Photo Courtesy of Flickr
Story by Amanda Greer / Contributing Writer
According to a 2015 study conducted by Georgetown University, almost 70 percent of all college students hold a part-time or full-time job while attending school.
This probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise. But what might throw you for a loop are the outrageous things they have to deal with while on the clock. Here are seven of the most cringe-worthy stories I’ve heard from MTSU students:
1. Getting Down on the Job
With any job, you’re likely to become friends with your coworkers, or at the very least you’re going to be cordial with them for the sake of staying employed.
It seems natural that these people might divulge the things they get up to, as is the case with Nathan Mitchell, a 22-year-old recording industry major who was working at an upscale restaurant in Murfreesboro at the time. While there was a lag in business, a manager let slip that he had been hooking up with one of the hostesses on site.
“There was a dude who was a manager and a girl who was a hostess, and they had been low-key talking on and off for a while. I was talking to the manager one day, and … he ended up telling me that he and the girl had had sex multiple times in the restaurant, like in the bathrooms and the walk-in cooler,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell has since left the restaurant and works at a more laid-back restaurant in Nashville.
As for the manager, Mitchell says he was fired after being caught drinking the restaurant’s liquor while on the job.
2. A S—ty Day at Work
Kevin Kittavong, a 22-year-old MTSU visual communications graduate, had only been working at the local Murfreesboro Hollister for a couple of months when he had the s–ttiest day ever. Literally.
“One day I was putting a shipment of clothing out on the floor, and I smelled this horrible smell. It literally smelled like s–t,” said Kittavong.
He went to his manager, and they waited restlessly for the fitting rooms to clear out enough for them to investigate.
“A few minutes later, the fitting rooms had pretty much cleared out, so we went in to check them to see what was going on, and lo and behold, there’s a pile of poop in the corner of one of the fitting rooms,” Kittavong said. “It was so traumatizing.”
“We ended up having to call our emergency maintenance people, because it left a stain and we couldn’t get rid of the smell,” he added. This incident didn’t deter Kittavong from the retail scene, and he has since been promoted to a manager position at a Hollister in Nashville.
3. Urine Trouble
Emily Hill, a 20-year-old psychology major, was working at a local department store when someone decided that peeing in a garbage can far surpassed the comforts of a bathroom stall.
“About a month ago I came into work, and my manager just has this really weird look on her face. So I was like, ‘What happened?’” she says.
Before she came in, her manager had been the only one in the ladies’ department at work and she had walked away from the fitting room for a couple of minutes. When she came back to the fitting room, there was a customer waiting to try on clothes, so she went to put her in a fitting room and smelled something, but she didn’t know what it was.
“So, she goes to put the customer in the first fitting room, and when she opened it she saw a trash can sitting on the middle of it. Turns out, in the time she was away from the fitting rooms, someone had taken the garbage can we keep in there into one of the fitting rooms and peed in it,” said Hill.
Hill adds, “She got gloves on and everything and took the garbage can out back and hosed it down!”
4. We’re Not Gonna Take It
2010 saw the peak of fast-food drive-thru pranks, from “invisible” drivers to “cone-ing” (the act of purchasing an ice cream cone and snatching the treat ice-cream-side-up just to weird people out).
At some point, these antics were bound to stop being humorous to the employees, as with Keaton Tillman, a 20-year-old business major. He was working at one of the many McDonald’s locations in town when he decided to clap back.
“I was working the drive-thru one night, and this person ordered a Coke. When I gave them their drink, they acted like I gave them the wrong thing and proceeded to throw the drink back at me,” said Tillman.
“It was still in the air and I just slapped it back into their car, and it got everywhere. I didn’t know what to do, so I slammed the window shut and hid around the corner.”
5. Like Searching for a… Tooth in a Garbage Sack?
Susie Flores, a childhood education major, works as a waitress at a local Italian restaurant. One day she had a customer demand that she and her manager rummage through the trash to find … a tooth?
“This lady was eating dinner with her child, and apparently the kid had some sort of tooth implant,” said Flores.
“They had finished their meal and left, but they came back within 30 minutes, and the lady was yelling at us because her child left his tooth and demanded that we find it. … One of my managers ended up having to dig through a garbage sack full of old spaghetti and salad and breadsticks for over an hour to find the tooth. It was ridiculous.”
6. Who Let the Dogs Out?
Savannah Shadrick, a junior interior design major, got the scare of her life when two dogs came charging at her on a delivery run for a sandwich company.
“I was running a delivery to a house, and when I got there, this 10-year-old kid opened the door, and these two pit bulls just dart past him and straight toward me,” said Shadrick.
“They were jumping and barking at me, and I’m trying to get away while the kid is standing on the porch yelling at his dogs to leave me alone.”
One of the dogs finally went back to its owner, but the other wasn’t quite finished.
“This kid is telling me, ‘He’s cool, he’s cool, just stay still,’ and I’m just standing here with my eyes closed trying not to get bit.”
The kid finally came and got the other dog and his sandwich, and Shadrick got out of there as quickly as possible. And apparently, the same thing has happened at this house multiple times while Shadrick was delivering.
7. Park It Like It’s Hot
MTSU grad Ashton Turney works for a nonprofit health organization that’s right down the street from a strip of popular Nashville clubs.
The company’s parking garage wasn’t gated and also didn’t charge a fee, so obviously people were taking full advantage of it.
“Our parking garage used to be open all the time, and people would park there to go to the clubs because it was free and close by,” said Turney, adding that the partygoers would leave destruction in their wake.
“They would leave beer cans and broken alcohol bottles everywhere, and they would turn over our garbage cans.”
About four months ago, the company decided it had had enough and posted a sign stating that cars parked after hours would be booted. Many of the clubgoers failed to notice.
“They booted 60-something cars that first weekend alone, and some of the people whose car got booted were so mad about it that they decided to poop in all of the corners of the parking garage, turned over every single garbage can and broke dozens of alcohol bottles.”
Do you have a crazy work story you’d like to share? E-mail Amanda Greer at avg2e@mtmail.mtsu.edu with “Work Horror Stories” in the subject line (or follow her on Twitter @__amandaconda).
To contact Lifestyles Editor Marissa Gaston email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com.
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