I used to work at a fast food chain, and because I had decent customer service skills, I would usually be placed in the drive-thru taking orders.

It was the day before Thanksgiving, and the ordering manager had deliberately shorted the store on orders for the week to account for the fact that we would be closed on Thanksgiving. We would get a truck on Friday to restock.

However, the manager hadn’t accounted for Thanksgiving gluttony starting early. We ran out of fries a few hours into my shift. Cue repeats of this exchange for the next several hours.

Customer: “I’d like a large [combo] with a large fry….”

Me: “I’m so sorry, we’re out of fries for the day.”

This was usually followed by many choice swearwords from the customers followed by screeching tires.

I had never been so glad to close the store as I was that day.

I used to work at a very popular fast food chain, and I was fairly good with the customers, so I was usually put on a cash register.

One day, I was taking orders and money at the back cash, which was right across from the freezer.  My stoner coworker proceeded to come out of the back freezer carrying half a dozen frozen chicken patties for the fryer. As he was coming past my register, he dropped them all on the floor. I didn’t think too much of it as the proper procedure was to get new chicken patties out of the freezer and throw the dropped ones away. 

A few minutes later, I realized that my coworker never came to the freezer for replacement patties, and I snagged the shift manager who was walking by.

Me: “[Manager], [Coworker] dropped the most recent batch of chicken on the floor and put it into the fryer anyway.”

Manager: “Well, if it was frozen, the hot grease will kill any germs.”

At this point, I looked at the floor, which was covered in grease, fry bits, paper, and other standard fast food gunk, and then I looked back at my manager.

Me: “Do you really wanna serve a customer something that has been on this floor? Would you want to eat it? What if they get garbage or hair in their chicken?”

My managed cursed quietly and went to put fresh chicken down. The floor chicken got discarded, and my coworker was yelled at for trying to serve floor chicken.

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.