrong. Instead of just shrugging it off – I suspect she was just grumpy and wanted to find something to moan about, as I was doing things according to instructions – I burst into tears and wasn’t able to go back to the shop floor for most of the rest of my shift. In my defence, it looks like undiagnosed ASD and PMDD was a significant factor in my overreaction, but still, I’m mortified when I think back on it now!

    The other was in my previous job where I was an IT manager in education. I changed the desktop wallpapers to bring them up-to-date and in line with current branding. Well, I’ve never known people freak out as much as they did that day! I wish I had so little to worry about that I could complain and whinge and moan and stamp my feet over desktop wallpaper!!!

    There was a similar reaction from people when we removed some of the very rarely used multi-function devices (printer/scanner/copiers). We knew they weren’t used because we went by the meter usage on the devices when deciding which devices to keep. People still got really angry over having *their* printer removed, as though they used it frequently and couldn’t walk a little bit further down the corridor to print off their work. Considering this was to save tax-payers’ money in a public sector, with devices used incredibly rarely, you’d have thought there would be a bit more understanding. Let’s bear in mind the people complaining in the above two scenarios are mostly post-graduate level trained, too, so they aren’t stupid by any means…

    1. Not Jen from The IT Crowd*

      I also heard about much worse from before my time there, including one colleague who was riled so much by the deputy boss, things got violent and very sweary and he was escorted from the premises immediately. Although his reaction was unwarranted to that degree, the deputy boss seemed to have that effect on people. It was very dysfunctional and toxic, and I’m glad to say I’m no longer there!

  231. OhYuck*

    Several years ago, my open plan office decided to do away with individual garbage cans at each desk and put in communal cans, at most 30ft away from any one desk. My co-worker lost their shmidt. Ranted and raved to anyone who would listen for weeks and would pile their trash on the floor next to their desk all day long rather than walk it to the communal trash can. This wasn’t because they were too lazy to take it to the trash, but to teach the powers that be a lesson that the decision to remove individual trash cans was unhygienic.

  232. Raisin Walking to the Moon*

    As a young center manager at a (toxic, barely functioning) preschool, I made holiday cards for all the employees. February rolled around, so I made valentines.
    Our cook hugged me and cried because she had never received a single valentine during her marriage, and somehow I was an angel God sent her to remember to keep her faith and stay married.
    Our K2 teacher was furious with me because her valentine had less glitter on it than everyone else’s, and I clearly did that on purpose to spite her.

  233. Lab Boss*

    We had a large wall calendar hanging in the lab, and would cross out each day in marker before going home. The new CEO saw it through a window and sent his assistant to tell us he expected us to stop striking out days immediately, since it meant we felt like we were prisoners just marking our time and he expected more from us. I don’t know if it counts as all that dramatic but boy was it weird.

  234. Susie Occasionally(formerly No)-Fun*

    In a previous job at a non-profit, we worked on a lot of donor-funded projects with very specific things we were supposed to accomplish. One of my coworkers came to me stressing that they were way behind and had just realized they’d forgotten to allocate money and time for a key item for one of their contracts, because they’d kind of forgotten it existed (there were all kinds of issues at this place, but that’s another story). I realized that a learning management system (LMS) used in another department had already been cleared for use in a similar context, and, as it was open source, we could make a copy and set it up to handle that item. I was trained in it and could do the admin work, IT had the bandwidth to handle installing it, problem solved. I suggested letting the person in charge of the original version of the LMS know that we were deploying a copy in case she saw it in use and wondered what was going on.

    Well, you would think I had spit in her coffee. The person in charge of the original LMS emailed me a screed, with liberal use of all-caps, calling me everything but a child of God. As I was halfway through reading this opus, she charged over to my cube and reiterated the highlights in person, at the top of her lungs, in front of my coworkers and several levels of management. She then swept off in a cloud of fury.

    The next day she sheepishly came up to me and explained that she had misunderstood, that she thought she’d have to be in charge of the new version of the LMS and all the attendant work getting it set up for the project. She apologized profusely, and (probably unrelatedly) left for another job soon thereafter. The LMS went up just fine, the project deadlines were met, a fairly significant contract was saved. I still didn’t get “exceeds expectations” in my yearly review, though. I’m glad I’m elsewhere. now.

