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[Warning: long story, but there’s a solid ending]

I used to work in a fancy tech office in downtown San Francisco, but my company switched to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic and what was only supposed to be about two weeks turned into two months and then over two years.

A little over two years in, we were told that we needed to go to the office to take home anything we’d left at our desks that we wanted to keep.

I wanted to get it over with so I selected the first time slot on the sign-up sheet and showed up at that time, but the man at the front desk said I wasn’t on the list and I couldn’t go in.

I had made a special trip to the office for the only time that worked and I just wanted to be done with everything and the man was being very rude and unhelpful.

I showed him my ID and badge for both the building and my office, but he said they weren’t proof that I worked there. I then showed him the email from my office manager confirming my time slot AND forwarded the email to him FROM my company email address to show that I still worked there.

Another security guard could see how rude the other man was being and offered to walk me up to my office so I could show him that my desk was mine and grab my stuff, but the man at the desk held firm on his power trip and said there was no way of knowing if I actually worked for the company and cited that he had never seen me or anyone else from my company before (because we’d all been working remote for the past two years).

As a last resort, I asked him to contact our office manager to confirm that I was allowed in the office. Meanwhile, I sat off to the side and broke down crying out of frustration.

After a lot of back-and-forth, it was found that I was on the list and he was probably just misspelling my last name, so I was FINALLY allowed to go up to my office.

Even so, he seemed completely unwilling to acknowledge his mistake and actually treated me as if he was doing me a favor.

When I got to my desk, I grabbed some random desk items and a company award I had won along with my company-branded jacket that was hanging on the back of my chair and I proceeded to leave for the last time.

When I got to the lobby, I turned to the man at the front desk to “thank” him for being so “helpful” and asked if he’d pose in a photo with me to commemorate my “last day at the office” and he agreed.

As a result, I now have a lovely photo of the rude man at the front desk with his mask hanging off his face and me standing in the foreground with my mascara running down my face as a result of crying due to his poor treatment.

I also made it a point to wear my jacket and hold my award, both obnoxiously branded with the name of the company he tried to imply I didn’t actually work for—because I can be a petty little brat when pushed hard enough.