I come into work for my afternoon shift through the front of the store. Things aren’t looking too bad customer-wise… and I jinxed it with that thought.

A kid comes sprinting straight up to me who is, give or take, about six years old. His eyes are all on my purse which, I’ll admit, is pretty nice. I managed to snag a pricey brand that is patterned with the letter C in teal and lavender colors.

The kid comes to a stop, eyes glued to my purse.

Kid: “Can I see that purse?”

I get the creeping feeling of “this is going to go south” and give him a small, tight smile. I move my arm a little so he can see the pattern better but keep a grip on it.

Me: “Pretty cool, huh?”

Kid: *Frowns at me a little* “No, I said I want to see that purse.”

He reaches for it. I promptly tuck it firmly against my side.

Me: “Sorry, honey, look with your eyes only, okay?”

Kid: “No. You’re going to give it to me to look at.”

Me: “No, I’m not, son.”

Kid: *Turning it up to eleven instantly* “YOU CAN’T TELL ME ‘NO!’ GIVE ME THE PURSE OR I’M TELLING MY MOM!”

Me: “Go right ahead and tell her, kiddo.”

The kid spins around and sprints off.

I’m no idiot: if this is the kid, I hold no illusions about the behavior of the mom. I want my personal belongings nowhere near this train wreck. Since I’m right next to the employee door, I dart inside, stuff my purse in my locker and lock it.

A few minutes later, I’m signed in and walking the floor to the front of the store.

Kid: “THERE SHE IS, MOM!”

Sigh. So help me, if this is a sign of how my entire day is going to go, I quit… On the plus side, I can already see a coworker on the phone, calling the manager. We’re good about spotting those huge, flashing, neon signs that warn of danger.

The raging woman comes storming up to me just as I reach the registers.

Entitled Mom: “Did you just tell my child ‘no’?!”

Me: “Yes.”

Entitled Mom: “How dare you?! You do not tell my child ‘no!'”

Kid: “She wouldn’t let me hold her purse!”

Entitled Mom: “Where is the purse?”

Me: “I put it away.”

Entitled Mom: “My son wants to see your purse! Go get it for him!”

Me: “Nope.”

Entitled Mom: “My. Son. Wants. To. Hold. Your. Purse. Go. Get. It.”

Me: “Nope.”

Entitled Mom: “You will get your purse and give it to my son, or I will have you fired.”

Me: “Nope.”

Entitled Mom: “Manager! NOW!”

Me: “Yup.”

The manager is jogging our way, expression confused.

Manager: “What’s going—”

Entitled Mom: “I want this b**** fired!”

Manager: “I heard something about a purse…?”

Entitled Mom: “My son asked to hold a purse, and she refused to hand it to him!”

Me: “That’s because the purse is mine, ma’am.”

Manager: *Eyebrow raised* “My employee doesn’t have to let your son hold her personal property, ma’am.”

Entitled Mom: “You can’t refuse my son service!”

[Manager] glances at me, and I can read his thoughts.

Manager: “Yes, actually, we can. Ma’am, we have purses on the floor that your son is perfectly welcome to hold.”

Kid: *Screaming* “I WANT THAT ONE!”

Entitled Mom: “I don’t care about those purses. My son wanted a specific purse, and this b**** refused him.”

Manager: “I repeat: my employee doesn’t have to let your son hold her personal property. Now, unless you actually want to shop for a product that we’re actually selling, I think we’re done here.”

Kid: *Still full volume* “I WANT THE PURSE!”

Entitled Mom: *Seething* “I’ll call corporate!”

Manager: *Scribbling on a scrap of paper, holding it out, and smiling* “Here’s their phone number.”

The woman snatches the slip of paper out of his hand and storms off, angrily screeching child in tow.

Manager: “[My Name], go into the back and… I dunno, hide or something, until I call you.”

I stay in the back for quite a while. I find out later the woman whipped out her cell phone three feet away from the door, jabbed her finger on it like the phone had personally insulted her, and ranted into it for several minutes.

Our phone rang a few minutes after that, and the woman stared in at my manager with an expression of smug superiority as the manager picked it up.

Big Wig: “[Manager], you’re not going to believe the call I just got, and I’m not even sure if your employees are just bored or what…”

Manager: “Oh, I bet I can believe it. Let me guess, some lady just called because my employee wouldn’t give her personal property to a kid.”

Beat of silence.

Big Wig: “…so this isn’t a prank?”

