Not Always Right / Skewed Priorities

“I don’t give a d*** if you burn to death. You’re going to take my payment right now!”

Far too many people encountered in stories on Not Always Right and its sister sites have… rather strange priorities. Sometimes it's just out of selfishness. Other times… these people are just plain weird!

Not Always Right

This woman dodges falling glass for a bunch of flowers.
This woman demands that a technician be sent to her house, which was in an earthquake zone. Even better is that she also left her house because of the earthquake. So she won't go to her house because it's unsafe, yet expects someone else to do the same.
I don't care about floods! Where's my package?
This woman asks about her computer despite a tornado warning going off.
This woman wonders why no copiers are working, despite everything, herself included, being in ankle-deep water.
This customer complains about a package even though deliveries are delayed due to bad weather. When they were asked if they could go to a store, they said that they were snowed in. So they are mad that the delivery people aren't taking risks to the weather while playing it safe themselves.
This person complains about having to walk an extra block due to an iced-over sidewalk. Thankfully, she got the point when someone else told her that a boy was injured walking across that sidewalk.
This customer can't believe that a store is still open despite a snowstorm. As for them, they came out there to make a return.
A thunderstorm interfered with my television service? I still want my television service!
This woman insists on going down a closed road despite an officer telling her of the danger. She charges ahead anyway, crashes, and yells at the officer for not telling her.
There's a hurricane? Forget that, where's my television service?
This woman braves a tornado to get to a store.
This man demands his photos, even if the roads are too dangerous due to ice storms!
This guy would rather argue over the price of a duffel bag than take his wife — who is visibly in labor — to hospital. And then has the nerve to accuse the employees of "trying to kill [his] wife over a duffel bag!"
I don't have backups of my financial system? Screw that, how can I make these error messages go away so I don't have to hit Enter all the time?
£1.36 for some cauliflower? I can't afford that at all! I'll have some £5 lottery tickets instead!
This woman will take advantage of discounted prices, broken finger be damned!
This woman's concern for her one-month-old baby being locked inside her car during a very hot day immediately disappears when it turns out the only way anyone can get inside the kind of car she has is by smashing a window.
This submitter actually has to point out to a problem customer the sheer stupidity of refusing to show her ID to a video game store's cashier, because she automatically assumes the cashier is an illegal immigrant who will steal it, but immediately giving it to the first complete stranger who offers to check it for them.
"No, he just wants military satellites to be able to track his model airplane's precise location... but he's afraid of e-commerce."
This customer asks to return a Playboy-themed game that she bought for her 8-year-old — not because it's pornographic, but because it requires lots of reading and he can't read very well.
This customer admits that she's planning to adopt a pair of cats and then leave them to fend for themselves in a dead relative's large house. Or she's going to live with the cats at that house and let her son fend for himself and the cat they already have at their apartment; she keeps changing her story. She, of course, then has the nerve to accuse the worker of not caring about the animals, because he won't sell them to people who won't actually take care of them.
This woman, in need of a flight reschedule, insists on waiting another 24 hours for a flight through Charlotte, because their airport has a Cinnabon.
This customer thinks that going to the salon daily is more important than treating her son's asthma, which has been acting up for five days.
This customer, upon seeing a taxicab involved in an accident, is only concerned with the fact that the taxicab might be the one he called.
Here, a girl has dairy allergies, but her mom is more concerned that a barista embarrassed the girl in front of her friends by not adding whipped cream to her drink.
This woman had been suffering from chronic pain and needed to pick up her medication from the pharmacy. What has she been doing all day? Getting a new iPhone!
This woman tripped and possibly injured herself, but all she cares about is that her purse (which is on the counter within eyeshot) isn't stolen. She meticulously searches her purse while still laying on the floor and obstructing the exit.
