I don’t get to visit my favorite hometown coffee shop much anymore, so it’s always kind of an event when I have a chance. It’s an extremely hot day and I’ve been on the road for almost an hour; I also had to take a detour around some road construction to even get to the coffee place.

I park next to a car with two teenagers chattering away inside. I notice because I don’t want to accidentally slam doors with one, but they are in no apparent hurry to exit, so I get out and head for the building. The shop has one barista on the register and a second one to make orders; I’ve actually finished paying for my order at the register when the two teens from the parking lot come in and the second barista greets them with Valley Girl-esque enthusiasm. The three of them start chatting and I move down to the end of the counter to wait for my drink.

I notice a frozen mocha sitting next to the sink, and I wonder if it’s mine, since I ordered a frozen mocha. But the barista at the register has disappeared and the second barista is talking nonstop with the two teens while she throws together two iced coffees for them. Being really non-confrontational, I don’t want to say anything, in case that wasn’t my drink at all. Still, I’m a little miffed she’s making their drinks before mine. But maybe there was something wrong with the machine and my drink couldn’t be completed. Anyway, I tell myself, it can’t be my drink, because I asked for no whipped cream. I tell myself all kinds of things to keep myself from speaking up.

The barista finishes, hands the two their iced coffees, finishes her little visit with them, and then finally goes over to the sink to retrieve the rapidly-melting frozen mocha that was mine all along and hands it to me.

I’m completely infuriated that my order was evidently finished before those two jabber jaws even paid for theirs, and for some reason, the barista just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to pass it to me at any point while making two more drinks. But I was too afraid to speak up before confirming it was my drink, and too shy to complain about it once I realized what had happened, so… here I am complaining into the void! Hello, void. Thanks for listening.

This happened in the 1970s at a well-known hotel chain in Oklahoma. My (now-ex) wife and I stayed there one night because she was having an outpatient procedure at a hospital in the area early the next morning. 

It was a disaster from the beginning. The room was dirty, to the point where I got stabbed in the foot by a straight pin that was in the carpeting. There were cracker crumbs ground into the carpeting. Very little about the room was right.

As there was no alarm clock in the room, I requested a wake-up call for 6:00 am.

We woke up at about 8:00. No call.

I called the desk and angrily asked what had happened to our wake-up call. “I don’t know. I just came on shift.” No apology; no acknowledgement of the problem that they had caused.

I called the hospital, who said they could still get us in as long as we got there as quickly as we could.

We ran down to the desk, rushed through checkout without looking at the bill, made it to the hospital, got the surgery done, and got home safely.

Then, I got the credit card statement. They had charged us for a meal in the restaurant; we had never been in the restaurant at all!

So, I wrote a strongly-worded letter to the hotel manager, with a CC to the chain’s headquarters. The original, sent to the hotel itself, clearly had “CC: [corporate headquarters]” on it.

A short time later, we received a money order from the hotel for the amount we’d been overcharged, along with a handwritten note apologizing. The note was poorly written, with misspellings and other mistakes. It was obvious that someone in the hotel had intercepted the letter and replied in the hope that management would never know.

Okay. We got our money back.

A week or so later, we got a check from corporate for the full amount we’d paid, along with a very nice, typed letter promising that they would investigate the incident.

We ended up with more than we had paid, which I figured came close to compensating us for all the crap we had had to put up with.

I used to work for an escape room, which is a room where there are puzzles that lead to clues that people must solve to escape it. I’m having a lot of fun. Then, I get this woman. She is lazy and doesn’t want to try to figure out the clues, and insists that I do it for her. We are allowed to only give hints, and I do, but she is so thick that anything but saying the answer confuses her.

Finally, frustrated, she screams, “Well, I guess I’m just too dumb for this! How dare you make me feel dumb?!” and throws a fit. She leaves a horrible review and my boss, who is the one who designed the puzzles, blames and fires me.

And that’s the story of me getting fired because a woman was too dumb and lazy. And the boss was an idiot but in a different way. The moral of the story is: if you’re too poor at logic and deduction skills, go do something else. Oh, and don’t work for someone who blames you for things that aren’t your fault. Plenty of people have failed and didn’t leave bad reviews.

A friend of mine took a job offer from a large aerospace firm. He needed a special security clearance for his project, but until that was complete, he had no assignments at all. He’d occupy his time reading magazines and little more. Months went by and he heard nothing.

Finally, after six or seven months — not an unheard of time needed to do background checks in BG, Before Google — he called up the security office to see where things stood. They had lost his paperwork and had to start the process over again.

He ended up getting paid for well over a year’s time to read magazines and books.

(My mom and I used to go to this popular fast food joint all the time, but we stopped because the food didn’t taste good anymore. We decide to try it again and think we will like it again. Mom uses a mobile order and it can’t process her payment, so we go inside. We go through a line, not cutting at all. Once we get to the front, Mom explains.)

Mom: “Hi. I was trying to do the mobile order but every time I hit the button to pay, it says it cannot process my payment.” *shows the cashier* “See? Can I order here?”

Cashier #1: “Um, you could try over there if it won’t process your order.”

(We go to the kiosk and start our order over. Halfway done, we realize the kiosk will only allow us to order breakfast. It hasn’t transferred yet. Annoyed but trying to remain polite, Mom gets ahold of a second cashier.)

Mom: “Excuse me, miss?” 

Cashier #2: “Yes, ma’am?”

Mom: “We noticed the kiosk is only offering breakfast. We wanted lunch.”

(She comes over and checks but frowns.)

Cashier #2: “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. You will have to order at the front. They aren’t synced yet.”

(Mom looks really fed up but we wait in line a second time, which is now twice as long. When we finally get to the front, Mom explains what the lady said and how she wants to keep our coupon on; it’s for two dollars off on our order of 20 something dollars.)

Cashier #1: “Um, I don’t know how to do that…”

Mom: *so fed up by now* “Would your boss know?” *points to the lady behind him* “Would she?”

Cashier #1: “She might…” *goes over* “Ma’am, these ladies want to know how to fix their app. The mobile order?”

(The manager, who doesn’t look nice at all, comes over and checks what Mom is explaining.)

Manager: “Try restarting your phone or reinstall the app. That’s all I can suggest.” *walks off*

(Mom is now beyond annoyed, but she reorders our food with the cashier and, of course, they get it all wrong. We pay for bacon and get no bacon, and ask for no sauce for one burger and extra on another and get extra on all. Then, our ice cream is sitting on the counter and gets dumped on the ground. An employee redoes it and apologizes about it. As Mom and I leave, she turns to me.)

Mom: “We are never coming here again. This just ruined it.”

(And our food still tasted awful. I will never go back there again.)