I’m working at the front desk with a new girl. The morning is going well, but then he comes, like a banana on the sidewalk, like death at a picnic:

The German.

The majority of German folk are the most polite people on earth (usually my favourite clients) and I deal with them a lot since I’m one of the four people in the hotel that can actually speak their language.

But this specific guy, uh-uh.

The Deutsche giant hits the desk with his graceful fist in an attempt to attract my nice colleague’s attention. She immediately smiles, and tries to greet him in English.

New Colleague: “Good morning Mr. [Guest’s Name], how can I—”

He cuts her off and starts yelling at her in fast, angry, German, he also keeps hitting the desk to emphasize his discontent. The poor girl looks like she is about to cry, and looks at me confused and scared.

I jump in and approach him in German, he seems less angry.

Customer: “Finally! You should have interpreters here all the time; it’s incredibly unprofessional. I shouldn’t have to learn English or Spanish to go on vacations, I should be here relaxing!”

Me: “I’ll make sure we have one here in reception more often, sir. Now, how can I help you?”

He seems calm for now. He looks at his family behind him, looks back at me, points at the glass ceiling and says with the most condescending voice:

Customer: “It’s raining… again.”

He caught me off guard. I didn’t understand if he was trying to make small talk or if he was ACTUALLY complaining to the reception about the rain.

Me: “Yes… sir, what a shame right? Let’s hope tomorrow will be sunny.”

I decide to treat it as small talk, and that doesn’t make him happy. He is astonished that I don’t see the issue.

Customer: “I PAID FOR THIS HOLIDAY! I PAID to come in this tropical country and enjoy the sun, not to see rain every day for a whole week. IT’S RUINING MY VACATION!”

He is absolutely convinced I should do something about it. I show him a long series of fun family activities that can be done even if it’s raining, petting zoo, underground swimming pool, monkey island, etc.

He seems interested in the rain rafting passes; they take you down some rapids in a canoe and it’s even better when it’s raining. I manage to sell him four of those and he leaves with the happy family. I go back to work, proud of myself for turning a complaint into commission money. Yay me!

It stops raining later, but I don’t notice as there is a rush of check-ins. The angry German is back, and he can’t care less about the queue. He pushes back the cute couple on a honeymoon that I am serving and slams that fist on the desk again.

Me: “I am very sorry, sir. If you would just allow me to finish the transaction with these guests I’ll be with you in a minute.”

He. Is. Not. Having. It.

Customer: “I bought passes for the rafting, but it stopped raining five minutes in and there wasn’t enough water to go fast! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!”

Me: “You will be able to use that pass any other time, you could just wait for another rainy day, sir.”

He is even redder now. He looks like he is going to explode.

Customer: “I AM LEAVING TOMORROW! ARE YOU DUMB? I want my money and I want to do the canoe thing TODAY! Get me your manager, NOW!

I happily call my supervisor, an amazing Dominican woman who speaks multiple languages and does her job like a boss. She takes no s*** and I know it well.

She is fierce.

In the most elegant German possible, she says:

Supervisor: “Good afternoon, sorry for the wait. What seems to be the problem?”

As soon as she introduces herself the German starts a tirade about how much service sucks, and about how I sold him a pass for raining canoes and then it stopped raining.

Customer: “THIS PLACE IS S***! Why call it tropical if it’s always raining? Unbelievable, I came here to see sun and warm weather, NOT RAIN FOR A FULL WEEK! ARE YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?!”

My manager is listening carefully and shaking her head with empathy for the poor man’s misadventures. I try to chime in to explain to her my side but she shushes me and points to the clients in the queue. I keep doing my job while she deals with him on the other side of the counter.

After he is done with his therapy session, he waits for an answer, since my supervisor hasn’t said anything yet. With extreme nonchalance, professionality, calm, and politeness, she asks:

Supervisor: “[My Name], pass me the reception phone, please? This problem needs to be dealt with immediately.”

He seems pleased that she is taking his complaint so seriously, and is gloating with pride, sending me “I told you so” looks. I grab the phone and put it on the counter. She grabs it, thanks me, and starts dialling a number I’ve never seen.

