I am a veterinarian. I hear all sorts of different reasoning and preferences for why people elect to do or not do certain things to their pets. My job is to inform clients of the pros and cons of different options and make a medical recommendation. After that, I generally respect their decisions even if I disagree. However, this client really took to the cake for making strange decisions.

It was a new client with an adult female cat several years old who had previously received veterinary care but was just moving to a new clinic. I noticed in the records that the cat was intact (unspayed), which is unusual. I decided to investigate.

Me: “I noticed that [Cat]’s records say she is not spayed; is that correct?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “Is there any particular reason or concern you have for not spaying [Cat]?”

Client: “Well, I was just concerned about surgery. I just don’t want to put her through unnecessary surgeries, you know?”

Me: “Certainly. Just to check in, are you aware of the increased risk of mammary cancer in unspayed female cats? And are we keeping her away from intact males?”

The client confirms these things and doesn’t seem to want to discuss it more.

Client: “I just didn’t want any surgery…” *pause* “…but, she wasn’t being a good kitty…” *chuckles* “…so we did have her front claws removed.”

Yes, folks. She didn’t want her cat spayed to reduce risk of cancer because of the surgery aspect, but she had the cat surgically declawed. I genuinely did not know what to say. The real kicker to that weirdness? On the way out, the client said to our receptionist that she “just likes [Cat]’s personality more when she’s in heat.”

Our Homeowners Association built a fence around the neighborhood — a lowest bidder type situation. It looks okay. It’s reddish colored and tall enough, but the boards are flimsy. It’s been a few years and it’s starting to fall apart — nails missing, boards fell off, etc. I let the HOA know about it a few months ago. I’ve hammered a few boards in to keep my dogs safe when I let them out, but mostly I’ve been waiting for them to fix it.

They haven’t touched it in months.

I notice one of the panels has come loose — no nails in the upper and middle part, just one in the bottom. Anyone could pull on the fence and walk right into my backyard. I say enough is enough and I go out to fix it all. I replace boards that have fallen from the outside, put the panels back together, and get a solid fence line.

My house backs up to a busy street, and when the red light is on, cars back up all the way past my house area.

I’m on the outside of my fence, trying to get nail holes to line up and screwing things into place, when I become aware of honking noises. Before I can take off my headphones, a large cup of melted ice and watered-down soda slams into the fence next to me and splashes its contents on my right side, soaking my shirt and some of my pants.

Needless to say, I’m startled.

I pull out my headphones and turn to look at the street. The light is green but a husband and lady are holding up traffic. Apparently, they’ve been trying to yell at me and get my attention. When yelling failed, the lady in the passenger seat thought throwing a half-full cup at me was a good way of getting my attention. It worked.

I’m looking at her with a “WTF” look and cars are driving around them honking. I don’t even get to say anything before she starts screeching at me.

Woman: “You need to get off your a** and move down to my fence! I’m tired of my fence being s*** and no one fixing it. How dare you ignore my fence and start down here?!”

No apologies. No civility. Just screeching and throwing her s*** at people and blocking traffic for everyone else.

I’m usually a really nice person, but I’m done with being yelled at for things and putting up with ignorance, so I don’t try to hold back on my anger. I might feel badly later, but for now, I’m more than done.

I put my drill down, grab my water, and take a few steps toward them.

Me: “I don’t work here. I live here.”

Or at least, I attempted. She and her husband aren’t listening. They are both still going off about their fence and lazy, fat, useless employees and the HOA.

I unscrew the large cap off my water bottle. The water splashes on my fingers. It’s ice cold.

Me: “I DO NOT WORK HERE! F*** OFF!

Both of their faces go full pucker. As the lady draws breath and starts to shriek again, I toss the contents of my water bottle toward their open window. She gets a decent bit to the face, which shuts her up. I doubt I got the hubby, but enough went in the SUV that I know he’s annoyed.

Me: “And if you ever throw something at me again, I’ll beat your g**d*** a**.”

Then, while her screaming in rage was going on, I gathered my drill and went back to work.

The husband jumped out of the SUV, but he was 5’6’ and 150 pounds tops and I’m 6’1” and 300 pounds, so he yelled at me but didn’t try to make contact. I responded with a finger and he got back in his vehicle and flew off with tires screeching. They went thirty feet and had to stop at the light, well within my sight and hearing.

The F-bombs were glorious. Plus, knowing my fence is better than theirs helps.

I shouldn’t be surprised at the way people treat people on the job. But did they think going off and yelling at people would actually succeed? Let alone throwing a cup of old soda at me?

One of our employees managed to lock his car keys in his car and his keycard in his office. He came up to the window and was checking out a temporary badge. I had been in the building cafeteria and came back just in time to hear this exchange.

