I worked as a manager of a liquor store for about three years. I live in rural southeast Michigan, so it’s a small area. In this store, there was only one person working 90% of the time, so there were no “scheduled” breaks.

This night was super slow, so at around 6:30 pm, I went to use the bathroom. I heard our door buzzer go off.

Me: “I’ll be right there!”

I hurried up and got back out front. I saw a guy walking toward the door FROM BEHIND THE COUNTER with like six bottles of liquor and a few cartons of smokes.

Me: *Loudly* “CAN I HELP YOU?”

Guy: “I’M NOT STEALING!”

He threw everything he had in his hands at me before continuing to run out the door. If he wasn’t stealing, why didn’t he buy the stuff? Why did he tell me he wasn’t stealing? This interaction haunts me at night sometimes because I have so many questions.

I’m a police officer. One morning, I’m working patrol when my supervisor pages me on the radio and asks me to give him a call. It should be noted that one of my supervisor’s pet peeves is when people block fire hydrants.

Supervisor: “I got a guy in the lobby making a scene because his car got towed. He’s claiming it was racially motivated and wants reimbursement for the tow and to file a complaint. I checked the log and it looks like it might have been you. You tow any cars today?”

Me: “The only car I’ve towed today was a [Make] [Model] parked on [Street]. Is that the one?”

Supervisor: “That’s the one. So, why did you tow it? “

Me: “Well, the registration was expired since [date more than six years ago].”

Supervisor: “Okay, sounds like a good tow to me.”

Me: “And it was parked in front of a fire hydrant.”

Supervisor: “Oh, even better! Well, that settles that. Make sure you send me your body cam footage just in case he follows through with the complaint, though.”

Me: “Will do, but I never even saw him, so it’s all just of a car blocking a hydrant and previous damage documentation.”

Supervisor: “Perfect.”

The guy still wanted to file the complaint. My supervisor offered to sit down and review the body cam footage with him. He suddenly decided to drop the complaint, saying he must have mistaken this interaction for a prior one with a different police department.

Customer: “Can I like… buy a gun?”

Me: “We have to fill out some paperwork, but if it all checks out, then you can.”

Customer: “I don’t like paperwork. I just want the gun.”

Me: “Uh… I’m afraid the paperwork is necessary.”

Customer: “I never pass the paperwork! I was just at the bank, and they made me do the paperwork and then they said no!”

Me: “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Why do you want to purchase a gun?”

Customer: “To make the bank say yes!”

I calmly asked him for his number so my manager could call him to help him out. As soon as he was gone, the number (and camera footage!) was given to the police!

It’s been a few years since this happened in 2016, so some of the specific details are fuzzy. I was working as a floor supervisor for a satellite TV company’s technical support center. The call group I was heading up was a corporate-level team designed to handle customer situations that were recurring frequently or just not getting resolved.

The customer called in and spoke to my agent, demanding credit on his account because he couldn’t watch a baseball game that had happened two days before. On top of that, he was wanting the company to reimburse him for his ~$100 bar tab because he “had to go there to watch the game” because he got an error message. Company policy was that if there was an actual issue and we couldn’t fix it, we’d give credit for the time you were without service.

The error he was getting was a black-out message. He lived in the Chicagoland area, and he was wanting to watch a Cubs playoff game. Since he was in the local area and it was a home game, they had restricted the broadcast in his area to encourage people to buy a ticket and see the game in person. While it’s not what most people want to hear, normally, they understand. Not this guy. He asked for a supervisor and I took the call.

He immediately tore into me, cursing the company, me personally, and anyone else he could think of that might have been involved. I let him get it out of his system and asked for some more information. After he explained the situation, I confirmed that his service was working properly and explained the issue. I also asked him to call us in the future when the issue was happening so that we could fix it.

He refused to accept anything beyond a technician coming out and a full year of service, for free. Like… everything. NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB Extra Innings, HBO, all the international channels (from China, the Philippines, Guatemala, etc,), you name it, he wanted it — for free. I did the math out then, and I think it was around $3,500 in total services he was demanding. As a tenured employee, even I didn’t get all that, and I told him as much.

For some reason, that’s when he changed tactics and started crying, recounting the horrible things he saw and did while a member of the armed services (Marine Corps, I think it was). I have no idea the experiences he’d had and can’t imagine how traumatizing the things he was telling me must have been, but they didn’t change that there wasn’t actually a problem, and if there had been, we weren’t given a chance to fix it.

When crying didn’t work, he threatened to kill me and bomb the call centre. That’s when I took all his information (we had his name, address, phone number, SSN — the whole nine yards) and provided them to his local law enforcement agency. I escalated the call to my corporate security team so that they could provide the call’s recording as evidence for when he went to trial.

It wasn’t cost-effective to have me flown from Denver to Chicago for the proceedings, but I was kept in the loop when he was arrested and charged. I’m pretty sure he took a plea deal.

I work at a gym and am greeting members at the front desk. One member leaves the building and then comes back a few minutes later looking stressed.

Member: “Do you happen to have cameras in the parking lot?”

Me: “I believe the property manager does.”

Member: “Okay, I need video evidence. Someone broke the windows on my truck. I don’t think they took anything, but I already called the police.”

Me: “Oh, no! I’m so sorry about that. Let me grab a few things and I’ll start filling out an incident report.”

I radio for a coworker to come up to the front to cover me and then go out with him to get pictures of his truck. Our parking lot is straight out from the entrance of the gym, so it’s odd when the member makes a right and starts walking toward the side of the gym where our dumpsters are. We turn the corner and he’s parked in a no-parking zone.

Me: “Uh, I’m pretty sure there aren’t cameras in this area.”

Member: “You said you have cameras in the parking lot!”

Me: “This isn’t the parking lot, though.”

I grab a few pictures and tell him to let us know when the police arrive so we can finish the incident report. It’s fairly simple since nothing was stolen and we have no video to find out who smashed his windows.

A few weeks pass and the member comes back.

Member: “The police officer ended up giving me a parking ticket, and I had to pay for the new windows because they said there was nothing they could do!”