Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I figured I have to tell some people this.
I was working the register at my cafeteria. A women with her child who must be 5-6 comes up and buys something. Normal. Until this happened. she asked If we could watch her kid while she goes smoke a cigerette(The only place to smoke is a 15 minute walk) I obviously tell her no. She gets mad and starts saying some gak like how she pays my salary. As luck would have it my boss walks up with the campus police who just happened to be there. I promptly point "No, He does" She leaves before anything else is said and I go on my break.

I know alot of dakka has stories like this or worse. Let them loose

I knew a guy that worked at Mcdonalds who used to put pubes in the hamburgers.

Worth 15 dollars an hour AM I RITE?


When I worked at Walgreens people used to take dumps on the floor.

Clean a woman's public restroom. It will turn your hair grey overnight.

 Frazzled wrote:
Clean a woman's public restroom. It will turn your hair grey overnight.

I did... spent an entire summer working at a summer camp, part of my daily duties (hehe duty) was to clean the mens and womens bathrooms before and after every meal... It was terrible... I disliked that job so much I signed back on for another year to teach 11 year olds how to tie knots... and then worked there for another 4 years

I did it an amusement park. wo...

I worked at a Dollar General for two years while I was in college. It was a decent part-time job at the time, but I certainly had my share of experiences.

We had one particular lady that was notorious for complaining about EVERYTHING. One of my favorite stories was when she flipped her lid when we didn't have the kind of cat litter her cats liked...and she had to drive allllll the way to Walmart (four miles away) to get the kind she needed, or else her cats would poop all over the house. I explained that it was a Sunday, and we receive our supply truck on Monday mornings, but that didn't change a thing! A lot of the customers were really shocked haha.

Another lady had a bill over $120, and remembered about all her coupons AFTER she paid for all the stuff. Mind you, I was the only employee in the store at the time, and I was slammed at the register...and she wanted me to a return on everything, and re-ring it all. Yeah, that didn't happen, and she was "so upset". Luckily, she was a regular, and just them a different day.

Ha, then there was a lady that gave me a $100 for a total that was only a few dollars, but the kicker was she would ask for a specific way to give her the change back. And she kept changing it. Luckily, I've heard about this tactic, and people use it to confuse cashiers to giving people more money than what they're actually due. After the fourth time, I gave her the easiest way, and told her to deal with it since I had people in line.

Those are the decent ones that come to mind...since I live in a college suburb, we mostly had stay-at-home mom's and retired people that came into our store, so it wasn't too crazy (most of the time).


Edit - Ah! Can't forget about DayQuil Guy! He used to always come in and buy two bottle of the stuff every couple of days. Once he actually came in, still drunk off it, and told me how I was "such an awesome dude". He was slurring so badly, it sounded like he was speaking in cursive. Luckily, he lived in the apartments down the street, and always walked to the store.

Worked in retail at KB Toys and had a customer come in when Marvel Legends was doing its Villain line, and he yelled at me about how Abomination was going to be the most popular figure in the line. I tried to explain politely how he was competing against Green Goblin for popularity, and the guy flipped out. It was interesting, to say the least.

Also worked in a restaurant where the owner ordered you to show up 15 mins before your shift started, but not clock in until it started. He stole 15 mins from each employee, each day.

The. I also worked in a college dining hall where one of my bosses was my ex gf's older brother. When he gave me attitude, I informed him I used to nail his sister. That was a pretty fun retail/food experience though.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also worked in a restaurant where the owner ordered you to show up 15 mins before your shift started, but not clock in until it started. He stole 15 mins from each employee, each day

This employer behavior is terrible. Was the person ever reported for doing that?

Who are you going to report him to?

 Frazzled wrote:
Who are you going to report him to?

Department of Labor I'd imagine. Seems like a violation to me.

Saint Peter

"Sorry our policy is you have to show up 15 minutes early."

 Ma55ter_fett wrote:
Saint Peter

"Sorry our policy is you have to show up 15 minutes early."

But isn't that illegal? Just because it's his policy doesn't mean it's not breaking any laws.

Maybe I'm missing something here

Worked as the graveyard bellman at the Clarion hotel on Canal street in New Orleans.
One morning at 2 o'clock, I heard the desk manager yelling my name in a panic. I ran into the empty lobby to see a gunman pulling down on a security guard. Not wanting to see anyone get shot, I clipped the guy behind the knees, dropping him facedown on the floor. I followed up by joint locking his legs to the pointhe began screaming in pain and threw his pistol away. I held him in that lock until the police came a few minutes later to take him away. It took two officers to carry him out of the building because he was unable to walk.
A couple weeks later at around the same time of the morning, I ended up fighting a couple guys with knives on the street in front of the hotel. But that is a story for another time...