The lady in this story is dead-set on getting her Easter ham, regardless of the fact that the aisle they're in is obstructed by a badly-injured employee. Who cares about a medical emergency, she needs her ham! Three points make this story worse than usual - one, that the employee died shortly afterwards, two, that three other customers are seen ignoring the collapsed man before he was discovered by a manager, and three, that the lady went on to complain and the other employees all got into trouble with corporate for 'not being more accommodating to her needs'.
With the hair salons all closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this lady walks into a veterinarian's (since they're still open for basic grooming) and expects them to color her hair, since she cannot go out in public as it is (despite the fact that she's already in public). Worse, by her logic, she needed an animal to get through the door, so she stole a dog that was waiting outside a store across the street.
In this story, a tornado^note sends employees and customers in a fast food restaurant scrambling for shelter. The building miraculously survives...and after everyone leaves shelter, a woman immediately asks the employees when she is getting her food (never mind that the power is now out and the street outside is a total disaster).
This customer fails to see why an employee isn't excited by their store's 90% closing down sale (going on to wish out loud that every store was closing down just so everything would be on sale).
This motorcyclist doesn't seem to understand that him riding into a safari park on his bike is very unsafe. What does get him to relent is when another customer remarks that the monkeys and bears would "tear up" his bike.
This caller, after wiping her baby's bottom with some wipes (noted specifically not to be for personal use) and having the baby's butt start to bubble, is more worried about how the company's going to compensate her rather than the health of her baby.
This guy calls 911 over his power going out because he doesn't want to miss his ballgame.
Similarly, this caller is miffed that a match between Highlanders and Christchurch Crusaders was cancelled.
Submitter: “The NZ Rugby Union cancelled it, sir, because of the terror attack in Christchurch yesterday.”
Caller: “But they are professionals; they should have played!”
“HOW DARE YOU RUN AN EMERGENCY ALERT DURING THE RED SOX GAME?!”
A weird non-selfishness-caused example is this customer, who's found out that his sports game is being broadcast in Spanish, but is more upset that no one is telling him why the game is in Spanish.
This woman at a shoe store seems legitimately confused as to why the employees are trying to get her out of the store for her safety instead of letting her finish her shopping when the shocks of a significant earthquake reach the store.
Far too many examples involving fire alarms:
- This customer wants her cat food. Who cares if the building burns down first?
- This man values his daughter's harp over his own life. His wife doesn't.
- This fast-food chain is more interested in staying open during the lunch rush than keeping the store from burning down.
- This customer insists on shopping and demands the submitter "do something about that racket." Said racket being the fire alarm.
- There's a fire in your call center? Who cares! You keep helping me or I'll have you fired!
- This customer also refuses to stop shopping when the fire alarm goes off.
  Customer: “I need to get a present for my wife! It’s our anniversary tonight!”
  Submitter: “Sir, I am sure your wife would rather have you alive than have a gift.”
  Customer: “…You haven’t met my wife.”
- When a fire breaks out, this customer thinks harassing the submitter and making sure he's dealing with the fire "properly" is more important than evacuating.
- This customer has to be removed from the building by the authorities because she refuses to stop shopping when the store she's in catches fire.
- When the call center catches fire, this caller gets angry when the person he's calling to evacuates, saying he'll call back and get him fired. Thankfully, when he calls back, he apologizes, explaining that his wife called him out on his dickishness after he got hung up on.
- Unlike the above, when the call center's fire alarm goes off this caller outright says they don't care if the submitter burns to death.
- A bizarre example in this story, as this caller insists on continuing the conversation even as the submitter's building's fire alarm goes off. But the caller finally gets the picture and hangs up when the submitter lies and tells the caller that their pants are on fire.
- This hotel guest thinks that not waking her son is more important than evacuating when the fire alarm goes off.
- This father gets angry at the submitter for "ruining [his] son's birthday" because he has to evacuate the building due to a fire.
When this caller's keypad goes up in flames, he doesn't want to use a fire extinguisher to put it out for fear he'd be responsible for damaging it!

