I work at a museum with a little café. We close at four and make two announcements before closing, one at closing, and one a few minutes after to make sure everyone leaves the building so that we can finish our closing procedures and lock the building.

It’s about 4:10, and a family comes to the café where I am restocking.

Mother: “Can we quickly buy something?”

Since the register is still open, I agree, since most folks quickly grab something and leave at this point.

However, even though we have stacked all of our chairs and moved all of our tables, the whole family goes and sits on the permanent wall booth and makes it clear they are going to sit in to have their meal rather than take it with them as most people do when it’s obvious we’ve already technically closed.

We work around them, cleaning and restocking with no other guests in sight. At about 4:20:

Mother: “When do you close?”

Me: “We closed at four.”

Mother: “Thank you.”

She kept eating.

At 4:30, all of us employees had to leave. We were standing around, purses, keys, and backpacks in hand, and the family was still munching away.

A manager decided, even though it wasn’t part of our closing procedures, to shut off all the café lights. Only then did the family angrily grumble that we “turned the lights off on them” and shuffle out, seeming not to notice that, other than us, only the janitorial staff was left in the entire building.

A woman submits an email ticket for help accessing her account. Okay, easy stuff.

Me: “Can I have your username, please?”

Customer: “[Username].”

Me: “I can’t find that username in the database. Can you please verify that it’s correct?”

Customer: “Yes, it’s correct.”

Me: “Okay. Can you please send a screenshot of the error notification you’re receiving?”

When she does, I notice she’s trying to login into some random website I’ve never even heard of. I have no idea how she ended up with our contact information.

Me: “The site you’re trying to access isn’t a product of our company. You should reach out to their customer support.

I then close the ticket.

But alas, that’s not the end. She calls in to the support line, and I happen to be the one to answer the phone.

Me: “Thank you for calling [Medical Company]. This is [My Name]; how can I help you?”

Customer: “Is this the [My Name] who refused to help me get access to my account?”

I immediately know this is going to be a fun call.

Customer: “It is your job to get me access to my account!”

Me: “Actually, it isn’t; you’re asking about a product we don’t even sell.”

Customer: “I’m not hanging up until you help me!”

I relent and Google the software, find their customer support number, and attempt to give it to her. After I recite the number, she goes silent for a couple of seconds, and then says:

Customer: “What do I do with this? I called you for a reason! Why are you trying so hard to avoid doing what you get paid to do?”

Me: “Ma’am, what hospital do you work for?”

Customer: “[Hospital].”

I do notice that they have an account with some of our products, but the product she needs help with isn’t one of ours. I tell her this and she just isn’t grasping it.

I finally get pissed off.

Me: “Ma’am, this is not a product we sell. There’s nothing I can do aside from pass of their contact number.”

Customer: “Well, we’re going to sit here all day, because I’m not getting off this line until I’m helped”.

I chuckled a little to myself and hung up.

She immediately called back. I saw it on the caller ID and decided to just let it ring for a bit to see if she’d give up. I alerted the other techs, and after a good laugh at her expense, my manager picked up the phone. He told her the same thing I did, and again, she insisted on “being helped”. After she whined some more, he told her there was no assistance we could offer with a product we didn’t sell and hung up, again.

That was the end of her tirade, right?

Nope.

She then began spamming the chat. I closed the first one immediately and she opened a new one.

I finally called the hospital she worked for, and thankfully, someone else picked up the phone. I asked to speak to a manager and told her what was happening, and she apologized and insisted it would stop. The lady immediately quit spamming us. I hope she was immensely embarrassed when she finally realized she was an idiot calling the wrong number. Her final sendoff was giving me a one-out-of-five rating on the initial email ticket she submitted.

Legend has it, to this day, she has yet to gain access to her account.

I work in a small IT shop with low traffic, and today, an old person asked me to show him how to use Facebook, Skype, and the Internet basically. I help elderly people with these things almost every week, so there was nothing unusual with his request. Because of the shop’s low traffic, there’s always time to teach the older generation.

My usual tactic with old people is to have them take notes and not only watch me do everything but also try it themselves. After we’re finished, they take a small “exam” where I ask them to do the things we talked about, but with me just observing and not helping. This method has always worked so far. Some of them even got the courage to try new technology stuff themselves and returned just to proudly show off their new tablet/computer/phone skills.

Customer: “I’ll understand everything by watching you doing and explaining it. I’m a fast learner!”

He even refused to take notes. I didn’t want to force him into anything, so I just slowly showed him everything, asking, “Is it okay so far?” from time to time. He always said yes, he understood everything, and that it was not that difficult. We sometimes had breaks to let the information sink in.

We spent an hour and a half going through everything slowly. I honestly believed him that he understood everything. Then, he said:

Customer: “Could you please write all of this on paper? I don’t have my glasses with me and haven’t seen anything on the screen, and everything you were saying seemed difficult, so I didn’t really pay attention.”

I asked him several times during those ninety minutes if everything is all right, so it’s not like he didn’t have a chance to tell me to stop — especially when we were having those five-minute breaks. I understand that he might have felt ashamed for not seeing well or not understanding things, but if that was the case, where did his shame go when he casually said he didn’t listen?

I work in a call center for a company that does billing for utilities. For some reason, if you Google the phone number for another billing company, our customer service number comes up. I get calls for [Other Billing Company] frequently enough that I have the correct phone number handy to give to people who have dialed the wrong number.

Recently, my call center has had a particularly high call volume, resulting in wait times that are often around an hour.

I take a phone call from a woman who is trying to contact [Other Billing Company]. She would have heard our recording while waiting to speak with someone, which would have made it clear which company she had called.

Me: “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’ve called the wrong number.”

Caller: “I waited for an hour!” *Hangs up*

This happened some years ago. I was one of the leaders at a scout camp for around twenty scouts, age ten to fourteen or so. One of the activities that we always have on any scout camps is a “night run”. This means we let the scouts go to sleep for an hour or two, and then after midnight, we wake them up with some kind of noise, ask them to hurry out, and then give them a task to do in the dark.

This camp was during the wintertime. Anyone unfamiliar with the weather on the Faroe Islands should just know that you do not want to sleep in a tent during this time of the year unless you are absolutely sure you want to catch a nasty flu. It’s just wet and miserable. All the scouts were sleeping in a long low-rise building with loads of rooms on either side of a long hallway.

This year, we wanted to make the night run about a murder mystery. The leaders responsible for waking up the scouts had borrowed a smoke machine because they wanted to fill up the hall with smoke. After it was full enough, they would make a huge amount of noise as if there was a fire and then chase all the half-awake scouts up.

The next part I was told afterward since my task was further away from this building.

The leaders had started to fill up the hallway with smoke, which turned out to smell like bananas. After just a tiny amount of smoke had come into the hall, the real fire alarm went off! The leaders got very surprised since they either had forgotten these alarms or they for some reason didn’t think this smoke would set it off.

But even more surprised were they when non of the scouts came running out. Not one! After opening some doors, they found out, that all of the scouts were still sound asleep, while the alarm was blaring away in the hallway.

The leaders had to personally bang on each and every door to wake up the scouts, who came out in a daze and acted like there wasn’t a fire alarm going. Even after they got out, the leaders found out that three or four scouts had just gone back to sleep! The leaders weren’t too happy about that.

Now, as I said, this happened some years ago, and the building was already at that point a bit old and needed an update. This update has since come for the whole campsite, and the fire alarm has also been changed for a better one. But I am very, very glad that this was discovered during a night run and not during an actual fire!