the locked reception desk, the pizza revenge, and other tiny amounts of power you’ve seen abused

Last week we talked about the smallest amount of power you’ve ever seen someone abuse, and here are 18 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The pizza revenge

The office assistant asked me what pizza I wanted when she was ordering for an event. I told her specifically I liked the one they had gotten the week before and described it. She never ordered that pizza again.

2. The very secure kitchen

I learned early on in a new job that ONE person other than security and the C-suite had the key to the boardroom. I also learned that somehow everyone in my department had pissed off the key holder, and I was now the designated person to bow down and request the key.

One night we were having an after-hours meeting and I managed to ask nicely and get the key, not realizing I needed a separate key for the kitchen, and that when I got into the kitchen I needed three different keys to access the fridge, coffee supplies, and serving pieces. The keyholder had not suggested it to me, either.

I had to call Security. He had a separate ring for just this occasion and opened everything for me. Then he directed me to a form where I had to write down every last thing I had used and get my manager to sign off. The form was the personal creation of the keyholder for times when she couldn’t supervise use of the kitchen. So were the locks.

3. The data plan

I was once sent an email by the CFO of the company letting me and some others know we were using too much data on our company-issued cell phones. One coworker replied saying he used that phone for his personal phone too, and didn’t we have an unlimited data plan? The CFO admitted we did, meaning he was complaining about something that didn’t cost the company a penny. He never emailed about that again.

4. The ID

Ugh, it was me. I worked at a big box warehouse store in college. Our policy was that everyone in a party had to be carded for alcohol purchases if they appeared under the age of 40. This upset people on the regular (both the “under the age of 40” part, as well as carding everyone in the party).

One busy day, I noted (out of the corner of my eye) that the two people coming up in line were very chatty with one another, and I assumed they were in the same party. I asked everyone for their ID and the second woman in line refuses, insisting she is not with the person who is buying the alcohol. She is obviously over 21 but younger than 40. I insisted she had to. We went back and forth on this for several minutes.

At some point during this exchange, I realized that I believed her that they had met in line, I knew she was over 21, and I really didn’t need to see her ID, but by the power vested in me I REFUSED to back down.

She did end up showing me her ID. She also complained to my manager. In a way, we both won.

5. The cookies

My team of five (including my boss) would sometimes receive holiday gifts from various vendors that we worked with.

One year, a particular vendor sent us a gift of cookies. They were individually packaged in a variety of flavors. It was addressed to my boss, but generally it was for the group.

The thing was, not all of us currently had projects working with that specific vendor. Still, normal people would have put the cookies someplace with a note saying “help yourself” or some similar method of sharing.

But no, my boss went through and spent her valuable time calculating the percentage of services each of us was using from this vendor. Surprise, she used them the most! So she sent us a note saying that she had selected her share of the cookies first, and that we were to come to her office in a specific order, based on how much we each used this vendor’s services, to select our requisite cookies.

It was so freaking weird.

6. The resignation

I was quitting my job in an extremely toxic call center environment. With my resignation, I submitted an extremely basic resignation letter, as one does when one is requested, simply stating that I would be resigning and my last day would be X.

They returned my letter to me and advised me that I needed to include the reason I was leaving.

Stopping just short of laughing in their faces, I advised them that, no, I wouldn’t be making any changes to my resignation letter. They recruited a supervisor from another team to “remind” me that they needed me to update my letter, and her face I did laugh in, reminding her that I’m leaving and they can’t make me do anything because at that point … what else are you going to do?

I’m sure they wanted it to use against me in some way, they used everything against everybody. Most adversarial place I’ve ever worked and I’m not the least bit surprised it went out of business not long after they lost me.

7. The locked reception desk

Our new receptionist apparently locks the drawer of the (not private! very communal!) front reception desk when they’re not there and takes the key with them. We’re all hybrid, including this receptionist, so there are multiple days a week when someone else is using that space to cover reception, but god forbid that person should use a (company-provided) pen or anything, I guess?

This practice was uncovered during a recent incident involving a time-sensitive piece of mail that got locked in the drawer and wasn’t accessible until the following week. (Normally the building manager would have an extra key, but it turns out this same receptionist also borrowed that one and never returned it.) After that kerfuffle, the receptionist promised to leave the key in a pre-determined spot going forward, but I didn’t find it there when I needed a paperclip earlier today.

8. The coins

I collect property taxes, so the amounts are hundreds or thousands of dollars. I also take payments in cash. One day, five minutes before noon, this jerk comes in with several hundred dollars worth of rolled coins, as well as a giant Ziploc bag full of loose coins. There had been cases of people paying $5 parking tickets with pennies out of spite, but never any amounts this large before.

I could have refused to accept it and made him come back with paper money but he was a known troublemaker who’d have argued me into the ground just to be a jerk, so I decided to play Petty Bureaucrat and count his coins as slowly and deliberately as I could, including dumping out the rolls to count those as well.

He was all impatient and kept complaining that he was in a hurry and why was I taking so long. Every time he said anything, I’d make a show of losing count and start over. I made him stand there for 40 minutes with his face scarlet red and steam boiling out his ears, but he couldn’t say anything because that would mean slowing things down even more. Once I had it all counted, I thanked him sweetly and he stormed out.

I put up a sign saying “more than $2 in change not accepted” and the guy never tried anything like that with me again.