Supervisor: “Good Afternoon, this is [Supervisor] from [Hotel]; is this Eden? Could you put me through with our Lord and Savior?… Yes, thank you very much. Hey! Jesus, my man! Listen, I need a favour, could you please stop the rain here in Sosua? Really? Awesome, I owe you one.”

She hangs up the phone and smiles innocently at the fuming humiliated man. He then grabs the two little girls and drags them to their room screaming something incoherent about a bad TripAdvisor review. After he is gone, she turns around, smiles, and says to me:

Supervisor: “Good job on selling him the passes, even I couldn’t smile at that dude for more than thirty seconds. Now, I want to see that queue gone when I come back in an hour. Come on, girls!”

And she disappears, heels elegantly ticking on the floor.

I work as a concierge in a hotel. I’ve got a coworker who’s honestly what most people would consider a parasite. He works way less than everyone else and is perpetually finding ways to skive off. We call him Wizard.

Our boss absolutely loathes Wizard and is determined to find a way to fire him.

I don’t know the exact details, but she suddenly came in one day and said that the delivery company had accidentally sent our shipment of gift shop merchandise to the branch at the other end of the city and they couldn’t send it to us. Someone had to go in person to pick it up.

Wizard basically got volunteered. It was only later that we found out that he didn’t have a driver’s license, so he couldn’t take a van over there. Worse, our boss specified that we needed the merchandise by 4:00 pm. This meant that Wizard had to somehow cross the city twice in three hours, carrying with him several boxes of merchandise on the way back. It would be impossible, as we estimated the one-way journey by public transport alone would take two hours. Failure, he was told, would be punished by immediate dismissal.

Within fifteen minutes, the janitors were already planning his farewell party.

Imagine our surprise when Wizard turned up at 3:00 pm with all the merchandise, completely unaware that our boss had set him up to fail.

The boss was livid, furiously screaming at Wizard, who was honestly completely lost as to why she was pissed. He got the goods within the allotted time and without damage, so why was this lady screaming at him like he had failed?

This wasn’t the first, nor the last incident. Whenever we had a problem, we’d go up to Wizard, and he’d make them go away. Somehow. We never actually asked how he did it, but after you saw Wizard in action, you really didn’t care how he did it.

A list of his feats:

1) Salvaged a couple’s honeymoon after their original plan suffered several cancellations

2) Got rid of a waitress’ stalker for her. Twice. (Two different men.)

3) Can somehow speak no less than three Asian languages and act as translator for foreign guests from East Asia.

4) Has good enough alcohol tolerance to go drinking with a Russian guest. (Said guest half-demanded that someone take him to a cheap bar and drink with him. That was a weird request, but Wizard had fun.)

5) Knows where to find cosplay events and dress-up parties even in the most inane times of the year. (Another weird request. I immediately handed it off to Wizard.)

6) Figured out which guest was stealing stuff from another guest’s minibar.

7) Administered first aid to an old man that fainted.

8) Solved an issue where a regular kept pawing at a female janitor.

At some point, one of the janitors claimed that he was a wizard and that questioning his methods would lead to the magic being lost. Everyone decided to play along with that, leading to his nickname.

Even our regional manager was amused by Wizard, bringing up the idea of having dedicated problem-solvers in every branch. I don’t know how that panned out, but needless to say, our branch considers Wizard one of our key members… even if we basically have to do most of his paperwork for him.

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We are a couple of middle-aged Brits who decide to take the holiday of a lifetime in Colorado and the Rockies. This is in the early 1990s before the Internet, and bookings have to be made by telephone. My husband’s first name sounds the same in the UK and the USA but is spelled differently.

We stay one night at a hotel in Denver which is part of a well-known international chain. It doesn’t go well! To start with, the key card will not unlock our room door, and we have to be helped by a member of the cleaning staff who is working nearby.

The next morning, around 8:30, we go into the restaurant for breakfast; we’re the only guests there. We are seated by the busboy who brings us coffee and disappears out the back. So, we sit, and sit, and finally, we call out:

Us: “Is there anyone here?”

