I do repair work for beverage equipment — vending machines, glass door coolers. etc. My company provides the equipment and keeps ownership of it. We do all repair and maintenance of the equipment. Customers are supposed to call us as soon as there is a problem, NOT try to fix it themselves. We do NOT charge customers to repair the equipment, since we own it.

I receive a service call for a cooler not cooling at a children’s play/party business. I arrive within two hours of the call being dispatched — company policy is to respond within twenty-four hours — and am met by the woman in charge.

Customer: “Your cooler stopped cooling. First, it started freezing drinks days ago! We turned the thermostat off to defrost it and then turned it back on. Now it won’t cool at all!”

This is a HUGE red flag for me. Customers aren’t supposed to try and fix things; that’s what we do. Also, I recognize the problem being described. If caught early, it is a quick fix — ten to fifteen minutes. At this point, I’m going to have to take the whole refrigeration system out and back to the shop.

I have to raise my voice to be heard over the loud games and louder kids.

Me: “I really wish you had called us as soon as the cooler stopped working. It can be fixed really easily if caught early, but now your cooler will be down for a few hours.”

I go out to my truck and get a handcart to wheel the refrigeration system out.

Customer: *After I come back in* “I talked to our office. We placed three work orders and you didn’t come! This is terrible service!”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I only received the work order this morning. I don’t know anything about other work—”

Customer: “It doesn’t matter! You work for the company; it’s all of your faults! Also, since you sprung this on me by surprise, you need to move this cooler into the back and bring our spare cooler up front. I can’t be running to the back every ten seconds to get a cold drink!”

The cooler in question is eight feet tall and weighs around five hundred pounds empty, over double that full (which it is). The cooler is on rollers, but it’s NEVER safe for one person to move a cooler this size. Also, the place is carpeted and full of kids running around. Even if I had help AND the cooler was empty, this is an equipment move that I would have to refuse for safety reasons.

Me: “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. It’s not—”

Customer: “I don’t care if it’s not your job. You work for [Company]. The coolers belong to [Company]. You will do this!”

Me: “I can’t.”

Customer: “I’m calling back and they will make you do it! Don’t you leave!”

She calls our service desk while I take the refrigeration system out to my truck. I come back in because, at this point, I know it will be more trouble for me if I just leave. I hear her on the phone with the service desk, explaining that she just needs a small cooler moved around. After a few minutes on the phone, she hangs up and tells me the service desk says I can move the cooler.

Me: “As I told you before, I can’t move it by myself! It’s unsafe!”

Customer: “If you don’t, I’m going to make a huge complaint!”

Me: “Go ahead.”

And I left. At that point, I had done nothing wrong, but I wanted to say a lot of things that would actually get me in trouble.

I went back to the shop and repaired the refrigeration system. I also let my manager know about the situation. He told me to take one of the shop guys with me when I went back and send him in so I won’t have to deal with the customer. Putting the refrigeration system back is an easy one-man job, so I was not putting my work off on someone else.

The return trip went without issue. The shop guy told me that the customer was very smug that she got her cooler repaired the same day — not unusual at all — and apparently felt that her complaints got me in trouble. 

Afterward, we checked to see if there had been any other work orders placed for that cooler. There were none except for the one I responded to.

One of my coworkers found a pram with a baby in it in the middle of the floor. No one seemed to be watching it.

It turned out that the baby’s mother had left them there so she could go on the bumper cars with her other children. She didn’t even ask any of us to watch the baby.

I work at a kids’ entertainment center with lots of different roleplay activities. We’re not like a wide-open area theme park, and everyone has to queue and wait for their time slot for the activities. And because we have lots of different activities and we’re indoors, we do not encourage running as it’s very easy to just crash into someone.

I’ve been having a pretty normal day with kids from local schools who are here for an excursion and behaving relatively well.

