My office is full of mathematicians. A colleague is telling us about how he managed to insult one of our bad bosses without said boss realising it.

Colleague: “So I told him that he must be at the top of the bell curve.”

Me: “That’s just mean.”

Colleague: “Is that… a statistics pun?”

Me: *Winks.*

Other Colleague: “That doesn’t make sense, as if by bell curve we’re talking a normal distribution, then the mean, median, and mode are all the same.”

Colleague: “[My Name], don’t make jokes around statisticians.”

Other Colleague: *Confused.* “What joke?”

Our lab has a small office/lab space away from the main area where three of us work. One day, we start getting calls to speak to someone in another lab about a job. As we don’t have the correct number ending (all numbers for the building start the same, but differ by a few digits to get to the correct office), we tell them to email the person they are looking for.

However, after a few days of being interrupted more than five times a day. It’s getting pretty irritating, and we decide to look it up on the department’s web page to give them the correct number, only to find our number is listed.

We reach out to the lab (it’s a floor below) to tell them about the issue… and nothing happens for a week.

Okay, it could be IT mucking up as it is the website, but we three are not secretaries for them, so we go on a hunt for the boss’s number and start giving that to the people calling.

The day after the number has been corrected and no more phone calls, success!

I have just switched internet providers, and I have received the router from the new one.

The box has a huge print on it:

Box: “Do It Yourself Box.”

As soon as I open it, a slightly smaller print, but still very large, says:

Box: “Do not install by yourself, wait for our technicians.”

I check twice, just in case I got Schrödinger’s Internet.

I previously worked at a place where I was hourly but should have been salary (they later made me salary) and had to work odd hours at times due to the demands of the job. Despite the extra time that I worked, I was still expected to be clocked in at 8 and to leave no earlier than 5, all while making sure I got as little overtime as possible because they didn’t want to pay overtime. They also expected me to take lunch at a pre-determined time, even though it conflicted with the nature of the work I did.

Every time I clocked in late, clocked out early, or clocked out for lunch at the wrong time (this was the bulk of the issue), a report was generated from HR and sent to my supervisor. Despite my making the case that it was basically impossible to adhere to these requirements, my supervisor point blank, told me:

Supervisor: “I don’t want to see these anymore.”

This was in reference to the report they were waving around in the air about my comings and goings on the time clock.

Me: “Okay, I’ll make sure you don’t have to see them anymore.”

I then walked down to HR and informed them that my supervisor was tired of seeing these reports and no longer wanted to see them. I told them verbatim what I was told, and they accepted it without question, as I said it came straight from my supervisor.

Surprisingly, they didn’t double-check the request at all; they simply stopped sending the reports to my supervisor. To be fair, they were tired of sending the reports and knew the situation was not tenable.

After that, things were great; my supervisor was happy and had always been happy with my work.

Many months down the road, I spoke with one of my salaried coworkers about it when they remarked that our supervisor hadn’t been griping about the reports in a while. So, I told them what had transpired.

Coworker: “I don’t think that’s what they meant when they said that.”

Ultimately, I don’t know how they actually meant it, all I know is that I fixed the issue by doing exactly what they said, and everyone was happy after that.

We have one middle manager colleague who is the epitome of a bad manager. She’s petty, loves to use her power to lord over others and punish them, and takes credit for other people’s work. She’s the most disliked person in the company. 

Our office is having a big outdoor event that involves a barbecue and family entertainment, so our spouses and children are encouraged to attend. My wife comes along and recognizes this specific middle manager by name when introductions are being made.

Wife: “Hello, there! I’ve heard all but good things about you!”

The middle manager smiled and didn’t even realise what she had just said. It was a bright highlight to an otherwise average day!