I once worked in a Sainsburys, and while the tobacco kiosk was the most enjoyable (or less despairing) job, some of the absolute morons I'd get honestly wanted me to blow my brains out. It wasn't necessarily their stupidity, but their rudeness as well really did it.

- Some guy and his teenage son comes up to the counter, and I hear the guy whisper to his son "Which ones?", to which I hear the reply "Marlboro". The guy asks for a pack of Marlboro, so I refuse on the suspicion that he's buying for a minor, perfectly valid and legal thing to do. The guy blows a gasket and throws his shopping at me before storming off.

- One woman comes into the store and asks for *every* pack of Dunhill cigarettes that we have. Fair enough, comes to about £100. About an hour later another woman comes in and asks for a couple of packs of Dunhill, but we've sold out obviously. The concept that we have no more left didn't appear to hit her, and for about 10 mins I'm being interrorgated by this woman, demanding where the rest of the stock is when I'm showing her that the shelf is empty.

These cases, and many others weren't helped by the fact that the supervisors didn't have a spine between them, and would gladly belittle their staff, not bother to back us up when needed, because Sainsburys in particular are incredibly anal about their appearence and ridiculously high standards that border on the asinine and in some cases unbelieveably unethical. ¬¬

 Valkyrie wrote:
I once worked in a Sainsburys, and while the tobacco kiosk was the most enjoyable (or less despairing) job, some of the absolute morons I'd get honestly wanted me to blow my brains out. It wasn't necessarily their stupidity, but their rudeness as well really did it.

- Some guy and his teenage son comes up to the counter, and I hear the guy whisper to his son "Which ones?", to which I hear the reply "Marlboro". The guy asks for a pack of Marlboro, so I refuse on the suspicion that he's buying for a minor, perfectly valid and legal thing to do. The guy blows a gasket and throws his shopping at me before storming off.

- One woman comes into the store and asks for *every* pack of Dunhill cigarettes that we have. Fair enough, comes to about £100. About an hour later another woman comes in and asks for a couple of packs of Dunhill, but we've sold out obviously. The concept that we have no more left didn't appear to hit her, and for about 10 mins I'm being interrorgated by this woman, demanding where the rest of the stock is when I'm showing her that the shelf is empty.

These cases, and many others weren't helped by the fact that the supervisors didn't have a spine between them, and would gladly belittle their staff, not bother to back us up when needed, because Sainsburys in particular are incredibly anal about their appearence and ridiculously high standards that border on the asinine and in some cases unbelieveably unethical. ¬¬

Reminds me when I was a Customer Service Manager at Walmart when I was 18

Worked for good ol Carl's JR (did not make 15 an hour sadly) way back in the day. Second day in i was taking orders, customer came in hardly spoke the english. He requestd light mayo i thought he said extra. He kept repeating it so i made it a point to get to the back and dump mayo on the burger. Well..... 10 min or so he comes up to me and with a mayo smile and mayo all over his nose. I guess the guy wanted no mayo so i goofed. He was yelling and swinging the burger around getting it all over the place. It was in his haird up his nose guy was having a blast with it i guess. Any how he threw the burger in the trash yelled some gak in spanish and got into the ice cream van he rolled in on. I was given a write up and i quite that day after placing an order for six number four meal that i paid nothing for.

I worked at a Denny's. Our manager was...a sociopath. My first experience with him was when I was ordered to mix up some ranch dressing. I went and pulled him aside to tell him on the QT that I had seen roaches in the tub of dressing mix, to which he responded (as though I were the biggest fool on earth): "So? Pick 'em out!"

In any event, I worked night shift. As the only 24-7 restaurant in the area, we catered to a large number of strip clubs. One of them frequently hosted 'special VIP guests' (usually porn stars). In any event, one night, a large number of strippers came in, after hours, with some porn star I didn't recognize. Their table, at some point in the evening, requested a whole cucumber from the kitchen. I complied because the strippers always tipped EXTREMELY well. Now, I won't elaborate, but...things were done, horrible things...to this cucumber. After they'd left (and tossed me almost fifty dollars in combined tips) I went to bus the table. As I was poking the cucumber into the tub with a spoon, aforementioned manager came by and looked at me in horror.

"What are you doing?" he asked. "Take that back to the kitchen! That cucumber is still perfectly good!"

Wait...noticing that your location is in Illinois, is that restaurant near Sauget, Il? Just wondering, because there are plenty of strip clubs near that area, and some are...not the best

Nope, that would be farther south. But, pretty much once you get south of 64, all the strip clubs get kind of horrific.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I worked at a Denny's. Our manager was...a sociopath. My first experience with him was when I was ordered to mix up some ranch dressing. I went and pulled him aside to tell him on the QT that I had seen roaches in the tub of dressing mix, to which he responded (as though I were the biggest fool on earth): "So? Pick 'em out!"

