I purchased two bottles of liquor for a party we were having. The price was 465 Norwegian kroner (NOK). I paid with a 500 NOK note, realized I had 15 NOK in coins, and asked if the teller could change it for a 50 NOK note. 

Teller: “Of course! I do appreciate the extra change!”

In a bit of confusion, she handed me the 50 NOK note together with the 500 NOK note. I looked at her for a little while, and she was just staring at me. Being a decent human being and having a history in retail myself:

Me: “I don’t think I should have both?”

Teller: *Now shocked* “Oh, my God, you are right. Thank y—”

She couldn’t finish her sentence before the person behind me started yelling:

Next In Line: “YOU ARE SOOO F****** STUPID!”

She was pointing at me, all red in the face, still yelling:

Next In Line: “That is your money now; she gave it to you. You idiot! You could have had this for free! Workers learn this way! This is how workers learn!“

I was too stunned to reply and just stared at her, dumbfounded. The customer turned to the teller and started on her:

Next In Line: “This isn’t your money anymore. You need to hand it over. She—” *still pointing at me* “—is too stupid to take it, but I’m not. Give it to me now! It’s not yours anymore. It’s mine. You need to learn from your mistakes!”

She kept up this logic until another worker came up to escort her out. She was still insisting that the liquor store owed her for their mistake.

The teller and I shared a gaze and a “wow” before resuming our days.

I do video post by the hour, and I work according to directions from clients. My terms are payment upon receipt.

I submitted an invoice for $3,500.

Client: “I have only $3,000 budgeted. Can you help me out?”

Me: “Okay, I’ll discount this job for your budget, but on the next job where you make a windfall because I did the work for less than you budgeted, I expect a bonus up to $500.”

Silence.

Then, he took sixty days to pay the discounted invoice.

I deliver pizzas. I’m on my last delivery of the night. It’s a nicer house. I pull up, grab the pizzas out of my car, and walk toward the driveway.

Two figures pop out from behind a bush next to the garage. It’s dark out, so I can barely see them. One has a hood on with his drawstrings pulled so that most of his face is covered. It freaks me out. I think they are middle schoolers or possibly freshmen in high school, tall enough that I confuse them for possible adults at first.

Anyway, it freaks me out and I just stop.

Me: “What are you guys doing?”

I am so scared that I am about to get robbed.

They don’t say a word. One just holds up money, so I walk up the driveway by the garage to meet them. They have a phone propped up against the garage door and one starts giggling. I think maybe they are trying to film a prank. Once I get closer, I can see they are between thirteen and fifteen years old.

Me: “Hey, just so you guys know, you don’t want to be dressing and acting like that, because the pizza delivery guy is gonna think you’re trying to rob them.”

They just mock what I said, so I opened the bag and hand one of them the pizzas.

Me: “Wait until you guys have to work a job like this.”

The other one mocks me again and then — it turns out the phone is on a FaceTime call — some kid on the phone speaks up.

Phone Kid: “Give them the pizza, you monkey!”

And they all laugh. I don’t say anything. Then, the kid with the hood gives me $22.

Kids: *In unison* “Keep the change, ya filthy animal!”

And they walked inside, laughing. I thought it was odd that I would give him the pizzas before getting the money because I know better than that. I looked at the delivery tab, and just as I thought, IT WAS ALREADY PAID FOR. $20.95 had already been paid for by credit card. I didn’t say a word and just left.

Now, I’m not a bad guy. Normally, when this happens or someone doesn’t realize how much change they should have, I always, ALWAYS, ask if they would like change. But after being mocked, f***ed with, called a monkey and an animal, and told to keep the change, I decided I would. No way I was gonna chase them to their door to give them that back after the way they treated me.

I’m thinking they ordered online and their parents left them money or something and they didn’t realize it was paid for. That, or they were just very generous with the tip. I’m eighteen, and honestly, I might’ve thought what they were doing was funny years ago, but working low-paying customer service jobs has changed my perspective. I don’t find pranks that mess with employees funny anymore. Hopefully, these two learn a lesson.

This incident took place in India in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. The school where my sister and I studied was in my hometown. We knew almost all of the teachers since they were practically our neighbours.

By the time I graduated from school, the principal had retired and the vice principal had taken over as the principal.

[Vice Principal] was also from the same town, and for some unknown reason, he had some sort of grudge against my father. In local gatherings and such, he would always try to belittle my father at all chances he could get. My father would normally let it pass since he knows that getting into silly arguments with such a bully is totally unproductive.

When my sister and I joined the school, my father was required to pay a refundable deposit of 5,000 Rupees per child, which would be returned when each child graduated from the school. 10,000 Rupees was a large amount in the ‘90s and is equivalent to 95,000 Rupees now.

I graduated in 1989. My father enquired about the refund.

Vice Principal: “Since [Sister] will be graduating next year, both of the deposits will be returned together.”

