A couple of years ago, I was visiting Pompeii. I had opted to follow a tour guide for it.

At some point during the visit, while on the way to the Villa of Mysteries, our group saw around six people sitting on the ruins, picnicking, Styrofoam boxes with plastic cups and tablecloths and all.

Our guide quickly approached them.

Tour Guide: *In accented English.* “Hey! You can’t have breakfast here!”

Man #1: *Answering in English, showing the bacon and eggs he was eating from a piece of bread.* “Dude, this ain’t breakfast, this is lunch.”

The other five people in that group laughed.

Tour Guide: “Doesn’t matter.” *Waves at the general area.* “This is a house inhabited by—”

Man #2: “Who, Biggus D*ckus?”

More laughter from the group.

Man #1: “Yeah, man, why does it matter? Nobody’s using it, and we aren’t in the way.”

Tour Guide: “Shall I call the police? Would that make you move?”

Man #1: “Oh sure, like they don’t have their hands full with all the pickpockets around.”

Woman: “They let us picnic in Mesa Verde; why can’t you let us? What’s so special about these three piles of bricks?”

The tour guide, though visibly ready to kick the woman’s head off, does end up calling the police. Visibly and loudly.

Man #1: “Dude, why the f*** did you do that? We aren’t harming anyone!”

Man #2: “Don’t you really have anything better to do with your time than to police where people eat? Isn’t this a free country, Luigi?”

Tour Guide: “I’m literally also paid to get people like you off the rui—”

A different woman ends up throwing a paper cup full of soda against the tour guide before she starts packing up. The tour guide, in a display of biblical-level patience, aside from yelling, doesn’t fight back: instead, when the police arrive shortly after, he adds that the woman has thrown things his way. We moved away as the police dealt with the rude and disrespectful diners, so I don’t know how it followed up.

When we were far enough away, a man from our tour group asked if he was okay and if he was still willing to keep guiding us; he said that, though it would’ve been shorter than anticipated, he was okay with keeping the tour going.

I did end up seeing the Villa of Mysteries and the Dioscures’ House for the record. Also, even though it’s not expected at all in Italy, at the end of the tour we, collectively as a group, decided to tip him 10€ each, totaling around 100€, for the behavior he displayed in the face of such idiots.

A tourist family walks into the restaurant. I greet them, give them some menus, and one of them sighs heavily.

Customer: “Pizza and pasta? Again?”

Me: “Madam, you are in Italy.”

Customer: “Yes! I know we’re in Italy; please don’t explain geography to me. But when you have this many American tourists coming every year, you’d think more restaurants would have things like mozzarella sticks, loaded fries, or something!”

Me: “There is a McDonald’s on the other side of the piazza.”

Customer: “I’ve been going there for breakfast every morning. You think I should go there for dinner too?!”

Me: “Well, it’s just that for the last four days you’ve been here for dinner every night.”

Customer: “Yeah, you’re the only place that has an English name.”

Me: “La Trattoria?”

Customer: “Exactly.”

Me: “Madam, you’ve been here four evenings in a row and the menu surprises you?”

Customer: “Well, back in America we have daily specials!”

The small company where I worked was basically a family-run business: the CEO and CTO were the cofounders, and among others, the CTO’s son was my senior in the technical office.

One mighty Friday, [CEO] spent the afternoon in the technical office, asking me to prepare offers for prospective customers he was going to visit. When all was ready, I asked him if he needed some more info on the offers, and he smugly pushed back, stating that he had run the company since before I had even started sucking milk from my mother and that he knew the company business like the palm of his hands.

And with that, we all left for the weekend. 

Saturday rolls in and, as soon as I step out of my morning shower, I see ten missed calls from [CEO] and ten more from [CTO]. Even though I am not supposed to be on call or even working during the weekend, I call [CTO] back, in case anything serious has happened.

As soon as [CTO] picks up the call, he starts shouting:

CTO: “Why are you not picking up [CEO]’s calls? He was with a prospective customer and had some technical questions!”

