Tales From Work

[shenjoku]

Geez, my work experience seems so tame compared to all of these O.o Nothing interesting ever happens to me lol.

Only thing I can think of is that when I used to work at Fry's grocery store back in high-school I found a playboy calendar still sealed in shrinkwrap in one of the shopping carts. It was out in the open lot late at night when I was just putting carts away like usual. I took it home and gave it to my older brother for his birthday XD

[Charu]

Ah, it's been a week since I made this thread. Now it's time to share another story from this beautiful place, dohoho.

*ahem*

SO

One of other favorites to tell happened on a Wednesday before the clock struck noon...

...So walking around helping students like I usually do until this black chick comes up and asks how to go about printing. I tell her the usual spiel. "Print card, put money if want more, 10 cents a page, yada yada yada."

So alright, cool, tell her this and I go and continue helping others while going back to my desk and twiddling my fingers and playing some dank minesweeper. Then... she comes up again of course and asks me, "How do I print in color?"

Of course I then explain to her how and that it's 30 cents a page then and I offer to let me help her set up a document so it's not ALL pages since the machine won't know that a single black and white page is still... a single black and white page.

She says, "No, that's fine, I want everything in color."

Oh boy, so I sit back down and notice she was adding money like crazy to her card. Like I'm talking +$20 or something.

Later I find out why, she decided to print out this 100 page whatever, ALL IN COLOR and then ONE PAGE that was supposedly black and white.

So she gets her color pages... except for the black and white one.

She starts fuming.

"WHERE'S MY PAPER?"

She demands me to come over and take a look at the printer that supposedly "ate her money".

"WHERE'S MY PAPER, THIS PRINTER JUST ATE 10 CENTS!"

"Calm down, you probably didn't actually print it."

"NO, I DEFINITELY PRINTED IT, IT TOOK MY 10 CENTS!"

"M'am, the printer can't choose what it wants to print. If you did see it, it most likely didn't go through and didn't charge you."

"IT ATE MY 10 CENTS, I DEMAND COMPENSATION"

"M'am, if you just..."

She then punches the printer as hard as she could (...probably not because it's still here and working, but it was a hard hit) and glares at me like I'm the one being unreasonable right now.

H O L Y s H i T e

"Okay, let me go get my superiors."

"You go do that," she responded.

So I go and do just that. I went and told one of the clerks the situation. We came back out and the clerk tried to same spiel I did. Of course now it was more hushed up and somewhat actually polite.

The clerk ended up just not wanting to deal with her and told me to just give her a free card and be done with it. So I go and do that, as the clerk returns to his desk, and give it to her with the most robotic stare I could give her.

She takes it, smiles, and then walks off saying. "MmHMM, that's right, can't be losing money, nu-uh. I gots a family to feed."

. . .

. . .

. . .

triggered

[inDheart]

Originally Posted by Charu

Of course I then explain to her how and that it's 30 cents a page then and I offer to let me help her set up a document so it's not ALL pages since the machine won't know that a single black and white page is still... a single black and white page.

She says, "No, that's fine, I want everything in color."

Oh boy, so I sit back down and notice she was adding money like crazy to her card. Like I'm talking +$20 or something.

Later I find out why, she decided to print out this 100 page whatever, ALL IN COLOR and then ONE PAGE that was supposedly black and white.
[...]
She takes it, smiles, and then walks off saying. "MmHMM, that's right, can't be losing money, nu-uh. I gots a family to feed."

...

how the what...

i think you've entered bizarro printer world, charu. that is like the exact opposite print job from the one you'd want if you were trying to save money.

curiosity, was it like a full-color document to start? having trouble thinking of 100-page full color things that would need to stay in color, besides some specialty books

[Charu]

No, majority of it was, as I said, black and white text. So she wasted a whole lot of money, heh.

[Izzy]

A number of people were laid off at work a couple days ago. Apparently sales was failing to meet the necessary goals. Our development team is basically now a support team. =(

[trumaestro]

So Wing Wednesday is a pretty popular promotion.

And when you pick what you thought was a good time to clean the fryers and wrong

[Wineandbread]

I'll tell a #talesfromgradschool

A colleague in my lab group was replacing the nitrogen tank in his lab. It's in the basement by the microscopy area, and has to go 4 floors up by elevator.

As he's entering the elevator, one of the lab technicians walks to the elevator as well. We're talking a balding, mid 40s-looking French guy who doesn't dress particularly well.