According to my coworkers, who were shamelessly watching this debacle go down, the mom’s smug expression wavered when my manager grinned widely and then laughed.

Manager: “Nope. Sorry. It’s an actual thing.”

There was a long, deep sigh. My manager said he could almost see the Big Wig pinching the bridge of his nose.

Big Wig: “I’ll call her back and tell her that since no policies were broken, no action will be taken at this time. If she harasses your employees, just have her removed by the police. Ban her if she pushes it.”

He hung up. The lady’s phone rang. She snatched it up, and her face twisted into an expression of “lemon, no sugar,” and barked out:

Entitled Mom: “I will never shop at your store again!”

She then pulled her phone away from her ear as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing, glares murderously at my manager, and disappeared into the sunset.

For once, the promise of never returning was kept, and there was rejoicing throughout the land.

This story is part of our Halfway-Through-2022 roundup!

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The most entitled person I have ever met has to be my uncle. He is the oldest son of my grandparents, yet somehow, he was treated like the baby of the family. If he screwed up my grandparents bailed him out. Crashed a car, new car. In trouble at school, no not our angel. Ends up in jail because of a hit and run and he was drunk, they paid all his legal bills and supported him in prison.

He only lived out of my grandparents’ house for a couple of years before he burned every bridge in town and nobody would hire him.

He’s living with his parents and he’s around sixty years old. About eight years prior to this he convinced his father to stop leasing the farmland to a farmer who has consistently paid and leased that land for twenty years so that he could “farm”. He agreed to pay the lease fee for the land but wasn’t allowed to use the pole barns on the property.

He paid one year then stopped paying, and took over the pole barns with junk. I mean literal piles of junk everywhere. He also made it his mission to make everyone uncomfortable during visits to our grandparents. Glaring at people, screaming at everyone over imagined slights, running my dad’s equipment into the ground then not fixing it.

He also refused to help his parents or work with anyone to ensure they were cared for or that the farm didn’t end up in foreclosure.

Five years ago, the family farm went into foreclosure. He didn’t offer a single penny to his parents to try and save it even though he is the reason it was in foreclosure. My dad and I came up with $10,000 cash to save it.

Last year was the last straw. My grandma ended up in a serious accident. I stopped by the house to feed the cats and found an absolutely disgusting mess. The house reeked of urine, food expired by years, mold growing in the fridge, and holes in the floor.

At that point I had it. I threw a fit, I was ready to move my grandparents into my house that week. I calmed down and sat down with my dad and laid it out that either things started to get cleaned up or I was calling adult protective services.

We cleaned up the house, got care services arranged, and then we noticed bills piling up. They shouldn’t be as they received enough money to pay for their needs. We combed through the finances and found huge amounts of money just disappearing. Come to find out my uncle had been asking for money along with my aunt.

They were also forgetting to pay bills or paying them and not writing them down so accounts were over-drafting.

During all this, my uncle never checked on his parents even though he lived with them. We decided they couldn’t handle the farm anymore and it was causing too much strain on them to manage.

We found a buyer for the property and sat down with the entire family to discuss it. My uncle refused to listen and called us greedy. We decided to ignore him and go through with the sale.

During this time my grandpa had a heart attack. My uncle left him lying in bed and didn’t call an ambulance. My dad and I swung by to take them to dinner and found my grandpa in the bed literally dying. My uncle never called to check on him after he left with the ambulance.
We never took my grandparents back to the farm after that.

Unfortunately, the buyer didn’t work out for the farm, so my dad and I pooled our money together to purchase the farm.

We formally evicted my uncle, found an actual leaser for the land, and are building a new house where we will live with my grandparents.

We are also burning down the old farmhouse as my uncle destroyed it. He is claiming we stole the property, that he deserves his inheritance and that we didn’t do this legally. Our lawyer disagrees.

Karma does occasionally show up.

I am working as a cashier close to Christmas, so everyone is on edge and my managers look like they want to die. My main manager is new and still getting used to everything; he tries to please everyone within reason.

In walks a customer, already complaining about how busy we are. She heads towards the grocery section and is forgotten. Then about ten minutes later I hear on the walkie that a customer is angry because a woman came in with a dog. I can see the light drain from my manager’s eyes. He looks like he wants to be anywhere else, especially as we see the customer stomp back up to the front.

Customer: “Are you the store manager?!”

Yes, she emphasized ‘are’ and ‘store’ like Nicholas Cage.

