I worked the IT helpdesk at my office complex. I had a ticket assigned to me where I had to phone the user and check if the problem was fixed. I called him to ask.

User: “Oh, I’m driving at the moment.”

Me: “Ha, I guess that means you can’t check your computer. Can I schedule a call with you for when you’re back in your office later?”

We scheduled it for that afternoon. After I ended the call, a bunch of managers jumped on my call notes.

Manager #1: “It’s unacceptable that the ticket is still active.”

Manager #2: “It looks bad for our metrics.”

Me: “He was driving!”

Manager #1: “Then you should have cancelled the ticket because the client was ‘refusing assistance’. This really doesn’t look good for your numbers.”

Me: “Is my job to fix people’s computers? Or is it to make the stats look good?”

Both managers had to think about that for a minute, which was worrying in itself.

I had a woman complaining that her blackened white fish was over-seasoned. I looked at it, and yes, I could clearly see by looking, that she was telling the truth, and it was definitely over-seasoned. So, I told her that I would take it off of her bill, and offered to get her a new piece of fish.

Customer: “Here. Taste it and see for yourself.”

Me: “No, you’re right. I can see from here that it’s over-seasoned. As I said, I’m not going to charge you for it.”

Customer: “Well, I think you should taste it.”

Me: “No need to, ma’am. Would you like me to get you another piece of fish?”

Customer: *Getting aggressive.* “Take. A. Bite!”

I’m a vegan and haven’t eaten meat in about eight years.

Me: “Ma’am. I don’t eat meat. Besides, I’ve already told you that I’m taking it off of your bill.”

Customer: “Then take a bite, chew it, and spit it out! No one asked you to swallow!”

I was a supervisor in a large(ish) call center that, at the time of this event, was in-person in the office. The company used to have a very strict dress code, which included things like no jeans, no long hair for men, and no visible tattoos, etc. This was stupid, as it was a call center where we never saw anyone, and it was even in a separate building from the “corporate” office.

One day the dress code was finally updated so that clothing, including jeans, could be worn as long as they didn’t have any holes, anyone could have long hair and color it however they wanted, and tattoos could be shown as long as they weren’t inappropriate. The new motto is: if you could wear it to meet the in-laws, you were good.

Now the one thing that didn’t change was the drug test policy: you had one when you got hired, and they did random ones each month. As a supervisor, I was one of the people who would be notified when an employee in the call center had been selected, and I would send them to the HR building the moment they started their shift.

I noticed that one agent, “Abby,” would get selected almost every month, while some employees who had been here for years were never selected. I mentioned this to my manager, and they said, yeah, they suspected she smoked pot, so they have been adding her to the list so they can catch them.

Now keep in mind that Abby was young, in her early 20s, and was one of the sweetest people in the call center. She would bring homemade pies or bread to share and, as far as I’m aware, is a model employee. I asked my manager if they knew something I didn’t, and they responded that she has a pot leaf tattoo on their ankle, so she must smoke.

I knew the tattoo they were talking about, as it was a mistletoe leaf, and her boyfriend died on Christmas Eve due to a drunk driver, so she got it to remember him. I told my manager, and they doubled down because they knew it was a pot leaf. I googled the difference between a pot leaf and a mistletoe leaf on my phone and showed them the simple search results showing how they don’t look alike, and Abby even had the red berries on her tattoo.

The manager refused to admit they were wrong, which was typical of them, but I did notice that Abby was no longer “randomly” selected.

I’m stocking some medicines (basic stuff, cold and flu meds, allergy pills, etc.) when an older couple looking up and down the aisle spots me.

Male Customer: “Excuse me, what’s the best one here for summer allergies?”

Female Customer: “Don’t ask her, dear. She probably uses a tribal doctor or shaman for that kind of thing.”

Me: “Uhm… excuse me? I use antihistamines like most people.”

Female Customer: “Oh!”

She looks me up and down, seemingly reevaluating my Black self.

