Client: “Excellent work! We love what you’ve done with the site! Actually, would it be too much trouble to send me the original?”

Me: “The original?”

Client: “You know, the site on paper before you scanned it in.”

I’m in the middle of a rush at a restaurant. I have no busser. A couple is insisting on sitting at a particular table, but it hasn’t been cleaned yet.

Me: “It’s not the only booth by a window. I can seat you at any of these other tables.”

Couple: “No. This one has the most sunlight.”

I give them an “Aww, shucks” look.

Me: “All right, well, it’s going to be a minute until we can get around to cleaning it, so just hang tight.”

Food is sitting forever in the window, tables are flagging me down for their checks, and there are another dozen people loitering at the entrance. It’s like one of those server nightmares where your feet feel stuck in molasses.

The couple intercepts me at the register while I’m putting in three tables’ lunch orders.

Couple: “Could we put in our order with you while we wait? We know what we want!”

Me: *Big sigh* “Look, let me finish a couple of things that need immediate attention, and I’ll get your table clean.”

At this point, the husband has begun wandering around the restaurant. I finally catch a second, and I begin clearing and wiping down their table. I turn around to look for them, and they’re gone. I go into the next room, and they’ve sat themselves at another table.

Couple: “Oh, we decided on this table after all. Sorry for the trouble. We must be a nightmare!”

At least they’re self-aware.

The last hiccup was when I refilled one of their coffees to the brim. They asked for a new cup because I had “spoiled their coffee-to-cream-and-sugar ratio”. Some people…

I work in a highly-specialized but rapidly growing field of engineering. My company specializes in niche design software for some of the most complex design questions. These are typically questions that four or five PhDs with a hundred years of experience between them couldn’t answer without our software.

Nevertheless, our marketing director has decided to be… willfully ignorant… about exactly what we do. She is smart and capable enough to LEARN, at the bare minimum, the basics. She just chooses not to. She is also the kind of person who likes the sound of her own voice and refuses to listen to anyone, especially if it is another woman, which — surprise! — I am.

We are in a meeting when, out of the blue, she asks a random question.

Marketing Director: “What is the status of the demo?”

Me: *Taken aback* “Uh, can I ask what the demo is pertaining to?”

Marketing Director: “The GUI demo! It is top priority.”

We have several Graphical User Interfaces in the works right now, and as the project lead, I am not aware of us being at any stage to create a demo. But maybe she means a previous GUI? Or even something other than a demo?

She has a habit of miscalling critical projects, no matter how many times I correct her. For example, we have a project called Baseball and another called Cube. She will frequently refer to both projects as Baseball despite them doing two very different things. It’s the same with the word “demo,” which can mean anything from an actual demo to a demo video, a tutorial, or training material.

Me: “I was unaware that this was a priority. Can I have a little more detail on it? Like what this demo hopes to accomplish?”

Marketing Director: “It always has been a priority!”

Me: “Well, I have no knowledge of it, so let’s talk about what you are looking for.”

Marketing Director: “Are you telling me I am going to have to wait three months to get this done?”

Ah. Well, that at least narrows “the GUI” down. I am able to pinpoint what GUI she is talking about based on the project completion date, so I can proceed.

Me: “The work on [Correct GUI] is optimization. It won’t affect the branding so we can work on a demo, but I am going to need a bit more information. For that, I would like [Owner] present to give his feedback.”

Marketing Director: “I want a demo of the capabilities! Are you telling me I cannot get a demo on the capabilities?”

Me: “What do you intend to do with this marketing-wise? Li—”

Marketing Director: *Cutting me off* “The capabilities! Like what it does! Can we do that?”

Me: *Pauses* “I don’t understand the question.”

Here she goes on a tirade that I just kind of space out on because, at this point, I know she doesn’t even know her marketing message or her target audience. She is expecting me to do this all for her.

Me: “As I have stated, I don’t understand the question. As I explained several times before, the GUI doesn’t have any new functionality or capabilities. It is a wrapper for our current command-line capabilities. We can make a demo, but we need to know who you want to market for, and [Owner] should provide feedback on what he wants to use it for so it is multi-functional.”

Marketing Director: *Beaten but annoyed* “Well, do you have any questions for me?”

Me: “Do you have a statement of work for this demo so we can work it in?”

She didn’t answer and instead opted to change the subject before leaving shortly after. We will see if we get that Statement of Work or if she is going to keep acting like it is done until someone gives in.

Client: “I can’t concentrate when you keep tapping like that!”

Me: “I’m typing. This is the sound of typing.”

Client: “No, THIS is the sound of typing.”

He starts gingerly finger-pecking the keys.

Client: “Notice the difference?”

Me: “All right, then. This is the sound of work actually getting done.”

Client: “It’s the sound of a jerk being a… jerk, if you ask me.”

I don’t work for him anymore.

I was working at a toy store chain that was closing for renovation. We’d done liquidation sales for two weeks in addition to shipping products to other stores. Once it was empty of product, we got to work tearing down the shelving, walls, register lanes, etc. You could literally see through the front windows all the way to the sunlight streaming into the back dock.

An older man with his young grandchild came up to the doors and started banging on them.

Man: “Let us in so we can shop!”

When they were told that we were closed, that there was literally nothing in the store to sell them, they both threw tantrums. The little boy kicked the door.

They left before police could be called.