Aunty Acid by Ged Backland for December 17, 2024

A Kind Regular Intervenes On A Sadly Regular Occurrence

I’m working at a very small bank location. There are only three of us. My boss and my coworker have been friends for a long time, so they sometimes go into her office to talk while I’m left alone in the lobby.

This is one of those times, and I am slammed. I’m running from the drive-thru to the lobby, and my boss and coworker are just sitting in her office. There’s a glass wall, so they can see how busy I am. They’ve ignored all my efforts to get their attention. One of our regulars approaches.

Me: “Hey, [Regular]! How are you? How’s your wife?”

Regular: “[My Name], I think we need to buy you some skates! Are you the only one working today?”

I wordlessly point at the manager’s office. He looks over his shoulder, makes a face, and hands me a deposit.

Regular: “I see. Well, I just have the one deposit, so take your time.”

I start processing his deposit. The drive-thru dings. I sigh. My regular turns around to make eye contact with my manager and coworker in the office. He stares at them for about thirty seconds and then turns back around. My boss and coworker come running out of the office and start calling lobby customers over.

Boss: “[My Name], you know you’re supposed to tell me when it gets busy!”

I stop what I’m doing and stare at her.

Me: “You couldn’t see the line?!”

Boss: “Just go get the drive-thru next.”

She walked away. I handed the regular his receipt. He nodded at me and exited.

That regular and his wife intervened for me multiple times at that location until I transferred out. If they read this, thank you BOTH so very much for standing up for a young employee who didn’t know how to stand up for herself yet.

And Now She’s Schooling Them

My friend and I are Australian, and the legal drinking age here is eighteen. [Friend] had just turned eighteen and, as is tradition, she went down to the bottle shop to buy her own alcohol for the first time (legally, anyway). She went in after school, still in her uniform, and was refused service due to an apparent store policy that they couldn’t sell to anyone in school clothes, even if they were of legal age and showed proper ID.

So, what did [Friend] do? She went back outside, took her uniform off, and walked back in wearing only the booty shorts she had on under her school skirt, her bra, and an open cardigan thrown over the top.

She got to buy her alcohol that day.

I ended up like that until I started working in research. I loved the work, even when I stayed until late to get the database ready to freeze, then send to the FDA. Getting the drug approved was a real rush.

At my last job, I enjoyed working, and just about everyone was my friend. It was an increible atmosphere where you felt appreciated and understood the value that you brought to the product. 5-star reviews, consistently! Then they went overseas, and the products went into the tank. Good thing I was in good financial shape to retire.

I always tried to be friendly with my coworkers. And most of the time it was easy, but there were exceptions.

What I experienced: Once a company hires outside consultants to advise on business practices, upper management types will blame low-level workers for problems that they themselves are essentially responsible for. The working atmosphere becomes a feeding frenzy of mutual recriminations. And then the consultants go on their merry way, fat and sassy, having skimmed off financial resources with their consulting fees. And then … a company culture wounded, and bleeding, business competitors soon swoop down to feast like vultures.

I am friendly with NOT friends with my coworkers. I need to stay slightly aloof to maintain professionalism and objectivity.

Aunty KAREN. Do not ask her how she is doing. KAREN will call 911 and report a Death Threat. If you see me walkin’ down the street, Walk on by. Dionne Warwick, Walk on by.

You don’t have to get older to realize that. But years ago I worked for a company that made military airplane parts…I was Office Mgr, Bkpr, Human Resource, Safety Director, shipping and receiving, and assisted management in all departments. I LOVED that job! Everyone got along and it was so festive. When younger Bush was president, he put us out of business in short order. :(

I had great friends at work until it was my turn to get laid off. After that, apparently I suddenly contracted cooties.

90% of my employees were like that. “If you want to see the dead come back to life, be here at quitting time.”

I had to learn that lesson, too!

Payday and quitting time.

If that’s all, that’s sad. Not “everyone” at the workplace will always be your friend, but if at least SOME aren’t, you’re not doing it right.

No one wanted to be at my job, we all just ended up there. I quit over their COVID policies and never looked back. After a month or so I realized I had forgotten most of their names.

Where I work they started the team building b.s. After the first round I told them to stuff it, I am there to make money not make friends. If my coworkers want to start doing the jobs they were hired to do instead of slacking off we would get along better.

Aunty, that is because as you have gotten older your work colleagues have gotten to know you. Of course they are not your friends NOW!

I loved the job I retired from, PC Support for a University. There were some people that were difficult to get along with, but I’m proud to say I managed to get by the “walls” some of them had put up and actually became friendly with them. There was one in particular. She was a Faculty member who did not suffer fools gladly, and she initially felt that my Department had a lot of them. Over time, my competence and my refusing to rise to her jibes about my Department turned her around. I discovered a real treasure in her. She had led a very exciting life and had some great stories. One thing in particular that I remembered her talking about was that she had been a News Correspondent, going to some of the “Hot Spots” in the World!

Would you want to be friends to the office Grinch?

That is truly really sad.

I soon and often found that some work colleagues to whom I imparted info in the morning would have passed it around to multiple others by lunch time. Discretion is far from guaranteed with co-workers.

A) I worked with a bunch of females so there is no trust there and 2 I’m the youngest of four girls so there’s that

Most vending machines contain enemies of your liver, kidney and bloodstream. I suppose many secret enemies might even click the ‘Like’ line just to make you feel comfortable in their trap.

Thus, Auntie Acid might want to try to get back into a neutral zone at about 7; this is a basic non-joke.

I felt the same way.

The last job I worked before I went on disability was not a very friendly place for me and I was miserable. I tried to make friends but they wanted to be snobs and only associate with certain ones. I also missed a lot of work because of my health issues that caused me to go on disability so there were many times that i would come in late and stay later or go in on a weekend and they didn’t think that was fair and complained about it. Also, they would turn up the heat, (even though they weren’t allowed and boss ended up putting a lock box on thermostat) and I would get way too hot so I bought box fan and took in but everytime I left the room one of the woman would go over and shut it off and then complained when I would turn it back on and tell them to stop, it was only pointed at me so they couldn’t possibly feel the air. It got to the point that everyone was making my life so miserable that I would end up with having a panic attack at work, so my boss moved me to another building of the company so I didn’t have to be around that anymore. I found out later that the main one that was causing me problems started to cause problems for two other people and would go to boss and complain they were starting it and the boss laid into her about it so the woman ended up quitting and I heard she was not missed by most.

I figure I’m lucky. I’m well past retirement age and I had gone back to do contingent work in our lab. Most of the people have been there for years, and though we live far enough apart we can’t do after-hours things, we enjoy keeping up with each other as well as doing mentally stimulating work. The only challenge we’ve been having is that we have too much work for the staff and are unable to increase the staff. We used to have time to go to lunch together and do some casual talking from time to time, but we must keep putting out the effort as best we can.