I have a friend who got fired from a job because of a manager like this. What happened was the burger meat had been out for a while and wouldn't be any good so they went to toss it and instead got told off by the manager (who happens to of course be a complete bitch ). Since unfair dismissal laws stop her from just firing him cause she feels like it she had to write a formal complaint and then never send it to him thus meaning he never acknowledged it or something like that and with picking him up on some more made up crap meant she could legitimately fire him for trying to do his job properly and not give random people food poisoning.

Needless to say either that place didn't have any customers or they made her walk by the end of it.

We had a lotto fund here at work, everyone who wanted to threw in a couple of dollars every week, and the lady who ran it would go out and buy a ticket. After about six months people started commenting that the tickets bought cost a lot less than the number of people contributing. The lady was asked to explain, refused to comment and went home sick. She didn't come in for the rest of the week, during which time some people went and checked the tickets she'd bought, and it turns out a couple of them had wins she didn't tell us about.

When she returned to work she was told people were willing to put it behind them, if she could explain what happened and return the money, but said she had no idea what had happened, but she hadn't taken the money, and it must have just slipped her mind not to tell us about the winning tickets. She said she would give us the money for the winning tickets, but never did.

Because it was an out of work social activity, our employer didn't act on the matter. It was only a few months later, when she was flatly refusing to take on any kind of new work (there's a lot of load sharing in finance here), that it was determined that the work environment was unacceptable to everyone involved, and she was transferred. And then transferred again, and one more time, before being put on unpaid leave.

The total stolen from the lotto fund was about $500. For this she's given up probably in excess of $30,000 in wages, and still counting.


There's also a guy who's been put on two warnings for personal hygiene. Everyone is happy with his work, the guy just stinks, and stinks so bad that its worth firing him over.


Oh, and there's a guy who claimed that when the attack on Iraq started the Australian army personally requested for him to return and recommence his duties as a sniper. The guy is probably in his mid 50s.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

 Ma55ter_fett wrote:
Saint Peter

"Sorry our policy is you have to show up 15 minutes early."

But isn't that illegal? Just because it's his policy doesn't mean it's not breaking any laws.

Maybe I'm missing something here

You aren't. It's both totally illegal, and the status quo for the call centers I and other family members have worked at in the past. They expect you to be ready to take calls when your shift starts, but to do so, you must spent 10 or 15 minutes getting your computer booted up and all your programs ready, which they tell you to do before you come in.

AT&T had a huge lawsuit against them over this very thing; and AT&T took the stance that "it wasn't really working" since they'd start their computer and then get some water or coffee while they waited for it to boot up. At some point they looked over at their legal department, all of whom where frantically making that shaking their head no expression emphatically, and then decided to settle it instead, wisely. Which is unfortunate for the industry as a whole since it would have pointed to a pretty easy precedent - though one I don't believe is needed.

I had one manager who tried to pull this on me, and I emailed her that I'd be happy to come in 15 minutes early unpaid every day as she requested so long as I got that in writing, and I CC'd HR. She was at my desk 5 minutes later telling me to be sure I put it on my timecard.

My advice if your job is doing this to you is to call the Department of Labor. There is no reason that you should be working an extra 65 hours a year unpaid; and since all the employees present are doing so, it's enough of a violation that the DOL should be pretty interested.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also worked in a restaurant where the owner ordered you to show up 15 mins before your shift started, but not clock in until it started. He stole 15 mins from each employee, each day.

I don't feel sorry for you on this one. When I taught at my local union's apprenticeship school, that is one thing I would drill into new apprentices from day one: If you aren't at least 15 minutes early, you're late.

A long time ago, in my high school days, I worked at Wal-Mart; it was absolutely miserable in every way. Once I had a guy threaten to fight me because, even though he was blocking the entire aisle with his cart, I walked past his wife without saying "excuse me," even though I did. Then another time I had a huge line in my checkout lane and a woman of larger carriage became downright belligerent with me the woman in front of her in line had Little Debbie snack cakes but when she was in the food section there were none of the shelf. She insisted I call the guy who works in the food section to have more brought to her in line. I explained to her that it was store policy to stock food as soon as it arrived off the truck. She refused to believe me so I called the guy working that section and had him confirm what I said. She again refused to believe me and after insulting me and accusing me of lying, she proceeded to spend the rest of her time at my register giving me a death-stare. She also paid with a check.

After 16 years retail.....how much stuff can i post??