Not Always Working

This teacher refuses to let her students leave the class during a fire alarm because they're taking an exam. She would rather the students burn to death rather than leave an exam unfinished. Luckily the director came, got all the students out, and the teacher was fired and sued by the school.
This coworker prefers working electricity to a house.
This pizza delivery worker was involved in an auto accident that damaged property (including another person's car). The first thing he did? Borrow a neighbor's cell phone to call his job to make sure he wouldn't lose it, rather than check on the occupants of the car. This, among other acts (such as lying to police), eventually caused him to lose said job.
This guard is more worried about the fallout from a potential Ambulance Chaser (without any proof that the seizure victim in question would even consider it, for the record) than actually saving the person's life, to the point he actively tries to stop emergency services from doing so. Because interfering with emergency services is a serious crime, the obstructive behavior gets him a criminal record, which means he can no longer work as a security guard (or in many other jobs, for that matter).
This doctor puts patient turnover ahead of patients' well-being. "Dr. Jerk" wouldn't begin to describe him.
This receptionist thinks finalizing her nose job on the phone was more important than getting a patient who's in pain to meet the doctor. What's worse was the patient was the only one in the lobby, meaning the receptionist could have done this at literally any other point in time without issue. The receptionist was later fired.
This division officer. Someone else daring to get married in a manner other than the way he did so? That's threatening the sanctity of his marriage! Having an affair with the daughter of a rear admiral, though? No, that's perfectly fine (until someone takes that information to his wife).
This photo lab manager, after catching another employee she doesn't get along with selling cigarettes to a regular customer without checking his ID because they both know he is in his 40s, immediately claims to be friends with that man's mother, that she as such "knows" he's actually a 14-year-old boy with a "growth disease" that just makes him look like he's 40, and she's going to report that employee and get them fired for selling cigarettes to a minor. The manager she goes to reprimands her for standing by and letting this happen, hoping that a coworker will get fired over it, rather than actually stepping in and stopping the transaction if she's so sure that the customer is a minor.
This doctor gets an infant with a fever of 106 degrees Fahrenheit, and rather than try to find what's causing this life-threatening condition, and treat it, fixates on a birthmark, accusing the parents of being abusive because they're more worried about the unexplained fever than getting a birthmark they were told would go away on its own surgically removed. Thankfully, the child survived, and the birthmark disappeared on its own, exactly as promised, by the age of 6, but the story does have an at-best Bittersweet Ending: the submitter was the only one of six children who suffered from this unexplained malady and lived through that night.
The manager in this story doesn't care if there's a severe thunderstorm raging outside, she wants her employees to gather shopping carts, even going so far as to plainly state that she does not care if they get struck. When one employee objects, the manager screams at that employee and fires them for insubordination, only for her boss to discover the following day what happened and fire her instead for willfully endangering that employee's life.
The last paragraph of this story says that the boss supported OP's refusal to falsify medical records for a coworker's canceled vacation… but only because it was a non-work personal issue, not because altering a medical document is unethical and probably fraud.
The manager for this car dealership is more interested in winning the monthly prizes for data accuracy than in actually fixing the accuracy of his dealership's customer data.
Apparently with this security guard company, trying to get a co-worker falsely arrested for allegedly throwing a piece of equipment at him^note is only grounds for a write-up, while refusing to stop feeding stray cats that wander by is grounds for termination.
In this story, a brawl breaks out in the parking lot of a high school and the submitter, a school bus driver, lets students trying to get away from the fight onto their bus for their safety. Afterward, the supervisor does nothing to acknowledge the fight nor the submitter's quick thinking that probably prevented students from getting hurt and instead punishes the submitter for letting students not on the submitter's route onto their bus (even though the bus never moved) and for not getting the students' names when they did. As this is just the latest in a series of grievances the submitter has had with the supervisor, the submitter quits on the spot.
This waitress wears rather high heels to work, and is reluctant to walk to the kitchen to check if the food has allergens.
Waitress: *sighs* “No. Do you really want me to go all the way to the kitchen in these shoes just to ask?”
Submitter: “No, love, don’t worry about it. I’ll just have the allergic reaction with a side of convulsions, followed by a good trip to A&E!”
This American submitter in Canada finds that their manager has left the building to watch the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Submitter: “So watching the playoffs is more important than doing his job?”
Coworker: “Welcome to Canada!”
During a fire drill, this co-worker, calls the head of Human Resources about what she should do – thinking that protecting the office's files is more important – and refuses to leave until she hears back.
- Similarly, this worker refuses to stop working when there's an actual fire. The worker even threatens to report the submitter to HR for making her leave.
This worker in a loud factory tampers with his ear defenders so that he can listen to music on the job, which potentially damages his hearing and makes it difficult to hear people around him. After being caught at this twice, he is given a written warning.
In response, he did the most grownup thing and quit because he would rather be unemployed than not listen to music.
This story apparently had a guy call in sick because “he hasn’t beaten his video game yet.”
Submitter: “I heard that’s been going around.”

Not Always Romantic

A woman is involved in a car accident, requiring nearly 12 hours in the hospital for observation and stitches. Her husband fails to show up, citing an emergency with his mother, and even when she gets out it's inconvenient for him to even give her a lift. The emergency in question that lasted so long? His mother couldn't find the television remote, which was right where she always put it, and he clearly needed to spend all night consoling her for the scare. Unsurprisingly, when he does return home, he returns to find divorce papers waiting for him.

