For a bit of context: my family lives in a row home, and we petitioned for a handicap spot in front of our house because both of my parents have mobility problems. We got the spot, but there’s a big honkin’ tree right in front of our house that blocks the opening of the passenger side doors. (Yes, it should have been taken out before they put the signs up. We are WELL aware.) When it comes time for us to go out, my dad (the only driver) has to pull the car forward into a sort of double-parked position to make room for us to open the passenger doors and get in, so we stand on the curb while we wait.

Now, on to today’s episode of “how can life mess with me this time”.

I was getting ready to go to work, standing on the curb while my dad moved the car into a position where I could get into it. While waiting for him to go through his routine of “get in, start car, scroll through fifty radio stations on his phone until he finds the same five songs he likes”, I hear some rustling in the tree above my head. I don’t think much of it, because it’s a little windy outside.

Then I hear a crack above my head, and two things fall and land on me.

The first is a thin branch, not very long but very fragile, doing no damage and kind of just rolling down my back.

The second is a big, fuzzy, freaked-out squirrel, landing directly on my head and scrambling around on my head, my shoulders, and my arms.

So, my dad gets to enjoy the lovely view of me doing some sort of macabre interpretation of the Macarena with a hot cup of coffee and a purse with a squirrel using me as its own personal climbing wall.

It eventually jumped off of me and scampered off, leaving me with a handful of red scratches on my face and neck that drew a bit of blood. My arms were at least safe because of my jacket, but my coffee was now all over my clothes. I looked like I had been attacked by a cat with an attitude problem.

I took one look at my dad, who was cackling like a madman in the car, took out my phone, and told work that I needed to go get checked out because I had been accosted by a squirrel.

It would have been a lot better if my boss hadn’t started laughing too.

I take a customer call when we open, around 9 AM.

Caller: “Your store is closed, and you need to come and open it!”

Me: “Ma’am, the store is open.”

Caller: “I’m standing outside right now, and it’s closed with the lights off!”

Me: “Where is the store?”

Caller: “[College Campus]!”

Me: “West Virginia? You’re calling a store in Maryland.”

Caller: “Well, they weren’t picking up, so I called the first number I could find on Google!”

Me: “That branch is a college store, and they’re closed because it’s spring break.”

Caller: “So you’re gonna come over here and open the store for me!”

She said it as a demand, not a question.

Me: “No, ma’am. That store will reopen when the college does.”

Caller: “But I need a book now! You need to come and open the store!”

Me: “I’m a four-hour drive away.”

Caller: “Fine, I can wait until after lunch.”

Me: “Ma’am… I feel you’re misunderstanding why I’m telling you how far away I am. I will not be driving four hours to help you get a book, only to drive four hours back. There are other bookstores in your town. Go to one of those.”

Caller: “They’re all the way across town!”

Me: “And you’re asking me to drive across two states.”

Caller: “Ugh, you lazy b****!” *Click.*

I work in a full-service hotel outside a major US city.

One evening, I check in a guest who, shortly after they get to their room, calls down to request an item be delivered. After confirming they would like the item brought to them as soon as possible, I put in a case for a coworker to deliver said item. 

Ten or so minutes later, my coworker calls me at the desk to say they could not complete the delivery because of a “Do Not Disturb” privacy sign. I call the guest back.

Me: “Good evening, this is [My Name] from the front desk. One of my colleagues will deliver your [item] right away, but they did let me know there is a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.”

Guest: “Oh, did they come already? I didn’t hear any knock.”

Me: “Yes, ma’am, they did not knock because of the privacy sign on the door. Hotel policy is that our staff will not knock when a privacy sign is up unless it’s an emergency.”

Guest: “Oh, I didn’t know! I don’t think I’ve heard of that rule before.”

I confirm the delivery, hang up, and turn to my manager beside me, slightly confused.

Me: “What… did she think the sign did then?”

I’m the author of this story. For a bit of clarification, when insurance claims are brought in, and the insurance company sets up a rental, the rental coverage is, by default, set for two days. This gives us time to prepare the estimate, and the insurance company to review it. Once the estimate is sent in, the insurance company extends the rental out based on the predicted completion date.

Sometimes, customers don’t realize that part, and they call the shop in a panic because they only have two days of rental coverage. I clarify the situation to them and explain that the insurance company will automatically extend it out, and I send over an email to whoever their adjuster is as a quick courtesy to ease their worries. Normally, this is enough for them, and it puts their minds at ease.

Not with this customer, though.

At the time of writing, repairs are well underway, and we’re going to be wrapping up by the end of the week. The parts are in the paint booth getting painted, and we’re waiting on one other part before we’re finished. As per norm, the insurance company has extended the rental out, with a few extra days of breathing room in case of any delays.

The customer calls the shop, furious. She’s screaming that she’s coming to get her car, that she doesn’t want the repairs done anymore, and she’s taking it to a shop that claims they can fix it in less than a day, and she’s already turned in the rental because they only gave her two days.

I explained to her that the repairs are underway, and the rental was automatically extended. She doesn’t listen, stating that she’d already turned the rental in, and that it’s somehow OUR fault that she’s without a car.

No matter what she says, she won’t listen, and she hangs up.

Less than ten minutes later, she comes storming into the shop and demands her car back. No “hello”, no “hi, can I talk to someone about my car”. Just outright “Give me my car”.

Given she’s the one I just spoke to on the phone, I call my manager over in hopes that he’ll get through to her that the repairs are already underway, and that we can’t give her a car that’s still disassembled and unfinished. He also tells her that if she does take the car, she’ll have to pay the full amount, up front, because the insurance company won’t cover the repairs if she doesn’t get them finished at our shop.