  235. Museum Conservator*

    I was a contractor at a museum and often worked at an art-storage facility that had a shared kitchen. One day all of the plates were gone, so I grabbed a large bowl and took it out to the picnic table outside. As I was eating my lunch another employee said, “you know, that’s Clara’s favorite bowl.” Clara was a kind-of scary curator. I thought, well, it’s already being used so I might as well finish my lunch. Suddenly the employee got a horrified look on her face and yelled, “Clara’s coming! You have to get rid of it!” I panicked and threw it – the bowl with my lunch in it – behind a bush. Clara came out and looked around and asked if anyone had seen her bowl. I froze like a deer in the headlights and shook my head no. Later that day I had to sneak out to retrieve the bowl from behind the bush, carefully clean it, and put it back as though nothing had happened.

  236. adagencygirl*

    when i worked at an ad agency years ago we had a holiday party with plenty of alcohol supplied to employees. post-holiday party people went back to the office (because of the free beer on tap) to hang out. one guy put on dub step and another guy hated it and asked him to turn it off. he didn’t, so the enraged employee hit him over the head with a bottle all whilst yelling I HATE DUBSTEP

    no more booze in the office after that

  237. Overcopier*

    I was once roundly chastised for….

    …making 25 extra copies of a program for a school function.

    I was told by the person who created the program (and apparently was the sole person allowed to print copies of it) that the big boss was very particular about such things. This was a program we had used for years and it had to be done just that way and only one person was allowed to decide how many copies were to be made.

    Minutes after the chastisement, I looked closer at the program and found a major typo in the heading and several other typos — a program that was used every year for (as I recall) six years!

  238. Office Chinchilla*

    Back in my temping days, I worked for someone who was notorious for temper tantrums. One day, he was going to lunch with his family. I waited until he was gone, then asked another assistant to cover the desk so I could get lunch. While I was gone, he called looking for directions for the restaurant he was taking his family to because he was lost. When it took the other assistant a minute to find it on Google Maps and try to figure out where he was in relation, he called her a “f’ing idiot.” When I got back to my desk (I was gone about 10 minutes), he called and screamed at me for a while. I said “what can I do to help you right now?” and he screamed “nothing! I’m just mad!” All I could imagine was that his family had flown across the country to see him and now he was spending the little time he had with them screaming at some stranger on the phone because he didn’t want to use his GPS. (These were the days before we all had maps on our phones, but he had a Garmin.) Someone else from the department came over to offer me some Xanax and the advice that prescription medication was the only way she survived her first year in that department. HR was aware of all of this. (Because the following week I temped in HR.)

    Eventually the company hired me full-time in a different area and ended his contract, but it took WAY WAY longer than it should have, especially considering he would scream at people higher than him in the org chart because he wanted to expand his job into their areas without talking to anyone and got mad when he found out they were already doing what he wanted to do.

  239. Rach*

    My boss gets extremely weird when I leave the office for extended periods of time (IE running errands, cleaning our others spaces 2 mins down the road).

    There are times when I’m picking up items from the store and he will call me to tell me that people are lining up around the block to get in the office. When I arrive….no one is there.

    Most recently I spent all day decorating the space for one of our holiday events. He texted me that the phone was ringing off the hook. I came back to the office and the same person called twice within the span of 5 minutes…and that was it. Same thing happened to me during the summer when I took a quick walking/coffee break during a beautiful day (which he prompted me to do).

    1. CommanderBanana*

      UGH. My boss does this. One day we were on travel at an event and she claimed that someone at our office had told her the “phone was ringing off the hook” and of course it was because no one was answering the phone because we’re all lazy slackers.

      Our phone system shows you phone calls to our main office line. There were none. It was her desk phone that someone had called a few times.

      She also like to accuse the staff of “turning off their phones” and not answering the call line, which has never happened.

      1. I Have RBF*

        I was on a temp receptionist job one time when this woman (we’ll call her Karen) came out from the back and berated me for “not putting her calls through!!!1!!” I looked at my logs. No one had called her. Not even to leave a message. But Karen continued to berate me for not putting her (nonexistent) calls through. This company was special in that they wanted envelopes to clients typed, not run through a printer, because it showed a “more personal touch”. Plus, if people got calls but weren’t at their phones, the calls would ring back to the front desk for the receptionist to take a message, no voicemail. So we had to take a message… and then leave the person a voice mail. (This is how I knew there were no calls for Karen, because they would have gone to her phone, and she answered, or I would have had messages for her. I didn’t.) Thank god it was only a one day fill in.

