I worked at the restaurant side of a truck stop for a little while a few years back. There were three restaurants: pizza, chicken, and subs. We all got trained on all three.

I was working at the pizza one when a guy came in and ordered a lot of food. I decided to joke around and asked if he was sharing.

Customer: “Don’t be so stupid!”

He turned to the worker at the sub place and pointed at me.

Customer: “Hit them in the head with the toasting pan as hard as you can!”

He then turned back to me.

Customer: “Piece of s***!”

The store manager for the truck stop part came over.

Manager: “As soon as you get your food, you are to leave immediately. You’re no longer welcome here.”

Customer: “I’m a trucker. That’s just how we are.”

Manager: “I have plenty of truck drivers in, and they behave much better.”

All I did for the twenty minutes he was waiting was sit in the back crying, trying not to run out there and hit HIM with the toasting pan. I wanted to jump the counter and go after him. I was angry. I was angrier that the manager let him get away with it and stay as long as he did.

The next day, the manager above him came in and found out about it. He walked up to me and told me that he would have made the customer leave without his food and only a partial refund for his behavior, had he been there.

My mom has a friend who is originally from Iran. This occurred a few months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

Friend: “I’m thinking about visiting my son in California, but I don’t know if I should drive or fly.”

Mom: “With increased airport security, you’ll probably want to drive.”

Friend: “Yeah, the lines are probably really long.”

Mom: “Yeah… the lines.”

I work as a housekeeper for a senior assisted living facility. Every month, we run a fire drill for both the main building and the memory care building. The procedure is to go to the nurses’ station because there’s a panel that tells us where the fire alarm is being set off. Then, we move the residents from the affected area to the other side of the two sets of fire doors, and we evacuate the entire building if need be.

Residents are not encouraged to try to find their own exits because we need to know where they are and who is accounted for.

Every so often, fire system maintenance comes out to test and maintain the fire system, including testing the fire alarms. One day in the main building, the alarms were going off and the fire doors were automatically closing in response to the alarms for about six hours. The staff and the residents who were aware of it were getting annoyed.

Finally, sometime in the afternoon, the company finished up and left, giving us some peace. It was short-lived, though; about half an hour or so afterward, the alarm went off for a split second and the lights started to flash.

Rolling my eyes, I headed down to the nurses’ station just to make sure it wasn’t the company doing one last test. No one else showed up. The nurses were looking at the fire alarm panel in confusion as it was showing them that a “Resting Room, West” had the triggered alarm, but we had no such room.

Admin came down from their office to see what was going on. As my boss, the head of the maintenance department, and the head of nursing tried to figure it out, I waited. As they ran back and forth between the panel and the various alarms in the different rooms, no one else showed up. It was just me and the nurses who were already at the station.

When they pinned down the alarm, it turned out that it was a real trigger; the baker had left something in the broiler for a bit too long and it got smoky.

Admin was furious and called everyone down to the nurses’ station to give them the butt-whooping they deserved. One of the dining people was brand new and started to cry because she was getting yelled at for something she hadn’t been taught yet — apparently, someone had told her to tell residents to go out the closest exit rather than the fire evacuation routes — and she had to be consoled by the head of dining away from the meeting.

The head of maintenance decided to run a fire drill again that day to drill into peoples’ heads what they were supposed to do. That was the fastest drill I have ever seen take place since I’ve been there.

I work for an equipment dealership that sells, rents, and repairs heavy equipment. It’s just after 7:00 am, which is when we open. I’m the only one in at the moment to answer the phones, and I’ve only taken a single service call so far. I’m not even able to get my greeting out before this caller goes off on me.

Caller: “You’d better not transfer me to another d***ed voicemail! I need to talk to someone right now!”

Me: “I’m… sorry? I only just got here. What is it you need?”

He lets out an irritated sigh and starts talking to me slowly like I’m an idiot.

Caller: “Look, sweetheart. I’ve called several times over the last hour. I talked to you every time, and you keep sending me to someone’s voicemail. I want to talk to an actual person.”

Me: “We only just opened, so I can assure you it wasn’t me you spoke to. Likely it was our automated system. But if you’ll let me know who you need, I can get someone on the line for you.”

Caller: “I need a person.”

I resist the urge to tell him he’s talking to a person right now.

Me: “Right, and what do you need help with? Were you looking to rent or purchase, or do you need service?”

Caller: “I need a salesman. I want to a buy a brand-new piece of equipment.”

Me: “Great. I’d be happy to get you over to one of them. However, they aren’t in for another hour, so—”

Caller: “You’re telling me you don’t have anyone willing to sell me equipment?”

Me: “None of our salesmen get in until 8:00. I’m sorry. But I can get you one of their voicemails so they can call you—”

Caller: “No! I don’t want no d***ed voicemail! I have $50,000 cash in hand, and if you don’t wanna sell to me, then I’ll take my business elsewhere!”

I silently wish he WOULD go somewhere else just so I don’t have to deal with him anymore.

Me: “As I said, none of our salesmen are in yet, so I have no way of getting one for you. They work bank hours since many of our customers need financing. If you’d like, I can take down your name and number and pass it on to one of the salesmen as soon as they get in.”

Caller: “Fine. But you make sure they call me right at eight o’clock, sweetheart, or I’m taking my cash and going to someone who actually wants to do business.”

I did take his information and pass it on to our sales team, who said they’d call him. He called back multiple times later that day, and my newest coworker got him one of those times. He gave her the same “I’ve been calling for so long and have cash in hand and I’ll go somewhere else” spiel. She came to me in a near panic because she couldn’t get a hold of a salesman; she didn’t want to be blamed if this guy went to a competitor. I told her to try them again just in case and then move up the chain to a manager if she had to.

She managed to get a salesman on the second try. After she finished with the call, she relayed to me that they had, in fact, called him first thing that morning and talked to him, and if he called again, we could send him to voicemail. Apparently, he wanted to buy a brand-new excavator and refused to finance it; he thought he should be able to buy a (minimum) $100,000 machine for $50,000 because he was willing to pay in cash, and he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

As far as I’m aware, he either moved on to harassing a different company, or he finally agreed to finance (or buy a cheaper piece of equipment); we didn’t get any more calls of that sort after that day.

In the 1950s, I worked very briefly one summer as a “pump jockey” filling cars at a service station.

On a very hot day, a woman pulled in, and as I started filling her tank, I could hear the engine ticking. As I started to move toward the hood to check the oil and water, I could feel the heat radiating.

I grabbed some water and a thick wad of rags to protect my hands. The engine was ticking away. She was telling me that she had driven straight through from Wichita (roughly 200 miles, or 320 kilometers) with a red warning light on the dashboard. I could tell that her radiator had boiled dry and would be hotter than blazes. The engine was probably completely seized by then.

I wasn’t going to touch anything that hot, so I started pouring water over the top of the radiator where it immediately turned to steam.

Customer: “Isn’t that supposed to go inside?”