I am serving a customer on a Saturday night. I am advising them how to do something online.

Customer: “But it’s Saturday night. Isn’t the internet closed?”

Me: “No. The internet doesn’t close on Saturday nights.”

Customer: “Even though it’s after banker’s hours?”

Me: “Even though it is in fact after banker’s hours.” 

They left a very kind, but very confused senior.

Many, many years ago, I worked half a shift at a bar in northern Wisconsin before I found out it was a local meeting spot for the scariest group of extreme racists that may or may not have been part of a three-letter hate group.

They’d take over half the seats in the house, get loudly drunk, and then wander off in all directions. The place looked respectable on the outside, so I never expected it to be such a nightmare.

On my first day, I arrived shortly after most of them were already a few drinks in.

One of them staggered over to the bar.

Me: “Hello! What can I pour for you?”

Racist: “We’ll see, but firsht, ya gotta answer me a queshion.”

From the way he was slurring, I was already wondering if my first task on my first shift would be to cut off a belligerent drunk and convince them to drink some water or eat some food.

Me: “Well, I’m new, but I can probably tell you what’s in just about any drink we serve.”

Racist: “Naw, naw, thassss…”

The word ended in a hiss, and he slowly tilted to the left before righting himself.

Racist: “…not what I wanna ashk. I just wanna know…” 

At this point, he went from slurring in a conversational tone to bellowing at the top of his lungs.

Racist: “AIN’T YEW GLAD YEW AIN’T A [N-WORD]?!”

And in that instant, half the bar swiveled their heads, and they all stared straight at me, waiting for my answer.

Until that moment, I’d only ever heard of people saying their insides went cold, but I would’ve sworn I’d just swallowed an entire bucket of ice. With red flags waving and klaxons screaming inside my head, I put on my most agreeable expression and nodded to him. Then, I politely excused myself, told my boss that I was out, and left. My boss just shrugged and said maybe I wasn’t a good fit.

In the decades since, I have never encountered a workplace like that, and I hope I never will again.

I have an uncle who I’ll call “Uncle Bob”. He’s generally a nice person who does some legitimately good work for the world. However, he has a habit of making unilateral decisions about almost everything without asking others’ opinions, and he frequently ignores the opinions given unprompted. He doesn’t do it out of malice; it just doesn’t seem to enter his mind that other people may wish to provide their input or may not want to do everything he does. (I have my theories about why he thinks this way, but they aren’t really relevant here.) Regardless, it means that he makes for a pretty terrible guest.

Uncle Bob sends me an email one day with the flight confirmation information showing that he is planning to visit me for four days in the upcoming summer, less than two months after I move to a new city. Since I haven’t seen him in nearly ten years and generally enjoyed his company in the past, I decide to shrug it off. How much inconvenience can four days be, really?

Fast forward to about two weeks before his arrival, and I get really sick with a “stomach bug”, later determined to be long [contagious illness]. After several days of seeing if I will recover, I call up Uncle Bob and explain the situation, with the intention of suggesting that we reschedule the visit. But before I can bring up the suggestion, he interrupts.

Uncle Bob: “Don’t worry about that. I’ll fly up, and I can accommodate whatever it is that you need.” *Click*

Once again, I shrug it off. His visit to me is just one in a series of visits he’s making across the US, and I don’t really want whoever he’s staying with before or after me to get stuck with him for too long. And besides, how inconvenient can four days be, really?

Quite inconvenient, it turns out. I won’t recount the entire play-by-play, but suffice it to say the only real accommodation provided by him is a single afternoon off when I truly feel too ill to do anything (although I never feel well during his visit). Other highlights include him asking invasive questions about “what the doctor said to me”, him monologuing over many drinks (for him, not me) for three hours about subjects of his choosing, and his polite but obvious disinterest in all of the activities and tourist sightseeing I arranged for us to do. So, by the afternoon of day four, I am ready to send him on his way.

While I’m driving him from our last sightseeing spot toward the airport, he receives an email saying his flight has been delayed by six hours.

Uncle Bob: “Let’s go see a movie. I don’t want to wait around in the terminal forever.”

Okay, this could work for me. Last week was the dual release of two highly anticipated films, both of which I want to see, so I agree. He scrolls through his phone for movie times, and I drive to the theater.

Uncle Bob: “Let’s go see [Action Spy Movie]. The rest of these look stupid.”

No shade on anyone who likes action spy movies, but extended car chases and trains falling off exploded bridges have never been my cup of tea. And I was less than impressed by the movie I ended up watching while nursing long [contagious illness] symptoms and waiting to drop off a guest who had overstayed his welcome. Although, apparently, he had the same opinion of the film as I did; during a climactic moment, he leaned over and said:

Uncle Bob: “This is ridiculous.”

I was in charge of Public Relations for a large IT company, and as a result, I had to handle an American executive as we did press interviews in six different European countries in five days. The main problem was that I was with an American who hated Europe. He was grumpy because there was no jogging track around the Eiffel Tower and because no UK journalists wanted to meet him for breakfast meetings at 6:00 am. In Paris, he insisted we eat dinner at an Angus Steak House.

At the departure lounge in the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris, he went into total meltdown.

Client: “I can’t stand all these French people smoking. Make them stop.”

Me: “Yeah, good one.”

Client: “I’m serious. Go over there and tell them to stop smoking. Now.”

I walked over to the group of French students who were chain-smoking Gitanes and asked them if they knew the time. I went back to the client and told him they had said, “Go forth and multiply.”

I worked at a hotel/casino combo place as one of the evening janitors. So, if someone barfs in the elevator, guess who cleans it up? Yep! Me! Okay, fine, give me the key to lock the elevator and a mop, and I’ll be right back. 

I ended up getting into an argument OVER TEXT because neither my immediate boss nor the people who make the rules could be bothered to come in and talk to me directly. Of course, THEY always refuse to work night and weekend shifts. 

The problem was that all the housekeepers left for the day before I even got there. Naturally, quite a lot of people wouldn’t realize that they needed something until 10:30 at night. I already had an extensive list of duties to perform, and my direct boss was telling me that I needed to tack on catering hand and foot to drunk hotel clients who wanted another towel or some other nonsensical task that wasn’t part of my responsibilities.

The argument revealed that the owners of the hotel/casino were too cheap to have night housekeeping on duty. They were also unwilling to give me the bump in pay or a change in job position and description. It was just one more job I was expected to do without any additional pay, to be a “team player.”

Me: “Well, I guess the hotel guests will just have to do without. I have too much to do with my responsibilities, so no, I’m not going to be able to do that.”

Boss: “It’s not up for negotiation. We had a meeting, and they said you had to do it.” 

Me: “No, I don’t. I quit!“

I feel bad for the other guy working as a night janitor, but not for my boss.