I work in an IT call center. I was packing up to go home for the day, and my manager stopped me. With that much notice, you should have had time to figure out how to get into the office tomorrow. We want to start normalizing everyone coming back to the office. I deleted Teams and my email off my phone; as a result, I was no longer available after hours. I tried to get to work, but the snowstorm was so bad that the bridge closed and the roads that went around were backed up for hours.
I called my boss to tell him. I am not allowed to work from home. See you tomorrow, I hope! When I got home, I spent all day napping and playing video games, and it was totally worth it.
We close at pm sharp on weekdays, yet this customer strolled in at demanding a refund. That should have been the end of it. But no, they knocked again, this time more aggressively, with a sour face to match. I approached the door once more, reiterating our closing policy and the impossibility of processing refunds after hours.
Even after the manager confirmed our policy, they refused to budge, effectively holding us hostage at our own store past closing time. Desperate to defuse the situation and finally head home, I made the call to redirect the customer to the nearest open store, a twelve-minute drive away, open until pm. Only then did they reluctantly leave, leaving behind a trail of frustration and exhaustion.
Taking advantage of minimum-wage workers, who are simply doing their jobs, is unacceptable. My dad would be quite harsh to my mother, scolding her for little mistakes asking if she was stupid if she dropped a plate, for example , and being generally disrespectful. Sadly, I was so used to it that it became normalized.
