I was listening to the creepy orgy music from the Eyes Wide Shut soundtrack to add a bit of thrill to my Excel drudgery in the middle of a crowded office.
About a minute in, I looked around and noticed stares of utter shock coming from every direction.
I realized I’d forgotten to plug in my earphones.
–Anonymous Rex, “Corporate America to the MAX”
Have your own FML stories? Share them here.
The owner of my company is mostly hands-off, but there are a few elements he’s still really invested in. One of the biggest ones is the spring product line brochure we send out every fall.
We’re a pretty small company, so we do the brochure in house. Which means I pretty much do all the work. We hold lots of meetings about how we want it to look, which products we want to feature prominently, etc. etc. way in advance, and I keep checking in with all the higher ups throughout the process.
The owner is invited to all of these but never comes and never comments on work in progress.
And yet it always goes exactly the same way as it did last fall.
The owner had been overseas at a conference-slash-vacation that lasted up until the week we planned to go to press with the brochure.
He gets back, checks on my (totally complete) brochure, and tells me he “doesn’t like the feel of it–can you design it without so many harsh rectangles?” He also wanted me to switch the orientation of the pages from vertical to horizontal because he saw one “very professional” catalog done that way at the conference.
I worked overtime (without getting paid extra) for two weeks to make it happen, we got to press ten days late, and we showed up in people’s mailboxes at least 2-3 weeks behind all our competitors, because the printers had other jobs once we missed our deadline.
And the owner blamed me for “poor planning.”
–Kathryn C., Home Goods Retail Brand
Have your own FML stories? Share them here.
I know I’m not the only one who deals with office assholes stealing their food. Usually, though, it’s limited to the kinds of items you wouldn’t immediately miss–a little bit of the salad dressing you left in the fridge with a massive label on it, or a shmear of the cream cheese you keep on hand.
I like to lessen the pain of starting my work day by eating breakfast at my desk in the morning. My hour commute means that once I’m there, I’m pretty starving. I always keep bagels in the freezer so I can toast one up before I open my inbox.
One day, I come in and check the freezer for my customary bagel and…nothing. They’re all gone. I eat one every day, so I knew one was left, but here I was, starving, and there was nothing in the freezer but a lean cuisine lasagna.
I swear out loud and another coworker in the break room asks what’s going on. I tell him that “some asshole stole my bagels, so now I have literally nothing to eat.” (I may have been hangry.)
He smiles blandly and says “oh, that was me. I left my breakfast at home by accident. I’ll replace it tomorrow, though.”
What the FUCK?!?
The worst part of it? We work literally next door to a cafe. Yes, they serve bagels.
–M.P., Insurance Industry
After college, I decided to move to France for a kick.
Unfortunately, not being able to speak French really hurt my employment prospects. Who knew?
I had to take whatever I could get. So I joined a very small company which operated out of a glorified shoebox.
Although the size of the office didn’t really bother me, the office cats did (largely because I’m allergic to pretty much every animal out there).
At first I made a complaint to my boss. Unwise move. She owned all of the cats.
She said that if the cats bothered me that much, I should look for work elsewhere.
Compassionate person, right?
So rather than sneezing and having my eyes run all day long, I came to work every day that summer heavily medicated.
In hindsight, it was probably exactly what I needed to get through all of that data entry.
Choose Your Own Misery 