the Home Depot in Orem. I was a seasonal worker in the garden department. I liked driving the fork lifts and unloading trucks and stuff, but annoying customers (there were many) were the worst. After a few months, one day after already dealing with a few really annoying customers, I was called outside to help a particularly annoying jerk.

On occasion we were asked to help customers load something into their car. Usually it was a pallet which would be loaded into the back of a truck by the fork lift. Sometimes it was a lady who needed help loading peat moss or some bags of mulch, in which case I was happy to help put something into her car or truck. If it's a man, they usually load crap themselves, or if needed, ask for a hand lifting something big or awkward. How many times have you had Home Depot employees load entire loads for you by hand?

Anyway, I go outside the garden dept on the side of the Home Depot and this dude pulls up in a teal convertible Chrysler Sebring. He was clearly very proud of it and acted like it was his Ferrari or something. He got out and showed me his receipt, a pallet of pavers. That's like 500 bricks weighing about a ton (literally). I told him that his car couldn't handle the load and that he'd have to make a few trips. He rolled his eyes, opened up the trunk and said "load em up, all of them, they'll fit" in a demanding tone. I said "I'd be happy to help load them together with you." He got all snooty and said something like "if I wanted to do manual labor I wouldn't have gone to college. If you don't want a job like this you should really think about a career change, now do your job!" I looked at his car, then looked him in the eye and said "you driving the wife's car today?" Insulting his Sebring visibly flustered him, but he said nothing.

A car can only handle like a quarter pallet of pavers, max, and it really taxes the car. I loaded the whole pallet. I filled his entire trunk with pavers with the balance on the floor of the back seat of the sedan. The back of the car was slammed soooooo low. It was clearly ruining his car. At that point his pride stepped in and he tried to drive away with a ton of pavers in his trunk. The Chrysler whined and started making some awful squeaking noises as it lurched forward slowly. After 20 or 30 feet one of his back tires went completely flat. I just turned around and walked back inside the store.

I got a pink slip the next day. Strangely they never said it was because of this incident, just that they were laying some people off, but I was the only person let go. I was graduating in a couple of weeks anyway and didn't care.