Employee: “Thank you so much. Once I get my keycard, I can get out of here.”

Coworker: *Looking confused* “Sir?”

Employee: “Yes?”

Coworker: “Forgive me for asking this, but… how is getting your building keycard from your office going to get your car keys out of your car?”

There was a very long pause.

Employee: “F***!”

Both my coworker and I jumped.

Employee: “F****** MOTHERF*****! F***! F****** F***!”

He proceeded to leave the lobby.

Coworker: “Was that my fault?”

Me: “No.”

It took four hours for roadside assistance to send a man to pop the door locks on [Employee]’s car. When he arrived, he found out that the back passenger door was unlocked.

Our hotel has a high turnover rate for employees, including general managers, so front desk employees have no prior experience and never get fully trained. Instead, they are thrown out to work the desk after training for barely a week with only training videos for guidance. I’m the only person who received training from the previous staff before they all quit and I got promoted to supervisor.

We have some guests staying in two rooms. The person whose name is on the reservation never actually checked in, but the reservation has an accompanying guest on it who checked into the room. In hindsight, we shouldn’t have been checking accompanying guests in without any authorizations, but our general manager always says it is okay as long as their name is on the reservation.

It’s checkout time on Monday. I’m calling guest rooms to inform them that it’s time to go. I get to this guest’s rooms and tell them they need to check out. Room one says they’re extending their stay, but room two says they’re leaving and then calls back to extend. Okay. I authorize room one for another night, but room two’s card declines. S***.

I contact them about this.

Guest: “Can we have the card on room one pay for room two?”

Our system is complicated and has no clear way to do this.

Me: “No, I need a card for this room.”

Guest: “Okay. We’ll bring you another form of payment.”

The day goes by and they don’t come. I see the guest who checked in on his way out.

Me: “You still need to bring a new payment method to the front desk.”

Guest: “I will when I come back.”

I tell the next shift who is the assistant manager to call them and ask for payment, which they never do.

I come in on Tuesday, and once again, they ask to extend. Unfortunately for them, I don’t have their rooms for tonight, nor the payment they promised, so I tell them they need to bring a form of payment. At this point, they ask for a new room and to just transfer their charges.

Me: “In order to do that, I need you to pay what you owe. You have until 1:00 pm to do that if you are switching rooms.”

Guest: “Okay.”

Time passed. It was almost 1:00, so I was watching our security cameras to make sure they were coming down. I saw [Guest] walk in, so I was under the assumption that he was getting his group together to move rooms. I saw them leaving the room, and then I received a spam call. When I looked back at the cameras, I didn’t see them anywhere. Confused, I went back through the camera footage to find they had gone out of a side door. In my dismay, I let the managers know what had happened.

I tried calling the original person on the reservation. The number wasn’t in service. Unfortunately, we hadn’t put the information of any accompanying guests in our system. Basically, we had nothing to go on other than to make a house account for them. The one thing I did manage to obtain was their license plates from the camera footage because they happened to drive the wrong way in the parking lot — the way that had the only outdoor camera.

Fast forward to this week. I saw [Guest] get off the elevator and try to hide his face like I didn’t see him a week ago. I checked our in-house guests in our system; this time [Guest] had checked in under his own name. I checked the security camera footage to find out when he’d checked in, only to find out that the reservation was made over the phone and the person at the desk checked them in before arrival — which is something we NEVER do — and on his arrival, they didn’t check his ID or credit card because they were too busy Facetiming friends.

I contacted my general manager, and we charged the full amount of their stay to cover the costs of [Guest]’s previous stay, as well as a $500 smoking fee for last week and this week because their rooms reeked of the devil’s lettuce, and then we kicked them out. So satisfying.

I am on the phone with a client who I do web service for. She is incredibly rude to me the whole time. Our conversation is also constantly interrupted by her yelling at what I assume is her cat (“Get down from there!” “How many times have I told you not to climb on the mantel?” “Stop it!”) without warning to me and my ear.

After about ten minutes of this, I hear another phone ringing.

Client: “Oh, I have a call on my cell. Let me put you on hold for a minute.”

Me: “That’s really okay; you can just call me back—”

Client: “No, I will put you on hold.”

From the sounds that follow, she proceeds to put the phone down on a hard surface and answer her cell phone. 

Thinking she will only be a minute, I wait, trying not to eavesdrop. After about a minute or two, I am finally about to hang up when it sounds as if she has picked up the phone I’m on and her voice gets very loud.

Client: *Sighing loudly* “I’m going to have to let you go now. Yeah, this stupid girl from that web service company is on the other line. I have to help her finish figuring out how to do her job…”