My mom was a big foodie and loved cooking for people. Barbecues were always a huge thing with my family, and my mom loved to try new recipes. She also never made a fuss if anyone asked for accommodations. She was always willing to make adjustments so everyone could have at least something they could enjoy, and everyone was welcome at her table.

Once, my nephew had a girlfriend who was… a bit strange. Let’s call her Cleo.

It wasn’t so much that she was inherently a bad person, but her thought processes were sometimes hard to follow, and she had a tendency to hog conversations and make them all about her.

Cleo also followed all kinds of trends when she thought it was fancy. If social media hyped depression, she was all depressed and proclaimed that happily to everyone, totally oblivious to the fact that several of my family members battled with diagnosed depression and that my mom and I had to spend significant time in mental hospitals for depression.

When one of Cleo’s favorite actors was advocating for women’s rights, she became a ferocious women’s rights activist, blaming all women around her for not caring enough and buying into the “paternal narrative” — whatever that was supposed to mean. She accused them of wanting all women to be stay-at-home moms, completely disregarding that my family is mostly blue-collar and all the women have been workers all their lives. No one, from my great-grandmother to me today, has ever been a stay-at-home mom.

When social media claimed pescatarians were en vogue, Cleo claimed to be a pescatarian — no matter that she didn’t eat fish at all. She proclaimed that it meant eating only chicken.

At the time that this story happened, Cleo got it into her head that she was a vegan. And no, being vegan was not a problem for my family, nor would it have been a problem on this special day if Cleo really was a vegan. The problem was that she wasn’t a vegan; she just fancied herself being one.

We had a barbecue planned, and my whole family was there. I also brought my friend and roomie who was a vegetarian. My mom created a group chat on a messenger app and asked [Friend] and Cleo what they would like to eat. When Cleo answered that she didn’t know what she could ask for, my mom offered several options for them to choose from. [Friend] said, to make it easier for my mom, she would also eat the vegan option Cleo chose, knowing from my tales that Cleo was a very picky eater.

Cleo then wrote that some veggie shashlik and hummus would be nice, so my mom made that. She told both of them specifically what she planned to put in the shashlik. She also made several salads and a chimichanga for dips along with them, as well as vegan mayonnaise, the promised hummus, and several other vegan-friendly dips to choose from, and foil-baked potatoes. Cleo knew exactly what would be there for her to eat and happily agreed with everything, enthusiastically writing back how much she would enjoy eating all that. Despite being asked repeatedly if she would like anything else, she always answered everything was fine.

Knowing how nitpicky Cleo was, my nephew brought a separate grill to put the veggie options on so they wouldn’t touch the meat. This was solely for her since [Friend] doesn’t really care much about all this; she’s the type who eats what’s available as long as it is vegetarian-friendly. She’s also a bit picky, but when push comes to shove, she eats bread and some salad and is happy as a clam; she doesn’t make her own peckishness into other people’s problems.

The day came, and everything was finished. Madam Cleo walked over to the vegan dishes, scrunched her nose, and proclaimed:

Cleo: “I can’t eat all this; it’s not really vegan.”

After pushing a bit, she proclaimed:

Cleo: “I don’t think this will taste good, either; it looks strange.”

Then, she marched to the kitchen and prepared herself some toast with butter! Yes, real butter,  which was totally not vegan. She could not eat the butter right there at the table — no, that was not vegan — but it had to be the new piece of butter from the fridge and the store-bought toast, because — and this is a verbal citation — “homemade bread is NEVER vegan!”

Cleo then proceeded to complain that no one had asked her for her opinion before, although she had been engaging in a messenger group generated just exactly for that and not telling anyone anything and agreeing with everything for a whole week!

When [Friend] very gently inquired why she didn’t say anything during the chats, Cleo claimed that she felt overwhelmed by my mom’s suggestions and didn’t dare to voice her concerns after my mom had “decided” what she should eat.

At this point, my mom was fuming, so I decided to keep Cleo away for the rest of the evening and engage her in talk so my mom and the rest of the family would not have to deal with her silly and self-centered nonsense.