  240. DramaLlama Farmer*

    The drama over when to schedule an in-office Holiday staff party was unreal. Fights were had, a few F bombs dropped, passive-aggeessive statements on the group chat “I don’t personally care but how could you even think that idea was okay.?” It was bad and I almost refused to go.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      We had something similar once with ours – someone (Cordelia) was leaving on 2nd December that year, so the idea had been to go for a lunch which was joint leaving party and Christmas party. The venue “The Prancing Pony” had been suggested. The date chosen happened to be a date another coworker “Dawn” was on annual leave, but it had been agreed that another coworker “Anya” would meet her in town and drive her to the venue.

      Then-manager thought that as it was so early in December, we wouldn’t need to book. Dawn was dubious about that and thought we probably should. One night, we all got a Facebook message from Dawn – the Prancing Pony couldn’t accommodate us, so she’d made the decision to book alternative venue “The Three Broomsticks”. What Dawn didn’t know was that she’d booked somewhere Cordelia didn’t like. Cordelia can be a bit blunt and say straight out what she thinks, and on this occasion came right out and said she didn’t like it, although she did say she was willing to go there. Willow, trying to smooth things over as she could tell Dawn was starting to get upset but felt that Cordelia should really go somewhere she liked for her leaving meal, said something like “How about The Bronze, you love it there?” backed up by Tara who said she also preferred The Bronze.

      Again, fights were starting, at one point something blew up about an unrelated matter, in the end I’d had enough of all these messages and said something like “So, are we agreed on The Bronze now then?” This seemed to stop it, we all agreed, Cordelia tried to call The Bronze, couldn’t get through, said she’d do it the next day.

      Dawn had stepped away from Facebook to have dinner, then come back to the conversation to see that in her absence, it had been agreed to change the venue. She then flounced, saying “If it’s The Bronze, I’m not going as it’s not on my bus route, have a good time.” The thing was, we all knew that was an excuse – none of the proposed venues were on her bus route anyway, Anya’s offer to meet her in town and drive her still stood, and Willow pointed out that another option would have been to get to the office and travel over with the rest of us – but at this point everyone had had enough of the arguing. (She did backtrack on that the next day and agree to go.)

      Drusilla, who’d had her phone charging in another room and missed it all at the time, was then shocked to check her phone later and see “90 new messages”.

  241. Penguin Tummy*

    I work in healthcare and we had a patient admitted with chickenpox, who was extremely ill, developed encephalitis and later died. Chickenpox is uncommon in our country, the vaccination has been on the standard schedule for about 35 years. However, older people may be unprotected, so the manager sent around an email and brought up at team meetings that we should all check that we are vaccinated. Some people absolutely lost it. They were ranting about “management interfering in their lives” and “they can’t tell us what to do”. Up to date vaccinations are a compulsory part of the job. Management can literally tell them to get vaccinated. Vaccination was also offered for free at work.

    1. Herp-a-derp*

      I’m old enough that the chickenpox vaccine wasn’t a thing yet, so I’ve had chickenpox. Monday, November 26, 2029 is the first day I can get the shingles vaccine in this country. I’d get it now if I could. For those unaware, shingles is a painful re-emergence of the chickenpox virus. Every single person that has had the chickenpox virus still has it dormant in their body. It never, ever goes away. Once you catch it, it’s permanent.

      Herpes.

      Chickenpox is herpes. 1/3rd of Americans develop painful Shingles skin lesions (that’s *herpes*, remember) and so, so many people choose not get the vaccine that could make their last decades suck less? It boggles the mind.

      Your coworkers are insane. They have the choice to never suffer from a herpes virus strain and they’re *declining*. Who the hell wakes up in the morning and thinks, “yes, I would like to be susceptible to a very painful condition that’s trivially preventable. Oh well, roll the dice.”

  242. Gretchen*

    Years ago I was an office manager at a tutoring center where teachers would use red colored pencils to correct students’ work. We were running low, so I ordered a large box of scarlet red pencils from our supplier. Unfortunately the teachers’ preferred shade was carmine red. I didn’t think it would be a big deal since the colors were nearly identical, but I was wrong. Almost every employee refused to use the pencils I’d ordered. They even hijacked a staff meeting to complain. Even after I’d given in and agreed to purchase a new box, they still spent most of the hour listing all of the reasons the scarlet was unusable (It wasn’t – to be clear, the color of the pencil did not matter at all. They could have been purple or green and it would not have made a difference).

