I have just finished booking an overseas tourist who is a certified diver into one of our day dive trips. This particular trip is an all-day trip, with a good three hours of diving throughout the trip, with small surface interval times — breaks — on the boat as it moves between sites. This particular customer, a much older gentleman, just walks in and, already knowing exactly what he wants, announces that he wants to book this trip for the day after tomorrow.

Me: “All good to go! Here is your booking voucher; simply present it to the crew upon boarding and they’ll take care of you from there. Hope you have a great time out there!”

Customer: “Great! Just one last question: what time does the boat get back? It’s just that our flight leaves at [time roughly two hours after the boat returns].”

Me: “Certainly! As mentioned, it is an all-day trip so the boat will be returning at roughly five pm… Wait.” *Alarms bells ringing* “Sorry, did you say that your flight leaves that night?”

Customer: “Yeah! Five pm, hey? Oh, I didn’t realise it got in so late. Do you think we’ll make it to the airport?”

Now, our nearest airport is roughly an hour away, so while I do think the customer will be pushing it to make it to his flight, that’s not why I suddenly went quiet. You see, regardless of which SCUBA organisation you are with or which dive company you book with, they all say that, for medical reasons, you are not supposed to fly within twenty-four hours of your last dive. This customer’s flight is due to leave only two hours after the boat so he is certainly within the twenty-four-hour exclusion period for flying after diving. As a certified diver, he should definitely be aware of this rule.

Me: “Well, sir… I’m sorry, but you can’t dive on [Day].”

Customer: *Taken aback* “What?! Why? Is it because we won’t make our flight?”

Me: “Well, no. Unfortunately, you need to wait twenty-four hours after diving before flying. Knowing now that you are flying after your dives, I’m going to have to cancel your trip. I can’t allow you to dive when you are flying out so soon. I will, of course, refund your trip right now, or if you are available, move you to tomorrow?”

Customer: *Getting visibly angry* “What?! I can’t do tomorrow; I have another trip booked! I don’t want a refund, either; I want to dive! Why can’t I dive?!”

Me: “It’s a health issue, sir. Flying so soon after diving leaves you susceptible to decompression sickness, or the bends.”

Customer: *Sarcastic tone* “Oh, really? Well, missy, I’ve been diving since before you were even thought of. Since when did this become a thing?”

I am not putting up with the sudden rudeness.

Me: “Since we realised the debilitating effects, both short-term and long-term, of decompression sickness, sir, usually resulting in a painful death. Now, you have two choices: either move to tomorrow where you will be outside the twenty-four-hour exclusion zone, or if that’s not possible, I will certainly refund you.”

The customer is now getting supremely irate.

Customer: “This is ridiculous! Back in my day, we didn’t even have this sort of regulation! I came all the way from [Country] to see [Dive Destination] and I demand to see it!”

I am initially stunned, but then I compose myself.

Me: “Certainly, sir, I understand that coming all this way only to be told no would be incredibly frustrating. But right now, you have only one choice: leave, make up your mind, and come back when you have calmed down. If I don’t see you by [closing time], I’m simply going to take your name off the booking, no refund.”

The customer storms out of the shop, seething. I just shake my head and return to my work. It is nearly closing when the same customer comes walking back in, a smug smile on his face.

Me: “Good to see you again, sir. Did you decide what you would like to do?”

Customer: *Smugly* “I want the refund.”

Me: “Of course.”

As I’m processing his refund, he asks me this:

Customer: “If I didn’t tell you about my flight, would we be doing this right now?”

Me: “Well, no, but at the same time it’s good you did tell me. It’s not a good idea to keep things like that hid—”

Customer: *Cutting me off* “That’s all I needed to know.”

I finish processing the refund. I hand him back his receipt.

Me: “All sorted, sir. Once again, I am sorry that you couldn’t go out—”

Customer: *Cuts me off again* “I just want you to know as soon as I left I booked with another company for that day. They were very happy to serve me. I look forward to giving them amazing reviews while you get one-star.”

I do not care about reviews, but I am more shocked that he was allowed to go diving even after his flight times make it dangerous.

Me: “Really? They booked you on even with your flight leaving so soon afterward?!”

Customer: “That’s the thing! I didn’t tell them! I’m going to have a great time, and I’m going to personally email you the bad review I leave!”

And he proudly strolled out of the store. I was amazed, and I wish I had found out which company he ended up with so I could’ve called them myself to warn them. I really hope he missed his flight, and if he didn’t, that he didn’t suffer ill effects.

We get that he spent a lot of money coming here, and that this particular area is a dream destination for a lot of people. But it is NEVER worth your health! Still waiting for that bad review, by the way.

The store I work for has stopped putting out their shopping baskets for customers to use for sanitation reasons. In this specific instance, I’m watching the self-checkout robots when a customer walks in looking for the baskets.

Customer: “Hi. Do you know where your baskets are?”

Me: “Hi! The baskets were too hard and time-consuming to properly sanitize, so we put them away. You’re welcome to use a sanitized cart, instead. Sorry about the inconvenience!”

Customer: *Pause* “So, what am I supposed to use, then?”