Not Always Related

This guy's car engine suddenly bursts into flames when he starts it up to leave his six-year-old daughter's school, and his first instinct is to try to put it out and leave said daughter, still inside the increasingly smoky vehicle and struggling to open her car door, to fend for herself. He doesn't even realize that the submitter has rescued his daughter until after the fire has been put out. The man's blasé response to this leaves the submitter furious:
"Oh, I forgot she was in there. I was worried that I'd have to rebuild the car if I didn’t get the fire put out."
This mother-in-law is so determined to get to the Black Friday sales that getting to them is more important than a) her elderly neighbor's sleep (because she'd accidentally flattened her car battery, she wanted a jump start from him at 3AM; and she thinks it's unreasonable that he swore at her for it) and b) stopping to call 911 at the scene of a serious vehicle collision that happened right in front of her.

Not Always Learning

This teacher, panicked by an unannounced fire drill, runs outside with her cosmetics... but not her class register or the students themselves, so she couldn't check if all of the students had made it out.
Principal: “Your class would have been toast and you would have looked fantastic. Unbelievable!”
This teacher demands a mother buy a computer for her son and doesn't care that the mother is poor and can't afford to buy one.
Rather than shell out the funds to hire new teachers (and forcing local parents to cover for the staff they don't have), this school would rather buy goats to serve as class pets.
This student is running late to his final exam and sees someone lying injured in the road after getting hit by a car. He chooses not to help her, and instead runs into the classroom to make it to his exam on time.
This school principal is trying to find a way to afford his daughter's wedding and European honeymoon. He decides the best idea is to not pay any of his teachers for two months to save up enough money since "you don't have bills to pay anyway". All the teachers promptly stage a palace coup and quit on the spot, forcing the school to close due to no employees. The principal's daughter is mad that she didn't get the wedding she was promised and cuts all communication with him, and the principal's wife divorces him for losing their only source of income. All of this because he felt his daughter's wedding was his top priority.
This orchestra girl inexplicably injures herself and doesn't bother to check her knees or her elbow (where the injuries were), only saying that she's fine and can still play the French horn.
A referee at a school soccer game refuses to call a game in the face of a tornado, even as the weather worsens around everybody, until he gets confirmation that the tornado^* is actually heading right for them.
This girl's parents force her to attend school through several days of increasingly severe mononucleosis, causing a mono outbreak among students and teachers, so she can keep a perfect attendance record.
The submitter sets an oven on fire while attempting to do some baking. Nobody at all is interested in the fire; all everybody else wants to know is how they got their assistant, a girl, into the kitchen which was in the boys-only dorm. (The school is noted to be extremely strict on the subject, with entering the wrong gender dorm being grounds for, among other things, suspension and expulsion; the assistant in question was permitted to enter by dint of being the only person willing to help the submitter with the baking in the first place.)
This teacher insists that the submitter continue with their presentation when they start bleeding inexplicably,^note and cuts down their mark for "disrupting your presentation" when they're finally allowed to go get a paper towel to clean up the blood.
This anti-schooling father takes his son on vacation when he should be taking his GCS Es. When the son's teachers call him about it, he adamantly refuses to change his plans, saying he's been waiting for the vacation and that schooling never did him any good and that it'll never do his son any good.
Father: “Well, we’ve had this holiday planned for ages. It’s not our fault you idiots scheduled these exams at the same time!”
When this resident hall has its fire alarm go off…
Girl: “[Guy]! Did you really grab that f*** camera on your way out?!”
Guy: “Yes! This thing cost me $800; it’s worth so much more than my d***ed soul!”

Not Always Friendly

"You're letting [your mom's cancer] ruin your life!"
The thief in this one decided begging a cigarette off a bar patron was more important than escaping the police. Or maybe he gave up and wanted a smoke before he got arrested.
Someone was apparently willing to shill out $700 USD a month for a two-bedroom apartment with good transit connections… for no one but their cat.

Not Always Healthy

This boyfriend is casually filming a video for YouTube and Instagram of the ambulance crew responding to his partner's medical episode, and at no point seems to realize she's in serious danger.^note

Not Always Legal

This lady is fine with disrupting a homicide investigation and placing unnecessary 911 calls (offenses that could – and did – get her prison time) to get her coffee... but not with driving 5 minutes and paying a few more dollars to get coffee ("that isn't contaminated with blood", to quote the police officer who dealt with her) from another place.
A music store employee does absolutely nothing when a shoplifter leaves with an armload of CDs... until the submitter informs him that the thief damaged his car while leaving the parking lot, at which point the employee almost bowls the submitter over running out the door to check on his car.
A college campus police officer, answering a complaint, begs a young woman to put a shirt on, even though — as she repeatedly points out — she's not actually breaking any laws since she's wearing duct-tape pasties. And he claims he can't leave until she does, not even to answer that other call about gunshots on another part of the campus.

Skewed Priorities / Not Always Right