My lab colleague hits the button for gas tank floor. This dude proceeds to press all the buttons, leave before the doors close, and tells him "have fun".

Apparently the technicians were testing the fact that the magnetic interference of the nearest elevator was affecting one of the high end electron microscopes, and they correlate the effect with what floor the elevator was on.

10/10 would be a dick and press all the buttons on the elevator again

[MarioNintendo]

I realized the code I've been working on for 2-3 days wasn't working because I was passing a char as an int to some variable (1 vs '1').

...

I do enjoy reading the stories in this thread

[TheThong]

Omg Charu. Kill the bitch. I would've been so annoyed at the last comment haha.

I had patient recently who came in due to being sexually inappropriate and aggressive / violent towards staff. Not a huge story, he was very entertaining on my shift actually. Was eating the gloves, made a bandana out of the gloves, turned his top into a 'bra top' and would folded everything in the room.

I'll tell you guys about when I used to work at a restaurant as well. I was the manager for the morning shift, myself and another staff member had to prepare for the day. Usually we leave the front door locked, cos we get so many customers coming in that think we're open.

So we open at 11am, and it's only 10.30am. At this stage, most things have been prepared but we have no money in the til, so I'm just about to go to the bank. This man walks in as I tell him we open at 11.

He proceeds to say, 'can't I just order now?'

I reply, 'sorry, we don't have any money in the til and are still preparing for the day. We open in half an hour if you would like to come back then?'

He continues to question (multiple x) why he can't order and I repeat the same answer. (In my head I'm thinking, Omg this is wasting my time I'd probably be done with prep by now). When he finally goes, I go to the bank.

It is now 1040am, and it takes 15 minutes from waiting in line to getting the money sorted. When I get back to the restaurant, it's 1055am. My other colleague tells me the same guy came back at 1050 and demanded that she serve him, while she tells him there's no money in the till and that we aren't open, storms out.

Anyway, he didn't come back at proper opening time.

The next day, my regional manager comes in to work with me and tells me I received a customer complaint! (this is my first one btw).

The email basically said that I was rude, treated him like a dog, and kicked him out the restaurant. Wtf.

[Dinglesberry]

Originally Posted by MarioNintendo

I realized the code I've been working on for 2-3 days wasn't working because I was passing a char as an int to some variable (1 vs '1').

...

I do enjoy reading the stories in this thread

>That feel when ur coding in php cause who needs variable types amirite

<?php

$option = 2;

switch($option) {
  case "2 is this really a case of two or is it a random string":
    echo "First option chosen";
    break;
  case 2:
    echo "Second option chosen";
    break;
}

Output
First option chosen

[Arntonach]

@TheThong you need to clarify that you're closed. Like specifically say "We're closed".

[TheThong]

Originally Posted by Arntonach

@TheThong you need to clarify that you're closed. Like specifically say "We're closed".

There's a sign at the front that says we're closed, and also on the windows it says our opening times. When the guy came in, I told him we weren't open straight away so that's pretty obvious for a nice way of saying ' we're closed'. The guy was an ass anyway, so nothing I said would've worked. We had plenty of other customers who would come in at an early time too, and do the same thing and when I told them we weren't open until 11am, they'd just be like ' ok' and come back then.

[FoJaR]

i worked at the cafeteria in college for a semester and one time i got to make rice crispy treats. it was NOT FUN. had to stir up a giant pot of them with literally a canoe paddle. they were tasty though.

hmmmmmmm one time when i worked installing closet shelving units we were out in the country and the lady left just the biggest revolver sitting on a chair right by the front door. must have been a 44mag. thing was huge. i guess they were far enough west that it wasnt a thing to just leave a gun out when you have strangers working in your house. weird.

also i used to do phone surveys and it got to the point where i could read a book and conduct a survey and record responses all pretty much at the same time. but doing secret shopping for fedex kinkos was much better because they put you on hold so much i got a ton of reading done. also i was a badass secret shopper.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm when i worked in the meat department of a grocery store i would clean the meat room every day before i left, all the saws, the grinder, hose down the various puddles of blood and goop etc. never buy anything on manager's special and always smell your meat before you buy it. unless of course you have an iron stomach. in that case do what you want but definitely cook things well done.

[botchi246]

My first job was working at Target as an overnight stalker. This Target hadnt opened yet, so we basically stocked the whole store. Plenty of interesting people and stories from that job. It was from 9pm - 6am.

