Working the check-in counter at a major Las Vegas hotel/casino, you hear all sorts of jokes and comments from all sorts of people. You learn to roll with it. An older guy starts checking in:

Me: “May I have your last name, please?”

Guest: *Smiling.* “Only if you marry me.”

I point to the row of seven coworkers all processing check-ins at the same time as me.

Me: “Sir, I currently have one single empty suite that’s eligible for a free upgrade for a customer holding the same loyalty status as you do. All my coworkers have access to that same suite, and the first one of us who completes a check-in for a guest can offer that—”

Guest: “—Smith! It’s Smith! Smith!”

Me: “Thank you, Mr. Smith.”

I complete the check-in and get the (now very quick and direct) man his complimentary upgrade.

We have a regular customer who goes from quiet to screaming in the space of one question. Every time she orders, she gives us her rules:

Customer: “I am ordering something, and I say it clearly, and I say it once. You take my payment, and you give me my food. That is the limit of our interaction. I don’t want you to ask me if I want another item or offer an upsell, or ask me how my day is!”

We learn to just not to talk to her.

One day, she comes in and orders as usual. Right after her, another customer orders the exact same combo. That day, we have a special: if you add a promotional tie-in item, the whole combo becomes cheaper.

Me: “If you’d like to add the promo item, your total will actually go down.”

The second customer happily accepts. The grumpy customer storms back to the counter.

Customer: “Why didn’t you offer me that deal?!”

Our manager steps up without missing a beat.

Manager: “Ma’am, you give us your order, we take your payment, we give you your food. That is the limit of our interaction.”

The look she gives the manager could have powered Vegas for a month.

I come in today, and my coworker warns me:

Coworker: “The boss is gonna call you today because of a phone call she got this morning. Some angry mother called because her kid claims you kicked him out of our store the other day. He came home in tears.”

Me: “I only asked one person to leave yesterday. If that’s who the mom is calling about, then this should be a real doozy.”

My manager does call me in and asks me what happened.

Me: “Did you look at the security tapes?”

Manager: “No. Do I need to?”

Me: “Well, if you did, you’d see that this kid, who is seventeen by the way, walked to the ATM in the gambling section.”

Manager: “…oh.”

Me: “Yeah. This kid came into the store and went straight to the back area to use the ATM. I noticed he looked young, so I went and asked how old he is. He told me his age, and I told him he was supposed to use the other ATM near the front door of the store because to enter that area, you have to be twenty-one, even just to use the ATM. He was already in the middle of using the ATM when I said all this, so I waited right there until he was done and then escorted him out. I just reminded him that he can’t come back to the gambling area. I was polite, understanding, not at all upset, and he seemed fine when he left.”

Manager: “Well, apparently, this kid took that as you kicking him out and telling him to never come back to the store. I’m not sure if mom’s over exaggerating or if the kid was angry for some reason.”

Me: “So… we good?”

Manager: “Oh, more than good. If she calls back, I’ll tell her that I thanked the employee responsible for ensuring her son doesn’t get arrested for underage gambling, and that she’s welcome that we didn’t call the cops.”

She did call back. The manager did say those things. And then she hung up for some odd reason.

I posted this story. And because good things always come in threes, and bad things always come in twos, it’s time for the story of the second time my family went to Las Vegas.

This time, at least, I was over twenty-one, but the group was larger: I brought my girlfriend, my brother brought his girlfriend, my other brother brought his wife, and my sister brought her boyfriend. So, in addition to the six people in the family already, we had four more people for a total of ten. And the one thing that we could all agree on was “how cool would it be to see the Grand Canyon?” So we decided to organize a trip to the Grand Canyon for all of us, but due to conflicting schedules, my oldest brother and his wife could not make it.

They were the lucky ones.

To keep costs down, we took redeye flights into Vegas. By the time we checked into our hotel and got to our rooms, it was 2 AM. In our infinite wisdom, we determined that we would go to the Grand Canyon on the first day of the trip. Get it out of the way, you know?

