I worked as a parking lot attendant and cashier when I was sixteen. I pushed plastic carts all day, or I rang up people’s groceries.

I was halfway through my shift out in the sun getting carts when I decided to take a small break under the shade near the bench beside the front entrance of the store. I didn’t pay much attention to the few people in the area, but this very nice older Chinese lady struck up a conversation with me.

I was a bit stunned because it came out of nowhere. She started talking to me in a thick Chinese accent about my job and saying stuff like:

Customer: “You have a good job, and you earn good money.”

This weirded me out at first, but she kept the conversation going and talked about how in China, people would work out in the soybean fields and rice paddies only to get very little money at the end of the day.

I was taken on one amazing trip in this chat with this lady, and I still don’t understand why. To end this conversation, she said:

Customer: “You do a good job. Thank you.”

And with that, she kinda just walked away. I never saw her again, but I wish I had. Those words and that lady have stuck with me ever since. I’m sure I did a better job after that because it was very motivating to hear some positive feedback from customers for once!

Like all hotels, we have a lost and found system because people leave things behind all the time. The item is bagged, labeled, and sorted into a storage box based on the floor it was found on, and then the information is written in a binder so we have an easy way to know exactly what’s in our lost and found bins. I’ll abbreviate Lost & Found as “L&F” for the sake of brevity.

We keep L&F items for ninety days. If they’re not claimed by that time, they become the property of the hotel and are typically claimed by whichever housekeepers wants them. If no one wants the items, they are thrown out. The number one items left behind are phone chargers. Most people don’t bother calling and asking for them to be returned, so after ninety days, they get put in a drawer in the office for the employees to use and to lend out to any guest who has forgotten their own charger.

[Guest] comes in with her husband. I greet them and start checking them in and everything.

Me: “Oh! I’m sorry. What was it?”

Guest: “A phone charger.”

I try looking up her last reservation, but for some reason, the system ain’t havin’ it. Name, phone number, email address — nothing I search is bringing up any results.

Me: “Do you remember the room number or the dates you stayed?”

Guest: “No, but I spoke to the manager on the phone multiple times when I first left it here. He said he’d ship it back to me, but it never arrived.”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry, but nothing is coming up in my search results right now. I can look a bit harder later on when we aren’t so busy.”

Guest: “It’s very unprofessional for you to not have any record of our last stay.”

Lady… obviously, we do have a record, but it’s hard to find when the name isn’t turning up results and I don’t know what date or room number you stayed.

Me: “I understand, and I’ll do my best to find it when I have a few minutes. I can call you when I find something, okay?”

She goes to her room, but not ten minutes later, she calls the desk to ask me if I’ve found her reservation yet. My sister in Christ, I haven’t even had a chance to breathe yet.

Me: “No, but I’ll call you when I do.”

Guest: “Could you just physically go to the lost and found and look through everything to see if you can find my charger?”

Ma’am, what in the f***…

Me: “Do you remember what room you were in last time or what date you stayed?”

She half-scoffs, half-laughs.

Guest: “No! Of course not! You don’t need that information to find my charger!”

Me: “Well, that’s how our lost and found is organized, so I either need that or I need to see your reservation, which I haven’t had a chance to find yet.”

Guest: “Can you search by my rewards number?”

Me: “Yes, but I’ve already tried that.”

Guest: “No, no, no. My old rewards number from my old phone number.”

Why, no, that didn’t cross my mind. She reads it off to me, and her reservation pops right up. And I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t a reservation from February 5th. It’s November. I stare at it and blink for a second, wondering if she is kidding me.

Me: “It looks like your last stay was on February 5th. Does that sound correct?”

Guest: “Yes! That’s it!”

Me: “Oh, that was nine months ago…”

Guest: “I know that. I told you I spoke to your manager multiple times, and he promised to ship it back, but he never did.”

Me: “I, uh… Let me check our L&F log real quick. Please hold.”