The sleeper stories:

So we had this big black guy that worked with us, and I am talking big! Like 300lbs, 6'6" at least, a bear of a man. Every time after we finished unloading the trucks he would mysteriously disappear before setting the store up to put the product on the shelf. Eventually we found out that he was going to the bathroom and passing out in there for hours at a time. He got fired. I didn't care, let the big man sleep!

We had another employee who was tall and gangly. Never smelled good and liked to hang out in the freezer doing that stuff. So one time, he was in the freezer doing his thing and the manager called him out to go stock paper towels and toilet paper and whatnot. Well we all know that when you come in from outside from cold weather into a warm place, you get comfortable and tired. Well this guy was in the aisle and literally fell asleep standing up and fell back over some paper towels! He was literally a human scorpion and still asleep! I don't know why he got fired, but he was hilarious.

[lofty rhino]

Originally Posted by choof

my current coworker is a great dude, actually
he told me a story about how he beat the shit out of illegal immigrants with a 2x4 back when he was working in construction
he regularly calls black dudes "******s"
he makes jokes about women in front of customers and sometimes they reference my sister (who he's dating)

great dude

i'm pretty certain he has the same intelligence level as a glass of wendy's iced tea

Seems well-adjusted.

I worked at a grocery store as a cashier one summer and there was a pretty insufferable dude there.

He would constantly hit on middle-aged women, most of which left feeling berated.

He would call me over to show me the drugs he had in his pockets and continually wink at me from across like five registers afterwards.

On one occasion there was a woman with an Australlian accent who he kept referring to as English.
He mimicked her accent by using stereotypical British phrases.
She got aggravated and eventually just stopped responding.

When he finished ringing her up, he let her go with a "cheerio!"
Her face was pretty priceless.

[Dynam0]

I used to work for the water and sewer dept. of my city as a summer student, depending on which crew you were on you would either be bored our of your tree or working your balls off (I preferred the latter because the day would fly by).

I was with the capital projects crew for about two full summers, basically they would be contracted to install large sections of water/sewer services or replace an existing street that is particularly old (80+ years in some cases, some water mains are so corroded and barnacled, the inner diameters are reduced to the size of a garden hose, you'd find tons of liquor bottles from guys getting drunk on the job too).

-So one summer we were in a more run-down area of downtown for a few weeks; most people would avoid the job site but just being in that area you see some funny stuff. One day a bicyclist decided they would bike over a bunch of fencing that was on the ground rather than simply go around it and they ended up eating it really bad. Everyone stopped working and asked if he was okay, he didn't seem like it but just got back on his bike and booked it away. Pretty lucky because everyone sues the city for shit lol.

-Another day some guy who is absolutely plastered (it's like 10:00am) comes up to the hole asking for a smoke. Everyone shakes their head and tries to avoid talking to him, he turns to me and starts yelling some gibberish and almost falls into the hole (which is full of sewage). I grab him and get him turned back toward the sidewalk where he decides to lay down behind a bush and take a nap. About 30 mins later he gets up and asks everyone again for a smoke, we ignore him. He calls us assholes and stumbles on his way down the sidewalk, literally makes it one block before a cop pulls over and arrests him.

-Another time we literally had a police chase through the job site which was insane because the first car almost drove right into the hole and would've killed half the crew, he fishtailed and went onto the sidewalk, the cop didn't even slow down, it was nuts.

-Different location but one of the excavators was moving some dirt beside me and another worker and caught a set of power lines with his boom (that weren't live), we tried yelling at him but he didn't notice and kept turning the machine, the wires went taut and it caused the top of the telephone pole to snap right off and nearly crush me and the other guy, it ended up staying hanging from the wires but yeah, final destination style lol

-Countless shit stories

[Gundam-Dude]

My first job ever was working as a dairy clerk at a grocery store for several years, usually closing shifts. Stuff I've experienced, witnessed, heard, etc.:

· Store had a sale on 500ml 35% Whipping Cream and before store closing, this lady came in and wanted to buy a minimum of 200 cartons. She explained that her son ran a bakery and needed a fuck load of whipping cream for cheap, and apparently my store had the best sale price at the time. A single milk crate holds 16 cartons, but you can fit up to 28 cartons by putting a second row of 3 directly on top of the bottom layer. That being said, I basically toss 13 crates into her shopping cart and she proceeds to go checkout. After closing hours, my manager comes up to me and instructs me to pull every 500ml 35% whipping cream carton off the display shelves because customers had been complaining that the cream we had been selling had a foul smell, which could only be described as rotten eggs. So essentially the supplier issued a massive recall because the products were somehow contaminated. tl;dr version, I unknowingly sold 200+ cartons of 35% whipping cream that smelled like rotten eggs to a customer. gg man gg

· I've witnessed both my manager and an undercover cop chase after a guy from inside the store out to the parking lot because the guy tried stealing $200 worth of meat. At the time of the incident, I was outside bringing back shopping carts into the store, so I basically had a front row seat to the fiasco.

