I am closing up at work, almost done cleaning, and very ready to go home. The café itself closed almost twenty minutes ago.

I hear the front door open despite the fact that the sign is flipped to “closed” and our hours are clearly listed on the door. Three kids, probably around ten to fourteen, enter.

Me: “Oh, sorry, the café is closed.”

Oldest Child: “No. You close at 19:30. We called ahead and confirmed.”

I’m confused now. She sounds so sure and assertive in her statement that I’m slightly panicked I might have missed an update about us closing later at the moment.

Me: “I’ve cleaned out everything; I literally do not have anything to serve you. It’s cleaned and ready for tomorrow. I’m almost done for the day.”

Oldest Child: “But we’re regulars. We came all the way from [City forty-five minutes away]. That’s so far away. And we called ahead.”

Me: “I didn’t receive any calls all day. Who did you call?”

Oldest Child: “It was a man. He said you close at 7:30 pm.”

Now I’m thinking they might have somehow managed to get a hold of my boss’s number, but I have no clue how.

Me: “Did he confirm it was here? This place? Not [Café with a similar name], [Café with a slightly similar name], or [Café with the same concept but not named at all like us]?”

Oldest Child: “He did. We said [Our Café] and even asked if it was the right address here.”

I want to stress that her tone during this entire conversation is very demanding and slightly condescending. The dissonance of a child acting like this is completely throwing me off.

I quickly check my schedule on my phone, confirming that my shift ends in ten minutes. I relay this information to them.

Middle Child: “But we’re regulars!”

Oldest Child: “And we came from so far away! Just for you! Can’t you make an exception?”

Once again, I reiterate that I am quite literally out of product to sell them and that everything is turned off.

The conversation keeps looping; I tell them I’m closed and don’t know what they’re talking about, and they insist they called ahead and that I should make an exception for them because they’re regulars from so far away.

Me: “Okay, who did you call? Did you get a name?”

Oldest Child: “No. It was some guy. Look, here’s the number. I’m gonna call again.”

She puts it on speaker phone, and sure enough, some guy whose voice I don’t recognize picks up.

Oldest Child: “Hi. You close at 19:30, right?”

Man On The Phone: “Yes.”

Oldest Child: “And you’re [Our Café], right?”

Man On The Phone: “No, we’re [Café with a similar name].”

Oldest Child: “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

She hangs up, and the atmosphere is suddenly very awkward. I’m trying not to laugh a little.

Youngest Child: “But… but they don’t have the [specific thing] that we want.”

Me: *Kindly* “They do. I know for sure they do.”

Youngest Child: “Oh. Okay.”

Oldest Child: *Still trying to find somewhere to direct her weirdly intense energy* “But then we have to hurry to make it.”

Me: “You really don’t; you’ve got over an hour to get there, and it’s five minutes away. I’ve walked past them many times; it’s right by [Station close by]. You can’t miss it.”

The youngest child confirms that she knows where I’m talking about and that they’ve also passed it. The oldest is avoiding eye contact.

Oldest Child: “Well. I guess we should go, then.”

Me: “I hope they have what you want. Have a nice evening.”

And with that, they left. I stood in my empty shop for a moment, baffled. Never have I thus been lectured by a child.

I’m a taxi driver. I pick up a young couple. As I start driving towards their destination, one of them says:

Passenger: “Last night, I drove with a really weird taxi driver.”

Me: “Oh? Why is that?”

Passenger: “I was going all the way to the end of [Road where pretty much nothing happens after 4:00 in the afternoon]. He drove 50 km/h all the way.”

Me: “But 50 km/h is the speed limit there?”

Passenger: “Yeah, but there was no one there.”

I’m sorry our drivers see the speed limit as an actual limit and not a suggestion, I guess?

A few years after smoking in taxis in Denmark became illegal, I picked up a young woman aged about eighteen. She told me where she was going, and I set off.

Passenger: “Is it okay if I smoke?”

Me: “No. I’m sorry, but it’s been illegal for a few years by now.”

Passenger: “What if I roll down the window?”

Me: “No. It’s still illegal and it does leave a stench afterward.”

Passenger: “What if I smoke weed, then? When you smoke weed, there’s no smell afterward.”

Me: *In disbelief* “Sorry, but no. It is still illegal.”

Her claim that the smell of weed doesn’t linger was weird. Also, I got to her destination in less than ten minutes.

Related:
Weeding Out The Bad Customers

Back in 2005, I was doing customer service for an online payment service. One day, I got a call from an irate gentleman who wished to report fraudulent transactions on a debit card. Uh-oh.

I’d learned by now that, rather than going through the “Do you have an account with us? Does anybody else in your household?” motions, it was heaps easier to just ask for the full card number and run a search across all accounts. If the card has already been compromised, what damage can it do at this point to tell me the full card number, right?

An account indeed popped up on which the card had been used. However, the name on the account didn’t match that of the caller, so I did some more probing and sniffing, all within rules and regulations. 

Long story short, it was Junior who had gone on a shopping spree. Apparently, for his fifteenth birthday, his parents had given him a Visa debit/credit card with no spending limit. And our service required that all customers be at least eighteen years of age when opening accounts.

Customer: “Well, how do we get his money back?!” 

Me: “Um… we rather… don’t, sir. There’s been no fraud committed because, well, the card owner spent his own money, which was well within his right.”

Christ on a bike, how Daddy Dearest blew a fuse!

Customer: “But that can’t be, because that was money for Junior’s birthday! Why didn’t you stop the transactions, then?!”

Yup. Daddy actually blamed us for not verifying Junior’s age prior to letting him open an account with us and go to town with his card.

It took all of my composure not to burst out laughing. Instead, I diplomatically replied:

Me: “Sir, it’s clearly written in our terms and conditions that account holders must be at least eighteen years of age when signing up for our services. That alone frees us from any responsibility — not that we had any in the first place. Secondly, it was not our company that decided it might be a good idea to give a fifteen-year-old his own debit card with no spending limit. You’re quite welcome to dispute the charges with the card issuer and see if they’re willing to reverse the charges, but, quite frankly, I doubt it, seeing as the card was always in the cardholder’s possession and all charges were made knowingly by said holder. As such, no fraud has occurred, and we are unable to assist you further. Thank you, and goodbye.”

And the amount squandered? Roughly DKK 4,200. Adjusted for inflation and the exchange rate, we’re looking at US$600 or €590 in 2022 money.

Happy birthday, kiddo! I hope you at least got to keep your stuff, whatever you bought.

I drive a taxi. One evening, I picked up three men who were all around thirty. They asked me to take them to a well-known gay bar in downtown Copenhagen.

They asked if they could listen to some music. My radio wasn’t working properly, so all I had was my own CD in the CD player. That day, I happened to be listening to Volbeat, which is a bit on the heavy side.

They complained that they don’t want to listen to heavy rock, so I turned it off again. A moment later, they wanted to listen to it anyway, so I turned on the music again. Two minutes later, they again decided that they didn’t want to listen to heavy rock. Again, I turned off the music. When they changed their mind yet again a minute or two later, I just ignored them, as we were only a few minutes from their destination.

When I didn’t turn on the music again at their request, one of them shouted “hate crime” several times. That he used such a term just because he didn’t get everything his own way actually shocked me.

To me, a term like that is not something you should use lightly.