I am grabbing a drink during happy hour while my friend is bartending. The place has just opened, so it is pretty slow. A woman walks up and looks at the specials board. One of the happy hour specials is some fancy-pants vodka/lemonade/watermelon cocktail, which the woman orders.

She watches my friend make the drink with the three of us chatting the entire time. My friend finishes and hands the drink over the bar to the customer.

Customer: “Wait… does that have alcohol in it? Oh, no, I didn’t want any alcohol.”

Friend: “Yes… you saw me making it and adding the vodka.”

Customer: “I thought you were making it for someone else.”

Friend: “You are literally the only customer in here.”

This is a story from my absolutely hellish New Year’s Eve. Plenty happened, including a guy physically ripping my shirt trying to grab me (I love working with drunk people!), but this one just confused me.

The place where I work is kind of posh. We are a restaurant but we do some drinking-only events, and our New Year’s Eve event was ticketed and drinking-only, with booth packages on every single one of our booths. These ranged anywhere from about £500 to £1500 in my section, depending on the size of the booking and what package they got.

I had my table of eight come in. They’d gotten our twelve-beer package and our vodka-and-mixers package. Simple, really. All was going well. They were arguably my least favourite table in my section, but that’s mostly because all the others were super hype and fun. (Plus this one girl at the table seemed to think she was the sole exception to our no-vaping and keep-your-f******-shoes-on rules.)

After the twelve beers were done, they asked how much it’d be for another twelve. I told them, the three guys discuss, and they got the twelve beers for themselves and a bottle of prosecco for the girls. Again, nothing wrong so far.

Over the course of the night, while I was in my section, I physically watched them drink those beers. I took away their empties every time. Then, at about 1:00 am, I noticed that their beer bucket was empty and took it away. When I got back to the section after running a quick errand, the table called me over.

Vaping Girl: “Excuse me. Someone took away our beers.”

I thought there had been a bit of confusion.

Me: “No, I took away your empty bucket.”

They protested this, with several of them screaming at me there were still beers in there.

This went back and forth for a little bit before the vaping girl turned to me, snooty as h***, and said:

Vaping Girl: “We paid a lot of money for this table, and someone’s just stolen our drinks!”

I got my manager, and their story changed to someone — not staff — coming over to the table and taking beers out of the bucket during the midnight countdown. My manager comped them six more free beers essentially to shut them up.

In the end, most of the table left, and the three who were still there at closing were lovely, but I’m just confused how someone could drink all their drinks, somehow not notice they’d done so, and then proclaim that we’d unjustly stolen them away from them?

I was a newly-hired waitress on the graveyard shift when I was barely eighteen. Being the low man on the totem pole, I got the worst shifts, including 10:00 pm to 6:00 am on Sundays. Despite usually being dead, this shift was scary for me because I was still learning and it meant being on my own except for the cook from 3:00 am to 6:00 am.

Six frat boys came in at 4:00 am, drunk and starving. They were my only table. They ordered a ton of food and told me they were having a last hoorah before two of them left for the military.

Everything was going well until they got the idea to dash. One by one, laughing, they got up and ran around the restaurant and out the door, with me yelling some version of, “Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!”

This restaurant was in a strip mall on a busy street, and there was a condo complex across the parking lot. The guys continued laughing as they trotted around in front of the restaurant before heading across the parking lot toward the condos.

I followed them outside, continuing to yell at them to come back and pay.

Just then, a cop pulled into the parking lot — part of his regular patrol of the businesses! The guys started running in earnest then, but the cop caught the last guy.

Once the cop confirmed with me what had happened and how much the bill was, he escorted the frat boy home to get money for the bill, brought him back, and made him apologize, pay, and tip me fat.

It. Was. Glorious.

I studied abroad in my junior year of college, and a group of us decided to take a bus tour during spring break through several countries in Europe. The days were jam-packed, and we stumbled into our hotel room rather late one evening.

The lobby included a check-in desk, a seating area, and a small bar. The receptionist informed us that there was no bartender on staff this time of night, but she could serve us beer or wine if we wanted it. Our tour guide checked us in while the rest of us waited and talked. We all wanted to have a drink before turning in, and as we discussed the menu on display it, became apparent that I was the only one planning to order wine; everyone else wanted beer.

The receptionist finished at the desk and came around the bar. She looked at me first.

Receptionist: “What would you like?”

Me: “I’ll have a Riesling, please.”

Receptionist: “Of course.”

She poured me a glass — and by that, I mean that she poured me a FULL glass, at least two standard servings of wine, maybe two and a half.

Receptionist: “Why do people only pour half a glass of wine? I never understand it.”

Suddenly, all of my classmates also decided they were in the mood for wine. The receptionist continued to have a very generous pour, and she chatted with us for a while until we went up to our rooms.

I work at a gas station. A guy comes in at 2:15 am.

Customer: “Gimme a bottle of tequila.”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t sell alcohol after 2:00 am.”

Customer: *Getting mad* “I’m not leaving until you do.”

Me: “That’s fine. I get paid by the hour. I’ll just mop around you.”

Customer: “I’m calling 911!”

He gets on the phone and talks for a moment before hanging up.

Customer: “I spoke to 911, and they said you’re being a d**k for not selling to me.”

I don’t budge, so he ends up doing this three times. I don’t think he is really calling 911 until the cops actually show up!

Officer: “Sir, you’re breaking the law by using 911 for a non-emergency.”

Customer: “What do you mean, non-emergency?!”

He was escorted out.

Some customers want the impossible, and they’ll go to ridiculous lengths to get it. Check out more impossible demands in our roundup: 10 More Hilarious Stories About Customers Demanding The Impossible