I work as a student worker with my university’s IT department. We service and manage computers for students and faculty, typically with malware or hardware issues. Sometimes, we have customers that need something done with their phone, in which cases we usually can’t do much more than connect them to the university’s Wi-Fi.

This happens less than a month after I start working on the front desk directly with customers. The more experienced student worker that has been showing me the ropes has stepped away for a moment. The glass front door is thrown open and a very tall, lanky customer storms in.

Me: “Hello, sir, how can I—”

I’m interrupted as the customer thrusts his phone across the front desk and into my face. He has the flashlight function on and it glares right into my eyes.

Customer: “Why is there that light?”

Me: “Um, you may have left the flashlight on, sir?”

Customer: “You mean, you don’t know?”

Me: “We don’t typically service phones. I think—”

Customer: *Shouting* “God, why do you even work here?!”

The customer storms out, muttering something about me being useless. The other student worker returns to the front, having heard the shouting.

Student Worker: “Ah, was that the rent-a-room guy?”

Me: “What?”

Student Worker: “Did he want to rent a room?”

Me: “No. We don’t rent rooms, do we?”

Student Worker: “No, but he was in a bit ago and screamed at me about wanting to rent a room.”

Me: “He wanted me to turn the flashlight off on his phone.”

Student Worker: “Looks like he’s using one of the computer lab computers.”

Our office is adjacent to the university computer lab. From the front desk, we can see through the window as the customer angrily slumps into one of the seats and logs in. By now, our supervisor has come out from the back.

Supervisor: “That was horrible.”

Me: “Yeah, the guy screamed at me.”

Supervisor: “If he comes back in, try to get his username. We can report him to student conduct for being verbally abusive.”

Student Worker: “What if he’s not a student?”

Supervisor: “Then we can report him to his department manager.”

After an hour, the customer got up and left without coming back in. That’s when I hatched a plan. I went to the computer he had been using, logged in, and looked at the “user” folders in the computer’s hard drive. They were all recorded with usernames, and there weren’t more than ten. I quickly copied the usernames to an email and sent it to my supervisor.

He replied simply that he had it.

The other student worker identified the guy by his account photograph when the right username was looked up, and he was reported. I never saw that customer again.

(This happens in the virtual world of Second Life. I work in Second Life, organizing shopping events where many merchants sell their virtual products, and it’s very common to send notices to customer groups so that the info about the event reaches everybody, i.e. address, flyers, number of participants, and so on.

Usually, store owners have time until the day before the opening to set up, so the location is closed to the public; otherwise, the flux of incoming people would make it almost impossible to decorate, etc. A random person sends me a message out of the blue:)

Customer: “Hello, [My Misspelled Name]. Is there any reason why you would send out the info about your event today—” *the seventh* “—when you state that it started on the second?”

Me: “Because it’s still going on until the tenth. It’s a fair.”

Customer: “Why wasn’t it sent out before the second?”

Me: “Because before the second it was not open.”

Customer: “But you knew it was going to happen.”

Me: “Guilty as charged.”

Customer: “Bloody ridiculous.”

Me: “It was an interesting conversation; thank you for your feedback!”

Customer: “Your attitude is appalling.”

(Seriously, I thought she was trolling me and sooner or later she would say something like, “Gotcha!” but sadly, she was serious! Entitled much?)

(In the early nineties, while in college, I work drive-thru at a fast food place. There is a man, maybe in his early sixties, who comes in very regularly for “senior’s coffee,” which is only 25 cents at the time. We don’t think he is old enough, but he is such a mean, nasty, cheap old fart that we just let him have it for that price. He’ll often target the newest front counter girls, just ask for coffee, and then berate them if they dare to charge him the regular price. If they don’t know that he gets a “special” deal, he likes to make them cry.

One of the managers has told me that this man’s wife attends the same church he does, and she is the sweetest, kindest woman ever. We don’t know how she can stand her husband.

If a manager tells him off, he would snark at them, too. Apparently, he was “somebody” in the community at one time.

Around this time, Canada holds a national referendum, and I get a job for the one day working a voting booth, which pays well. I manage to get partnered with a good friend from work, and we have a small polling station to ourselves, so it seems like it will be a long but fun day away from our usual work. Partway through the day, who should come into our polling station but [Grumpy Old Fart]. He is in his usual state, griping loudly.)

Grumpy Old Fart: “Why are you calling yourselves a ‘voting’ station? It should say that you’re a ‘referendum’ station! What is this country coming to?! Are you so dumb that you don’t know the difference? Why aren’t you labelled as a ‘referendum’ station?!”

(He carries on in this vein for a while. When I can get a word in edgewise, I say:)

Me: “Well, we couldn’t spell it.”

(I have never actually seen someone go as apoplectic as he did; he was so livid he could barely speak, and he stormed out. My friend and I nearly had an aneurysm ourselves from trying to not laugh in his face; we managed to hold it until he left. He never spoke to either of us again after that.)

