Top 21 Mildly Infuriating Flops of the Week

Our patience is running thin, per usual, thanks to a variety of different vexing mishaps. Welcome to this week's edition of the top mildly infuriating flops of the week. The incidents we're about to showcase may not be catastrophic, but they certainly rankle and irritate. Life has its ways of throwing curveballs at us, and we're constantly dodging them. Whether it's an intrusive neighbor prying into our affairs, or someone like Karen putting her dirty, stinky feet on our armrest on a plane, there is always something that manages to disrupt our peace.

It's possible that our frustration stems from a sense of entitlement or sheer boredom, or maybe it's the lofty expectations we place on the universe. In fact, it might be precisely due to their triviality that these occurrences become so aggravating. Regardless of the underlying cause for our boiling brains, the reality remains unchanged. Scroll down and discover the collective sentiments surrounding these irksome incidents.

For more, here is a barista who quit after one Karen took it a little too far.

'A very obviously used candle': Top 20 Birthday Gift Flops

For some folks, gift-giving is very much not their love language. In fact, some people are so bad at coming up with thoughtful ideas for presents that they should just be barred from doing so at all. It's almost better for the relationship if those folks accept this reality, relieve themselves of the stress of coming up with a good idea that will inevitably be bad, and relieve the receiver of the gift who will have to lie about how great said idea was. In short, bad gift-givers should stop trying. It's almost like genetics: you either have the ability to give good gifts or you don't. 

 

Like many of the folks who shared their horrible birthday gift stories via this r/AskReddit thread, I have personal experience with this top as well. When I turned 12, my mother got me a dictionary. We mocked her for this even then. The next year, she really outdid herself when she got me a pencil cup holder. Not a pencil, mind you. Not even a pen. A pencil cup holder. This is when we accepted the reality that my mom is just not the best gift-giver and since then, our relationship has thrived. So I'm living proof that these kinds of honest moments with the bad gift-givers in your life can improve relationships and expectations. That is, unless the bad gift-givers react poorly to this news and are completely surprised by the conversation. In that case, this person in your life is not just a bad gift-giver, but they are also just plain old delusional.

 

Keep scrolling below for this collection of bad birthday gifts. For more, check out these Michael Scott-esque boss moments.

Update: 'I said, "Guess I’m not a team player"': Boss floods security guard employee with texts and emails while she's on vacation, employee brings in HR

It would take a lot for you to block your boss's phone number, but this woman had to do exactly that. Her boss just wouldn't leave her be as he tried his hardest to interrupt her vacation time. 

U/Pinkyrye shared her story to r/AmItheA**hole, and she provided several updates on her situation as well. Despite working at her security guard job for six years, her boss still gave her a hard time about taking five days of vacation time. Some places really are stingy with time off, paid or unpaid. It doesn't seem to matter to them how hard you work or how long you've worked there — you're just a number to them. And especially if you work in retail or food service, managers are known to try and get you to find someone to cover the shifts you're missing. 

These days, stores have apps where you can trade shifts, give them up, and take them from others. But in the recent past, you'd have to sit there with the phone numbers of every employee, and literally call every person one by one until you found enough people to take your shifts. At that point, you're basically a manager. 

Check out this story below, as well as the immensely satisfying updates. Then, this COO decided to show up to work in a full prom outfit after the CEO mocked her fashion choices. 

'Why wasn't I at my desk? I'll tell you why': Karen Boss asks where employee went after berating her, employee CC's all of HR in her response

Here's a great reminder to be careful what you say out loud at work. It shouldn't matter if you are the lowest-level employee at your company or the CEO, but regrettable words will undoubtedly be held against you, especially if you are already widely disliked by your department. 

 

That's exactly what happened to this Karen boss, who frequently berated her employees, one of whom shared this post on Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit. She would always complete what her Karen boss asked of her, albeit with a little sass that she attributes to being in her twenties at the time. When the employee was five months pregnant, Karen asked her to do something and OP said she was on it but added a slightly sassy "whatever." This prompted Karen to mutter something under her breath that OP and a fellow coworker heard.

 

We'll let you scroll below to see exactly what was uttered, but let's just say that OP was understandably upset. She cooled off at employee healthcare (they worked at a hospital). Once she returned to her desk, she saw a number of emails from Karen asking why she hadn't been at her desk. That's when OP decided to reveal that she heard exactly what Karen said about her… but not just to Karen. She also let all of HR and Karen's bosses know as well.

 

Keep scrolling below to learn what happened next. For more stories like this, check out this post about a coworker's parking fiasco. 