[Friend] stayed with me because she knew me and found my way of dealing with such situations amusing.

So, we engaged in talk. I prompted Cleo to tell me about herself, and she willingly obliged.

All in all, I kept her occupied for several hours, never letting her feel bad, and constantly keeping her talking. [Friend] quietly sat next to me, dipping bits of her freshly made and completely vegan baguette in fresh olive oil and salt, smiling and nodding to Cleo who explained to her how that was not vegan.

My family members dipped in and out of the conversation, looking at me with disbelief and shaking their heads, but gracefully not saying anything to aggravate her.

When it was time to say goodbye, Cleo beamed at me and proclaimed loudly:

Cleo: “Thank you for the nice evening! It was a joy talking with you! It’s really nice to meet someone who’s open to new knowledge.”

Then, she left her stage.

My sister approached me.

Sister: “I listened to part of that conversation. How the h*** did you stand that? How could you be so calm? I only listened to bits here and there, but I wanted to strangle her halfway through.”

[Friend] chuckled and answered before I could.

Friend: “Don’t you remember what [My Name] does for a living? She works from home, so I listen to her when she works. Cleo might think she got a nice conversation, but I know what she really got: the world’s longest technician service call! [My Name] pretended it was a work call; she even used her script to prompt her in between. Cleo didn’t know it, but she called her Internet provider today and got troubleshooting. What you heard was her giving her technician a top rating. I just waited all the time for [My Name] to tell her to restart her router.”

And what could I say? She was right; that’s exactly what I did. I never thought that eight years as a tier-three service technician working escalations at a call center for a service provider would pay out this way. But I guess if you’re able to get a non-cooperative idiot to follow your instructions to get his equipment to run properly without shouting at him for his stupidity, keeping a delusional wannabe vegan with a mission to tell everyone their opinion away from your mom is a piece of cake.

The story has a happy ending; my nephew ditched her later. He’s now dating another girl. She’s a vegan for real. She really enjoys barbecues, and guess what? She’s always happy with the food because she helps with preparations and cooks her preferred food herself.

My phone rings and the number comes up on my display.

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: *In English* “Hello, I’m calling from Europol. Your ID documents are involved in a crime, and in order to avoid criminal charges, I need you to follow my instructions.”

Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, is headquartered in the Netherlands.

Me: “If you’re from Europol, why are you calling from a German mobile number?”

Caller: *Click*

Strangest scam call ever.

I’m going on a trip. Usually, I park in the official airport parking, but I forgot to book it until the day before and it was all sold out. Instead, I book with one of the many private enterprises nearby.

I arrive in good time and park my car in a free spot. I go to the check-in hut, but there is nobody there. There is, however, a prominent sign on the door that says to go straight to the shuttle stop, and the driver will check my ticket. There is a mobile number for emergencies.

I head to the shuttle stop, where there is another sign that says the shuttle comes at fifteen and forty-five minutes past the hour. It’s currently twenty past, so I sit down to wait. Sure enough, at forty-five past on the dot, the shuttle turns up.

I chat with the driver while he checks my details.

Driver: “I’m happy you didn’t call me.”

Me: “Why would I need to call you? Everything is fine.”

Driver: “So many people call asking what to do or when will the shuttle come.”

Me: “But it’s all on the signs?”

Driver: “You think people read the signs?”

I work as a student worker in a half-office-half-on-site-type workplace. We have a whole team of student workers who do assistant work, fetching stuff for the rest of the office, doing a bit of customer service via email, helping out when on-site, etc. Our only “direct” boss is the boss, but pretty much anyone and everyone gives us orders because that’s just the kind of job this is. We don’t mind as long as it’s at least slightly related to our normal tasks.

Enter [Coworker].

[Coworker] is a nervous, stressed-out wreck, and one of her coping mechanisms is spreading it around as much as possible. If she is stressed, you will be stressed. If something bothers her, it has to be dealt with right this moment, and it doesn’t matter if it can wait or you have better things to do or you’re not even working that day — she will tell you alllllll about it.