I go back and look at our L&F binder, and there isn’t even anything logged in there — not a single phone charger on that day or the next. This also means that the manager wouldn’t have sent anything back because nothing was found in the first place.

I pick up the phone again and tell her.

Guest: *Angrily* “You need to actually go back to your lost and found and look through everything to make sure!”

Me: “There’s nothing documented about you leaving a charger behind. And even if you did, we get rid of items after ninety days.”

Guest: “You’re telling me you threw out my personal property? That you just get rid of things like that? That’s irresponsible, unprofessional, and disrespectful to the person whose property it is. You should be keeping things until people come back for them.”

Yeah, sure, [Guest], because who knows when Gertrude IV might call and demand to have her toenail clippings from two years ago returned. It’s not feasible to keep all L&F items forever.

Me: “I understand, but that’s our policy here. I can pass this on to the manager who will be here tomorrow morning if you’d like.”

Guest: “I’d like for you to go look for my phone charger.”

Me: “I sa—” *Sighs* “Is it a regular iPhone charger?”

Guest: “Yes, it’s an iPhone charger.”

Me: “Well, I’ll give you another one if you want to stop by the desk sometime today.”

Guest: “Fine. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

I pull one out of our drawer, make sure it is clean, and wait for her to come down. I think this will be the end of it. But alas…

I give the charger to her, and she stands there lecturing me.

Guest: “This whole situation is so unprofessional! You’re all so irresponsible! I will be speaking to your manager about this in the morning!”

I text my manager a heads-up so he doesn’t end up ambushed unexpectedly by this woman in the morning.

Sure enough, the next morning, the guest comes down to talk to someone. My manager tells her the same thing I did last night. After this lady yells at her some more, [Manager] goes and gets our L&F binder and drops it on the counter.

Manager: “Look, see the dates here? There’s no mention of any charger found on those dates.”

Guest: “But I spoke to a man who said he’d ship it to me!”

[Manager] goes and gets the general manager.

General Manager: “Ma’am, I’m the only man who works here, and I didn’t speak to you about shipping a charger.”

Guest: “Well, you’re not the man I talked to! It was a different man!”

General Manager: “I’m the only man who works here. Didn’t the agent from last night give you another charger?”

Guest: “Yes, she did. But that’s not the point! This entire staff is handling this extremely unprofessionally. You’re all unprofessional, rude, and disrespectful. I didn’t want to have to write a bad review, but I can see that I’ll have to.”

Manager: “That’s fine, ma’am. Have a nice day!”

The guest left, but I can guarantee you that she did not have a nice day.

I can’t wait to read her review. That’ll be worth a good laugh.

I just started driving for a rideshare/food delivery company to make some extra cash. I live in a small town. It’s not so small that everyone knows each other, but it’s small enough that there isn’t much crime to speak of. But as a smaller female, I was still nervous about giving rides to people at night, because people in my town are heavy and frequent drinkers. I considered getting a dash cam as a safety precaution, but I didn’t have the money to invest in a good one just yet, and I felt like I probably wouldn’t need one, anyway.

Once I started getting the hang of rideshare driving, I felt more comfortable driving into the night a little bit, because I found that most people were just trying to get from Point A to Point B without incident, and I had some very fun conversations and interactions with most passengers.

However… there’s always one bad apple in the barrel, right?

I arrived at the pick-up destination for a rider one night, which was (I assume) his home, way on the outskirts of town, in the middle of nowhere, where it’s very dark. I didn’t pull fully into the driveway because I didn’t trust myself to back up all the way back onto the road in the dark (and snow), with sharp ditches on either side of the rural driveway, but I was completely off the road just fine.

My rider stumbled out of his house (uh-oh), and on his way to my car (staggering the whole way), he made dramatic sarcastic gestures to showcase how much of the driveway was there that I could have pulled into. Great.

He got in the car and immediately got on my case for not pulling as far into his driveway as he felt like I should have. I stated my reason for not doing so and began the navigation to his destination, which was to a bar back in town, about fifteen minutes away.

