A woman and her daughter come to check into their room at our hotel. The woman is immediately looking to be an issue, complaining about everything she possibly can. I give them their room key and send them on their way.

About a minute later, the phone rings, and it’s the woman calling from her room. She sounds livid.

Guest: “The air conditioning unit in my room is not working!”

Me: “Have you tried turning it on and changing the temperature to see if anything happens?”

Guest: “Of course, I tried that! Nothing happened!”

I go to her room, and within thirty seconds of being there, I locate the ON/OFF switch on the AC unit and flip it to ON. The unit turns on, surprise!

Thirty minutes later, I get another phone call. It’s her again.

Guest: *In a rage* “The DVD player isn’t working!”

I go to her room again and approach the DVD player. I find the ON/OFF button and turn the DVD player to ON. Voila! It works. Before leaving again, I turn to the lady.

Me: “Foiled by an ON/OFF switch two times in half an hour? This must not be your day.”

Her face started to get red, and I left before she could continue being a b**** to me.

I’m a woman. I used to work in the flooring department of a well-known hardware store. I had a guy that I was helping with tiles.

Me: “You will need to use [adhesive product] so your flooring will properly adhere to the underlayment.”

Customer: “No, you’re wrong!”

He just kept telling me I was wrong. Finally:

Customer: “I’ll just come back later when your manager is back from lunch.”

My manager is a man.

Then, the customer grabbed an employee from a different department to ask him the questions he had been asking me.

Coworker: “I’m not familiar with flooring. Let me grab the flooring associate.”

And he led the customer right back to me. I had never seen a grown man look so embarrassed and get out of an area so quickly.

When I was a teenager, I worked as a busboy and dishwasher at a family-style restaurant. It was hard, grimy work, but I was good enough at it that I “moved up” to prep cook. It was a much easier job as I could come in when I wanted to shred lettuce, make onion rings, and other similar tasks. As a result, I got to know many of the dishwashers that came through. A good percentage didn’t last because of the nature of the job — low pay and hard work.

But I’ll never forget one particular coworker who was working his first day when I was there doing prep work. He was older than me, gregarious, and friendly. He talked nonstop about his future plans, his girlfriend, etc. It was a bit annoying as I just wanted to get in and get out, but I tried to politely listen as I did my work. He also sang and danced a bit while working, which was definitely annoying but, again, didn’t impede the work I was doing.

But things got weird when he started eating off the plates of leftover food that came back, gleefully saying how great this job was. I don’t think I’ve ever been more disgusted than watching him joyfully finish a half-eaten waffle or snarf down leftover fries.

One of the waiters came back while he was doing this and looked at me as if to ask, “What is this guy doing?” I just shrugged.

Then, the restaurant got hit by the lunch rush and the new guy was quickly overwhelmed. Having been a dishwasher, I knew that one person could get through it; you have to just work fast and be focused. But fast and focused was not this guy. His perky demeanor got more and more somber as the reality of the job hit him and dishes started piling up.

He started hinting that I should help him. And then he began to outright whine that he needed help. I have helped busboys in the past if things get tough, but I had quite a few items to prep and some plans after work, so I said I couldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t get fired and that if things got really bad the manager (who was a good guy) would step in to help particularly given that it was his first day.

He stopped talking, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see him looking daggers at me. I was glad to finish my tasks and get out of there.

I heard later that he quit after the first day, and I never saw him again. I was not surprised.

I once worked for a shoe store chain. The next closest store to us, in the “rich” mall, was being closed after the holidays, but the manager and assistant manager there decided to bail out early. The regional manager asked me to fill in until the store closed.

On day three, a customer loudly berated me for wearing an anklet. This woman lost her mind over a piece of jewelry. So, I unhooked it, put it in my pocket, and continued her sale.

The next day, the regional manager called.

Regional Manager: “I got a complaint from a customer about you wearing an anklet. She wants you fired for being such a ‘disrespectful, whorish person’. She also claims you threw your anklet at her.”

The cameras showed that accusation to be false. The customer then tried to sue the main company for emotional distress.

I never found out what happened with that, as I noped out of that career path right after that store closed.

I work in tech support. I’m still in training, so when weird stuff happens, I get waved over as a learning opportunity.

A really upset user called in saying that his program wasn’t loading. As soon as my trainer took the call and heard the guy’s voice, he waved me over to listen in.

Caller: “There’s a line of people waiting, and this program isn’t open! I need someone down here to open this program right now!”

Coworker: “Okay, we can help, but can I first get the code for your comput—”

Caller: “It’s a whole line of people! Do you understand that?!”

Coworker: “I understand, but to help, I’ll need your computer number so I can connec—”

Caller: “You’re not coming down here?! You heard me say I have a line of people, and I can’t help them until you help me!”

Coworker: “Com. Pu. Ter. Num. Ber.”

Caller: “[Number].”

The guy kept going on, but my coworker didn’t say anything else. He just connected to the guy’s machine and double-clicked the icon, and we watched the program he needed load right up like normal. Finally, the guy stopped ranting. [Coworker] hung up without waiting for the guy to say anything.

He said these are the kind of calls I’ll have to get used to — the users’ number one solution is always for someone to come down to the floor and not to get tricked by that.