-80 year old lady comes out of the rest room. 'Mam you have something stuck to your foot" (some TP) ladies responce " off"
-Some lady left her kids in the store for 3 hours while she was in the mall. Local police had her crying when she left the office
-Some ware house truck loader dumped in our truck
-Black Friday lady runs in screaming 'where the is GIJoe"
-found questionable web pages posted all over the store on a Friday the 13th.
-gun pulled on my by a shoplifter
-doors are locked = store closed but people have to test them all the same
-'Put that refridgerator size piece of furniture on the roof of my car'
-'Put that 100 pound basket ball hoop on the leather back seat of my Lexus'
-'how do i get downstairs to store X' (You have no idea how bad i wanted to say jump and let gravity work for you)
-store above us had their toliet back up and come through the drop ceiling
-despite the sale sign having dates on it when sale ends...'when does this sale end?'
-'What do you mean I cant park in the fire lane while you load my car'
-'can you transfer my call to the other store' 3 cites away.
-person 'carry this to my car' me'ok where did you park?" person 'i dont know. lets take a walk'
-'me 'that will be $6.35 mam' {pays with $100} 'do you have anything smaller??' 'no' me 'ok I think I can handle this change' 2 10s, 14 5s, 3 ones and change later "found a 10"
-another person paid with a $100- I use the money marker (always on 50s and 100s) and it goes black. person 'I just got paid with it its good. black ink with the marker means its good'

There are more but sleep bekeons. More retail fun Tuesday. Sadly if I every win the lottery I may not be able to leave as I have the health insurance for the family. If I could leave, my departure would be EPIC.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also worked in a restaurant where the owner ordered you to show up 15 mins before your shift started, but not clock in until it started. He stole 15 mins from each employee, each day.

I don't feel sorry for you on this one. When I taught at my local union's apprenticeship school, that is one thing I would drill into new apprentices from day one: If you aren't at least 15 minutes early, you're late.

Did you read the part where he didn't get paid for this time in early?

Worst customer I had while working at Taco Bell was a family who'd come in once a week. The mom would make the order, we'd make it for them, and they'd get it, go eat it 3/4 of it, then she'd come back up and demand we remake the entire thing because it wasn't how she ordered it.

Happened all the time. I wanted to curb stomp the woman.

 Ouze wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also worked in a restaurant where the owner ordered you to show up 15 mins before your shift started, but not clock in until it started. He stole 15 mins from each employee, each day.

I don't feel sorry for you on this one. When I taught at my local union's apprenticeship school, that is one thing I would drill into new apprentices from day one: If you aren't at least 15 minutes early, you're late.

Did you read the part where he didn't get paid for this time in early?

Yes and I still don't feel sorry him. If you aren't early, you're late.

Worked at a roadhouse:

Had a co-worker where if you so much as got within 4 feet of in front of "her way" she would yell "move it dipsh#$". I tended to go slower...

Had the father, daughter and her daughter all work at the place. Each had a different style and management expectations. Imagine the chaos.

Had a co-worker where she was amazing looking (not the angry one) horrible waitress, forgot everything, still made double my tips in half the time.

Had a "bar-room brawl" break out. Actually had some regulars "got my back" made sure they were treated right (more-so) from then-on, it was rather touching.

Another co-worker (a guy) had a table walk out on him, $250 bill, management tried to make him pay it. All waiting staff said he does not pay and maybe they should figure out how to avoid this or we all walk out.

Had a person named "Harley" work there. This was a woman with some "hygiene issues". She was our cook. The aroma was not the food.

Had a bunch of girls from the local university on a "girls night out".
They proceeded at every opportunity to try to remove my clothing rather forcibly.
I felt it very strange that it was not enjoyable. Had the "package" handled till it hurt (why did they have to squeeze so hard especially with a full tray of drinks?)
That was about the strangest moment.

I work 4 days a week. That adds up to an hour of time I dont get paid. 4 hours a month. That is time I dont get paid. I might arrive 5 minutes early, but my work is lucky if I do more then just stick my head under the soda fountain and just let the stuff pour into my throat for five minutes

 Ouze wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Also worked in a restaurant where the owner ordered you to show up 15 mins before your shift started, but not clock in until it started. He stole 15 mins from each employee, each day.

I don't feel sorry for you on this one. When I taught at my local union's apprenticeship school, that is one thing I would drill into new apprentices from day one: If you aren't at least 15 minutes early, you're late.

Did you read the part where he didn't get paid for this time in early?

The guy owned 4 restaurants in town, he is/was the second richest guy who lived there. I was also 19 at the time and didn't want to make waves. As an actual adult now, I'd say something. And I believe in being early to work-I don't like arriving "on time," as I agree, that's the equivalent to being late. But, being required to be to work 15 minutes early, PLUS actually do 15 minutes of work off the clock every day...bad idea. I'd asked the manager (not the owner) about the legality of it, and her response was "do you really think YOU have a chance trying to sue HIM? Just deal with it." Summer job, as soon as college was back in session, I bolted. Girlfriend that I loved at the time (the girl I mentioned earlier who was the sister of my future boss) plus warhammer required dealing with crap to have enjoyment.