My workplace is a tea store where you can buy loose tea and we package it directly for you. An elderly couple comes in and seems very determined; I assume they’re regulars that know what they want.

Customer #1: “We need 100g of green tea with orange.”

Me: “We have orange-grapefruit and strawberry-orange but no green tea that is just orange. Did you mean either of these two? The only tea with orange we have is black.”

Suddenly, it’s like a switch has been flipped. They both sneer at me. The woman starts cussing and calling me stupid among a few more not-so-nice things.

Customer #1: “We bought it here before!”

Me: “Maybe we do not stock it anymore.”

Customer #2: “Honey, maybe it wasn’t orange. Maybe it was something else. We’ll recognize it if we see it.”

There were no other customers, and I had time to kill, so I proceeded to take our little test cups and scoop a bit of every one of our green teas — two and a half wall-high shelves full of boxes — to show them.

The tea they had bought before was ginger-lemon, which smells so strongly like lemon that it reminds me of citrus-scented air freshener.

Related:
You Can’t Be Citrus

I take calls and chats for a big gaming company, so I get a lot of people that are upset when something doesn’t work right. I get a mother as my first chat of the day that had started a refund request the Saturday before I got her. We can’t always give out refunds, so we have requirements that need to be met. She has met them, so she had the request sent to our back office by the first agent and was told to wait ten to twelve days for the refund.

The next day she gets in the chats again.

Mother: “I got the first half of the refund an hour after I had the request put in.”

Agent: “I don’t know why that’s happened like that. I’ll get the refund request sent to the back office again, but you will still have to wait ten to twelve days for the other half.”

The chat with the agent ends. Monday comes and I get Angry Mom.

Mother: “I bought some in-game currency for my daughter’s birthday, but it didn’t show up in-game!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that; let me see what I can do. Do you have the serial number from the console so that I have all this information on record?”

Mother: “No one has ever asked for the serial number before!”

I can see the last guy did.

Mother: “I’m not going to give it to you.”

I mark down, “I couldn’t get the serial number,” and move on. I can see all weekend she’s tried to get this worked out, so I ask my supervisor if I should send this refund request to the back office for a third time.

Supervisor: “No, if the back office has it, they will get to it.”

I go back to the mother.

Me: “I see you have a request set up already, so please wait the eight to ten days you have left.”

Mother: “No, I had the first half back an hour after I talked with the first guy and I want the rest of the money back now.”

I still don’t know how or why this happened like this, but my info says it takes ten to twelve days and I tell her this.

Mother: “That’s bulls***.”

At this point, she doesn’t care what I say unless I give her her money back, but I still have to follow what I’m told by my supervisor. I nicely ask her again to wait and again she says no. I give her the number of our tier-two help to see if they can make it any faster for her.

Mother: “No. I don’t have a phone; that’s why I have been using chat.”

Me: “Then I am afraid I can’t do anything for you. You can either wait the rest of the time or use someone else’s phone to call in to get further help.”

She goes off about how she just wants her money back and this was a gift for her daughter’s birthday and how it’s being ruined because she doesn’t have the money to get her stuff in the game.

I stop feeling sorry for her and feel worse for the kid having to live with that. I still say I’m sorry to hear all this and that I can’t do anything to make this go faster. 

Mother: “I’m going to contact the cops on you all and say that you’re stealing my money.”

This was the first time I’d had something go this far, and I was still new at this point, so I had ZERO idea of what to do. No one else knew what to do, either, really. After I saw that she’d left the chat, I ended the contact.

I don’t know if she ever got her money back or if she did go to the cops about this, but I also haven’t seen any news about the company getting sued over $10, so who knows?

Related:
Refunder Blunder, Part 54
Refunder Blunder, Part 53
Refunder Blunder, Part 52
Refunder Blunder, Part 51
Refunder Blunder, Part 50

I’m working in a cute little Vietnamese sandwich place and, like all cultural food places, it does have food and ingredients that are traditionally known in other Asian cultures. A white man walks in wearing a business suit, his head held high, and there’s this haughtiness about him that I notice as soon as he walks up to my register. He takes a long look at the menu and then makes a show of observing all of our extra snacks and drinks.

Customer: “So… this is Vietnamese food.”

Me: “Yes, it is!”

Customer: “But your sandwich up there has Kimchi.”