When my sister graduated from school, my father requested that the school refund both of the deposits. There was no response, even after two weeks, and my father personally went to the school to demand the refund. [Vice Principal], being the egotistical bully, started arguing with my father stating that the school couldn’t refund the deposits. The argument became very heated, and he refused point-blank.

Vice Principal: “We are not returning the deposits. Do what you want. You can take us to court if you want!”

My father went silent, got up, and left the school. He came home, sat down with Mom, and went through all the school-related documents she had kept. My mom had a very meticulous documentation system; she used to save every receipt, bill, stub, etc.

He found the receipts for the deposits and took them to his lawyer friend. My dad informed his friends whose children were in the same school about the issue.

The lawyer filed the case and took the school to court. The school couldn’t provide any reason for withholding the deposits, so my dad won. The school was instructed to pay back the deposits with interest, as well as court dues.

My father’s friends who were in the PTA took up the issue in the subsequent PTA meeting, and they got the school’s trustee board to ensure that such issues wouldn’t be dealt with in the same manner. All deposits would be refunded in time. They strictly warned [Vice Principal] not to bring personal grudges into school business.

Other parents who were owed deposits but had forgotten about them started claiming them. It cost the school a lot to pay back all the deposits.

I work for a carpet cleaning company. A landlord called us because his previous tenants had left one of his properties in a sorry state, and he wanted us to clean all the carpets.

He was not wrong. The carpets were absolutely caked in years’ worth of dirt, grime, grease, and worst of all, urine. It smelled horrific. It was so bad that our boss told the customer he would be better off replacing the carpets. Many of the stains were so ingrained that no amount of cleaning would shift them. But the customer insisted that they be cleaned because it was cheaper than replacing them, so we gave him a quote.

We charge based on the area of the carpet and how heavy the soiling is, not by hours spent or how much/what cleaning product we use, etc. However, the customer kept trying to cut corners to get a cheaper quote.

First, he told us we didn’t need to vacuum the carpet. He claimed he had already gone over the whole house with an industrial-grade vacuum and demanded that we lower the quote to reflect that. This was clearly not true; when we inspected the carpet there was clearly dirt and lint everywhere.

Then, he told us to use a cheaper cleaning agent and only send one person so he wouldn’t be paying for the labour of two people (even though an entire house was definitely a two-man job). On and on he went trying to cut corners to save money. 

Vacuuming the carpet is not only important to protect our machines — clumps of lint and dirt can clog or even damage our carpet cleaners — but it also means we can clean carpets more efficiently. Spending a few minutes removing as much dirt as possible beforehand means less work for the carpet cleaners and fewer rinses are required. Additionally, the cheaper cleaning fluids were not going to cut it. As a bare minimum, the carpets needed a cleaner with enzymes to break down the urine, or all we’d do was spread urine around rather than shift it.

This was all explained to the customer, but he was having none of it. Ultimately, we had to refuse his business because what the customer was asking for meant we would not be able to complete the job properly.

The customer demanded to speak to our boss, the owner, who repeated what we had told him. The customer blustered for a while longer and then left us alone.

A few months rolled by, and the customer called us back. He told us he had hired a different company, but they had made a mess of everything. He begged us to come and clean the carpets. My boss told him we would only do it if he accepted our quote with no substitutes or amendments, and he would pay us in full before we did the job. The customer begrudgingly agreed.

Our boss made sure to detail the fact that we would not be able to get all the stains out in the contract and that the customer was going ahead with the cleaning against our advice. He also made sure that the customer initialled and signed those parts of the contract.

My colleague and I went to the property again to assess the damage. The carpets were horrifically streaked, and we could smell damp in the air mixed with the stench of urine, meaning the carpets didn’t get rinsed, drained, or dried properly, and they certainly didn’t use an appropriate pre-treatment or cleaning agent. It really was a shoddy job that actually made some areas of the carpet worse than they had been before. Whoever the customer had hired before must’ve been real cowboys.

We gave the customer our quote, and he accepted and paid. We got to work, making sure to take meticulous before and after photos.

As we suspected, we didn’t get all the stains out, but we got more than we initially thought we would. The carpets looked a whole lot better, and best of all, they now smelled like a spring meadow rather than a truck stop bathroom.

The landlord tried to complain that we didn’t get all the stains out and demanded a partial refund, but we quickly reminded him of the contract — a contract he had signed and initialled. We had done exactly the job we told him we would do.

When we left, the landlord complained incessantly about how much it had cost him — not only paying for the job once but having to pay to get it done again — and that the carpet still was still stained. My colleague and I left without saying a word.

A few weeks later, we received a letter from a solicitor acting on behalf of the customer, demanding a full refund because we failed to clean his carpet correctly. Obviously, our customer had not been entirely honest with his legal representative, so we enlightened the solicitor about what happened and sent him a copy of the signed and initialled contract, email communications, and phone call recordings, as well as the before and after photos. We never heard a word from the customer or his solicitor again.

After the fees for the botched job, our invoice, and solicitor fees, it would probably have been cheaper for the customer to replace the carpets.