Me: “Let’s put aside that yesterday I asked him if he needed info and he refused, and that I am not even working on Saturday. Why didn’t he call [CTO’s Son], if the questions were so urgent and I wasn’t reachable?”

CTO: “What? Calling [CTO’s Son]? And bother him during the weekend?”

Me: “Well, I guess I will answer the questions on Monday, too, then.”

Strangely enough, there were no questions on Monday.

I am so glad I left that place.

The process for gaining access to this industrial work site is mental. Two days of courses, then a multiple-choice quiz and then a practical test: an intervention on a mock-up of the actual equipment. You change out of your clothes and into white overalls, just like in the ‘China Syndrome’ movie.

It’s time for the written test, and we’re fretting because it will be done in a foreign language. The teacher, however, is willing to help us.

Teacher: “I’m going to read the questions and the answers out loud, so pay attention to me.”

And he begins:

Teacher: “Which one of the following is a requirement to access the site? To successfully attend this training course, sounds legit, to possess a union membership card, gosh, I left mine in the other trousers, to be an employee of the National Ministry of Mining and Excavations, but we seem to be in a building and not in a hole in the ground.”

So that’s how it’s gonna be. We relax and joke and carry on.

Teacher: “Don’t you all get the test 100% correct, alright? Otherwise, it will look suspicious.”

Enter [Worker #1], already featured in other stories on this site. He smiles, nods, and proceeds to get each and every single answer wrong, because that’s what the teacher said, right? That you don’t have to get them right. 

He scores maybe five out of a hundred.

Lucky for him, he’s allowed to retake the test and joins us in the afternoon for the practical test. After the initial briefing, we’re corralled in a locker room with big wire baskets full of overalls and shoes.

Everyone picks something in their size and proceeds – on the benches, getting down to underwear, then donning white work clothing, “punching in” the dosimeter badge at the gate, and into the equipment room. 

Meanwhile, an instructor watches over, corrects our behaviour, and rates whether we do the actions in the correct order so that the contamination does not cross between “cold” and “hot” zone.

[Worker #1] is last at first, then definitely late. One of the instructors goes back to the initial locker room and returns with a somewhat embarrassed [Worker #1]. It takes a while to piece together the story, but it turns out that [Worker #1] has chosen just this day to go commando. So, not wanting to disclose his predicament, “smartly”, he waited to be the last one in the locker room before changing, but then he couldn’t figure out to use his badge to open the gate!

The surprising thing is that [Worker #1] still passed the test on that day, and only lost access a few years later, when background checks became stricter.

I bought a house with a garden and sold my flat. The buyer was a foreign worker who had been renting until then. He doesn’t speak Italian, but he makes himself understood when he wants to.

A few days after the sale, he called me asking for a document he needed. Many exchanges later, it was established that he needed the floor plan, with quotes. Cue a lot of “I already gave it to you” “no you didn’t” back and forth.

Luckily for me, I had a scan saved, so I printed it on my ancient greyscale printer and went to meet him.

Me: “Hello [Buyer], here is a scan of the plan you needed. I don’t have anything else, so keep it in a safe place, okay? Now, you’ll see that this wall marked here does not exist…”

Buyer: “Yes, yes, it was red.”

A-ha!

Me: “Where it was red?”

Buyer: “On the… paper…”

Me: “Oops.”

Looks like someone did have that paper after all… 

Our last interaction was just as surreal…

Buyer: *On the phone.* “[My Name]! The window broke, you must fix.”

We managed to establish that the window itself is fine: just the roller belt wore out and snapped, as it is wont to do.

Me: “I see. Say, when you lived in [previously rented house], who fixed window?”

Buyer: “Landlord.”

I highly doubt that, but meh.

Me: “Are you paying rent in there?”

Buyer: “No…?”

Me: “Congratulations! You have become a landlord, and now you can fix your windows. I left fifty meters of spare roller belt in the garage. Bye!”

I have no doubt we were going to have lots of similar conversations in the future, so I blocked his number after that.