  243. H.Regalis*

    Ooo, thought of another one: An acquaintance of mine is a manager at a machine shop. On a day he had off, Employee A borrowed a couple of Employee B’s tools. B said that was fine, but please put them back on my workbench when you’re done. A absolutely lost it. Yelled in the guy’s face, cussed him out, started throwing tools around the shop, muttering under his breath: Just totally raged out the whole day. B ended up leaving early because A was known to be a hothead and he was worried the guy was going to try to fight him. B texted my friend to let him know why he took off early, and when my friend got back to work the next day he fired A. This was not the first time he had raged out at other employees and the problem was not something a manager could fix.

  244. Emmy*

    I work at a resort and our head of housekeeping has decided that if the vacuum cleaner does not suck up every visible speck of dirt and dust in a single pass, then it is irreparably broken and needs replacing. Doing two or three passes over an area to remove all the dirt is a bridge too far. She often takes apart the vacuums multiple times a day because they’re not working well enough, and empties them and washes their filters every day. She has been complaining that the general manager won’t buy her new vacuums for over a year, in vain.

  245. Lobstermn*

    My (also dysfunctional in other ways) large public University is so panicked that an employee I occasionally interact with in another department is on leave for a mental health issue that their department head and coworkers are … pretending that she is still working! They refuse to set an OOO message on her email or voicemail, or tell people she’s not in the office! Total bananapants.

  246. Other Alice*

    I’ve probably shared this elsewhere but oh well. My mother works in academia and she has Seen Things. Some 10 years ago they relocated one of the departments to a new building. To be clear, this new building was very similar in size and layout to the old one, and just around the corner. Well, one random admin decided that this WOULD NOT DO and she WOULD NOT LEAVE the old building.

    On the day the movers were supposed to take all the department stuff to the new building, she barricaded herself into the office and refused to let them in. They moved everyone else’s stuff into the new building, except for this lady’s stuff. I guess everyone expected her to give up once she saw the rest of the building was literally deserted? She did not.

    She started to come into the old building, go into her old office and lock herself in (she had all the keys). Everyone else was working in the new building, and the old building was just deserted aside from this one rogue admin. I asked my mother why they couldn’t just force her to give up the old office. She said the university had already fired her once for some other egregious behaviour, but rogue admin had sued and won and been reinstated with backpay. So now she was basically untouchable.

    I think they got her to take early retirement eventually. But I have to consider the possibility that, 10 years later, she’s still going into that deserted building every day to lock herself into her office to do who knows what kind of work for the entire day…

  247. Peccy*

    Mine is not the most minor but is weird in “people being angry about somebody else getting something” way

    At my company they changed the parental leave policies when my youngest was 6 months old, to be much more generous (offer paid parental leave not just paid person-who-gives-birth leave and unpaid FMLA for everyone else, offer the option to ‘leave share’ with your spouse aka come to work and get double-paid if your spouse has to take unpaid leave, etc). It sounded awesome. I was sad to miss it. The leave could be used within a year of your kids birth but was only applicable to parents with babies born since 1st, so basically backdated a couple weeks.

    Other parents of infants under one FLIPPED OUT that it wasn’t backdated to them. There was talk of strikes. There was talk of a public petition in the vein of a Netflix petition (which was about difference in benefits for warehouse staff vs corporate—NOT the same at all as a bunch of well paid engineers mad that their leave didnt double… when it was already more than most Americans get because ‘Murica). Multiple staff said it was so dangerous and bad because “if they had known” about it they might have been tempted to delay the medically recommended induction/scheduled cesarean, at risk of their life! (What?? If you were a time-traveler and could go back in time 3 weeks?)

    Parental leave in this country is a disgrace and its own whole topic but I have never seen so many well-compensated people mad because other people were getting something, and somehow that takes away from them and is an insult. It was just absurdity with people spinning themselves up to be more and more mad and convince each other that something had been stolen from them.

  248. Karma is my boyfriend*

    I had a former coworker (D) who was superrrrr easygoing and calm. Or so I thought. Apparently, many years before I worked there, another coworker (E) got sooooo under D’s skin that D literally picked up a mini fridge and threw it at E.

  249. Dhaskoi*

    I once had a job applicant pull out of an interview with a maximum of unnecessary drama:

    2:00pm Friday: I and one of our managers log on for a Teams interview. The candidate is a no show.

    2:05pm: I call the candidate directly to check if they’re still available, no response.

    2:10pm: We cancel the interview and I email HR to contact the candidate to reschedule (or confirm they have cancelled their application).

    2:20pm: The applicant calls back saying they weren’t informed of the interview at all, clearly a bit upset and irritated, but they are available next week for an interview. I inform HR to reschedule.

    2:30pm: HR emails us that they verbally confirmed the interview with the applicant a week and a half ago and sent an email to their account with contact information. They forward the email to us as evidence.

