Back in the mid-1980s, I work at a chain record store that sells records, tapes, T-shirts, and other music-related items. One day, I am standing at the front register waiting for customers to check out, and in walks a very angry-looking man.

He tosses two 45 RPM records on the counter.

Customer: “I want to return these.”

I look down at the two 45s and notice that they are warped. And when I say, “warped,” I mean that they have more waves than Farrah Fawcett’s hair. These 45s put Shirley Temple to shame. It is summer, so it is pretty obvious that these records were left in the man’s car all day.

Me: “Sir, we can’t take these back; they’ve obviously been damaged by the sun.”

I kid you not, he looks me square in the eyes and says:

Customer: “I didn’t do a thing to them. They were this way when I bought them! Now I want a refund!”

Me: *Dumbfounded* “You actually bought them like that?”

He has the presence of mind to look embarrassed but recovers quickly and asks to speak to our manager. I call over to the assistant manager on duty and start to explain the issue. The customer interrupts.

Customer: “I want to return these, but your employee here won’t help me.”

The assistant manager is an imposing guy with a no-nonsense attitude. I fully expect him to kick this poor, delusional soul out of the store, but he surprises me.

Assistant Manager: “Okay.”

Honestly, to say I am surprised is an understatement; I am shocked! [Assistant Manager] comes around the counter to the register, processes the return, and throws the 45s in our return box.

Assistant Manager: “Will there be anything else, sir?”

Customer: *Smiling smugly* “I don’t know if I’ll be back here anymore if y’all hire people like her.”

Assistant Manager: “That will be fine, sir. We don’t want to deal with any more warped records, either.”

The man just huffs and walks out of the store.

Assistant Manager: *To me* “Better to return $2 worth of merchandise than to lose a good customer, but I think in this case we got the short end of the deal.”

Why is it people think they can lie to my face and I’m not gonna call them out on it? What possesses them to believe the third-shift guy, who deals with the craziest s*** of all at a seedy motel, is going to be an easy target to bulls***? I just don’t get it.

A woman comes in and says she has a reservation. I ask for her ID and credit card. She gives me her ID and then starts messing around on her phone. I wait about ten seconds.

Me: “Uh… ma’am? Your credit card?”

Guest: “Yeah, yeah, I’m pulling it up.”

Me: “Uh, ma’am, I can’t take a card that’s just a picture on your phone. I need it to be physically here.”

Guest: “No, you don’t. Other people here have taken it before! I’ve stayed here like twenty times in the past few months!”

No, she has not. I’m on the verge of giggling now because she’s so full of it.

Me: “No, they didn’t, and if they did, they’d be in trouble for not doing their jobs right.”

Guest: “Where’s the guy that’s usually here? I want to call him. What’s his number?”

Me: “Ma’am, I have no idea who you mean by ‘the guy,’ and even if I did, I can’t give out an employee’s personal number to a guest.”

The woman FINALLY managed to produce a credit card, flinging it across the desk at me. She was snippy and impatient for the entire rest of the check-in, and then she snatched her cards and her keys out of my hands when I handed them to her. I was saccharine sweet for the entire rest of the check-in just to really piss her off, finishing with, “Have a lovely night!”

I have been working in customer service for years. I always try my best to help customers and manage to stay calm whenever customers start their verbal abuse. Even though the job is for minimum wage, I really want to help people out and do the best I can, so when I need to call customer service myself for any reason, I make sure to give the same respect to the customer service representative as I would like to receive myself.

One day at work during my lunch break, I decide to get a ten-euro bill from the ATM around the corner in order to buy lunch from the cafeteria. I insert my card and enter my PIN, but then I notice something strange. There is some weird, putty-like stuff on the buttons of the PIN pad that shows my fingerprints, making my pin combination obviously visible. The bill doesn’t come out at first, and after some careful investigation, I notice there is tape holding back the bill. I manage to remove the tape and retrieve the bill. I try to remove the putty-like stuff but can’t, so I just press every button multiple times so my combination isn’t visible anymore. At this point, I am really worried I am being scammed.