The bus picked us up at 5 AM to take us to the gathering point. That’s three hours of sleep.

We milled around the bus terminal for about an hour (thankfully, there was free coffee and donuts), mostly still feeling like we needed another ten hours of sleep. But the bus eventually picked us up and we climbed on board. The trip would take us over the Hoover Dam in about an hour, and we would stop there to do the tourist thing for about an hour before continuing on. Total travel time to the Grand Canyon: about five hours. Excellent, an opportunity to sleep.

Quoth the bus driver: “No one sleeps on my bus. If you sleep on my bus, I sleep on my bus, and that’s bad for all of us.”

And if you’re wondering, yes, he DID call people out when he saw them nodding off.

The Hoover Dam was pretty spectacular, but we were all feeling the exhaustion already. Surely it would be worth it: the Grand Canyon is one of the natural wonders of the world!

By the time we got there, we were all exhausted beyond reason, to the point that I got the Call of the Void looking at the Grand Canyon. It was truly amazing, breathtaking, and scary. It was now about 3 PM. I think. It’s a little fuzzy on the memory.

We were at the Grand Canyon for about ninety minutes (I think), and then we clambered back on the bus, where the no-sleeping rule from the bus driver was less strictly enforced, but still enforced if he saw too many people asleep. We figured, no problem, we’d be back to our hotel by about 8 or 9 PM, and we could sleep.

As the sun fell below the mesas of Arizona and the world grew dark, we realized that was optimistic.

I still don’t know the route we took to the Grand Canyon. I don’t know how we got there, how we got back, what took so long, or how time seemed to stretch and contract at the same time to make everything a nightmarishly torturous experience.

What I do know is that we got back to Vegas around 11 PM.

By this point, my brother and his girlfriend were sitting far away from each other, evidently to avoid getting upset at each other. My sister was curled into a tiny ball – legs up against her chest, arms around her legs, head down – and her boyfriend was across the aisle from her. I found out later that she was so tired and angry that she was trying really, really hard not to lash out physically (she is not a violent person, but she was pushed well beyond her limit). My parents? Passed out. I was still struggling along, and my girlfriend was asleep on my shoulder. Surely, surely, we were almost there.

The bus driver dropped everyone off in order, from one side of the Vegas Strip to the other. And it was our (un)lucky day: we were the last to be dropped off.

We finally managed to get off the bus and into the hotel at midnight. No one said anything. We just went to our rooms and passed out.

We STILL tell this story twenty years later, not because it’s a fun memory, but because it’s an example of how something so wondrous can be surrounded by absolute Hell. And it’s kind of funny.

And the kicker? The reason that my sister was ready to absolutely destroy someone? Around 9 PM, another passenger on the bus asked the driver if there was an advantage to going to the part of the Grand Canyon we had to, the long trip.

“If you’ve never been there before,” he said, “not really. The shorter trip or the longer one will get you an amazing view either way. I recommend the shorter trip to new people. It’s only about five or six hours.”

A customer is asking me for directions to a department. I am originally from Hawaii, but I don’t feel the need to share that with strangers.

Customer: “Where are you from?”

Me: “Here.”

Customer: “No, you’re not.”

Me: “I’m American.”

Customer: “No, you have an accent. I can tell. Where were you born?”

Me: “Here. The States.”

Customer: “Your parents?”

Me: “Also, the States.”

Customer: “But you’re not American.”

Me: “I am.”

Customer: “Huh? Really? Well, it sounds like you’ve picked up some bad habits.”

Me: “Like demanding where a stranger comes from because they don’t sound like you?”

Customer: “Hmph! I was just making conversation!”

She walked the opposite way from the direction I was sending her, and I didn’t bother to correct her. She complained about me to my manager on the way out, saying:

Customer: “I have half a mind to call ICE on this place!”

Manager: “Wow, ma’am, you’ve managed to pack a whole lotta stupid into that half a mind!”

I love my manager.