'I saw red': Road raging hero chases after a rogue work truck that nearly squashed a family on the freeway, bringing their recklessness to justice

Road rage is usually a bad thing. When you're behind the wheel and you start to see red, it's probably time to take a break from traffic and give your blood pressure a rest. Not in this case. In this situation, one man's road rage actually became a potential life saver after he witnessed a reckless driver nearly pancake an innocent family. 

While driving on the freeway, OP saw a company truck veering left and right, driving like a maniac. Before he knew it, the truck swerved into oncoming traffic and nearly crashed, head-on into an oncoming minivan. When the family car was forced to swerve into the shoulder to save their lives from a fiery explosion, OP couldn't contain himself. He saw red, road raged, and went into vigilante mode. 

Keep scrolling for the full story of how one man turned his rage into heroics, bringing a dangerous driver to justice with his relentless attitude. For more stories of people who couldn't stand for injustice, check out this tale of an employee that got fired for being sick then got begged to come back after 2 years of an empty position– not for less than a 40% raise though…

'[She] began playing a film without headphones': Flight attendant makes passenger apologize to woman playing a movie out loud on the plane

Typically, when you're in the right of something, you expect might expect an apology from the person who has wronged you. You probably wouldn't expect yourself to be the one apologizing… if that were the case, wouldn't that make you the one in the wrong?

There will be times in our lives when it seems like the entire world is against us, where we're absolutely certain we've done everything right and nothing wrong, and—yet, everyone else seems to think otherwise. This can lead us to wonder, are we wrong? Is our entire perspective skewed? Or are we being collectively gaslit by an entire community of people who have it wrong for some reason?

If you find yourself in this position, maybe take a step back, look at things from a different perspective, and appeal to someone (or some people) who are removed from the situation to gain theirs.

That's what this airline passenger did when he had a confrontation with another passenger on a plane after the other passenger began watching a movie without headphones through the speakers of her phone at 1 AM. After suffering an hour of this, the passenger tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention, asking her to please put on headphones and triggering an explosive reaction.

When the flight attendant came past, she attempted to resolve the issue, appealing to the passengers in the row in front to see whether or not the noise was bothering them. It wasn't, as they, of course, were wearing noise-canceling headphones. This led the flight attendant—self-elected judge and executioner—to demand that the first passenger apologize to the one refusing to use headphones.

For anyone born yesterday, playing media out loud in a public space or on public transport is a bad move. Just don't do it. There's no doubt that the passenger playing media out loud was in the wrong here. And, yet, the first passenger was forced to turn to the internet to appeal to readers and see whether or not they were in the wrong for their role in the exchange.

They shared their account of events with a popular workplace subreddit, where readers shared their thoughts.

Read on to see their account of events and the reader's responses. Next, see this passenger who confronted another loud-talking passenger on their flight which led to a confrontation.

'My boss walks in and sees the steak lying on the window sill': Cringy husband embarrasses wife, acts utterly bizarre at business dinner with her boss

First impressions mean nothing to this dude. In a post from r/TIFU, a woman shared what happened when she tried to take her husband to a dinner with her boss, resulting in one of the cringiest outcomes imaginable. 

"I had just gotten a brand new job that I was really excited about," writes the OP. She was trying to get on her boss's good side by getting to know her better. It's not always easy to get to know your boss in a business setting when they need to be serious and focused. Instead, sharing a meal is a fantastic way to have some casual conversation and get to know each other on a more personal basis. After all, if you're aiming for your boss to be your mentor or just looking to improve your standing in the workplace, being close with your manager can't hurt. 

That's why it's especially baffling that this OP decided to bring her husband along. By her own admission, he has a history of doing some really dumb things, and sometimes acts unpredictable around others. Neither of those qualities seem good when planning a business dinner, but since the OP invited him, it ended up in a mess-around-and-find-out scenario. 

Next up, check out these bosses who could have had a starring role in "The Office," thanks to their silly work habits. 

'You need to move, or get out': Karen gets kicked out of pizzeria after blocking server from waiting other tables

The service industry is riddled with careless, entitled, and rude customers who think you, as a server, should worship the ground they trample on. At the rate employees come and go in this industry, it's easy to decipher why nobody really likes to work as wait staff. In this case, OP was working at a pizzeria, waiting on an entire floor of tables alone, as there were no other servers on duty that shift. Running to and fro, most of the customers could recognize a damsel in distress when they saw one. But alas, not everybody is so bright or aware of their surroundings.

OP admitted they made a mistake and forgot to order Karen's pizza, but that didn't warrant the response and attitude they received. Karen reacted in an absurdly disproportionate way to news like that, and OP was having none of it. Scroll down to read what exactly happened. For more like this, here is a boss who promoted the wrong employee, leading to the company crumbling.