I am asleep, but my husband wakes me up by farting loudly as he comes into the bedroom. I stir slightly, so he reassures me.
Husband: “I’m just looking for my phone.”
Me: *Half-asleep* “What, are you using echolocation to find it?”
He laughed, took his phone, and left.
I work in customer service and handle all the returns. One slow night, a woman comes in to return a 13″ MacBook Pro. Normally, returning laptops isn’t a big deal as long as they’re within the return policy of thirty days. While making the usual small talk, I glance at her receipt and see that she bought it about a month and a half ago. Okay, now we can only return or exchange it if there’s something defective with it.
Me: “I’ll put in the register that it’s defective and see if the system will let me return it; some companies make us send their products to the service center before they’ll authorize the return.”
As soon as I say this to her, she starts freaking out.
Customer: “You mean I won’t be able to exchange this right now?!”
Me: “I don’t think so, ma’am. What’s wrong with it, exactly?”
Customer: “I got a link in an email that went to a website where some really mean-looking guy’s face took over my screen and started saying satanic messages, and now my computer is acting all funny, so he must have given me a bug!”
I assure her that that’s very unlikely while browsing around on her computer, which is working fine. She starts yelling.
Customer: “But that’s what happened! How dare you call me a liar?! I have to have this laptop for work to access my work email! This defect is already costing me money!”
Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am, but as your computer is outside the return policy, we can’t return it.”
Customer: “SO, I MIGHT AS WELL SMASH THIS COMPUTER TO PIECES ON YOUR COUNTER?!”
Me: “It’s well within your right to do so, but then you definitely won’t get your money back.”
She just stares at me. I finish putting it into our system, and lo and behold, it won’t let us return it without sending it to our service center first. Cue epic freakout. I call my supervisor over while this woman starts crying hysterically about how this isn’t her fault, she just wants her money back, that scary mean face gave her a bug, we’re so evil, etc.
The general manager of the store comes and takes over, along with the supervisor of tech support. They both examine the laptop and determine that there’s nothing obviously wrong with it and tell the woman the same thing: we have to send it to service before we can exchange it.
She starts SCREAMING at the top of her lungs.
Customer: “This is bulls***! You’re f****** me over! You’re not giving me any f****** choice here!”
Customers were now wandering up from the very back of the store to see WTF was going on. The woman screamed something about threatening us with a gun, which is when my general manager motioned to the supervisor to call the cops. Being that this is Montana, there was a good chance that she DID have a gun — or at least easy access to one. She kept screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs and added in that she had cancer and we were killing her.
The cops showed up, patted her down, and hauled her away.
At our pool — summer months only as it’s outdoors — we have season passes available. They’re $50 for one person for the whole season or $100 for a family pass for the whole season — immediate family only.
When kids with passes come to the pool, they just recite the assigned number that matches their account number. There is a big book with all the numbers which the lifeguard is supposed to check to make sure they aren’t just saying random numbers. My town is 1,500 people, so I know a lot of the people who live here personally.
We always check for the first few weeks, and there’s no need to check the book after that if you KNOW the kids and their families and that they do indeed have a pass, especially if they are our everyday regulars (basically parents using it as a cheap daycare service).
One of our regular kids comes in. He was causing trouble yesterday, so I ask him for his number and make him wait as I look it up. This is just to inconvenience him because he makes our lives harder on a daily basis; I fully expect to find his name there next to the number he tells me.
It turns out his name IS in there… on A DIFFERENT FAMILY’S pass. He’s no relation at all.
I tell him this.
Kid: “Yeah, I know. We share the pass.”
Me: “Sharing a family pass with non-family members is not allowed. I’ll let you in today for free since you’re already there, but next time, you will have to pay.”
The kid plays all afternoon just as he has every other day this summer, splashing, laughing, the works.
Fast forward a few hours. The kid’s mom storms in, yelling obscenities.
Mother: “You yelled at my kid and said he couldn’t swim for no reason! He came home bawling his eyes out because you were so harsh with him! Who the f*** are you to tell him that, when he has a season pass and has been swimming here all summer?”
Me: *Calmly* “He did not have a pass. The other family had a pass and he is not a part of that family.”
Mother: “I paid for that pass, and he should get to swim!”
Me: “How did you pay for it?”
Mother: “Mrs. [Other Family] and I split the price; I gave her the money to put my son on the pass.”
Me: “It doesn’t work like that. If it did, a hundred different kids from a hundred different families could each pay one dollar and get one family pass, and they could swim all summer for free.”
Mother: *Not having any of it* “I already paid for him! He has a pass; he should get to swim!”
Me: “Season passes don’t work that way; they cannot be shared. He would have to pay to get in to swim, and I am very sorry, but I can’t do anything about it.”
This continues for around twenty minutes until I tell her:
Me: “I really can’t do anything about it, but I can get my manager if you want to further voice your complaint.”
This is mostly because I am tired of her, and partly because I know this sharing bulls*** won’t fly with my manager.
Manager: “I’m sorry that you paid Mrs. [Other Family], but you’ll have to take it up with her to get your money back because we have nothing to do with that. But your son really doesn’t have a season pass.”
The kid had been swimming and causing trouble DAILY for nearly two months FOR FREE. The pool received no money from him ever, and we had less than a month left in the season.
The woman still couldn’t comprehend the problem because, as far as she was concerned, she had already paid and there shouldn’t be any problem. My manager eventually gave her a heavily discounted single pass for the rest of the season.
I would have told her to f*** off at this point and just taken the loss of one regular. It pissed me off so bad because I couldn’t even FATHOM a mind simple enough not to understand why the financially struggling pool (or ANY business) just couldn’t allow this, or that they had ALREADY screwed the pool out of over a hundred dollars because he had been swimming all summer without a pass and without paying, not to mention causing all the guards countless headaches.
I work in a clinic as a medical assistant — the person who gets you from the waiting room and gets you ready for the provider.
I go out to the waiting room to grab my next patient, someone who is new to me. (Obviously, all names and patient information are changed for privacy.)
Me: “Tiffany?”
A woman gives me a funny look but then gets up and comes with me. I take her weight and get her into the exam room, but something isn’t sitting right, so I do my due diligence and decide to check I have the right patient.
Me: “Could you please verify your last name and date of birth for me?”
She gives me another funny look.
Patient: “Smith. December 2, 1964.”
Me: “Oh, shoot. It looks like I grabbed the wrong Tiffany.”
Patient: “I’m not Tiffany; I’m Sandra.”
Me: “Well, let’s get you back into the waiting room and [Coworker] will grab you very soon.”
I used to work at Glacier National Park. A distressingly high percentage of the population simply doesn’t “get” nature. It’s all just Disneyland to them. I regularly got asked where the animals’ cages were located, as well as fielded complaints about the unkempt “landscaping” on our trails.
Then, there were the ones who loudly complained about the lack of TV and Internet access in the lodges.
Guests: “What are my kids supposed to do all day?!”
The first few days on the job, I just thought people were screwing with me. No one could really be that dumb, right?