    3:00pm: I receive a text from the applicant reiterating their disappointment that they weren’t informed of the interview time.

    3:30pm: HR contacts us to say they have rescheduled the interview with the applicant, sent the link by email, and contacted them separately by text to confirm that they received the email and to let HR know if it has not come through. I text the applicant as well to confirm separately as I am the only person they’ve reached out to, specifying the time and date for the new interview (next Monday at 11.30am). They confirm to me that they have received the email from HR and that they will attend the interview at that time.

    Monday 11:30am: The candidate is a no show.

    11.35am: I contact the candidate and they inform me that they have withdrawn from the interview process (and that HR was quite rude for not informing me).

    12:00pm: The candidate texts me to say that they’re sorry, but they did withdraw with plenty of warning.

    What I didn’t know until Tuesday when HR informed us:

    Saturday 3:00pm: The candidate emails HR to cancel their application (this would have triggered an out of office reply informing them that the HR rep was out until Tuesday).

    Monday 11:40am: The candidate emails HR to berate them (all caps) for not informing us of the cancellation and being rude to me. This email would also have triggered an out of office reply.

    Tuesday 9am: The candidate texts HR to further criticise their bad communication (and apparently defend my honor as the insulted party) with expletives.

    I’m still mystified by this one.

  250. Sage*

    I forgot mine! I worked in circulation at a large public library, and our back office was a big rectangle with long tables up against the walls, with chairs so your back was to room as you worked, and all the book bins and mobile shelving in the center. Everyone full-time on staff had an assigned workstation of their own at one of the long tables with a chair and small cabinet for personal items.
    When I moved from part-time to full time, I was given a spot in the back corner, perpendicular to the assistant circulation manager. She was a bit of an odd duck – she’d come out of retirement for the job and the bulk of her earlier career had been in the library of a music conservatory. She very visibly found a lot of the chaos that comes with a large public library very stressful. She and her husband showed dogs, some fancy tiny breed that wears bows, and she had multiple big framed portraits of her dogs on her desk.
    Since she was the assistant manager, she had more space than most of us, but the space perpendicular to hers that I was assigned to was never part of it. I was new, so I was mostly at the circ desk, but the very first time I sat down while she was at her desk, when she got up, she backed her chair up into mine, just a touch, and she flipped out.
    Shot to her feet! Big dramatic gasp! Hand to her heart! “You startled me! You scared me! Why would you sneak up on me and sit there? That was very rude! I’ve had such a fright!” I very meekly told her that “Manager said this should be my spot” and apologized and promised to scoot my chair over as much as possible (we were a public library! Of course we were short on space!) She very sternly told me that if I wanted to use that spot, she needed me to warn her every time I sat down so that she would never be startled like that again. Being 22 and meek, I mostly avoided sitting there at all. Bless and keep all the librarians, they are pillars of our society, and also I’m very glad to be in another line of work now.

  251. Luna*

    Um, I once broke into tears when I was looking at the UPS page of my office job’s account because I was tasked with finding old invoices from 2021. Looking everywhere I could, doing my own basic trouble shooting, nothing worked and I couldn’t get my hands on any invoice prior to August 2022.

    I mentioned it my manager, who just retorted, “I can’t hold your hand for everything; do it yourself!” And that’s when I broke into tears.

    I dunno if I’d call this a overreaction caused by severe depression the job was making worse.
    Or a very understandable reaction to a job where my manager was not teaching me the office side of my job as she was supposed to. (I was more used as a glorified cleaner.)

    1. Bluebonnet*

      Honestly your reaction is understandable to me. I likely would have reacted similarly. So sorry you had to go through this!

  252. Super Arcade Kitten*

    Worked as a contractor for the Fed government (US) and our office had to move to a new building for renovations. Contracting Officer told all contractors to assist with the move to include using our cars to load up boxes and computers. I dont know why but we did. At the end of the day (sweaty and exhausted) she was livid because no one had seen customers all day (with what computers and furniture?) and threatened to not pay us. She raised such a huge stink that the contracting company sent someone out to berate us and say they were going to withhold pay.

    I said she was welcome to try that but since we had been moving all day and did indeed work, I would be filing an IG complaint and complaint with anyone else who would listen. They back tracked so fast you could see the wheels spinning.

  253. Couch Potato*

    In my previous company, I shared an office with a… difficult colleague (insert long story of no cooperation and lots of sexist remarks from this guy here).
    He also had brought a small sleeper sofa into the office (a common thing at the company) that stayed behind when we all were reorganized and reshuffled into other offices.