(I work in a business that does a live auction every Saturday night. The business has a restaurant that I manage. On Saturday night it always gets slammed. There is a couple having dinner in the bar and they have been served their food already. They decide they want a better view of the auction, so they decide to move themselves to a large table closer to the auction. I am cleaning the table they choose, where I’m about to seat a table of six people.)

Me: “Excuse me. I’m afraid you can’t move here at the moment because I have other people about to sit down here.”

(The lady goes ballistic and starts screaming.)

Lady: “If I can’t have this table, I’m not paying for my f****** food!”

(I am really surprised that she immediately freaked out.)

Me: “Ma’am, I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay for your food. I would be happy to reseat you after I seat the rest of the waiting list. Please go back to the table you were seated at before.”

(She doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not going to cave.)

Lady: “Fine. We’re going out to the auction, and when you have a table closer, we’ll come back for our food.”

(I watch them go view the auction and point them out to the owners to make sure they don’t dine and dash. After the auction ends and they pay for their purchases from the auction, the owner hands them their boxed-up food and their bill. No surprise, they don’t take it well.)

Lady: “Our server was extremely rude! After we went to watch the auction for a little bit we went back to get our food but it was gone!”

(That’s a total lie.)

Me: “You never came back to get your food; that’s why I boxed it after an hour. And the owners watched you in the auction the whole time; you never left your seats.”

(The owners comped all the food. Entitled people blow my mind.)

(It is a Tuesday and I just got done cleaning out the fridge at work, something I am expected to do daily. Today, there was only one thing to remove: a partially empty can of tea. Fast forward to dismissal time and we are changing out of our uniforms in the locker room. [Employee #2] is my working partner, meaning we split the daily tasks between us.)

Employee #1: *passive-aggressively* “Somebody threw out my tea. Tea that costs money. If it was [Employee #2], I’m sure it was a mistake. But somebody still threw out my tea.”

Me: “Pro tip: don’t put your drink in the door of the fridge because if someone were to open the door too fast, it will fall over and spill everywhere–”

Employee #1: “Did you just say, ‘pro tip’?”

Me: “Yes.”

Employee #1: “Oh, God.”

(She then is pretty much ready to head out the door and go home but not before she shares these parting words of wisdom:)

Employee #1: “Well, you can take your ‘pro tip’ and shove it up your a**!”

(The next day arrives, and we receive a huge order of many extremely heavy pallets that all have to be moved upstairs. We have elevators for this so it is not so bad. The problem employee barely speaks to me this entire day, but instead proceeds to rally the rest of the team against me, sends the elevator to the wrong floor on purpose causing me to lose time moving pallets, and when she does speak it’s to ridicule me and make my day as mentally miserable as possible. I let this go on for one more day, but on Thursday, I attempt to arrange a meeting with a supervisor and the problem worker at the same time. Nothing can be arranged until Friday. Remember that this started on Tuesday. On Friday, I am in the office alone with a supervisor and tell him everything that’s been happening and I am extremely honest about even my own shortcomings. He calls in the troublemaker for what is essentially an ambush. I didn’t want her to be able to plan any of her words.)

Supervisor: “[My Name] here has been telling me that you’ve been very passive-aggressive for the past couple of days and I would like to hear your perspective.”

(For the most part, her story holds to the truth. That is, until we get to the Q&A part of the meeting.)

Supervisor: “She also tells me you’ve been sending the elevator to different floors than the one she was on.”

Employee #1: *not even a split-second hesitation* “Oh, I thought I heard someone calling that they needed the elevator, so I sent it over.”

Me: *internally* “Really? And what is so difficult about pressing the elevator call button that this certainly imaginary person couldn’t do it for themselves?”

Me: *outwardly* “And what about throwing my own words back at me like they were poison? You just stood there and watched me struggle with a pallet, but you didn’t have any ‘pro tips’ for me?”

Employee #1: *another split-second hesitation* “Oh, you were hauling pro mix so I was trying to be punny by saying, ‘pro tip.’”

Me: *internally* “Except for the fact that you ridiculed my choice of words before any of us knew the pro mix would be delivered. Are we now suddenly clairvoyant? Makes perfect sense!”

Supervisor: “Well, we’ll need to stop this hostility. [Employee #1], if you or anyone else has any complaints, please come to me or any other supervisors next time, okay? Don’t take it out on your coworkers. [My Name], you’ll have to stop cleaning the fridge for now until we can come up with a better system for making sure new items don’t get removed by accident.”

(It was fair enough for the interim, but I was still only doing my job. I learned something very unpleasant about a coworker that I once thought was cool: liar, and a quick one. But she did try to make it up to me later after dismissal by telling me to have a good weekend, something she has never done before. It actually made me tear up a little because I was reminded that she’s not all bad. For the record, others rallied to my cause without even being told to. I have more friends at this place than I thought!)