When I return to the office, I don’t know what to do. One of my coworkers advises me to call both my bank and the police, just to be sure. She offers to call the police for me while I call my bank in order to save time, as the company is very strict about lunchtime and I only have about ten minutes of lunchtime left.

After giving my details to the representative, the following conversation happens.

Me: “Hi, I was just calling because I’m afraid I’ve been scammed, and I don’t know what to do. Do you have any advice? Should I get my debit card blocked?”

Representative: “Scamming doesn’t happen in the Netherlands; that only happens abroad.”

Me: *Pauses* “I… No, I really think I’ve been scammed. There was this weird stuff on the ATM and I—”

Representative: “Really? Girl, please. Like I said, scamming doesn’t happen over here.”

Me: “Well, I’m afraid that I’ve been scammed. If I have been scammed, is there something I can do about it?”

Representative: *Sigh* “If you’ve been scammed — but you haven’t — we could block your debit card and send you a new one. There are other ways to make sure you don’t lose any money, but I’m not going to explain them as you have not been scammed!”

Me: “I just want to make sure no one can scam me, ma’am. I honestly, really think I’ve been scammed. My coworker is calling the police right now.”

The bank representative responds in the most sarcastic, snide tone.

Representative: “Well, I just looked at your account balance and there’s not much to be scammed out of there, so I wouldn’t worry!” *Snickers*

I am lost for words. I almost start to explain that I get paid tomorrow and I’m afraid that money will be stolen, but the representative won’t let me get a word in.

Representative: “But hey, don’t worry, girl! I blocked your debit card, so now the bad guys don’t get to steal the whole seven euros left on your account. Your new pass should arrive within a couple of days, if you can wait that long.” *Laughs*

Me: “But I didn’t ask for—”

Representative: “Goodbye!” *Hangs up*

I just stare at my phone. I can’t understand how someone could be that nasty. My coworker returns a couple of minutes later and tells me how her call with the police went.

Coworker: “Well, the police said it’s good I called them because a couple of people got scammed at that precise ATM these last couple of weeks. They will send a patrol car to check it out, and they said it was a really good idea to get your card blocked; otherwise, you’ll probably get scammed, as well. How did your call go?”

I decided not to file a complaint against the bank representative at the time because she “might just have had a bad day,” which still irks me to this day. Looking back at the situation, I absolutely should have filed a complaint about her looking at my balance and blocking my debit card without my permission, for her tone and remarks, and for her weird stance and wrongful information about scamming. Fortunately, I did not lose any money and received my new debit card within two days, so at least that went well.

I work in Accounts Receivable and Human Resources at [Hotel]. Our hotel is very unique for a few reasons: it’s the nicest hotel in the immediate area; the immediate area is somewhat infamous locally for how rough certain neighborhoods are; we have our own convention center; while we are employed by a major hotel management company, I believe that they are now the largest hospitality management group in the US; and the property itself is actually owned by the city that it is in.

It’s another day at work. I’m in my office, being amazing as always, and happily getting all of the little accounts balanced and invoices sent. The phone rings. I give my opening spiel.

Caller: “Um, hi. My name is [Caller]. I have a charge on my account from your hotel last night but I’m not there. I’ve never even been to your state. I live in [State].”

Me: “That’s odd. Could you or someone with a tablet in your home possibly have made an accidental reservation here? You may have been charged when the room was held but did not check in.”

Caller: “No, we don’t have a tablet. I don’t have any reservation apps on my phone, and my children can’t open it anyway.”

I get the type of card and last four digits of her card, confirm the charge date, and get the exact amount charged. Rather than run it through our processor, I take a shot in the dark with our point-of-sale system while she’s still on the phone. It has this nifty little feature where you can search using the type of card and last four digits. It doesn’t always work so great, but when it does, it is awesome. And lo and behold, it decides to work when I try it.

Me: “Huh, that’s odd. I’m showing a matching card on a reservation that was authorized for that amount yesterday and they are still in house.”

I’m taken aback here and forget that I shouldn’t tell her names. Honestly, I am more talking to myself, trying to figure out what exactly was going on.

Me: “Hm… Mr. [Man].”

Caller: “I don’t know a Mr. [Man]. Our last name is [Caller’s Last Name]. Should I dispute this charge with my bank?”