· Interacting with high as fuck shoppers during evening hours of April 20th. Most of the questions that I can recall are people asking me where something is when it's right in front of them in their line of sight.

· Countless incidents of seeing pre-teen/teenage boys bawling their eyes out in the manager's office begging my manager/colleague not to tell their parents or call the cops because they tried to shoplift and got caught in the act.

· Being heckled one night for about 10 minutes by a black dude that didn't believe my real first name was a generic "white" name as opposed to a Chinese/Asian one. He saw my name tag and absolutely refused to believe that was my actual name????????????

· Their was an incident that happened at the store where a customer filed a complaint because someone had stolen approximately $300 from her purse which was left unattended in her shopping cart. Upon reviewing security footage, it turned out that one of the store's employee's, who was trusted enough to have key access to the cash office for several years, had stolen they money. Said person instantly got fired, but the fact that someone trusted enough not to be stupid enough to steal ended up doing just that, just not from the store but a customer instead.

· Several incidents of dumbass employees being fired for being caught shoplifting, either by security footage or in-the-act. A lot of these people I've worked with for several years and never would've imagined them committing the acts. smh fam

· This happened fairly recently (last year?) but my manager had told me that a couple of our newly hired cashiers were gullible enough to make change for $50 in counterfeit U.S. money. Now let me explain that this counterfeit money was literally printed on a shitty home office inkjet printer on regular 20lb bond paper, and not one but TWO of the cashiers were completely oblivious to that and gave the guy free money. Both cashiers played the whole ignorance card, claiming "they didn't know how to tell apart counterfeit money" so they only got a slap on the wrist with a 2–3 week suspension from work shift scheduling instead of getting fired. Are you fucking kidding me? smh fam

· Me, being the only person in my department that performs date checks, pulling off thousands of dollars worth of product from the sales floor that end up being thrown straight into the garbage/garbage chute.

· I've witnessed an improperly tied cardboard bale literally explode. My coworker spent over an hour cleaning up the mess he had caused.

More to add to this grocery store workplace later on if I can recall more.

I'll make some posts later on that cover more recent workplace stories, such as stuff I've run into throughout the years as a freelance, part-time, and full-time graphic designer, and my current job at a print shop.

I've also got plenty of workplace FUCK UP stories, but idk if this is the right thread to be posting/confessing those in, lol .

[Charu]

Originally Posted by Gundam-Dude

I've also got plenty of workplace FUCK UP stories, but idk if this is the right thread to be posting/confessing those in, lol .

I say share. I mean, I said both highs and lows!

[Poison-]

I used to work at a bar where the majority of the crowd was 30+. I was groped, spanked and hit on every night. At first I thought it was pretty flattering, but after a few weeks it became a negative part of my job

[DarknessXoXLight]

Not very extensive, just stupid. Happened yesterday.
Three 14 year old boys come into Gamestop and start asking if they can take stuff for free. My coworker and I play along at first because they aren't harming anybody and they're just kids so whatevs but then they start following customers and yelling and telling them not to shop with us. We tell them to stop but they basically go 'what're you gonna do if we don't?'
I mean.. I'm tired kid, I'm paid very little lmfao I ain't dealing with you. So they stopped for a bit and we finished helping everybody until they're the only ones left in the store.
We close in like 15 minutes so I'm not too concerned but then they start picking up some of the loot merch we have, throwing it around the store, wearing some of the hats/clothes we have for sale, and end up breaking a display.
At this point I'm not having it anymore, too bad so sad that you're kids, you're kicked out. So we told them to leave. They do, but then they hang out in front of the store blocking the door so another customer can't come in. So I go out there and tell them we will call the cops if they don't leave.
They disappear for like five minutes but come back right before we lock up with cameras and start recording us. This is where I draw the line because we've had a real problem with people recording employees so it's just 100% not tolerated. They start asking us whether we're feminists, whether we're lesbians, why we work for such an awful company. Real original ya toddlers i hope your youtube video gets a billion views for being so hilarious. I'm really tired kid. Cops show up, now they're banned. lel