I work at the customer assistance desk at an airport.

Customer: “Your airport shuttle service is s***! They didn’t drop me off at the terminal, and I had to walk through the parking lot!”

Me: “Ma’am, we—”

Customer: “—and the driver couldn’t speak English! I kept asking him about what terminal my flight leaves from, and he just spoke nonsense!”

Me: “—Ma’am, if you—”

Customer: “—And the vehicle smelled like bad cheese! There really is no excuse!”

Me: “—Ma’am! We don’t have a shuttle service.”

Customer: “…what?!”

Me: “We don’t have a shuttle service.”

Customer: “…then… then who the h*** drove me?!”

I arrived at the airport early (as wise travelers do) and decided to splurge on a ridiculously priced bagel to get something in my stomach. I sat in the waiting area, munching away, when a little girl walked over to me. She taps me on the arm.

Little Girl: “I want some.”

Me: “Sorry, kiddo, no. Ask your mom to buy you one.”

Mom: *From a seat nearby.* “It’s fine. You can share.”

I had to stop at the audacity.

Me: “Excuse me? No. Please go get your child her own snack.”

Mom: “She asked you, and I told you that you can share.”

Me: “I can share, but I won’t. You don’t even know if I have Herpes, or COVID, or any other number of contagious infections. Also, it’s really creepy that you want your child to accept candy or food from total strangers.”

Mom: “You’re being really rude!”

Me: “And you’re being an idiot. Either buy your kid her own bagel or tell her she has to wait. Either way, I’m not giving your kid my food.”

I then stand up, take my carry-on with me, and move to another seat, while the mom hugs her now wailing child, and glares daggers at me.

A couple are checking in with me at the airport.

Guy: *Handing me their passports.* “Yeah, we’re going to Bali.”

Me: “Oh, how nice!”

The guy then looks up and down the check-in area and leans in to whisper.

Guy: “Yeah, Sydney is getting waaaay too Muslim lately, so we needed a break from it, know what I mean?”

Me: “…riiiight.”

Guy: “We noticed you were the only Australian doing check-ins today, so we let some people go ahead of us so that we could get checked in by you.”

Me: “Well, all of my colleagues are more than capable of—”

Guy: “—yeah, yeah, DEI and all that. You know what we mean.”

I thought being anti-DEI was an American thing, but oh well…

Me: “Anyway, here are your boarding passes. Please enjoy your flight to Bali, Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world!”

Guy: “The what?!”

I’m knowledgeable enough that I know Bali is the only Indonesian province that’s more Hindu than Muslim, but I also know that most racists are stupid by default, so I wasn’t expecting him to know that.

For those of us who like to travel, we enjoy the simple things abroad. That includes bad English.

I flew into Tbilisi, Georgia, and approached passport control. There is a sign on the wall in Georgian and English, and a picture. The picture is a camera crossed out. No pictures are allowed, which is reasonable.

The English translation below reads “no shooting.”

I’ve just finished checking in at the airport, which took much longer than it should have – I had my boarding pass in Google Wallet, and the kiosk wouldn’t scan my QR code. An older lady stops me to ask for help, and she’s having the same problem, so I try to see what I can do.

I check the phone’s settings quickly and hand it back. She hits the App Overview button to find her pass, but its window only appears as a white screen, and she closes it.

Lady: “What have you done?!”

Me: “Huh?”

Lady: *Frantically searching her open apps.* “It’s gone! You’ve ruined it!”

Me: “…You can get it from Google Wallet—”

Lady: “—I don’t have Google Wallet! It’s gone forever now!”

She opens Google Wallet. The button leading to her pass is on screen, clearly marked.

Me: “That’s it. Just tap that.”

She leaves Google Wallet and begins searching her emails for her boarding pass.

Lady: “You’ve helped enough!”

I consider making an obviously stressed-out airport patron feel like an idiot, but I decide it’s better to apologise and walk away.

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Lady: *Relaxing.* “It’s fine. It’s my fault for asking you.”

She checks in another way and heads to the bag drop kiosk, which also asks to scan your boarding pass. The last I saw of her, she was getting help from airport staff. I hope they had better luck!