9. The titles

When I was temping in a university department, the engineering professors got into a heated, yelling argument over whether the “secretaries” (admins) were allowed to call them by their first names or had to call them Doctor LastName. Not just heated discussion, but an actual yelling, shouting fight with red faces and balled fists and everything short of physical contact.

Some of them were heatedly for egalitarian forms of address in the office with no students present, and many of them were adamantly in favor of being called “Doctor LastName” by anyone who was not a professional peer or superior.

10. The permission to speak

I worked for a smallish company that had a pretty informal culture (as in, even the CEO didn’t mind if you stopped by their office to ask about something that needed a fast answer). However, one member of upper management, let’s call them Merle, insisted that you go through their assistant if you needed to speak with them in person, never mind that they sat literally 25 feet from their assistant’s desk and could overhear your request for an audience. The assistant would walk over, ask if Merle was available, and walk back to tell you to either go in or return later. All while Merle refused to make eye contact with you. It was so weird.

11. The profit

I used to be the person in an office who did all the ordering of office/housekeeping supplies. I had to keep an eye on the stationery and cleaning cupboards, make sure nothing ever zeroed out, and fulfill all extra requests. We used the same supplies company for both.

One day I logged in to do an order and there was a big banner celebrating that they were now part of a national loyalty system (Nectar points! Yay!). I asked the boss if we had an office Nectar card. Of course we didn’t, so she said, “Have you got one? Knock yourself out!” She said it was my perk for the faff of keeping up with all the monitoring and ordering.

One lady in our office found out and lost. Her. Shit. It was unfair. It was favoritism. If I did get the points, I should specifically use them to buy treats for the office. The privilege should be rotated between everyone’s Nectar card. The boss rolled her eyes and told me to ignore it.

It came to a head when the annual account auditor came in – as a nonprofit we had to declare ALL individual biases / personal benefits from the charity / personal expenditure, etc. This woman stood up and declared in that meeting that I was personally benefitting from the charity and I should declare my “profit.” The auditor assumed this was a usual request, put a line in the spreadsheet, and asked me what it was. I consulted the document and declared my total annual benefit of … £3.20. The accountant looked the woman dead in the eye as she deleted the whole line.

12. The employee files

A lifetime ago, I was the solo HR person at a nonprofit. The employee files were kept in the payroll office, as that is where there was space to house the very paper-based files. A newly hired payroll administrator would not allow me to access the employee files since they were in her office and therefore under her control. The executive director had to get involved to tell payroll to stand down.

13. The ass

I had a boss who would not let anyone respond to an email that said, “To [boss].” Even if they were asking for a technical detail in compliance (my area) that she never would know the answer to, even if they included the compliance people like me in the email. We had to wait for her to reply and say “[Tio], can you please respond to this?” and then it came off like I was ignoring the email, but if I dared to respond before the request, I got chewed out because the email “wasn’t addressed to you.”

14. The pizza

I used to work at this insanely toxic law office. The lawyers went out for a day on some retreat and had told the people left in the office, mostly administrative staff, that we could order in pizza. Two of the team leads each thought they were the one In Charge and wanted to be the one with the privilege of ordering the pizza. This went on all morning — four hours of shouting matches and passive aggressive BS because these two were going back and forth on who got to order the pizza. People were taking sides. People were running back and forth between the two team leads because they refused to speak to each other at one point. It ended up that they both ordered pizza. From two different places. Full orders. Enough to feed the entire office twice over.

It was my last day so I was highly entertained, and I stole a bunch of pizza and put it in my purse (after everyone had gotten their fill, that is).

15. The redecoration

My aunt’s boss left for vacation and made the mistake of leaving my aunt in charge. In the three days the boss was gone, she did a whole office redecoration, including tens of thousands of dollars of new furniture, ordered new carpeting, and had the walls painted a new color. This was a small 4-5 person organization.

Some of the items could be returned or canceled, but since she had already thrown out all of the old furniture, triage was limited.

16. The empty line

My husband went to the permit office here. There was no one in line so he ducked under rope defining the zig-zag area where the line would have been.

The guy made him go back and walk through the entire zig-zag of the empty line.

17. The Tylenol rations

While here is no law in New York that states over-the-counter meds can’t be made available to employees, our corporate lawyer said, to be safe, no allergy or cold meds, but Tylenol, Motrin, Advil, and first aid items like bandages, ointment and balm were fine. They suggested single dose packaging.

The office manager decided that single dose packaging was too expensive. She ordered the largest bottles she could find. BUT — kept them locked in a cabinet behind her desk. She had the only key. If you needed something, you had to go to her, tell her why you needed it, have her open the cabinet and ONLY SHE could touch the bottles and pour out the right amount of pills, or give you the one BandAid size she thought you needed.

If she was out of the office, no one could get into the cabinet. She kept a list of everyone who ever made a request, what she gave and how much. It was a running list that she had for the five years I worked there. I know of at least one time when she refused to give someone Tylenol because they asked three days in a row and she felt like they were abusing it and should get some help.

18. The food authority

Hoarding of company paid for food by the admin who ordered it. She would go into the conference room as soon as the meeting was done, collect all the leftover sandwiches/salads, etc. and keep them at her desk. She would only hand them out to her “preferred people” which was always a rotating list, depending on who she deemed had offended her in any given week.

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