    Several years and two reorgs later, he left the company, triumphantly announcing how much he was improving his lot. HR emailed all hands about yet another reshuffle and what about the sleeper sofa in office XYZ, who did it belong to, it needed to be removed. I answered HR it belonged to That Guy who had just left.
    A shaken HR rep forwarded me their request that he remove the sofa, and his all caps answer that COUCH POTATO IS A F…… LIAR (and much more along those lines). I actually had to talk to HR and explain my side of the story while That Guy rained more vitriol on them. Not a peep to me.

    The upshot was that the (by then broken down) sofa stayed in the office and became a dog bed for the devolopers’s dogs.

  254. Just Here for the Llama Grooming*

    Have since retired from this job (which, to be clear, was 97% delightful, great people, good culture, interesting work, except grandboss was a lousy manager but that’s a tale for another day), but there was an epic moment involving office heat, or rather, cold:

    When I first arrived my work space (not quite an office, not quite a cubicle) next to a long-term employee who, I learned later, had a well-deserved reputation for being … let’s say tough to be around. Let’s call this person Clementina. I get along with most folks, was used to putting my head down and working, and most definitely did not want to make waves, so I could ignore the EXTREMELY LOUD VOICE (thank God for earbuds), the cranky attitude, the refusal to learn anything new even when it would have made Clementina’s job easier (not to mention that “new way” was well-entrenched and was the way the other folks with Clementina-equivalent jobs did this thing) … Okay, whatever.

    Here it’s appropriate to note that I’m typically the person who runs warm to hot — my office outfits always had layers, and even during the winter (in the Midwest) I seldom wore anything heavier than a sleeveless top with a light jacket.

    Until I sat next to Clementina. Our general area was, no lie, usually a solid ten degrees cooler than the space fifty feet away. Okay, whatever; I kept a wool jacket on my chair for when I got chilly and figured “Eh, office temps, whaddya gonna do?”

    But one day — I think I’d been there maybe three months — it was ESPECIALLY frigid. It happened that Clementina was out that day, so I couldn’t say “Hey, is it me or is it extra cold today?” I put my jacket on; I even draped a blanket over my lap, and I was still cold. Like, my hands are cold enough that it’s a bit difficult to use a keyboard. So, figuring there might be a problem with the HVAC, I called maintenance. Nice building staff guy shows up, climbs the ladder, hangs the thermometer. The air the system is blowing is 58 degrees F. “Wow, no wonder you’re cold!” He resets the air to blow 68, I thank him, put the blanket away, get back to work.

    Next day I come in, work for a while, it’s reasonably comfy (remember, I usually run hot, so it’s on the cool side, but I’m OK). BUT: evidently not for Clementina. Next thing I know she’s TALKING ON THE PHONE TO MAINTENANCE ABOUT HOW THE TEMPERATURE SETTINGS THAT SHE’S HAD FOR YEARS HAVE BEEN TAMPERED WITH!!!!!! AND THIS IS RIDICULOUS AND HOW DARE ANYONE!!!

    None of this is to my face, mind you; I was tempted to stand up and say “I’m right here!” But … wow.

    I trot down the hall to the office administrator, explain what happened; he rolls his eyes, walks me to a different space on another floor, asks if this is okay for me to work in. I accept gratefully. When IT shows up to move my computer they say “Hey, you lasted longer than anyone else has in that spot!”

    Clementina retired a few months later.

  255. Coffee please*

    We’ve got a fancy fridge that you have to push for it to open. There is an option to set it so you just pull it. Someone put a poll on slack because they wanted to have it just set as pull. We all laughed that the fridge was “dividing” the office. The girl who put the poll up started crying!

  256. Semi-retired admin*

    I think this story qualifies, marginally at least. Many years ago, when the Meredith Brooks song “I’m a Bitch, I’m a Lover” was in the top 40, I worked in the office for a quasi Christian organization. There were 4 or 5 of us who shared the office. The organization had a list of “approved” radio stations we could listen to, but no one cared whether we paid attention to the list or not. One of the people in the office would change it every morning to an unapproved station, then when that song came on, as it inevitably did, she would make a huge to-do, sighing loudly, throwing down whatever she had in her hands, storming over the radio and conspicuously changing the station. Next day, same thing.

