[Coworker] thinks he is the funniest guy in the company, despite several complaints and several warnings from Human Resources about it. He has the unchangeable opinion that he “should be able to make jokes about anything” and “if you don’t like it, then you just need to lighten up.”

The problem is that he chooses deliberately sensitive subjects and he’s not even funny, just offensive. I doubt he believes the things he says; he’s just trying to be funny or liked. But it often has the opposite effect.

We are in a training session and [Coworker] won’t stop making stupid comments and cracking jokes. It gets to the point where no one can hear the trainer speak and everyone is clearly getting frustrated.

Me: “[Coworker], just shut up, okay? We are trying to listen.”

Coworker: “Oh, please. This is all obvious, anyway. Lighten up, will you?! Sheesh.”

He stops right up until the first break, so I leave it be. We come back and [Coworker] instantly makes a “joke” about white people and compares me to a slaver. It’s only me and three other learners in the room who are white.

Me: “Seriously, [Coworker]? Not okay!”

Coworker: “What? You don’t get to be offended.”

Trainer: “Everyone, please! I am trying to deliver a training session. I’m not sure what [Company] thinks about all this, but I need you to pay attention and keep talking to a minimum.”

We struggled through the rest of the day with minimal interruptions. After the session, I stayed back, thanked the trainer, and apologised for what happened.

The next day, [Coworker] wasn’t in, but he often has random holidays. After a week, I asked around. It turned out the trainer made a complaint directly to the head of HR. Being external to the company, they took it very seriously, and [Coworker] was suspended without pay.

I was asked if I wanted to make a complaint but I explained that I just wanted him to stop. They said that they would “make that happen,” and to be fair, when he did come back, the stupid jokes disappeared, and it was so much easier to get along with him.

The company had a big BBQ picnic a few months back. Everyone bought in their own folding chairs so we could all sit in the car park together. I managed to leave two behind and forgot about them for a couple of weeks. By then, someone had taken them to the smoking shelter and they were already disgusting.

I was going to chalk it up to my own stupidity and leave them, but a while later, I bought a pressure washer and figured I may as well give cleaning them up a go.

I picked up the chairs and went to put them in my car

Coworker: “Hey! Where are you going with them?”

Me: “Oh, they’re mine from home. I left them here a while back, but I need them.”

Coworker: “But that’s my smoking chair.”

Me: “No, that’s my chair from home. Look, it even has my name on.”

It also looked nothing like any other chair in the company.

Coworker: “But that’s been in the smoking hut for months. I need that!”

He grabbed the chair.

Me: “I’m not going to ask nicely. You know it’s not yours; you can see my name is on it. Let go!”

He pulled as I did, only to slip, fall backward, and land in an oil patch from one of the trucks. I told him to stop being so childish, and if he didn’t pack it in, I’d put a complaint in. He put one in against me, anyway, which I immediately refuted, being as he was on camera the whole time.

More than that, now he had complained about seating, the company looked at the shelter and found the makeshift shanty town it had been turned into. It had cardboard flooring and tarp curtains, and someone had actually damaged the metal siding of the building so they could plug their phone in while standing outside.

The whole shelter was ripped out and replaced with a safe and legal one, making the chair thief very unpopular.

A few evenings ago, a guest wrapped in a pool towel came to the front desk and tossed his keys on it.

Guest: “These keys aren’t working.”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry!”

I remade the keys and sent him up. He came back downstairs and tossed the keys back on the desk.

Guest: “They’re still not working. A yellow light is coming up.”

This happens very rarely, and we always make it up to the guest.

Me: “It sounds like the card reader door needs to be reprogrammed, which will take about twenty minutes. My maintenance guy left twenty minutes ago but I’ll have him back to fix it right away.”

As I called the maintenance guy, the guy started huffing very heavily while staring at me with his eyes wide open.

Me: “Our maintenance guy will be here in twenty minutes. I’m going to comp your breakfast from yesterday. If you want, you can head back out to the jacuzzi and I’ll send you some drinks on us, as well, while you wait.”

Guest: “I will not do that. My girlfriend is upstairs waiting for the door to open in my suite that I paid to use!”

Me: “I apologize for that, sir. As I mentioned, my maintenance guy will be here in twenty minutes, so if you can bear with me until then, we’ll get you into your room.”

Guest: “I DON’T WANT TO GO INTO MY ROOM IN TWENTY MINUTES! I WANT TO GO INTO THE ROOM THAT I AM PAYING $400 A NIGHT FOR RIGHT NOW!”

Me: “Sir, this is completely our fault, but you must understand that sometimes things out of our control can happen. It’ll just be twenty minutes until he gets here and we will, of course, make this up to you.”

Guest: “I’M PAYING $400 A NIGHT TO STAY HERE! I WANT TO GO TO MY ROOM NOW, NOT IN TWENTY MINUTES!”

Me: “I understand that, but like I said, there is a problem with the card reader on the door that only our maintenance guy can fix. I want you to get into your room, but we can’t until our engineer gets here.”

Guest: “SO, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LET ME INTO MY ROOM?”

Me: “I want you in your room. It just physically can’t happen because of the problem with the key reader.”

