When I started a job one time I was invited by a group to go to lunch with them. The group consisted of the family that basically owned and ran the company. They were the VP of Technology, President of the company, Senior Programmer, A/R Manager, etc. Meanwhile I was a Jr Programmer making peanuts.

They all decided on Thai food. Yuck. But I was in no position to say anything.

At the restaurant I was lucky enough.. yeah right.. to sit next to the president. She seemed like a nice lady. About my age. Hmm, me Jr Programmer and her president. You can see how good I was doing in my life.

Anyway, I ordered the smallest thing possible as my truck transmission blew the week before. I watched as she ordered the most expensive sushi on the menu. No biggie, if you can afford it.. eat it.

Then, the bill came. I didn’t get a look at it, but they all said put in your money. Not wanting to look cheap, I slid over $10. for my $4 bowl of soup and $1.95 coke.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the president quickly toss in 2 singles. I didn’t think anything. Maybe one of her other family members owed her money or something and would pay the difference.

Well, they calculated the bill and came up $25 short. The A/R manager said, let’s make this easy, everyone toss in an extra $5.

 I about puked. Starting a new job, being broke and now sitting here with all the top people of the company. How was I going to get out of this one.

… I chickened out and just paid the extra $5 bucks.

In closing I would like to say that I never went to lunch with them again.

We work with this girl and we call her SuperStar. The reason is because she came running over to us one day and told us how she was going to be on American Idol next week. We all watched and she wasn’t on it.

When we started teasing her about it, she got all mad and stormed off.

But anyway, last week Superstar told us how she was sitting in the stall of the bathroom and a woman went to the stall next to her. Superstar watched as the woman faced the toilet like a man would. After a few minutes, her curiosity starting getting the best of her. She decided to climb on to the toilet and peek over the stall.

She climbed up and peered over at the woman. The woman slowly turned her head up as Superstar watched. After she saw Superstar looking over at her she shrieked, “Oh my god!” and ran out.

Superstar told us that the woman was in the stall throwing up.

The company I worked for a few years ago, hired this guy called Ron. He shared an office with a girl. After he was there for less than a week, the girl he shared the office found that she was missing a credit card. She didn’t know what happened to it, either she had missplaced it or if it had been stolen.

Then, a girl I worked with told me how she had seen Ron in Kmart the night before. She had called out to him. He looked right at her and sort of ran away. She told me how weird it was.

As the story unfolds, these two women in our office were talking and the girl mentioned seeing Ron in Kmart. The girl with the missing credit card stated how the credit card company reported a lot of charges from Kmart that same night on her credit card. They then went on the County website and searched Ron’s name. He was actually a fugitive wanted for some crimes including battery and robbery.

They called the sheriff’s department. Ron heard them and took off out of the building. He was pulling his car out of the parking lot as a sheriff blocked him in. We all watched from the windows of the office as Ron ran. It was funny! People in the office were yelling, “Run Ron! Run!”

It was great as Ron disappeared with the fat sheriff chasing him. After they were gone a while, we started to go back to our desks. That was when Ron showed up again without the sheriff on his tail. He had lost him. Ron tried to get in to his car again but his car wouldn’t start. Ron then got out again as more sheriff’s arrived. He then jumped a fence and was gone again.

Ron made the papers that next day. He was caught and charged with a ton of crimes including, assault on a police officer, credit card theft, etc etc.

We also checked the sheriff website a month later and saw his new picture. He was all beat up. It looked like the police beat him up pretty bad. Poor Ron.

I work with a guy that always says, “What?” He hears what I said, but always says it.

I used to get frustrated always repeating what I had just said. But now I no longer do it. I have seen how he does it to everyone. It is some sort of a response to all things people say to him. Just like a reflex.

 Although it is funny to hear him say it all day.

Where I currently work there is a supervisor who always tries to pump up one of our programmers. Whenever he gets the opportunity, he comes over and starts chanting, “Come on Jean!”

