(It’s my third day, and my colleagues are telling me stories about bad customers and workers. One of my floor colleagues is Turkish but speaks perfect Dutch — the local language — with an accent.)

Turkish Colleague: “This guy is the biggest racist you’ll ever meet. The moment I open my mouth, he screams, ‘GET AWAY FROM ME, TURKISH PIECE OF S***!’ He’s banned from the restaurant, but he isn’t getting the message and keeps– Speak of the devil, there he is.”

Manager: “I’ll go tell him.”

(I’m part Russian, and I normally speak without a trace of an accent, but I can mimic one perfectly.)

Me: “Boss, might I try?”

Manager: “Sure. If you think you can get him out of here.”

(I go up to the man and start speaking Russian.)

Man: “SPEAK GOD-DANG DUTCH, YOU A**HOLE!”

Me: *with the most comical and thick accent I can do* “Very sorry, sir. I forget I should do Dutch. Table for one?”

Man: “F*** you!” *storms out*

Manager: “That went better than expected.”

Me: “Honestly, I didn’t expect him to leave. I was about to call [Turkish Colleague] to step in if he wanted someone else.”

(I am meeting with the leader of a volunteer organization for my son’s school to interview for the treasurer position. As we are talking, conversation gets around to where I work, and I mention I work for [Fast Food Restaurant]. When I say this, the club president gets an annoyed look on his face.)

Club President: “You don’t work for [Fast Food Restaurant] in [Town #1], do you?”

Me: “No, I work for the one in [Town #2].”

(He looks relieved and goes on to tell me about his last visit to [Fast Food Restaurant] in [Town #1].)

Club President: “Oh, good. Those people who work there are useless. They are so stupid. I went there a few weeks ago at like two in the morning and they had their drive-thru all blocked off.”

(I used to work for this store, which is a 24-hour restaurant; however, they do have to close for about four hours every three months to have their exhaust hoods serviced. Since the hood cleaners need to have their truck close to the store and the roof access, the drive-thru is blocked off with large caution cones, and a brave employee will generally park their car at the entrance of the drive-thru to prevent someone running over the cones and entering the drive-thru, anyway. Signs are posted on the doors, the drive-thru window, and the drive-thru speaker, letting guests know about this. I am about to explain this when he continues.)

Club President: “Yeah, they had cones and a car right there so no one could get in, so I had to drive my truck over the curb.”

(I am pretty surprised at this. While he has a large truck that could easily do this, in all my years at that store I had never heard of someone seeing the cones AND a vehicle blocking the drive-thru and deciding to jump the curb, instead of trying to come inside to see what is wrong.)

Club President: “I get to the speaker and no one answers. I’m sitting there for ten minutes and no one is answering. I can’t leave because there is this truck just parked in the drive-thru, not moving, and there were a bunch of cars behind me that went over the curb when I did, so I can’t get out. I finally manage to get out, and I go to the door, and it’s locked. There is this little midget inside, and she won’t open the door for me.”

(I know the employee he’s talking about, and while dwarfism does run on one side of her family, it is considered very insulting to call a little person a midget. The club president is a VERY large man, and I could totally see a small young woman not wanting to open the door for a very angry man who is at least six times her size.)

Club President: “So I walk around to the drive-thru window, and finally the midget opens it for me, I ask her why the hell the drive-thru is blocked, and why the doors are locked. She gives me this annoyed look like I’m stupid and says, ‘Umm, because we are closed.’ I ask her if I could order now, since I am there, and she won’t even take my order! How useless is she? I’m glad you don’t work for those losers. I won’t go there ever again, if they don’t even know how to run a business!”

(He changed the subject after that, and I didn’t try to correct him. I didn’t want to cause a personality conflict when I was just trying to help my son’s school. He turned out not to be bad to work with, aside from trying to make me change my voicemail message on my personal cell phone, because it was inappropriate — it was an iconic character from a fast food chain saying I was his wing-man. The club president and his wife did a lot of wonderful things for my son’s school.)

(At our restaurant, which closes at 4:00 am and opens again at 10:00 am, the bathrooms close at midnight. They open again for neither love nor money, so at 2:00 am, I’m cleaning one of them.)

Random Dude: *kind of angrily* “Yo, can I use the restroom?”

Me: “Restrooms are closed. There’s a public restroom at the end of this building; it’s around the corner, on the left.”

(The guy mumbles something I can’t understand about his friend and the public restrooms, to the eventual effect of, “I don’t want to use those.”)

Me: “Restrooms are closed.”

Random Dude: “When do they open?”

Me: “10:00 am.”

Random Dude: *suddenly shouting* “Well, f*** you, too, b****!”

(I shrug and finish cleaning up the bathroom, and then come back behind the counter.)

Random Dude: *in the middle of talking to one of the managers* “That’s him! That’s the guy! He said, ‘F*** you! Restrooms are closed!’”

Me: “Sir, I did not use such language.”

(I continue to the back to put up the cleaning supplies, and when I return to the kitchen…)

Manager #1: “Did you really say that?

Me: “No, I did not.” *I relay the exchange* “—and then he started screaming profanities at me.”

Manager #2: “Yeah, I didn’t give him anything. I gave him the number to the franchising office, told him we were store number [other location’s number], and said your name was [Not My Name].”

(I nodded and continued with my shift.)

When I was 16 years old, I worked in a children’s museum where I was in charge of the aquarium section. We had a “touch tank” where people could feel sea life. Because the animals are delicate, we had a strict policy that people could only touch animals I had put on trays at the edge of the tanks. Despite this policy, (and numerous prominent signs stating the policy) people would routinely stick their hands in the parts of the tank that were off limits.

One day, a woman came in and proceeded to repeatedly stick her hands into the tank, despite my requests. Finally, I forcefully said, “Ma’am, please don’t stick your hands into that part of the tank, as it distresses the animals.” She pulled her hands out, flicked water in my face, said, “You just need to chill,” and stomped off, cursing about “little s***s who think they know everything.”

(My friend is venting to me about her annoying roommates. This conversation takes place over online chat.)

Friend: “They’re so awful. I got really fed up the other day and I did something bad.”

Me: “Oh, God, [Friend], what did you do?”

Friend: “Nothing that they could sue me over or directly attribute to me.”

Me: “[Friend]…”

Friend: “I just put sugar in their beds.”

Me: “[Friend]!”

Friend: “And salt in their conditioner.”

(Pause.)

Friend: “And chili powder in their laundry detergent.”

Me: “[FRIEND]!”

Friend: “They stole my pads and expensive hot chocolate!”

Me: “Oh, okay. That’s justifiable.”