A customer storms up to the counter and aggressively asks to speak to me, a manager.

Customer: “I came through your drive-thru this morning, and the guy who gave me my chicken sandwich called me a racist word! I want a free meal!”

Me: “The drive-thru isn’t open this weekend while it’s being repaved, all the staff this morning have been women, and chicken sandwiches are off the menu until we can fix a supply issue. Anything else you want to lie about?”

Pause.

Customer: “F*** you!” *Storms off*

I used to manage a pizza chain. Every Friday night, this lady would call and claim that her pizzas had been an hour late and demand a free pizza. The last time she did it, she caught me on the day when my girlfriend had broken up with me out of the blue.

I was already pissed off and hurt, so when the order girl up front yelled back that it was the scammer again, I grinned and said to put her on hold. I got this.

Scammer: “Is this the manager? My pizza—”

Using the caller ID, I pulled up her name, address, and order history and then interrupted her.

Me: “Yes, this is the manager — the same manager you call every Friday at 7:00 pm to complain and get a free pizza. Well, that’s not happening. Your name has now been changed to ‘SCAMMER’. You are no longer allowed to shop with us. The phone number for [Other Pizza Chain] one block from you is [phone number]. I’m sure they will gladly take your call.”

Then, I hung up.

Not two minutes later, I heard my order girl gasp and start crying, so I went out and took the phone from her. It was the scammer, and she was SCREAMING obscenities at this poor girl. So, I hung up and waited for the inevitable callback.

Sure enough, two minutes later, she called back, and I answered the phone. She started screaming that she wanted the manager. I said I was the manager. She cursed at me and I hung up again.

She called AGAIN, and I answered, leading with:

Me: “This is the manager speaking. Curse at me again, and you will hear dial tone again. How can I help you?”

She started berating me for my horrible employees and my horrible attitude.

Scammer: “I’m going to get you fired! My brother is the district manager! But it can all go away if you just deliver my pizza!”

Me: “Tell [District Manager] that [My Name] at [Location] said you’re a b**** and will never be served by us again!”

Oh, boy, did she get mad. Among other things, she said:

Scammer: “My husband is going to kick your a**!”

Me: “You’re in luck: you know where I am, and I’m the only guy on tonight, so it won’t be hard to find me.”

Roughly twenty minutes later, a man and woman came in. The woman was livid, and the man was pacing the lobby, all jacked up on adrenaline, ready to fight.

I was sitting behind the counter, and I smiled really big.

Me: “How can I help you?”

Scammer: “ARE YOU THE MANAGER?!”

Me: “Why, yes, ma’am. I am.”

Scammer: “[Husband], you’d better kick this motherf*****’s a**!”

Her husband came marching around the counter.

At that point, I got up — all 6’5″, 245 pounds of me — and looked straight down at this five-foot-nothing guy. He immediately turned around, went back to his wife, and started yelling at her.

Husband: “You said I had to beat down some dude! You ain’t say s*** about beating down a g**d***ed SASQUATCH! WE ARE LEAVING!”

That was the last I ever saw or heard of that woman. It was a great night.

As with most Asian families, my family believes that having a white-collar job is above anything. This is very evident with a couple of relatives who force their children to go to medical school. Any career other than a doctor is a sin in their eyes.

My mother was open-minded about my choice of career. The only condition she had was that I should have at least a bachelor’s degree before getting a job. So, I started working in the IT industry after college graduation. I had decent pay, I was able to learn and experiment at my own pace, and I even got an opportunity to work abroad. I was happy with my career.

Things weren’t easy at first, as with all jobs. I struggled to settle down with the workload and the new city. I reached out to my family to help me find a job near my home. My entitled relatives got hold of this piece of news during a family gathering.

Instead of helping me out, they scoffed. My aunt told my younger cousins:

Aunt: “See, this is why you shouldn’t be an engineer. You’re going to struggle and end up with nothing. After all, a doctor is the most respectable job in society.”