It is really hilarious and addicting. After hearing it a million times, we all are now addicted to saying it.

Come on Jean!

I used to work with this guy who blinked all the time. It wasn’t a normal blink either. It was sort of forced. I remember going to meetings with him and he would progressively get worse when things got more stressful. I had to concentrate on not laughing it was so bad. Sometimes I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than his blinking. I was entranced.

I was thinking that I was the only one who noticed this as no one ever said anything. I was speaking to this girl in the office one time and I said, “Do you ever notice how Allan sometimes blinks weird”? Just like nothing she says, “Oh blinky”. I busted out laughing. They had named him.

I worked with this guy who always hit on the boss. She was a middle aged divorced woman. He was in his mid 20’s tall and good looking. She used to eat it up. He loved to play her.

All of us guys were always disgusted by the displays whenever they occurred.

After he would do this, the guy would always sit there and read the paper while we all were on the phone trying to clear up our files. Many of us would also work weekends. Mr Compliments never did.

The kicker that finally made me move to another job was when there was a new job opening for a manager. We all had about the same time in the position and applied for the job.

The interview was with this woman. Guess who got the job.

I used to work at a place where they allowed people to wear shorts and sandals. There was this one ‘very large’ guy who worked in the cubicle next to mine that had to have had the smelliest feet I have ever smelled. He wore sandals and you could actually still smell him for almost a half an hour after he had left his cubicle. The smell eminated the whole office. We used to die there!

Complaints to management didn’t work. I don’t think this guy would have actually cared anyway.

I worked with this guy in the Quality Assurance department of a large travel company.

He was a very personable friendly guy. The whole department loved him and he always had time to ‘hang out’ during work hours. Often times he would be at my desk for up to an hour. Afraid to lose my job, I would just have to turn my back on him and continue to do my job. He just kept talking.

Then, he would go to the next person in our department and start talking away.

I had seen a college degree framed in his cubicle. It was a degree in Computer Science. One day he blabbed and told me his salary. He was making almost twice as much money as I was.

I told him he deserved to make that kind of salary as he was a Senior Quality Assurance Analyst and I was just a new guy. Also, I did not have the degree in Computer Science. I only had a BS in business from a state University.

I asked him about his Computer Science degree and if it was hard earning it. He said,”Nah, it was easy. I just paid this college $5,000 and filled out a form. They gave me the degree due to my ‘life experience’.” Life experience? I was confused. What are you talking about, I said. He said, these schools these days value the life experience people get working from jobs, so they provide you with a diploma.

Basically the guy bought his degree. The degree looked all official. He said that when employers call the school, they just verify that he earned the degree from the school.

As time went by I found out that he was in Quality Assurance for only six months and was given the title and salary of Senior Analyst due to his degree! The company I worked for, major travel company, was completely duped!

He told me that his wife did this too. She had a GED. Never graduated High School. She was working as an office assistant. Then, got the ‘life experience’ degree and was now a marketing manager for a well known company. She went from making $10 dollars and hour to making as much as he did.

I actually went to college. Killing myself to study, pay student loans, etc. Unbelievable.

I used to work at a auto shop in Silver Spring, MD. The owner tells me first day of work, “we open promptly at 8:00″. I worked there 4 months and NOT ONCE did the guy show up before 10 o’clock. The guy was also paying me cash every friday. One week he said he’d pay me on monday because he was short the money. So for a while he started paying me on mondays for the previous week. Monday became tuesday and after a while I was getting paid on Fridays for the previous week. Then I took a week vacation and so I didn’t get paid for the previous week. When I got back he said he had paid me. Man, I wanted to break his jaw. He said he’d pay me ‘as charity’ but that he doesn’t pay vacation time. I couldn’t believe it. I just took the money and didn’t argue, figured I’d be out of there soon anyway.

One day I asked if I could use the shop after hours to work on my own car. So I show up around 8 pm and the shop is full of bikers doing crack!

I left the shop a week later. A week after that it was shut down. Nice hey? Drugs will kill you man.