Guest: “SO, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO ALLOW ME INTO MY ROOM THAT I PAY $400 A NIGHT FOR?”

This back and forth continued for a few more minutes.

Me: “Sir, you need to lower your voice. I admit that this is our fault, but that doesn’t mean you can scream.”

Guest: “I WILL NOT LOWER MY VOICE! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWING ME TO GO INTO MY ROOM THAT I AM PAYING $400 A NIGHT FOR!”

Me: “I’ll allow you to go into your room. You just can’t because of the card reader.”

Guest: “SO, YOU’RE NOT LETTING ME INTO MY ROOM!”

Me: “I’ll let you go into your room. I am perfectly fine with you going into your room.”

Guest: “BUT I CAN’T!”

Me: “Yes, because the card reader is not working.”

Guest: “SO, YOU AREN’T LETTING ME INTO MY ROOM!”

Me: “Yes, I’ll let you go into your room; the card reader is just not working.”

Guest: “FINE! Can I go into another room while I wait, then?”

At this point, I was done with him and refused to help him.

Me: “No. This conversation is finished. You’ll have to wait.”

A few minutes later, I felt a burst of wind from outside and felt bad that his girlfriend might have been cold because of his stupidity. I made keys for a room next to theirs and gave it to him so she could go inside. He took the keys, but his girlfriend refused to go into the new room with him. He went in and then slammed the door shut, leaving her outside.

The engineer from maintenance came and fixed the door and then came to talk to me.

Engineer: “The door’s fixed. I could hear the dude in the room next door on the phone with his mom complaining about the hotel.”

We got his room ready, I went to tell him, and in front of me he was still repeating, “Mom, I’m spending $400 a night here and they’re not letting me into my room.”

I guess he and his girlfriend fought; two hours later, she left the hotel with her bags. He then walked in and out of the lobby a few times for a few more hours while walking slowly and staring at me wide-eyed. Everything he did, he did angrily; he pushed open the front doors hard, slammed on the elevator buttons, etc. Every time he closed his room door on the fourth floor, a guest would call asking what that gunshot sound was because of how hard he was slamming it.

Suddenly, at around 9:00 pm, I hear a loud slamming sound over and over again. I got like ten calls from scared guests. It turned out the dude was just in his doorway opening and slamming the door shut over and over again.

I called him.

Me: “Sir, we’ve been getting complaints. If you slam your door, one more time, you’ll be removed from the hotel.”

Well, he slammed it repeatedly again. He came downstairs at around 9:30 pm to check out as I was calling security to kick him out. While I was with him, I got a call from a guest asking what that sound was.

Me: “It’s an out-of-control guest. But don’t worry; he’s being kicked out now.”

I handed him his receipt, which he crumpled up in a ball and threw on the floor before walking out.

The next day, housekeeping reported that the door frame was shattered. Per the general manager, we charged him $1,000 for the broken door frame. I also added the comped breakfast back onto the bill.

The best part? Two weeks later I saw a one-star review from him saying, “They wouldn’t let me into my suite that I was paying $400 a night for. Ruined my anniversary. Would not recommend.”

I work at a popular steakhouse chain that does not have a room for large parties. We have two party sections in my restaurant, and each party section has a couple of four-tops and two-tops and two big tables that can accommodate around sixteen people, maybe seventeen if they squeeze in tight.

We had a party of thirty-five walk in today. They were upset that we couldn’t seat them immediately, so instead of telling them to wait for a party section to open up — which would split the party between two or three servers — my managers sat them at six tables around the restaurant with five different servers taking care of them. That would have been fine on its own, but this party wanted to be on the same ticket. They were rude and really loud, and they kept adding more people throughout their meal. I think they made it up to like forty people.

The best part: they left ten dollars as a tip on a check that was over $600. The tipshare (pooled tips) for that bill was definitely more than $10, so the servers basically got stiffed.

I wish I was making this up. People suck.

I was running a small cafe in a wee seaside town for what was SUPPOSED to be a month. It turned into nine months because of complications with the owner’s surgery, but it was mostly fun, fine, and a little eye-opening… until this woman came in.

[Woman] had decided to make her own business from home selling vegan-meatball-type things.

Me: “That’s lovely, but we make everything in our kitchen and cabinets ourselves, and we are proud of it.”

She would not accept this as an answer and actually threw two of these balls over the counter at me to give to the owner. I knew now why my friendly waitress called me from the back to deal with this woman.

After assuring her that I would pass them on, she demanded the owner’s personal number. There was no way in h*** I was about to give that over. [Woman] argued, and argued, and then argued a bit more, getting a bit louder in the process. Finally, I told her:

Me: “What about your rude bulls*** attitude makes you think we’d even consider working with you?”

As she was standing there with her mouth open, I saw, tucked under the till, a single blue card: one of our not-used-in-over-a-year business cards that had been discovered in an old folder a few days earlier.

I handed that over without a word. [Woman] snatched it like a child and stomped out and waited by our wall-length windows. The look on her face when I answered the call from inside the shop was the best part of the week. I’d already said she wasn’t getting anyone’s personal number, so why she thought I had broken and given her anything other than the shop number was beyond me.