I blinked at her. I was shocked that she could just insult my career in front of everyone. I was also disgusted at her because she’s a teacher and I expected her to know better. I didn’t want to make a scene, so I didn’t talk back. But someone else did: my mother.

My mother is a single parent. She was a brilliant student at school and dreamt of being a teacher. But that was all gone when she was married off. She regretted that when she was divorced and struggled to live. She wanted her daughters not to go through the same thing. She sold her jewellery and spent her savings to get us a decent education so that we could get jobs. She was furious when someone insulted our hard work.

She didn’t hold back her anger as she thundered:

Mother: “Are you out of your d*** mind, [Aunt]? You’re a teacher! Can’t you show a bit of dignity when you speak? Don’t you have common sense to think that your daughter couldn’t work in a hospital with electricity, running water, machines, or software if there were no engineers? Even a janitor at the hospital has their value. If you ever insult my daughter or her choices again, you will see the worst of me!”

The room was silent as everyone watched my aunt process what was going on. Nobody had ever seen my mother that mad.

But it did a good thing. [Aunt] never raised a word about her children’s careers or mine after that. Also, two of my cousins got into the engineering stream following the incident!

I worked at a pub that was attached to and served the menu of a chain restaurant next door. The restaurant was known for breakfast and greasy food. The owner was an… interesting man. He was extremely strict, and if you were new or a customer watching the interaction, he would be seen as horribly rude. Thankfully, he didn’t care about the business whatsoever, and we would rarely see him.

[Owner]’s attitude made servers come and go in droves; I think there were only three long-timers. I was originally hired on for the pub side only due to my extensive bartending experience, but due to mass quitting, I got tasked with working the dreaded Sunday morning shift one week.

Between 6:00 am and 10:00 am, everyone was mostly friendly and left good tips, but once churches let out, all Hell broke loose — no pun intended. The churchgoers were the most hypocritical of all people; repent and ask for forgiveness, then come and scream at waitstaff making minimum wage, let their kids make horrible messes, and sit for an hour and a half even though they saw the lineup out the door for a table. And 99% of the time, they’d leave no tip — or they’d leave a note or pamphlet about how I was going to Hell, smeared with strawberry sauce that their kid splattered in a five-foot radius around the table.

I grew to like the early morning regulars, and I was the only person who volunteered for the weekend mornings at that point.

One glorious Sunday, I clocked in and saw [Owner]. Uh-oh. Both the manager and assistant manager, scheduled to serve that morning alongside me and one other server, called in sick. Due to [Owner]’s INCREDIBLE cheapness and distrust of us “peasants”, only the manager had a PIN to do discounts on orders — including for the fifty variations of coupons [Owner] sent out in flyers, newspapers, and online ads to try and drum up business. Yes, a manager was on call or physically in the building between 6:00 am and 2:00 am closing time. Absurd.

On top of that, there was a hockey tournament happening, so we had four reservations for tables of fifteen, PLUS the regular church reservations (five tables of six), PLUS the regular walk-ins. It was going to be insanity.

So, here was [Owner], rolling up the sleeves on his $295 shirt — yes, he told us how much it cost after he spilled jam on it — looking like he was going to work. Thankfully, the other server and I were rockstars and were doing pretty well, to the point that [Owner] decided he could expedite in the kitchen rather than interact with the lowly customers… until orders that normally took fifteen to eighteen minutes to come out were taking upwards of thirty to forty-five!

I went back to see what was going on when I had a minute to breathe, and I saw LITERALLY fifty-plus slices of toast on the counter, twenty-plus plates dying in the window, and [Owner] red in the face and dripping sweat all over everything.

Me: “[Owner], what’s going on? Why haven’t you called me or [Server] for pick-ups?! And what’s with the toast?”

Owner: “I know what the f*** I’m doing. I’m the owner, not you.”

Me: “Okay… Not what I asked, but all right. Can I get some of these out?”

Owner: “No! I tell you when to take them. Don’t you ever try to do something without being told!”

Me: “‘Kay.”