He looked at my navigation screen from the back seat.

Rider: “Oh… Are we going to [Bar]?!”

Me: “Yep, it looks like it.”

He clapped his hands like a child and squealed:

Rider: “Yay!”

Yeah, this guy was already fall-down drunk. He was slurring his words and acting drunkenly obnoxious and loud. I was annoyed but didn’t feel unsafe.

As I started driving, he called his friend to let him know he was on the way to the bar.

Rider: *On the phone* “Yeah, I’m on my way. Have you gotten kicked out yet?” *Pauses* “Well, don’t get kicked out. Get me a [Beer #1]. Oh! And get one for the [Rideshare] driver, too.”

Me: “I’m on the clock, sir. I can’t have a beer with you.”

He ignored me.

Rider: “Yeah, she wants a [Beer #2]. Yeah, that’s what she wants.” *Pauses* “You get a [Beer #1] for me and a [Beer #2] for the driver. Yep.”

I rolled my eyes but just stayed quiet. I’ve learned from experience that you can’t win an argument with someone that drunk. But then, he said this…

Rider: “Yeah, we’re gonna make babies! Haha! Yep! Me and the [Rideshare] driver are gonna make babies!” *Laughs obnoxiously*

Oh, God.

Once he got off the phone, my hope was that he was so drunk that he’d already forgotten he’d said that, or maybe he was just making a crass “guy joke” to seem cool to his friend.

Nope.

Rider: *To me* “So… we’re gonna do that, right?”

Me: *Playing dumb* “Do what, sir?”

Rider: “Make babies! You’ll make babies with me, right? I wanna make babies with you!”

Yes, I know I was within my rights to stop the car and kick him out right then and there. However, it was the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and very cold outside. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to abandon a person this drunk in such circumstances. I was very annoyed and uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel like I was in danger, so I just figured I’d get him to the bar and that would be that.

Me: “No, sir, I’m afraid I’m spoken for.”

Rider: “Awww… d*** it. What’s his name?”

Me: “[Boyfriend].”

Rider: “Oh… Yeah, I can’t compete with [Boyfriend].”

Me: “No, you can’t.”

Rider: “He must have a huge d**k!” *Laughs obnoxiously*

Me: “He is a big dude — as in he benches 300 pounds, has muscles as big as my head, and could knock someone out with a single punch.”

This was actually true. My boyfriend has been on the bodybuilder path for a couple of years, and he is remarkably muscular and strong. And he used to do martial arts and never lost a match. He absolutely could have stomped this guy just by looking at him. Unfortunately, he’s a trucker and was at work at the time, about 200 miles away. I had activated the “share my ride” feature in the app the second I’d seen my rider stumbling to the car, so my boyfriend was aware of my location. I had told him that I would activate that if I ever felt nervous on a ride, so in some way, he was “there” with me.

Rider: “Oh. Well, if you ever get tired of him, you call me! Then we can make babies!”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Rider: “So, your boyfriend has a huge d**k. I have a small d**k, but I can still make you laugh!”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Rider: “We can have a good time together, even though I have a small d**k. I can make you laugh, and we can have a good time.”

I tried to change the subject.

Me: “I hope your friend didn’t get kicked out of the bar.”

Rider: “If he did, you’ll just drive us to another bar, right? And come and drink with us, and then drive us to the next bar!” *Obnoxious laugh*

Me: “No, sir, I won’t do that.”

Rider: “Awww, come on! We’ll have fun together. Hey! You’ll call me when you break up with your boyfriend, right?”

Cripes…

I finally got to the bar and parked on the street to let him out. He took an annoyingly long time to exit my car.

Me: “Okay, sir, here we are. You have a good night, okay?”

Rider: *Not leaving the car* “Hey… hey… If you and your boyfriend don’t work out, you’ll call me, right? We’ll have a good time.”

I just wanted him out of my car.

Me: “Sure. Have a good night, sir.”

Rider: “Hey! Will you be my driver when I leave?”

