I work in a restaurant. Two older couples come in. I know the table is going to be difficult when [Wife #1] presents me with a handful of coupons. I explain that I can only take one coupon per ticket, as is printed on the coupons themselves. [Wife #1] throws two coupons at me.

Wife #1: “Split our checks, then.” *To [Wife #2]* “We can just pay two separate checks.”

Whatever — people do that all the time.

[Wife #1] proceeds to drink Dewars (Scotch) on the rocks until she is extremely intoxicated. When she orders her steak, she asks me to have it cooked “blue.” She flips out when I told her we don’t do blue steaks, and she instead orders a very rare steak. Her husband orders salmon. I am given very specific instructions on how to cook both entrees.

[Husband #2] and [Wife #2] look mortified.

[Wife #1] gets her food and promptly flips out because it’s not “blue,” even though she was totally clear on the fact that we didn’t do that at the restaurant.

My manager, an experienced chef, eventually goes out of his way to make the woman a d***ed blue steak and serves it to her himself. It is the third steak we have cooked for her.

[Wife #1] lectures me for ten minutes (I am not exaggerating) on what a terrible server I am, how the restaurant is a piece of s***, etc. She eats all of her steak and half of her husband’s salmon and complains that their food was inedible. She demands that their entrees be taken off their bill.

I am fuming at this point, but the manager still comps their meals. I take the check to the table for [Wife #2] and [Husband #2] to pay. I am lectured again about what terrible service I offered. After another ten minutes of being scolded, I tell her:

Me: *Calmly* “I understand that you’re upset, but I didn’t prepare your food, and I served you exactly what you ordered.”

Wife #1: “Fine! I want to see the person who cooked my food, then!”

She also lectures him.

Wife #1: “I’m a professional chef, and I’m appalled at your inability to prepare a blue steak!”

Manager: “Okay. Would you like a job here? Since we obviously don’t know what we’re doing.”

[Wife #1] flies off the handle and storms out. Her husband follows meekly in her wake.

[Wife #2] and [Husband #2] leave me an immense tip. They’re so embarrassed by their friend’s behavior that they can barely look me in the eye. They leave, and I start cleaning their table. [Wife #2] comes back, presses an additional $20 into my hand, and whispers:

Wife #2: “I’m so sorry about the way she acted. If I’d known she would be that way I would have just fed her at my home… but she’s a chef and I don’t know how to cook.”

She gave me a hug and left.

A few weeks later, [Wife #1] came back and got super drunk on Dewars on the rocks again. She ended up standing on her tiptoes, screaming into the manager’s face in the middle of a packed dining room because there wasn’t cottage cheese on the salad bar.

She was banned from the restaurant.

I am working the opening shift at [Pizza Chain] with two other people. It’s around 10:40 am, so we are putting everything in the oven so we can open at 11:00. Hearing a knock at the door, I look up from cutting a pizza and see a woman teetering in front of the door with two small children next to her. I notice her parked car taking up two spots before noticing we still have fifteen minutes before we opened. The assistant manager is a stickler for the rules, so he tells us to not let the person in until we open. I’m fine with that since we don’t have anything ready.

Cut to 11:00 when I go to unlock the door before taking the register. The lady and her two kids enter. The kids run to the table in the corner, while the lady stumbles to the counter. I can now smell the alcohol emanating from her, and I solve the mystery of the parking situation. She orders a couple of pizzas and breadsticks — nothing too fancy. I proceed to give her the food, and as I hand it to her, she blurts out that she wants to talk to the manager.

Knowing something is about to go down, I proceed to get him and return to the oven. Nothing is coming out, giving me plenty of time to listen to the conversation between them — not that it’s hard, as the woman immediately starts screaming at my manager.

Woman: “You didn’t open on time! You were supposed to open at 10:30!”

I guess she knows our schedule better than we employees.

Woman: “And my food took way too long to make!”

We serve Hot-n-Ready pizzas, so as soon as I got the money in the register, I turned around and grabbed the food.

The manager is trying to calm down the drunk woman, who is threatening to call the police now. He is halfway through a plea before being cut off by the woman, belting out what will become his future nickname:

Woman: “YOU OL’ [RACE] B*****D!”

She stormed out of the place, leaving the food with the kids still sitting at the table. She walked back in a few minutes later, now carrying a paintball gun she had grabbed from her van.

The other coworker and I had made our way to the back of the store to burst out in laughter. The manager was still standing at the register, in a combined state of confusion and anger. The fun was only beginning.

Upon seeing the paintball gun, the manager asked me to call the police. However, the police were already pulling up. Apparently, while the woman was grabbing her paintball gun, she actually did call the police. The officer made his way into the store and took a look around, noticing the drunk woman in the corner of the store with a paintball gun and two kids, the manager at the register slowly turning red, and two employees stifling laughter.