I walked away and continued apologizing to my tables for the delays. Thankfully, most people were understanding, but it definitely took a toll on morale in the restaurant. Another ten minutes or so went by, and I still hadn’t been called to drop food. [Server] came running up to me with a panicked look on his face.

Server: “[My Name], oh, my God… Please. Do something.”

What had been fifty-plus slices of toast had now become THREE four-foot-tall piles of various types of bread, toasted and now stale, piled up on the counter. The plates that had been under the warmer were now flooding every flat surface, and the window was full again.

I started checking plates and calling out remakes, and then I felt a hard bump right on my spine.

Me: “Ouch! What the h***?!”

[Owner] had just jabbed me with the corner of one of the square plates.

Owner: “I SAID I GOT THIS! GET OUT!”

The restaurant fell silent as everyone heard that, and almost everyone was now focused intently on the doors to the kitchen 

Me: “[Owner], this is insane. Table thirteen has been waiting an hour for bacon and eggs! Please just go to the office and let me sort this out!”

Owner: “F*** YOU, STUPID B****! I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HIRED YOU, F****** KNOW-IT-ALL! I. AM. THE. OWNER. I WILL ALWAYS HAVE MORE EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE THAN SOME DUMB SLUT WAITRESS! IF I TELL YOU TO F*** OFF, IT MEANS F*** OFF AND GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN!”

I stood shocked for a moment. Then, I took off my apron, tossed it on the ground, and started collecting my belongings from my locker to leave. [Server] followed behind me, as did two of the cooks and the dishwasher.

As we made our way out of the kitchen, [Owner] continued screaming, swearing, and hurling insults at us all. Slowly but surely, tables of shocked patrons got up and followed behind us, loudly proclaiming how they’d leave bad reviews and post in the community groups about what they had witnessed and how [Restaurant] had gone downhill since [Owner] bought it six years prior.

The community groups were full of almost exclusively posts about [Restaurant] for the next week. Their Google rating went from a 4.6 to a 2.8 within that same amount of time, with only friends of [Owner] leaving positive reviews and comments in the Facebook groups, calling all of us who’d walked out “entitled brats who haven’t worked a day of real work in their lives”.

Eight other staff members (five servers and three cooks) quit that week after hearing what had happened. [Owner] was down to three front-of-house employees (a manager, an assistant manager, and one server who was a relative of his) and only one back-of-house employee. He left me a voicemail saying more horrible things, begged me to come back halfway through, and ended it with more insults and comments about how I’d never amount to anything in life.

A decade later, I own a successful business in the same town, and [Owner] is riding off of investors’ money and begging for customers, but everyone remembers what he is!

I am working the express register. Our express lane moves around the store, so the signs indicating it as such are not permanent. Each cashier also has a physical “lane open” sign that we carry around with us to place on a hook over the register. It’s all very charmingly old-school and analog.

A customer moves the “10 Items Or Fewer” sign out of the way to push two full carts up to my register.

Me: “Ma’am, this is the express lane. Only ten items or fewer.”

Customer: “I don’t see a sign.”

Me: “You just moved it out of the way.”

Customer: “Well, I still don’t see it.”

She continues to place her items on the belt, ignoring my further polite attempts to redirect her to the correct lane.

Realizing you can’t reason with such people, I turn off my register, pick up the express lane sign and the “lane open” sign, and walk over to the next lane, which is closed. Since my register was card payment only, I am confident in saying this to the customers who were stuck in line behind the entitled customer:

Me: “This lane is now the express lane! All customers with ten items or fewer in the original express lane line, please move over here.”

Of course, the entitled customer can’t move over fast enough since she’s already unloaded half of her items and the other customers only have their baskets.

Customer: “Hey! I’m unloading here! You can’t just close the lane!”

Me: “I’m afraid I am working the express lane, ma’am, and that is now this lane. The lane you’re on is currently closed.”

Customer: “Look! This lane is open! Serve me!”

I look the lane over quickly and then look back at her.

Me: “I don’t see a sign.” 

She fumed, but I ignored her to check out the customers who actually did follow the rules. She gathered up her items and angrily got in one of the correct lanes.