The problem is that she doesn’t know enough about our tasks and workday to give concise, useful orders. She only works in the office and has no idea what we’re even doing when we’re on-site because she has only been there a couple of times. She still thinks that she can “solve” our “problems” (most of them imaginary) with her “instructions” that don’t make any sense on any level whatsoever.

She also doesn’t trust us. At all. So, she checks and double-checks, sometimes calling us ten times on a six-hour shift just to repeat the same instructions over and over again — after she’s already given them to us in writing, color-coded and using very simple language.

It probably doesn’t help that she doesn’t have a lot to do. Her normal tasks are done pretty easily and quickly, so sometimes it feels like she is even looking for something to be stressed about out of boredom.

One of these things is the dishwasher. She lives for this dishwasher. Oh, not in the sense that she takes care of it, loads it, or puts the dishes away afterward. No. Her main job seems to make sure that we do this — in a “walking past the dishwasher all the way to our office to tell us that we have to push the button to turn it on and then walking back to her office past the dishwasher again” kind of way.

The most mind-boggling instance of this happened when the dishwasher on our main floor was broken for a few days. We devised a system where certain people would bring the dirty dishes up to the dishwasher on the second floor at the end of our workday and certain other people would bring them back down at the beginning of the next.

This system led to [Coworker]’s weirdest “I have to tell other people how to deal with this machine” moment yet.

One day, we had a little office get-together around lunchtime which led to more dirty dishes than normal. [Coworker] saw this and immediately had to do something about it, so she walked from her office past the dishwasher and up to the second floor to tell one of the secretaries working there that they should go downstairs to our office and then tell us to bring the box with the dirty dishes up to the second floor again — where [Coworker] had just walked to. Past the dirty dishes.

I don’t know why she didn’t bring the dishes up herself. I don’t know why she didn’t just call us to tell us herself. I don’t know why she didn’t just walk to our office to tell us herself. I don’t know why she told the secretary that she had to walk down and tell us in person.

I just… I don’t know. But this is exactly how all her “problem-solving” works. So it’s not really surprising that we mostly ignore her ideas.

Where I work, only managers can do refunds; the system won’t allow it without their individual PINs. So, whenever a customer changes their mind or we make a mistake, we have to call a manager and wait for them to enter their PIN and do the necessary steps. At the end of the transaction, a small receipt is printed saying that it’s for a refund. Because this takes a lot of time, we normally wait until the end of the rush to do the “official” refund with the managers so the inventory is correct, and we just do the necessary math in our head to give the customer what they want in the moment.

Then, one day, I get one of the few times where I have to call the manager in the middle of the rush because we have to do the “official” refund right now. He comes over and does his thing, the refund receipt prints… and he hands it to me and tells me that he, the customer, and I all have to sign it.

Me: “Wait, what? Since when?”

Manager: *Conspiratorially* “I’ll tell you later.”

I’m intrigued, so after the rush, I call him over and ask about it.

Manager: “Well… I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell you, but… one of the other cinemas in our chain had a little… legal problem.”

Me: “Like what?”

Manager: “Like… the ushers picking up old, used movie tickets and some of the managers ‘refunding’ them at the end of the day, and then both of them splitting the money… kind of legal problem.”

Me: “What? But every transaction is logged under our own individual accounts. You need your PINs for everything. And there are weekly and monthly reports about every transaction we do, and the bosses look at them regularly.”

Manager: “Yep.”

Me: “And the managers — who know all this — didn‘t think they’d get caught?”

Manager: “Apparently not. Most of them are students, too. Their criminal record is f***ed for the next few decades. No one will ever employ them.”

And that’s why, from then on, we had to wait for the managers every single time a customer changed their mind, no matter how long it took and how stressful the rush was: because some stupid people thought they could beat the system and failed.

Related:
Refunder Blunder, Part 61
Refunder Blunder, Part 60
Refunder Blunder, Part 59
Refunder Blunder, Part 58
Refunder Blunder, Part 57