When she started repeating her spiel that she had turned in the rental already, my manager even called her out and said that it was entirely her fault that she doesn’t have a car now, and that we’d even advised how long repairs would take.

I threw her a bone and tried reaching out to her adjuster to get her put back into a rental. By chance, I have both her phone number and email, so I leave her a message and send her an email to try to get the customer put back into a rental. By luck, the adjuster can get her rental going again…but they won’t have availability until tomorrow, meaning the customer will have to take an Uber out of the shop anyway.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for her stupidity.

Related:
Not Much Assurance About The Insurance, Part 25
Not Much Assurance About The Insurance, Part 24
Not Much Assurance About The Insurance, Part 23
Not Much Assurance About The Insurance, Part 22
Not Much Assurance About The Insurance, Part 21

I was a young kid back when Windows 95 came out, but I was already a fledgling geek. I remember feeling cheated that Windows 95 was its own operating system, rather than something that ran on top of DOS, because it meant my ‘extensive’ knowledge of how to use DOS (which amounted to basically the CD, dir, and del commands) was now useless since there was no longer a need to occasionally drop down to the DOS layer. It’s rough when you’re rendered technically obsolete before your first decade of life.

When my friend’s family got their brand spanking new Windows 95 computer, with its impressive 1/1000 of the ram my phone uses to play floppy birds, his parents allowed him to keep their old computer in his room. He requested I help him free up space on the old computer, which I was fine with until we found the largest directory was the Windows directory, leading to him opening it up, asking me which file to delete.

I told him I wouldn’t touch anything in Windows since it could break his old computer, but he insisted on going through each file one by one and asking me if I knew what it was and whether he needed it.

I answered generally that it was a file that he definitely shouldn’t touch (ie, any .bat and .exe) files, or that I didn’t know what it was, and so he still shouldn’t touch it until we got to a file with a name like readme.txt

Friend: “What about this one?”

Me: “Hmm, .txt means it’s just text to read.”

Friend: “So, do I need it?”

Me: “Probably not, I think txt files only have things for humans to read, but it’s really small, it won’t save any real space. It would be safer to—”

He deletes it before I can finish.

Me: “You really shouldn’t delete anything! You’re going to break your computer and then blame me for it.”

Friend: “I just need more space.”

Me: “It’s not worth the risk.”

Friend: “I won’t blame you if anything is broken, just tell me what you think is safe. I can delete any of the .txt files, right? What about this one?”

He’s pointing to another .txt file, but unlike the last one, the file name doesn’t give me any idea what it’s used for. I wasn’t confident enough to say he could delete it, and in fact realized I wasn’t going to be confident to answer about any file if [friend] was going to be so cavalier about deleting them that he didn’t even let me finish speaking first.

Me: “No. I’m done, let’s go do something else.”

Friend: “But you said you would help me with this.”

Me: “I don’t want to be here when you break your computer; let’s do something else.”

He agrees, and we go to do something else, but a few days later, I’m walking outside when I see [Friend]’s mom, and she waves me down.

Mom: “Hey, do you happen to know what’s up with [Friend]’s computer?”

Me: “What’s wrong with it?”

I get a brief description, which amounts to windows breaks while trying to boot up.

Me: “I told him not to delete anything!”

Mom sounds angry, but at her son, not me, as she asks me to explain what happened. I explained what happened and that I assume he deleted files he shouldn’t have after I left.

Apparently, [Friend] had been intentionally vague about what had happened when the computer broke, but at one point had mentioned my name without thinking. He wasn’t trying to place blame on me; he’d made it clear when his mom asked that the computer had broken only after I left once, he realized his mistake in mentioning my name. Mom only asked me about it because she didn’t know what else to do.

Mom: “I’m sorry he didn’t listen to you, but would you know how to fix it?”

Me: “Not if he deleted an important file. The only thing I’d be able to do would be delete everything and reinstall.”

Mom: “How do you do that?”

I tried to explain, but she acted as if I were speaking a foreign language. I remember feeling odd that she was treating me as a computer expert. Sure, I knew a bit more than my peers, but I was still just a kid who at most dabbled with computers, so it was hard to believe I was more of an expert than an adult.

Luckily, this was the one repair step I was somewhat familiar with, as wiping everything and starting from scratch was my mom’s go-to solution when her computer started acting too strangely, and I’d assisted with the process a few times already. I don’t THINK I was the cause of the frequent need to try to repair our computers – I didn’t know enough to be messing around with any of the dangerous parts of the computer yet – but looking back, it does seem odd just how frequently we needed to do a reinstall.

Mom: “How long would that all take to fix?”

Me: “I don’t know, assuming you had everything, maybe an hour or two?”

Mom: “That long!?”

Me: “It’s not that bad, mostly it’s just swapping out a CD every now and then and then going back to watching TV while it installs.”

Mom: “If you were willing to come help us fix it, [Husband] and I would appreciate it, and we’ll find some way to make it up to you later.”

I agreed, and so the next weekend I alternated between playing with [friend] and checking on his computer to see when it was time to swap out CDs. [Friend] gave me a very sincere sounding apology for not listening to me when I said not to touch things as well. A few weeks later, I got to go with [Friend]’s family when they went to Hershey Park, one of the largest theme parks somewhat near us (and the only one that always smelled like chocolate!) as my reward for repairing their computer.

[Friend]’s punishment for breaking the computer was to lose it permanently; it was moved into his sister’s room instead. He was mildly bitter about that for the next few years until they upgraded their computer again, and he got the Windows 95 one. In the end, he had only himself to blame, though.