I work in a bank. Some of our systems are down. We can still process deposits and withdrawals, but we cannot provide balances or any other services. I’ve been leading all discussions with customers with this information all day; however, they are still asking for things I cannot do and getting mad when I can’t do it.

A customer walks in.

Me: “Hi, how are you today?”

Customer: “Good, and you?”

Me: “I’m all right. I did want to let you know that our servers are down, and while we can still process a deposit or withdrawal, we cannot provide balances, open accounts, or any other service right now. Unfortunately, there is no estimated time that we’ll have these services back.”

Customer: “I just have a deposit. No balance needed.”

Me: “Great! I’ll process that for you.”

I process it and hand over his receipt.

Customer: “Oh, wait, I do need my balance.”

He immediately smacks himself on the forehead.

Customer: “And you literally just told me that balances are unavailable! I’m sorry.”

Me: “Don’t worry about it. At least you realized what you said and owned it.”

Customer: “Long day of people not listening, huh?”

Me: “You have no idea.”

Me: “We need this tool to streamline this process and automate it so we save ourselves several hours each shift. It would probably result in about a 20% reduction in our workload.”

Client: “That sounds great!”

Me: “I’ve already got a draft of what it will do, how it will work, and how the user interface will work and look.”

I show it to them.

Client: “I need this to be different. This just won’t cut it for what we need. Can you make these changes?”

Me: “I can, but it might not work.”

Client: “How so?”

Me: “It will definitely affect the performance and overall usefulness of the tool for us, but if you really need it, then we can sacrifice some functionality.”

I then go away to work on the “revised and improved” version as requested, often taking multiple times longer than planned for the “base” version.

Client: “Why is this taking so long to work, and why does it not do what you said it could do?”

Me: “Because you asked me to make it this way.”

Client: “You should have said it would not work.”

Except I did.

A few years ago, I was spending the day with my dad, and we decided to eat at a branch of what was at the time a large national restaurant chain that specialised in having locations along major road networks to cater to travellers, truckers, etc. We ordered and got talking — so much so that it wasn’t until forty-five minutes later that we realised we’d not received our food.

My dad went and found someone, who went to find out what had happened to our food. She came back after a few minutes, apologised, and admitted that our order had been forgotten but would be made now. We hadn’t ordered any drinks, and she offered to get us some, the inference being that they were an apology for their mistake, so we said yes.

We weren’t in a huge rush, so we just got back to chatting until, before we knew it, another thirty-plus minutes had gone by and we’d still not received our food.

My dad once again went and found the same waitress, who again apologised and went off to find out what had happened. She came over and admitted the kitchen had forgotten our order a second time but would put it on immediately.

My dad and I just looked at each other, and without saying anything, we knew that we’d both decided to just leave it, so we politely told the waitress to forget it and got up to leave. However, as we were walking out, the manager came after us.

Manager: “You didn’t pay your bill!”

Dad: “We didn’t actually receive our order.”

Manager: “The bill is for the drinks you had.”

We were a bit put out by this and pointed out that it had now been an hour and a half since we’d ordered, they had forgotten to make our food twice, and the drinks had been offered to us as an apology.

Thankfully, the manager backed down, and we went on our way.

The kicker: the restaurant was absolutely empty except for my dad and me, and it had been the entire time. My dad had to go find someone both times as the waiting staff weren’t on the floor but off relaxing in a corner somewhere. 

I think our experience possibly explains why no other customers had been eating there despite it having been relatively busy when we’d been there before, and honestly, we weren’t surprised to see that over the next few years, the chain kept closing restaurants and eventually went out of business altogether.

We may not have gotten our food, but I got to spend some time with my dad, at least, which is always something I enjoy.

This is an actual conversation with a client over email. Because they are on the other side of the world, we have a twelve-hour delay for each response. The file in question is a 75MB .WAV file.

Me: “Thanks for your order. Because the file size is too big, please follow the link below to access your product. If you have any problems, please let me know.”

Client: “Hey! Thanks for the email. There wasn’t anything attached, though. Can you please send it again?”

Me: “Yep, the file is too big to attach. There was a link at the bottom of the email. Here it is again.”

Client: “You forgot to attach the file again.”

Me: “I didn’t forget. I provided a link to where you can download it.”

Client: “YOU STILL HAVEN’T ATTACHED IT!”

Me: “I can’t attach the file; it is too big. You can download it here. Click this link, and you will get it.”

Client: “You’re so incompetent. How can you not attach a file to an email? What the f*** are you doing in this business? Attach the f****** file or give me a refund.”

Me: “The file is TOO BIG TO ATTACH. Click THIS LINK. FROM THERE, YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE FILE.”

The client then logged a dispute on PayPal. They never clicked the link or accessed the file.

I run tours around the area from a fancy resort in Jamaica. One of the tours is the exploration of a cave by the beach, which involves a little bit of swimming. I meet the tour group the night before at the resort and explain how it all works.

In the morning, I meet the tour group on the beach and hand out life jackets. A middle-aged woman not dressed for getting wet looks up from her phone, and she seems confused.

Tourist: “What is this for?”

Me: “For the cave swim tour, ma’am.”

Tourist: “You never told me we would have to swim!”

Me: “I explained at the resort that the tour involved exploring swimming into a cave.”

Tourist: “You should have been clearer!”

Me: “Ma’am, the tour is for the exploration of a natural cave that can only be accessed through the ocean. The name of the tour is the ‘Cave Swim Tour’. I don’t know how much clearer I could have been.”

Tourist: “I thought there would be like a guest path or something! What if I needed to use the restroom or stop for a coffee?” 

Me: “…I don’t think this is the tour for you, ma’am.”