Manager: “Just the front-end manager, ma’am. Can I help you?”

Customer: “There is a dog in your store!”

Manager: “Well yes, ma’am, we are a dog-friendly store—”

Customer: “That is disgusting! I’m calling the health department!”

Manager: “Ma’am, you can, but we are a private business that can set those rules in place.”

Customer: “We will see about that!”

She then finds the health department number and calls them. I can only hear her side obviously, and her reaction is golden:

Customer: “What do you mean they can do that?!”

With that, she stormed out. My manager just looked at me and mouthed “dear God”. Had me dying for the rest of the day.

The most entitled jerk I ever endured was a coworker of mine. He was an older gentleman that worked the night shift with me prior to my assignment as the supervisor of the lower valley, he had days where he was the best guy to be with and then days where he was just mean for no reason.

 I distinctly remember one time I was on patrol, and I noticed that the mountain ridge had reignited (there had been a fire earlier in the day). I radioed him and told him to call 911 and get the local fire department down to the site since I was in the valley and didn’t have reliable phone service.

Coworker: “Oh, no, I don’t want to call 911, you call 911, I’ll just open the gate.”

And then he hangs up on me then won’t pick the phone up again.

It took an additional fifteen minutes to get a fire response to the property because I had to go looking for phone service, but that’s just a teaser, a little taste. Here’s the main story:

One day I end up on the shift preceding my coworker. At 10 pm he rolls in to relieve me, I issue the posting equipment to his partner for the night and then wait for him to come up to my car and get the patrol equipment from me. I am parked in the designated on-camera area where we pass this equipment down in. He is outside of it.

Me: “[Coworker], I have the keys and the phone here for you.”

Coworker: “Well, I’m over here.”

There is a pause.

Me: “Yes… come and get the equipment.”

Coworker: “No, I’m over here.”

Me: “What?”

Other Guard: “…?”

Coworker: “I said I’m over here.”

Me: “Yes… but you have to come and get the… equipment, [Coworker].”

Coworker: “No, I’m over here.”

The other guard and I exchange looks.

Me: “[Coworker], come get your equipment. We have to complete the pass down.”

Coworker: “Well then I guess we can’t complete the pass down.”

Me: “[Coworker] you can either get the equipment or you can leave the property and I’ll work your shift.”

Coworker: “Well, I’m over here.”

Other Guard: “We need to pass down on camera, [Coworker], you know this.”

My coworker didn’t reply. I place the equipment down on my car and unfortunately, it slides off and hits the floor. My coworker goes ballistic, leaping from his vehicle and accusing me of throwing it at him and threatening him.

He then walks off the property and grabs a Honolulu Police Department officer that was chilling in our closed driveway exit lane doing his paperwork (common because we allow them to do this at night) and tells the police officer that I was threatening him and threw the equipment at him.

The officer was literally going to try to arrest me but my car was running and my dashboard camera was recording. Since my windows were down it caught everything.

I told the officer I could show him the footage but once I mentioned it he shook his head and told us that it sounded like an internal problem and left.

My coworker chased after him demanding his name, badge number, supervisor, everything since he didn’t do anything about the situation.

The officer told him that he didn’t care, he was a common visitor to our property and since I was usually on the day shift he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t do what he was claiming and the fact that I offered camera footage sealed the deal in his mind.

My coworker came back in and I told him to gather his equipment or to leave. He took the equipment and flew into the property almost slamming into the shack and the main gates.

I filed an official complaint with every… single… person above me and included the full dash camera footage.

My coworker only got a write-up.

I found out later that this was to be his revenge for me taking the first set of patrols the night before. I worked with the man for the next two years until he finally got himself eliminated for refusing to stop feeding the stray cats on the property which was causing issues for our tenants as he was leading them into their areas. When property management ordered him to stop, he yelled at them and that was it.

Man tries to get me falsely arrested ON CAMERA and gets a write-up.

He yells at the poor property manager about cat food and gets terminated.

Related:
When Coworking Is Not Working

My mom is an amateur geologist. She makes polished cabochon rock necklaces to sell at gem fairs. She runs into a lot of interesting potential customers.

Customer #1: “You must have painted these! There’s no way the rocks are colored like that naturally.”

On another occasion:

Mom: “These rocks formed over millions of years.”

Customer #2: “No, they must be fake! The world is only six thousand years old!”

Neither person ended up buying anything.