Me: “Yes.”

Customer: “That’s Korean, you know.”

Me: “Yes, I know.”

Customer: “And your snacks here are all Japanese.”

Me: “I suppose. Cultures tend to mix, you know. Our main focus is the menu.”

He stares at me suspiciously.

Customer: “You’re not Vietnamese, are you?”

Me: “No, actually, I’m half-Samoan.”

He nods, although I’m not sure if my answer is satisfactory for him. 

Customer: “Cool, cool. I didn’t think you were. I know all of this stuff because I spent a couple of years in Vietnam on business trips.”

I just nod and smile. He picks up a small plastic case with a brownie.

Customer: “Wow, you sell brownies, too! I didn’t know brownies could be Vietnamese.”

Me: *Slightly irked* “Well, a Vietnamese lady made them, so I suppose that’s what makes them Vietnamese.”

Customer: “Hmm.” *Put the brownie down* “I suppose you have a point.”

I tried to break the awkwardness by suggesting some of our popular items off our menu, and I recommended the Pho since that was basically our star item for anybody who is familiar with Vietnamese culture and food, all of which were ignored. After another minute of him just staring at the menu above me, he turned and left without buying anything.

Our hotel is chronically understaffed and housekeeping is constantly overworked. I am helping out on a particularly busy weekend when they are swamped. We have sold way more rooms than housekeeping is capable of servicing, so we have people from all different departments helping tidy up rooms, make beds, etc. I go to clean a room that has just checked out and everything goes as normal. I clean the room, the housekeeping supervisor checks it, and she passes it off as ready for sale.

A guest calls about an hour after checking out and claims she forgot her phone in the room I just cleaned. Housekeeping calls me and asks if I found an iPhone in the room. I say no, but I’ll go back and check to see if I missed it somehow. I go and check and find nothing. The supervisor also says she found nothing.

The guest insists she left the phone there and gets angrier and angrier because she’s on her way to the airport and is flying home. Things escalate to the point where she says she will call the police on us.

The police do get involved; they contact housekeeping and ask them to identify who had access to the room. The head of housekeeping and my manager call me down and fill me in. They say that I really need to tell the truth as to whether I found the phone or not. I swear to them that I didn’t, and I even show one of the managers the inside of my locker and the contents of my gym bag to prove I don’t have it. They then proceed to question the housekeeping supervisor, and she says the same thing and also shows them her locker and her purse.

We’re freaking out because the police are involved and nobody knows who took the phone. Then, the front desk calls down. The woman has called the police to let them know that she found her iPhone; it was in her suitcase.

No apology. No call to the hotel. Nothing. The police are pissed off that she has wasted their time, and for some reason, nobody at the hotel ends up taking any action against her.

Moral of the story: if you’re going to accuse people of stealing and put their jobs at risk, make sure your stupid a** is sure you actually lost it.

I have a close friend who is black move into my apartment. Shortly thereafter, I spend three weeks downstate for work-related purposes.

As I am making my way down the apartment hallway, I run into an elderly neighbor who is well known for stirring up trouble and constantly complaining. For instance, she once called the police on a trio of second-grade girls who were selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door and apparently did not see or understand a posted “No Soliciting” sign.

Neighbor: “Does that black girl live in that apartment with you?”

Me: “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes — and yes, she is on the lease, so don’t even bother trying to report her because you’ll just be wasting your time.”

Neighbor: “Ho-ho-ho-ho! It’s worse than that! I don’t know where the h*** you’ve been, but that girl has been blasting rap music at all hours of the day, and there have been all kinds of people coming in and out of that apartment — day and night! I’ve already complained to the management, just to let you know!”

Me: *Cold stare* “Really.”

Neighbor: “She’s a rude little s***, too; twice I tried to talk to her when I saw her in the building, trying to ask if she lived there, and she just kept right on walking like she was too good to even look in my direction! Who the h*** does she think she is?”

Me: “Right. That’s because she’s hearing impaired. That’s not to mention she’s a painfully shy introvert who spends her time programming and blogging. So either there is some serious paranormal activity going on in our apartment, or you’re just itching for me to recruit the whole building to mob you out of your apartment — permanently.”

She stares at me for a minute and then starts walking into her apartment.

Neighbor: “I’m keeping my eye on her.”

Me: “I’m sure she’s flattered by all the attention.”