Me: “Ms. [Caller], if you could wait, I would like to try to figure out what’s going on on our end first. Can I get your phone number and call you back within two hours?”

Caller: “Oh, yes. That’s fine.”

I turn to the Director of Finances. He has roughly 457 years of experience, so he is my go-to for odd situations and can give a pretty good explanation when things go awry. He agrees with me that there is no way that this could be a processing error from the bank. We pull up the reservation and can see in the transaction history that the guest actually swiped the card, meaning that we didn’t manually enter it and we didn’t make a mistake by typing the wrong number (which we don’t normally do, but stuff happens).

I then call the room, apologize profusely, tell him that the computer malfunctioned during their check-in and deleted the card on file and that we need to have him re-swipe his card as soon as he can. This is a strategy to get a close look at the card. The guy comes back, and he does physically have the card and it has his name on it, but something about the card is odd. Mr. [Man] accepts our apologies for bothering him and goes back to his room.

Now, here’s where it starts getting so fun that I still smile. I hate thieves. I mean, really. I hate seeing innocent people like Ms. [Caller] get hurt, stress out, have to go through filing a chargeback, and wait on their own money that they need, and the business then getting hit with a fee while also adjusting revenue. I’ve worked in so many places where the managers didn’t care and let people get away with so much shady stuff that it drove me crazy. I do not tolerate it anymore whatsoever. So, as I’m at the front, I see the general manager. He had seen the exchange at the front desk and asks me what it was about. I tell him what happened.

Me: “I’m pretty sure that Mr. [Man] somehow stole Ms. [Caller]’s information and made a fake card.”

Because we are city-owned, we get a lot of cool events, like the one we have in house at this very moment: the Sheriff’s Convention. The city manager is actually right by the general manager as I give him the breakdown of what is going on. The city manager calls over a sheriff he is on a first-name basis with, who ends up asking me all kinds of questions. They go off, confer with one another, run the guy’s name, and get whatever paperwork they need.

They then search the room. As it turns out, Mr. [Man] has made a bad name for himself and has been using aliases that were linked to him. When they search his room, they find several fake IDs, a lot of fake cards in his name, a credit card machine, and a lot of blank cards. He and his lady get to be part of an impromptu training for the convention and even get to ride in pretty cars that have pretty, pretty lights.

My favorite part about all of this is that when they checked in, the parking lot was FULL of cop cars. I still do not understand what made them think that paying for their room with a stolen card was a great idea. Or, you know, bringing in all of their equipment, stolen cards, and fake IDs.

I got to call back [Caller] back pretty quickly, and I had a great story for her.

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In London, you have one card that can be used on public transport within the London area, regardless of kind of transport.

On the bus I take each morning are two young women who are clearly used to getting their way. They hug four seats and nurse hot drinks — open drink containers are not allowed — each day. They also have distinct English accents. Although in principle, passengers are required to show proof of payment, most people just get on the bus.

This morning is a bit different, as a control unit boards the bus. They close exits and check if you’ve paid your fare.

Controller: *In Dutch* “Tickets, please.”

Woman #1: *Looking very innocent* “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had to pay for the bus in Belgium. Where I come from, you don’t need to.”

Me: “Strange. I’m pretty sure that last month in London, I had to pay for the bus.”

Woman #1: *Throwing me a look to shut me up* “Well, we only have tickets for the subway.”

Yes, she did have a ticket she had to validate upon boarding, valid for ten fares.

Controller: *In English* “It is the same ticket for the subway and the bus.”

Woman #2: “Oh, I’m sorry, we didn’t know. It is different in London. We will use it next time.”

Me: “Hmm. I’m pretty sure that I used the same ticket on the bus as well as on the subway in London.”

Both women glare at me, sending a clear message to butt out. I just smile, friendly.

Woman #1: “We are just here for a month and these tickets are expensive.”

Controller: “You can take a season ticket for a month and take as many trips as you like.”

Sadly, the controller let it slide this time and didn’t make them validate the ticket, either, as I’ve seen on other checks. On the plus side, I didn’t see them on this particular ride anymore.