Me: “We have sanitized carts in the lobby, or I’m happy to send someone to grab a smaller cart from the parking lot and sanitize it for you to use!”

The customer stormed into the lobby and grabbed one of the carts normally used by customers with kids, mumbling about how “ridiculous” it was the entire time. I guess some people are intent on not getting their way!

Related:
What A Basket-Case

I’m meeting a friend at a local coffee shop. She’s in her sixties, grey-haired, slim, and nicely dressed. She looks like someone’s grandmother, or maybe a retired schoolteacher. We get our coffees and go sit down and start catching up.

The next customer begins yelling at the barista for getting his coffee wrong. After listening to him berate the poor kid for a minute or two, my friend speaks up. She’s a retired marine and she knows how to make her voice project.

Friend: “Sir? Excuse me? May I ask you a question?”

Customer: *Irritated* “Yeah, what?”

Friend: *Speaking clearly and calmly* “How small does your d**k have to be to make a sixteen-year-old girl cry over a god-d***ed cup of coffee?”

Everyone in the store can hear her, and a couple of people laugh. The man glares at her for a moment and then stomps out of the shop. My friend turns back to me, smiling sweetly.

Friend: “Where were we? Oh, yes… How’s your mamma and them?”

Related:
Has No Problem Espresso-ing Herself, Part 7
Has No Problem Espresso-ing Herself, Part 6
Has No Problem Espresso-ing Herself, Part 5
Has No Problem Espresso-ing Herself, Part 4
Has No Problem Espresso-ing Herself, Part 3

I am the assistant manager at a smaller restaurant. I am the youngest employee and female, but I’m also one of the most senior employees and was promoted for busting my a** for almost three years.

One of my employees has been here for less than a year, and is an older male, over twice my age. While I don’t quite like him for personal reasons, I’m very good at not letting that affect how I treat my coworkers and employees. Unfortunately, I have repeatedly had issues with this employee, even when he first started. I’m pretty sure he has issues taking orders from a young woman, but who knows. Regardless, he frequently undermines me, refuses my orders, or ignores me entirely. He is actually fairly decent at his job, though — when he actually does it — and even more unfortunately, he is almost impressively good at brown-nosing and kissing a**, so he is more or less allowed to do whatever the h*** he wants by all higher-ups. I make a semi-compromise with this by basically trying to let him be as much as I can. But, as these things go, I sometimes have to, ya know, communicate with my employees.

We recently cut back on some shipments, as business has been slow. One of the things we cut is going from getting deliveries of our microfiber towels twice a week to once a week, which is entirely fine, but it means we have to be slightly more conservative in our towel usage until we reaccustom ourselves or get busier. This employee, apparently, didn’t listen to the meeting we had the morning before where this was explained and I see him taking a sanitizer bucket with FOUR towels to clean a small, already mostly clean lobby.

Me: “Hey, [Employee], why are there four towels in here?”

Employee: *Snarkily* “Because there’s four of them!”

Me: *After a pause* “Okay, but just so you know—”

Employee: “[My Name], it’s fine; just take one.”

Me: “What? No, I just wanted to—”

Employee: “[My Name], I already told you its okay!”

Me: “No, [Employee], I needed to tell—”

Employee: “[My Name], I don’t understand why this is such a big deal! I already told you you could take a towel.”

Me: “But—”

Employee: “There are even towels in the back! Why do you have to make such a big deal of this?”

I say this louder than normal, but nowhere near yelling.

Me: “[Employee]! Listen to me.”

He just stops and stares at me before smirking.

Employee: “Ooooh, you yelled at me in front of customers.”

He turns and walks away, completely ignoring all attempts at communication on my end, and goes directly to the office where my general manager is working. He proceeds to b**** and complain about how “disrespectful” I am and how my manager needs to “teach me some manners,” and he says that I’m “screaming at him in front of customers.”

My patience is running thin, and I try to interject to tell my side of the story, but he cuts me off every time with a hand-wave, saying, “I’m not done yet!”

By the time he’s done with his little rant, I am almost shaking in anger. He leaves, giving me a smug smirk, and I take a moment to compose myself.

I fully explain the situation, complete with me NOT yelling, only slightly raising my voice, and his complete dismissal of me, briefly mentioning that this is a pattern — which my GM is aware of.

General Manager: “All right, but you have to stop making such a big deal over little things. [Employee] knows what he’s doing; just leave him to it.”

Me: “I’m trying, but I need him to at least listen to me, and I would like it if you and everyone else stopped automatically taking his side for things.”

General Manager: “I’m not taking his side in anything, but you need to stop yelling at him and let him work.”

I’m thinking, “You are literally taking his side. Right now. Over the assistant manager that YOU promoted.”

Me: “I’ll try. Could you at least ask him to listen to me instead of interrupting? I just want to have a conversation.”

General Manager: “Yeah, sure.”

I think I need a new job.

I was working at a farmer’s market. The vendor next to me was selling carrots for $1 a bag — pretty good price, excellent produce. A customer whined, “[Big Box Low-Price Grocery Store] has them for $0.79!”

[Vendor] looked him in the eye and said, “I crawled on my hands and knees in the mud to harvest these. They’re a dollar!”

The customer meekly paid and took the bag of carrots.