Female Customer: “I guess you can’t always judge a book by its cover.”

Me: “That’s a lot of words to say you’re a racist a**hole.”

Her partner had to hold her back from trying to start a fight with me after that and strongly encouraged her to leave with him and get their medicine “someplace else”. My standing there, staring and smiling silently at her enraged her further.

My friend/coworker and I both have about thirty years in our industry, most of them at our current company. The old owner (who hired us both directly back in the day) retired, and his son took over. 

Not even a month after the old owner’s retirement party, I see my coworker storming toward his desk, angrily.

Coworker: “They just fired me.”

Me: “What?! Tell me you’re joking!”

Coworker: “Oh, it’s a joke all right. They won’t say it because it’ll open them up to a lawsuit, but they’re getting rid of all of us OG guys because we’re paid too much. They’re calling it restructuring, but we all know what that means.”

Me: “But I’ve been here longer than you? Why are they letting you go and not me?”

Coworker: “They got rid of Adams, Black, and now me, Cartwright. The idiots are going through all of us old timers in alphabetical order and aren’t even hiding it.”

My coworker and his friends packed up their desks and were escorted from the building. Lucky for him, thirty years of experience and a crazy number of accreditations meant he was rehired at a competitor by the end of the next month. Also by the end of next month, I could tell the sharks were circling, and my time would soon be up, regardless of how much I improved my productivity. 

I asked my friend if there was an opening in our competitor’s company, and he said, “Consider it done”, so I started to prepare my two weeks’ notice. 

I’m finally called into a meeting to face the firing squad, but what they say really surprises me:

New Owner: “Hi, [My Name]. As you may have noticed, there have been some organizational changes around here.”

Me: “I’m the only guy left who is on [High Salaried Level].”

New Owner: “Ha ha, yes, well, you must feel overworked after all this… structural change. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. The company has just purchased [Expensive New AI Tool], and we’d like to train you to use it, so that you can train it to run most of your tasks and manage your projects. Isn’t that great?!”

Me: “So… you fired everyone who knew what they were doing. You’re realizing now that there’s a knowledge vacuum, but instead of hiring those people back, or even hiring new ones, you want me to give my hard-earned experience for free to a set of computer code so that you can let the last guy go? Yeah, hard pass.”

New Owner: “Now, [My Name], I think you’re getting ahead of yourself. You’re—”

Me: “—Actually, you are.” *Slides over the envelope.* “That’s my two weeks.”

New Owner: “Wait, are you… quitting?”

Me: “Yup!”

New Owner: “But… we need you to train the AI! We need you to—”

Me: “—should have thought about that before effectively telling all my guys that we make too much money. Turns out sending that message to your staff doesn’t exactly inspire them to stick around and aspire for higher positions and pay rises. In fact, the message is, if you want to make more money, start looking around for another job, so that’s exactly what I did. Four of the guys you fired are already over at [Competitor], and I’m going to join them.”

New Owner: “This is… this is really unfair! It will take way more than two weeks for you to train the AI to do anything useful!”

Me: “Oh, I am so very sorry. I gave you the impression I would still be coming into the office for the next two weeks. Well, y’see, I have so much PTO saved up, with some carried over from previous years that I’m still owed, that I’ll be at home playing video games for the next two weeks while you pay me. Doing anything otherwise would be messy. Just ask HR.” 

I stand up to leave, with the new owner both glaring at me and looking like he’s sulking big time.

Me: “I’m sure you’ll be fine, though, right? Just hire one of the other guys to train your AI. I mean, you must have someone at my level still here, right? It would be soooo idiotic to fire everyone at my level except for me and then just expect I am going to train the AI to do my job for me? I mean, of course, you didn’t do that. Right?”

I walk out the door.

Me: “Good luck! Thank your dad for the great thirty years I’ve had here!”

My two weeks playing vintage games were great. My new job was even better. The knowledge that our old business lost most of its clients and had to hire expensive consultants to do what we did (for way cheaper, mind you), that was the best.