Then, an overseas school clearly here on a school trip comes in, and the students start running around screaming like monkeys, scaring all the other kids, and literally pushing their way through.

One of the teachers from the overseas school saunters up to my activity booth.

Teacher: “My students are from a well-known international school from [Country], and the students are excited to be here for their school trip. Is there a separate line for them so that they won’t have to queue and mix around with the local children?”

I literally gave her a blank stare for a moment and then put on my sweetest smile.

Me: “I am afraid not, ma’am. Over here, we encourage all children to be given a fair chance with one another, regardless of where they are from.”

I give a side-eye to their students running and screaming at the top of their voices like they own the place.

Teacher: “Oh.”

I kid you not, she literally walked away lifting her nose in the air.

My colleagues and I lost count of how many incident reports we had to fill out that day because the students from the overseas school were literally running around so much that they either fell down and bruised themselves or banged into other people.

This was in the early 2000s when arcade games were still popular. I was touring in Japan and decided to stop into a large arcade. With this arcade, you had the option of paying money up front and having the credits added to a card as opposed to the old-fashioned method of stacking coins on the machine as you played. With each play, you simply swiped the card over a reader and it would add another credit for you to play.

I came upon the wildly popular Street Fighter game and noticed there were two of the same arcade cabinets positioned back to back, facing away from each other. A Japanese girl who looked to be between six and eight years old was kneeling on a chair and playing away at one of them. I took the game opposite from her, swiped my card, cracked my knuckles, and got ready to throw down.

I got practically MASSACRED to a point where it was nearly humiliating, considering the fact that I was usually untouchable at this game. I wondered out loud:

Me: “Do the Japanese put the difficulty level at nightmare level for their games? God Almighty!”

Ego got the better of me, and I swiped that card for game after game, determined that I wasn’t walking away until I could beat that thing. And game after game, I got absolutely demolished. My sister who was touring with me strolled past.

Sister: “Why do you look so pissed?”

Me: “The AI in this game is insane! Nothing like the version in America! It’s like it’s practically predicting my every move and has a counterattack for it. I can’t touch it!”

Finally, I ended up running out of money on my card, and I slammed my fist on the game cabinet, yelled a string of profanity, and began the loser’s walk of shame to the exit. As I was walking away, the little Japanese girl I mentioned stuck her tongue out at me. A small group of children who had since congregated around her began laughing.

That was when it occurred to me: all this time, I wasn’t playing against the arcade CPU. IT WAS HER! It was the first time in my life I’d ever had the urge to smack a kid!

I went back about two other times, and each time, when I was playing some other game, I would feel someone tap me on the waist and I would turn to see that little girl smiling sweetly at me, waggling her little fingers, and then pulling up a chair and swiping her card over the credit reader, ready to completely decimate me at whatever I was playing. And that she did without fail, while always gesturing for me to swipe my card so she could murder me again. And again. And again…

I am female and have been working as a technician at this arcade for over a year. It’s a slow evening during the week, the only technicians working are a (male) trainee and me.

As I’m walking the floor, I get stopped by a man at one of the games. It’s showing an error code.

Customer: “Can you call one of the guys over here to fix this?”

Me: “Sir, I can get this fixed for you.”

Customer: “No, you couldn’t possibly. Send a man over.”

Me: “All right, sir.” *Into my walkie-talkie* “Hey, [Trainee], could I get you to come over to [Game]?”

Trainee: “Sure!”

We wait for my coworker to come over, with the customer getting antsy.

Trainee: “What seems to be the trouble?”

Customer: “[Game] is broken and I need you to fix it.”

Trainee: *Looks over at me* “So, what do I need to do?”

The customer looked crestfallen as I proceeded to walk the trainee through how to identify the error code and fix the issue, which turned out to be one button press. Had he let me fix it, he could have been back to playing five minutes sooner.

Related:
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 18
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 17
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 16
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 15
Can’t Hear You Over The Sound Of Your Ovaries, Part 14