  257. Gigi*

    Ages ago, I worked for a TV listings company in the era of TV books and the early days of online/onscreen guides. We were required to print out all of the schedules that different stations sent us, input them, write the listings, then hand over folders of the original schedules for one of our colleagues to verify everything. The CEO decided we should go paperless – not just that, but if anyone wanted paper, we had to go to his office and explain why (bonus – he lived several states away and was only in the office once or twice every few weeks). It was mass chaos as everyone got in trouble for not having out listings printed and checked, AND for trying to use paper to avoid the first trouble. It took ages for the editors to convince him that paper was still part of the process.

    The other massive overreaction I experienced there was when one of my hockey-fan colleagues got excited and added a bunch of listings for a hockey team that was moving into a new arena, so there were old venue and new venue in the system. I didn’t know or care, I chose the wrong listing to insert – about a week before the venue change, I used the new one, and (dozens? Tens? At least one) hockey fans complained to the company that their TV guides had the wrong arena listed. Ah, to have that amount of time on one’s hands.

  258. Fondu*

    I worked for a small company, and for one role, there were two people job sharing (i.e. one employee works, say, Tuesday-Thursday, the other works M-W-F). They shared a very tiny office. Employee 2 wanted to store her purse on a chair next to her during the day, and it HAD to be on a chair because “the floor is dirty,” and it couldn’t be on her desk because “clients could steal things from it” (nonprofit that was client-facing, think case management).

    Employee 1 was disabled and used crutches. With the only place Employee 2 placed her purse chair, Employee 1 couldn’t get into and around the office when she came in the next day. So she says, “Employee 2, please don’t have this chair here, I can’t get in and out of the desk.”

    Employee 2 has a meltdown.

    Employee 2 also didn’t want Employee 1 to have a mini fridge or a Keurig in there because of some nebulous concerns about nonexistent bugs. Employee 1 had those in the office because, y’know, she was disabled and it was physically painful for her to get up and walk to and from the office kitchen on the other side of the building multiple times a day, so that was her accommodation. I dunno, I just feel like it’s a special kind of jerk who tries to get a disabled person’s accommodations taken away just because you don’t want some dust getting on your purse or like, to see a food item in your office. (The office was always spotless, by the way. Any bug concerns really were specious.)

  259. TerrorCotta*

    I work in a niche industry where my team of 3-4 people craft a base “teapot” and an outside contractor makes the finishing lid. My team had been asked to start a whole new line of very dainty, fine china teapots and the first one was a huge hit. They were rolling out matching tea cups, etc, all very exciting!

    The second pot was our pride and joy. My lead designer completely outdid himself, it was the sculptor’s best work of her life, this was going to be an award winning teapot!

    Then we get the lid back, and it’s the equivalent of a terra cotta cow shaking maracas sitting on top of our prize limoge. A perfectly acceptable lid for a different kind of teapot, but completely wrong for ours. My team is heartbroken.

    I try to gently explain our disappointment to the Teapot Factory Owner, and ask if we can get another lid made. We’re not calling for blood, but we can’t even give constructive feedback because this thing JUST DOESN’T FIT THE POT.

    “Well! I’m sorry to hear that and I’ll understand if none of you ever want to make teapots again!”

    Wait what?? We love making teapots, we just–

    “No! No! You hate teapots and hate me, and hate that poor lidmaker.”

    We just wanted to make a pretty teapot! No offense to Cowman Miranda. (And yes, that WAS the final lid it shipped with, to our despair)

  260. Ama Gafr*

    The new (just over a week) team member who appeared at my desk in floods of tears because another team member had made the soup for supper, (as I had asked them to). Apparently this showed I had no respect for them or trust in their competency. And they really wanted to make the soup.

  261. Is That A Guinea Pig*

    It’s me, I’m the drama. I was running an organization in a shared building. One of the tenants allowed their employees to bring their pets to work. My team staffed the front desk and I noticed on the security camera that an employee of the other organization had a pet carrier at the front desk. This man had a hedgehog out on the reception counter! I actually didn’t even know what it was and assumed it was a Guinea pig. Instead of calmly and professionally addressing that animals could not be in the public areas of the building, I Lost. My. Mind. I ran (almost quite literally) to our landlord and caused such a ruckus that we later laughed about stressful situations being on a scale of zero to hedgehog.

  262. so very tired*

    In the early 2000s I was a file clerk for the mortgage division of a large US-based bank. I did a lot of different things with packing files to ship them to different departments, data entry, distributing faxes to everyone in the office, etc. One woman in her 40s hated everything I did. She said my clothes were too bright – I wore sweaters, button downs, and dresses in colors other than black and I did not wear anything with aggressive patterns or intense colors. I’m talking a cranberry red button down shirt or a plain royal blue sweater or a lavender dress with tiny white flowers.