The officer tried to get both sides of the story. The manager calmed down and told him our side of it. However, the woman was arguing with us the entire time. By now, the officer could smell her new perfume, Eaux de Jack Daniels, and gave her a breathalyzer. Five minutes later, she was being carried out of the store in handcuffs.

It is Friday evening at my part-time job at an electronics store. A woman around sixty who looks a little drunk approaches me at the front of the store.

Customer: “A year ago, I bought a TV here, and I got [Plan] protection. It was recently stolen, so you guys have to replace it.”

Me: “Sorry, [Plan] is a protection plan against damage or technical issues, not an insurance or replacement plan.”

Customer: “You are honor-bound to replace it!”

Me: “…No, sorry, but we are not.”

She then wanders over to the technical support desk and tells them the same thing; they give her the same response. I’m watching her on camera, as I’m pretty sure she is drunk. She eventually wanders back up to my desk, where my manager is now talking to me. She points at a large poster of a woman listening to music.

Customer: “What is that a picture of?”

Manager: “…a woman listening to music.”

Customer: “What is that a picture of?”

She points at a poster of a guy using a laptop.

Manager: “…a guy using a computer.”

Customer: “You work at this store, so you should know that TVs and monitors look at your face, and they read your mind, and they memorize all of your personal information. But when they try to read the minds of pictures, they cannot, and they break, so you need to replace all those pictures of people with pictures of robots.”

Manager: *Trying to be political and boss-like* “Well… I appreciate that feedback, and we will certainly—”

Customer: *Cutting off my boss* “No! You must replace the pictures with pictures of robots, now!“

Manager: “We are not going to do that.”

Customer: “You have to!”

Manager: “No.”

The woman wandered off, and she eventually got in her car and drove off. We ran out to get the license plate so we could call the police.

I work as a night supervisor at a grocery store. It’s early afternoon when I oversee one of our newer cashiers having issues with a customer.

The man is maybe in his forties and almost definitely not sober. He is buying a single can of beer, which runs just over two dollars. The cashier gives him his total, and he hands her two dollar bills.

Cashier: “Do you have any change? I need a little more.”

The man digs around in his pocket for a moment and pulls out a handful of rocks, putting them down on the counter. The cashier is startled, but the man just makes a noise and digs around in his pocket some more, pulling out… more rocks, and like four coins mixed in. He sets this down on the counter, too. The cashier hesitantly digs through the rocks for a quarter and hands the man his change and his beer. He swipes at the rocks, getting most of them, shoves them back in his pocket, and leaves, leaving a small pile of rocks behind.

A few hours later, a customer comes in and asks for a supervisor. The other supervisor on shift comes over, as I am about to cover the cashier’s break, although I can still hear the conversation.

Customer: “Yeah, there’s a man in your parking lot yelling some really obscene things. I wanted you to be aware. It’s your call whether you do something about it, though.”

My coworker goes outside to check and then comes in and reports a man standing on the sidewalk — public property. He is yelling mostly nonsense, maybe some rude things mixed in. My coworker phones the non-emergency police line and gives a basic description of the issue.

Eventually, they send someone down to shoo the man away, or he leaves on his own.

Later, around 7:30, a man comes in and asks to use the phone. It takes me a few minutes to recognize him as the man with the rocks from earlier. He is still definitely not sober, and it’s a bit difficult to understand him. He is also, inexplicably, carrying a stack of signs from a drugstore across the street — the long, thin, almost laminate things that get attached to the shelves.

I eventually get that he wants to call a detox/rehab service for some reason, but he doesn’t know their number or their name, just vaguely where they are. I pull out my phone to look it up as he keeps rambling.

Me: “Is it [Detox Company]? Does that sound familiar?”

Rock Man: “I don’t know. I guess.”

Me: “Okay, here’s the number. You can use the phone right here.”

I point to the customer service desk.

Rock Man: “Well, it won’t do any good to call them; I still got my cigarettes. They won’t let me in with my cigarettes. Can I call my mom, instead?”

Me: “Er, sure. You can use the phone and call whoever you need.”

I leave him to his calls and come back a few minutes later to check on him.

Rock Man: “My mom didn’t answer… Wait, what day is it?”

Me: “It’s Sunday, sir.”

Rock Man: “D***, she’s probably at church.”

It is almost 8:00 pm at this point.

Rock Man: “What time do you guys close?”

Me: “Not until 10:00.”

The man dithers around a bit more, mumbling.

Me: “Let me know if you need anything else, okay? Feel free to use the phone again.”

I leave and find my other supervisor.

Supervisor: “You know, that’s the guy who I had to call the police on earlier. He seemed much nicer inside.”

Me: “I didn’t know that, actually. I did, however, know that that’s the dude who paid us with rocks earlier, so that’s cool.”

The man left a few minutes later without further incident. Hopefully, he got where he needed to be.

I did find the stack of signs for the drugstore left outside on a patio table when I did my check at closing.

Guest: “Let me get a Blue Moon.”

I get him his beer. A minute later:

Guest: “Ain’t this s*** supposed to come blue?”