Me: “If you call for a [Rideshare] and I’m still on duty, maybe.”

Not a chance, my dude.

Rider: “Oh, I hope so. Hey, you call me, okay?”

He finally opened the car door to leave.

Me: “Have a good night.”

I watched him cross the street to the bar and immediately rated him one star in the app, citing “Disrespectful, Conversation, and Other” as the reasons for my rating. I clocked out of the app and went home. That had done me in for the night.

Once I got home, I called my boyfriend and told him what happened. Though my boyfriend is an excellent fighter and enormous (muscle-wise), he’s a gentle giant and not violent in any way, nor does he have a temper, so I knew telling him about this guy wasn’t going to send him on an “I’m gonna find him and kick his a**!” rampage. He simply sighed heavily listening to my ordeal and agreed that this guy was totally out of line, and he said he thought I handled it well.

Then, I went back into the [Rideshare] app and officially reported the rider for sexual harassment. The help team responded a little while later saying that he had absolutely violated the Community Guidelines, and they temporarily suspended his account.

I was fairly certain that was an isolated event… but I did buy a dash cam the next day.

It is Cinco De Mayo, and as we’re a well-known Tex-Mex place, we’ve had a busy day. (I know, I know, CDM is more an American thing than a Mexican thing. I just serve people tacos…)

Customer: “I’ll get the taco combo, but… uh…”

He leans in closer and whispers.

Customer: “Can I get that white people spicy?”

I try not to laugh, and I assure him that we will make it mild. We bring the meal out to him, and I note that he is struggling after the first bite, drinking cold water as he goes.

Customer: “I thought you said this was mild!”

Me: “It is, sir. The salsa is extra mild — and also on the side, sitting there untouched by you. You’ve just eaten a bite of corn taco and unseasoned ground beef.”

The customer noticed that I was right and immediately calmed down. The placebo effect is a crazy thing…

An angry older woman skips the line to storm up to me at the customer service desk and demands the store manager. I call him over while I serve the customers actually patient enough to wait their turn. The manager arrives and introduces himself.

Customer: “I should call the police on you! I caught my son with cigarettes, and he said he got them here! You should all be ashamed!”

Manager: “I’m very sorry, madam. We always ID for tobacco purchases, so I can’t explain why that happened. Maybe he was carrying a fake ID?” 

Customer: “And now you’re accusing him of having counterfeit documents?! I am reporting you to the Better Business Bureau and complaining on your Facebook page!”

Manager: “Do you know when he made the purchase? We can check the camera footage and see if we can figure out what happened.” 

She gives us a short window when her son was here this morning, and from the terminal at the customer service desk, [Manager] is able to isolate the purchase.

Customer: “That’s him! See?! You just sold him the cigarettes without any issue!” 

Manager: “Ma’am… first of all, we can all see that he clearly presented ID, but second of all, if that is your son, then he’s an adult.”

Customer: “He is an adult when I say he is!”

Manager: “How old is he?”

Customer: “That’s not the point! The point is that you sold them to him, and you didn’t even get my permission! I do not allow him to smoke!”

Manager: “Ma’am, if he’s over twenty-one, which he clearly looks to be based on the video, then he doesn’t need your permission to buy cigarettes — or anything for that matter. He’s an adult, and we have done nothing that the Better Business Bureau can do anything about.”

Customer: “Then I am still going to blast you for this all over your Facebook page! I’m going to complain on every post! You need to do something to make sure this doesn’t happen again!” 

Manager: “[My Name], can you go get some popcorn from the snack aisle, please?”

Customer: “What?! Why? I’m not asking for popcorn!”

Manager: “Oh, no, it’s not for you; it’s for us. If you’re going to go on to [Store]’s Facebook page to complain that we should have called you for permission to sell cigarettes to your twenty-one-or-over-year-old son, then those comments are going to be very entertaining.” *To me* “[My Name], get the family size. I have a feeling I’m going to be reading them for a while…”