    But the one thing she completely flipped out about was how one day I walked from my office area (a small two-person office with a door, I shared that space with another file clerk) to the fax room without shoes on. I had kicked off my loafers under my desk doing some data entry and just forgot to put them back on. I was wearing opaque black dress socks to walk like 15 feet across the office. Her deal was it was “unprofessional” to not wear shoes at work and customers could see me being “unprofessional” for the 35 seconds I was without shoes.

    We never had any customers in our office because we handled all back end processing stuff. No large US-based bank customer would ever see any of us, because we our office was nowhere near an actual bank branch. I guess I could see not wearing shoes as a regular occurrence but it was literally one time, and she wanted to pick on me for everything else I did.

    She made such a big deal about it to everyone else in the office that my boss eventually came by the office area and closed the door behind her. She asked what happened with the shoes, I told her, and she said not to worry about it because that woman was being a jerk and boss wanted to come by and hear it from my end. She said the closed door made it look like a serious conversation was going on to appease the jerk. Which in hindsight was cowardly because boss should have told her to cram it but I wasn’t in trouble and eventually the horrible woman went away. I don’t know if she was fired or quit or transferred or what, and I do not care. Picking on a literal 20 year old person for stuff that doesn’t matter = please kick rocks.

  263. Tenebrae*

    Not as dramatic or amusing as some of the others but a constant trial. I had a coworker who was quite immature and had a hair trigger temper. To be fair to her, I think she had a lot of stuff going on in her personal life that meant she didn’t have a lot of bandwidth left sometimes, but anything could set her off (or nothing at all – if she was stressed, she didn’t feel she needed to bother with basic politeness for me). I walked on eggshells around her. Among other highlights:

    – She refused to acknowledge my existence for two weeks (e.g. I would say hello in the morning and she’d refuse to even look up) because I was unpacking a tote box she’d used for an event and asked if an inconsequential item that belonged in my area had ended up in her tote instead because I couldn’t find it.

    – I was showing her how to attach something to an email (she wasn’t very tech savvy, which was fine, but she also wasn’t very patient, which wasn’t). She was absolutely infuriated when I explained that no, I couldn’t just attach it for her as I didn’t know where she had saved it.

    – Wanted me to find something for her. Had no other information besides that it was in a white binder and that my predecessor (who she loved) knew where it was. Told me I was incompetent when I told her I couldn’t find it because *there were no white binders in my area.* (I met the predecessor later. The contents of the white binders had all been rehoused).

    – We had moved buildings shortly after I started. It took me a year to start unpacking my area, because I was dealing with setting up every other area. She never had to come into my area for her job, never even had to see it (different floors, no overlap) which did not stop her from wandering down sometimes specifically to tell me incredibly stressful she found it and how she simply couldn’t tolerate that my area was messy.
    She never offered to help and when I completely calmly pointed out that I hadn’t had time to unpack because I was doing (phrased more diplomatically), literally everything else (including setting up her area, which she had been boasting had been finished six months ago), she told me I was acting crazy.

    – Part of her role was essentially to act as a receptionist so the front desk doubled as the front desk and her personal desk. She had a filing cabinet in which she kept her files, but also documents that other people handling the front desk might need. Someone came in for me and so I asked her to pass me Form A from the filing cabinet (a form we used all the time). Apparently she didn’t know where it was, so (in front of multiple customers!), she began aggressively flicking through all the files while loudly letting out a stream of, “F*ck, f*ck, f*cking form, f*ck this,” etc.

    She was best friends with my boss’s boss (who didn’t work in the building) so she was allowed to terrorize the rest of the staff as she pleased.

  264. OMG, Bees!*

    I am fortunate to skip out of Coffee Wars, but food has been a common enough issue, catered lunches specifically.

    As a 3rd party contractor, we had companies that would cater (or in 1 case even make their own food) and had various rules on who could eat it. 1 company allowed everyone to eat until 1 time they ran out of food and our contractor had some before an employee. Provide more food next time? Nope, solution was to ban contractors from lunches.

    Another, the one that runs a catering business, makes their own food, and groceries, flopped over the years. I finally got an employee discount (if I didn’t buy too much) only after I came in to an after hours emergency of a POS (cash register) down. But I still wasn’t to eat the food they made in the catering dept despite that being in a different part of the city in a food desert (fortunately the site manager there has a heart and allowed it).

    I have been skeptical, tho grateful, of companies offering free lunch ever since.

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