No one appears, so we walk out. As we go through the door, a woman appears from nowhere, holding my husband’s spectacles case which he left on the table, hands it to him, and walks away!

We decide we will have coffee in the lobby, but no, all the containers are empty and all the cups are dirty.

We load up our car and go to the desk to check out. Eventually, someone comes to the desk and prints our bill, quoting the room charge and a forty-seven-dollars bar charge, spoken very quickly and quietly.

As we have been nowhere near the bar, we ask to see the bar bill, and we find that it is signed using the American spelling of my husband’s name. As soon as we point this out, the charge is immediately taken off the bill, so quickly that we get the impression that this scam happens all the time.

We have since had several holidays in the area — and love it! — but never would we stay at this hotel again, and the next time we drove past it, we saw that it was no longer part of the well-known international chain.

Occasionally, we’ll get a complaint at the front desk about our beds. Usually, this is just from someone not used to staying in hotels who doesn’t understand that their bed is not going to be their exact preferred firmness; I’ve gotten complaints both of too-soft beds and too-hard beds, so it really is just individual preferences not matching up with reality. However, this is the most bizarre complaint about them I’ve ever received.

Guest: “Excuse me! The beds in my room are not what I paid for!”

Me: “I’m sorry, ma’am, how do you mean?”

Guest: “I paid for two queen beds and that is not what I got!”

I apologize and bring up the guest’s reservation, thinking she was somehow moved to a room with only one bed, only to find that she IS in a two-queen room.

Me: “Er… I’m sorry ma’am, this says you are in a room with two queens.”

Guest: “No! Those are full-size beds; I want queens!”

I have no idea how to react to this, because what she is saying is completely impossible. Our hotel doesn’t HAVE full beds; the only two-bed configurations we offer are two queens or one king. There is literally no way the beds in her room are full beds because none exist in the hotel.

Me: “Ma’am… I don’t know what to tell you. Those are queen beds. We don’t stock full-size mattresses—”

Guest: “No! I sleep on a full bed every night and those are full-size beds! I demand a room with two queens!“

Me: “Ma’am, I could move you to another two-queen room, but the beds would be exactly the same. If you really need a larger bed, then I could move you to a single king but—”

Guest: “I am here with my sister! I need two beds! Two!“

Me: “Ma’am, I’m not sure what you want me to do.”

Guest: “I want you to give me a room with two of your ‘KING’ beds!”

Yes, she used air quotes.

Me: “Ma’am, I’m not allowed or able to do that. I don’t even think two king beds will fit in one of our bedrooms, and even if they could, it would be against fire codes to have that much furniture in a room not designed for it.”

Guest: “This is unacceptable! I paid for queen beds! Queen. Beds!”

She continued to rant and rave, but the only thing we could think of to appease her would be to offer her a second, comped King room, and we were sold out and unable to do that. In the end, she checked out and we refunded her, with her swearing up and down that she would be writing corporate about our “false advertising.” Never before or since have we been accused of downsizing our beds, so I have no idea what that lady’s problem was.

Me: “[Business], this is [My Name].”

Caller: “Uh, yeah… I got a call from—” *garbled*

Me: “I’m sorry, who did you say you got a call from?”

Caller: *Silence*

Me: *Five seconds later* “Who was that you had a call from?”

Caller: “Oh… uh… I had a call from this number here.”

Me: “Okay. May I ask your name and what this call is regarding?”

Caller: “I had a call from this number. I’m returning the call.”

Me: “Yes, I just need your name so I can find out who called you.”

Caller: “They called me.”

Me: “I know. There are several people here who could have called and the number would have shown up as the same for each of them. This is the front desk.”

Caller: “But they left a message saying to call them back. I’m calling them back.”

Me: “They didn’t leave a name?”

This is odd, because we’re taught phone etiquette, and part of that is to always leave your name and the reason for your call.

Caller: “No, they just said call back.”

Me: “Okay, do you have a family member who lives here? Have you applied for a job here?”

Caller: “I don’t know.”

Me: *Loses all hope* “Okay, let me see if I can find out who called you.”

I put him on hold and called around to see if anyone called… someone… about something. God, I hate Mondays.