A woman walks in and asks:
Customer: “Were the pickles made by humans?”
I look at her with, I assume, a face of confusion.
Customer: “No! I mean, like, homemade? I don’t think you have an army of robots or trained monkeys in the back tasked with making the pickles!”
Now I want to work in THAT kitchen!
I am working in a large theme park, and a customer approaches me looking a little lost. This is a while ago before we had smartphones and mobile maps.
Guest: “Can you help me find [ride]? I’m having trouble using your map.”
Me: “Oh, that’s in our pirate section. It’s just that way in a straight line; you can’t miss it.”
Guest: “And what about [Pirate-Themed Restaurant]?”
Me: “Oh, that’s actually connected to the same ride, so if you head to the ride, you’ll get to the restaurant, too.”
Guest: “You really should make this clearer on the map!”
Me: “Would you like me to mark down where you are right now on the map, and then mark the ride?”
Guest: “Yes.”
I do so.
Guest: “Why did you put three crosses on the map?”
Me: “One for where we are, one for the ride, and one for the restaurant.”
Guest: “Are you trying to convert me? Trying to get me to worship Jesus with all these crosses?”
Me: *Thinking fast* “Uh… no, sir. Since you’re going to our pirate-themed part of the park, I made it look like a pirate’s treasure map! X marks the spot!”
Guest: “Oh… that’s fun!”
Phew!
Guest: “I watch way too much late-night cable to be Christian anyway.”
He winked at me, and I made a quick exit. What a thing to say in a family-friendly theme park!
An elderly couple calls our banking website helpline.
Caller: “We’re having some issues with our online banking.”
I start to go through verifying them to help them directly when they cut me off with one statement.
Caller: “Satan is in [Bank].”
Me: “Pardon?”
I’m at a total loss as to what they mean, but they’re speaking with such convincing tones, like they truly believe the devil is occupying our software.
We have some back-and-forth questions, and their frustration grows as they hiss out increasingly confusing things like:
Caller: “We’ve seen the mark of the beast on your website! Satan is here!“
Me: “Can you please describe what you’re seeing?”
This couple was down in Florida, and by then, I’d started to hedge my questions around some contextual clues, like, “Does anyone else use this computer to look things up?”
It turned out that they were using our search bar, but every time they went to click on it to search for something, these phrases were dropping down as suggested search items.
The couple had no idea what it meant to clear their cookies or cache, but by the time we got to that point in the conversation, they were too frustrated to listen to my directions. The best I could do was pass it along to my supervisors at their request so a “God-fearing soul could cleanse things and put it all to rights.”
As far as my coworkers and I could guess, it seemed like maybe a mischievous grandchild had been down to visit and decided to f*** with their grandparents’ heads.
I work as a night auditor, and we see and deal with a lot of crazy s***. I work at a small hotel in a small-ish town where we have a lot of break-ins, drugs, crime, and homelessness, and it’s overall not a safe city to live in.
It is 3:30 am, and some very young woman with a dog tries to come in. We lock the doors at 11:00 pm, and guests use their phones to open the door. It looks like the woman is trying to do this, but she cannot get her phone to work, so she rings the bell over and over again. I go to the office to unlock the door for her, and she rushes in.
Me: “Hi, ma’am, how can I assist you?”
She ignores me and runs to the elevator with her dog. I rush after her.
Me: “Ma’am, I am going to join you in this elevator because I need to verify what room you are going to as you did not check in at the front desk.”
She starts screaming at me.
Woman: “YOU CANNOT BE IN HERE WITH ME!”
Me: “I need to verify your information, ma’am.”
Woman: “I HAVE CANCER AND AM ON CHEMO! GET OUT! I AM IN ROOM [NUMBER]!”
Me: “Ma’am, I just needed you to verify. You don’t need to scream at me.”
Woman: “YOU ARE RUDE! I AM GOING TO TALK TO YOUR MANAGER IN THE MORNING, RUDE B****! WHAT ARE YOU, A F****** MORON?!”
Me: “Okay, let me just step out.”
She is acting erratically, and I do not want to be in the elevator with her and her dog, so I step out and push the button again so that I can go to the floor she is claiming she is on.
I get up there and notice that she has no idea where she is going.
Woman: “OH, MY GOD, STOP FOLLOWING ME! YOU’RE HARRASSING ME! ARE YOU STUPID? YOU IDIOT, I ALREADY TOLD YOU WHAT ROOM I AM IN!”
Me: *As calm as I can be* “Ma’am, we have sleeping guests, and you are going to need to calm down. Also, room [number] does not exist here. I am going to need you to come to the front desk and verify the reservation information; otherwise, I am calling the police to have you removed.”
The woman tries to get her phone to show me what room she is supposed to be in. It doesn’t work. She says she is a super-platinum god-like member, and she is calling the company because she is NOT going to the front desk and won’t put up with this treatment from me.
She apparently cannot access her Internet, or it is slow, or something. She asks me for the Wi-Fi information, but I just look at her and say nothing.
She then calls her boyfriend or whoever she is going to see. She tells him this crazy story about how I left her outside in the cold at 3:00 am, and now I am harassing her and won’t stop following her because I am crazy or something, and how I am a rude idiot and she feels unsafe.
She puts her phone on speaker.
Woman: *To me* “He wants to speak to you.”
Me: “Hello, my name is [My Name]. What actually happened is that our doors lock at 11:00 pm for guest and employee safety. When I asked her about what room she was in or for any information about her reservation, she immediately got an attitude with me and called me names, and she refuses to cooperate. We have a right to know who is in our hotel. If she does not come to the front desk, or if you can’t come the desk to verify, I am ready to call the police. Either way, she cannot be up on the floor where we have guests sleeping, acting the way she is.
Then, the man on the phone says something to her that makes the logic start brewing in her noggin.
Woman: *Looking incredibly embarrassed* “This isn’t the [Hotel] on [Street]?”
Me: “No. If you had cooperated with me, ma’am, to give me the information I needed, I could have told you long ago that you were at the wrong hotel, and we could have avoided all of this.”
She apologized profusely.
I went down the elevator with her and her nice little dog. The whole time, she kept saying that she was so sorry that she had been so mean and rude to me. I let her know that I was not singling her out and that I was just doing my job; if she were in a hotel sleeping, I am sure she would appreciate the employees not letting random people in that could be dangerous. She understood and was very apologetic.
She said she needed to use the restroom, so I allowed her to use our lobby bathroom and offered to let her stay in the lobby while she waited for a ride, which she didn’t need because she had driven herself.
She had been in such a hurry to get into the hotel that she had left her purse and her luggage at the entryway. To be honest, I am shocked that no one came up and stole her stuff — which would have been Karma at its finest, but I am glad it was resolved.
Me: “Hello! Attached you will find two concepts for the book design. Please let us know which one you prefer, and then we will design the rest of the pages.”
Client: “We prefer Concept B, but we aren’t sure we like the color. Can you please make it blue?”
I look at Concept B.
It is blue.
Me: “I’m happy to change the color, but the concept is already designed with blue as the predominant color. Are you looking at the file on your screen or printed out? Sometimes standard office printers can make colors look off.”
Client: “I’m looking at it on my screen, and it is definitely gray and not at all blue.”
Me: “Hmm… that’s strange. Take a look at this file and let me know what you think.”
Clients: “That’s great! Thanks. You can go ahead with the rest of the design.”
I had changed the color by shifting the color code by a single digit. To the untrained eye, both files would appear to be the exact same blue. I still have no idea what happened there.
