I work in a national park at the front desk for some hot springs. A lady comes in.
Guest: “I feel I need to complain about the animals. It’s clear you do not groom the park animals adequately, and I expect better of a national park.”
She turns and struts off. When I regain my composure, I tell my manager about it.
Manager: “If she shows up again, give her a brush and point her in the direction of the grizzlies.”
After I broke up with my fiancé, I visited our Human Resources office to change my life insurance beneficiary from him to my mom. (I know, I know. He should have never been my beneficiary in the first place.) I also increased the amount of my life insurance because he had left me in major debt, and I wanted my family to be able to pay for all that.
When the HR employee saw the life insurance amount:
Employee: “Wow! Your mom will be one lucky lady if you die!”
Me: *Shocked and confused* “I think my mom would actually rather I be alive.”
I work at a store that solely revolves around a popular river. During the summer, there is no shortage of clueless tourists.
Customer: “Excuse me. I let my two sons go tubing about an hour ago, and I was just wondering, when does the river come back around?”
Me: “Ma’am?”
Customer: “The river. How long does it take to come back around?”
Me: “…It doesn’t?”
The customer’s eyes went wide. She yelled for her husband and then left to go find their sons. I hope they found them before they ended up in the Gulf of Mexico.
The first time we went to Yellowstone, we would not stop to let our son look at some bears a couple hundred yards off the road because there were people literally stopping their cars and getting out to walk up to get better pictures, and we did not want to him to see someone being mauled by a bear.
The next time we went to Yellowstone, we did get out to look at the bears because there was an armed park ranger standing on the side of the road watching to make sure no one did anything that stupid. He was also answering the many children’s questions about the bears.
Child: “Are they boy bears or girl bears?”
Ranger: “The lighter-colored one is a girl and the darker-colored one is a boy.”
When pressed on how he knew this by the very curious children, he looked at them, looked at the parents, and said:
Ranger: “I’ve been observing them for quite a while.”
When we got back to the car, our ten-year-old asked:
Son: “Does he mean that he saw them mating?”
I’m really proud that he was tactful enough to wait until we got back in our car to ask that, because I did not want to deal with ignorant parents who get so upset over such simple and honest questions.
I am in Yellowstone on a family vacation. There is a geyser there called Old Faithful that rather regularly goes off about every ninety minutes. As such, the Parks Service has a sign with an estimate of when it will be going off next.
On this particular day, the geyser is a few minutes late and there are some people at the information desk to complain about it. One of them stands out.
Guest: “It’s a hot day and my family has been waiting!”
Information Desk: “Sorry, sir, but the times are only estimates. It’s pretty regular, though, so it shouldn’t be a few more minutes before—”
Guest: “No! This is not what I paid for! My family needs a picture of the geyser and we can’t be expected to wait this long.”
Information Desk: “What is it you would like me to do, sir?”
Guest: “Well, don’t you have some sort of button that you can press or something?”
Information Desk: “A button? To make the geyser erupt?”
Guest: “Well?”
Information Desk: “I’ll pass that… suggestion to my manager, sir. However, if—”
Suddenly, as seen and heard from the viewing area at the visitor’s center, Old Faithful does its thing — loud, beautiful, and perfectly timed. The guest turns to see that his opportunity has passed and then glares back at the information desk worker.
Guest: “You did that on purpose!”
The guest storms off and the perplexed-looking worker locks eyes with me and has a moment of honesty.
Information Desk: “You know what? I wish I had.”
