Job Moments Not to Repeat

In honor of Labor Day, I thought I would share a few of my best stories about job moments that made me shake my head. It’s moments like these that makes any sane person question their career choices.

As a college student, I worked all four years in my college library. I have a lot of stories about this particular position-I saw everything from panicked students who didn’t buy the textbook to study rooms being used for, well, not for studying. But one of the most memorable ones had to be the young teenage boy who wandered in, stayed awhile, then tried to wander back out-only to set the alarm off. Instead of coming to the desk to check out the book he must have had under his jacket, he walked back toward the stacks. I kept an eye out while dialing campus security. While I was on the phone, he tried again to exit, and again was thwarted by the alarm (why he just didn’t run, I’ll never know.) He turned back around, went to the computers, set something down, and successfully exited the building. Once I was off the phone, I went over to look at the book. He had torn off the barcode-apparently thinking that was setting off the alarm. The book-instructions on making a pipe bomb.

Some of the better bad moments came over the telephone. One thing I’ve learned in the non-profit world is that you will get more requests than you can handle, many of them for services that you don’t provide. My all time favorite came during my first round as an executive director for a local Red Cross chapter. The gentleman on the other end of the phone wanted my assistance in getting his brother home to see their mother, who was dying of cancer. Thinking that I was going to be assisting a family member in getting a service member home for emergency leave, I asked the man where his brother was stationed. Confused, the voice on the other end cleared things up for me. “Oh no ma’am. My brother’s not in the Army or anything like that. He’s in the state pen, and I’m trying to get him bailed out.”

A close runner up to that one was a request for financial assistance. I explained to my caller that we only gave assistance in times of disaster, but he was undeterred. “Oh yes ma’am. This here is a real emergency. You see, I drive a truck for a living. I got a DUI in Indiana, and I lost my license. It’s gonna cost me $3000 to get it back.”

I could go on, as I’ve also worked in retail, and briefly as a nanny, and all have their stories. However, I think these gems stand out, and I hope that I never top them.


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