I’m a lifeguard at a community pool. I see an adult jump into the deep end, and immediately, he looks like he’s in trouble. I rush over and assist him to the edge of the pool. After he has caught his breath, he’s angry.

Swimmer: “Your pool is a death trap! Why doesn’t it say how deep it is?!”

Me: “It does! It’s written on the sides, clear as day!”

I point to the clear signs painted on the side of the pool: “4 ft”, “6 ft”, and then “8 ft”. The swimmer sees them, squints, and then looks embarrassed.

Swimmer: “Oh, I thought those meant age restrictions, not how deep the pool went…”

I work in a hotel. A couple of weeks ago, most of the power was out on our side of the state. The power company had released a statement saying that power likely wouldn’t be restored for four days, so people were freaking out and flocking to hotels. [Energy Company] workers were coming in from other states just to help get power restored, so we had a ton of them.

The phone rang nonstop. I was alone with a lobby full of people, selling rooms by the second. I had three “hold” buttons, meaning I could put three people on hold at any one time. All night, I regularly had three people on hold and more still calling in. I started having to ask people to call back in fifteen minutes.

And since people can be impatient, it was a total s***show. This was one of the most annoying and entitled calls of the night.

We’d just sold out of pet-friendly rooms — AND the five rooms we occasionally use for overflow when people need pet-friendly rooms and none are available.

This woman calls me.

Caller: “I need a room, and I’ll have my dogs with me.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but we’re sold out of pet-friendly rooms.”

Caller: “Okay? Well, I’m not leaving my dogs at home.”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry, but like I said, we don’t have any more pet-friendly rooms available. You could try asking around at other hotels in the area.”

Caller: “You’re not going to do anything about it?”

Me: “Ma’am. We don’t have any more pet rooms.”

Caller: “Thanks for the sympathy! God!”

And then she hung up on me. Lady. Your dogs will be fine in the dark for a couple of days. What is the issue here? What is not connecting in your brain?

I just stood with the phone to my ear for a second trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Your dogs will snuggle up and go to sleep. They’re not going to croak because your power is out for a few days at the end of March.

Related:
A Most Inhospitable Hospitality Interaction

I work in a hotel. It was still slow when I got this phone call in the afternoon, which gave me the time I needed to sufficiently bang my head on the desk until either this lady gained some sense or I lost my own.

Kidding. It did warrant a facepalm, though — and a recounting to all the housekeepers still there about how ridiculous this lady was.

I got a phone call and answered with the standard greeting. It was someone from Central Reservations (CRS). CRS is basically software that allows our rates and availability to be updated on all websites selling our rooms in real time. They can also take phone calls we miss — for a hefty fee, so we’re told to avoid it at all costs. I’d previously been on another call while someone else tried to call repeatedly — no more than three rings before they hung up and called again. And again. And again. They were finally routed to CRS, and CRS called me after they weren’t able to placate this lady in hysterics.

By that time, I was finally free to take that call.

CRS: “[Guest] is claiming to have a reservation with you, but we can’t find it no matter what we search for. Can I connect you with the guest?”

Me: “Sure.”

CRS: “Thank you so, so much, have a great day!” 

I was connected with this guest.

Me: “How can I help you, ma’am?”

Guest: “I have a reservation with your hotel and I want to confirm my booking.”

Me: “Okay, easy enough. Can I have your confirmation number?”

She recited it for me. It was most certainly not one of our confirmation numbers.

Me: “Ma’am, that doesn’t sound like one of our confirmation numbers. Is it possibly an itinerary or booking number? Third-party booking places sometimes generate those for reservations they make.”

Guest: “I don’t know what it is; it’s under a line that says, ‘Your booking has been confirmed.’”

Er, okay I guess. I searched for it as an itinerary number with no luck. Then, I searched it as a confirmation number just in case, but as I suspected, nothing showed up.

I asked for her name. Searched by her name. Nothing. I asked for her phone number, she said she didn’t give a phone number when she called us to book. Ugh, okay. I even asked which dates she had booked for and looked through all the arrivals on that day. Still nothing.

She was impatient and aggressive on the phone.

Me: “Ma’am, are you absolutely sure you booked a room for this hotel? The [Hotel] by [Brand] in [Town], Pennsylvania? This isn’t one of our confirmation numbers.”

She exploded.

Guest: “No, that is not where I booked it! I booked a room at [Different Hotel Chain] in Canada!”

Me: “Okay, uh, well, this is the [hotel] in Pennsylvania. You’d have to check with the hotel you booked with.”

Guest: “I don’t understand why you can’t just look up my reservation! Aren’t they all interconnected?!”

Me: “I, er… Interconnected?”

Guest: “Yes! All the hotels everywhere are interconnected in the computer. You should be able to see my reservation! I just want it confirmed, that’s all!”

Me: “No… No, that’s not… I can only see reservations that people make for this specific hotel in this specific location. You have to call the hotel you booked — in the location you booked it for — and ask them to find your reservation.”

Guest: “Are you kidding me? You’re being serious?!”

Me: “Uh, yes, that’s how the reservation systems work.”

Guest: “So, you’re telling me that I have to hang up and go find another number and call someone all over again and just hope they have my reservation? Is that what you’re saying?!”

Me: “You’ll have to call someone else, yes, but you can call the hotel you booked through an—”

And she hung up on me.

What a crackpot! “Aren’t all the hotels interconnected?” No, ma’am, they are not. If you want to check on your reservation in Canada, you should probably call them at that location. Y’ain’t even in the right country. People.

My store has recently announced that we, the employees, are no longer allowed to have water bottles on the floor with us. Everyone is pissed. It gets super hot in the summer, and you exert a lot of energy unloading the truck and stocking shelves, so it’s annoying to have to stop what you’re doing and walk to the break room to grab a drink if you want one. 

I have to go to a fast medical clinic for some random reason, and while I’m there, I decide to shoot my shot.

Me: “Hey, would it be okay for you to write me a doctor’s note saying I’m allowed to have water with me at my job?”

Doctor: “Wait, they seriously won’t let you have water unless you get a note?”

Me: “They just implemented this rule. They haven’t said anything about a doctor’s note, but I figure it must be a loophole.”

She happily writes me a note that says, “[My Name] must have water on them at all times,” because if a person wants to stay hydrated, that doctor sure isn’t going to complain.

I arrive at work and present my note. Later, a coworker spots me with my drink on the floor.

Coworker: “How did you get away with that?”

Me: “Doctor’s note. I just asked, and they wrote it in a way so I would have to have water on me and not have to keep it in the back.”

Suddenly, there was an influx of people coming in with doctor’s notes that said they needed water on their person at all times. It got to the point that management got rid of the rule.

It was a stupid idea to begin with, but I’m mad that so many people had to waste money to get the doctor’s notes to be able to drink water.

Back when I was trapped in retail h***, I had a coworker who had a mental block, such that she couldn’t really parse people’s facial expressions or their tones of voice. On the one hand, this meant that she was basically unflappable as far as dealing with angry customers went. On the other, she had the very unfortunate tendency to assert that the differences in facial expression or tone of voice that she couldn’t detect did not exist.

For example, at one point, I had a large male customer who was leaning over the counter, leering at me, calling me “little girl”, and trying to convince me to “help” him carry his bag to his car. I told him to get lost or I’d be calling the cops, and he did leave.

[Coworker] came over and scolded me for being “rude” to the customer when he hadn’t done anything wrong, saying that I was little and he was just asking for help. When I tried to explain the subtext she was missing, she shook her head and just spoke louder and louder to talk over me, insisting that she “didn’t see anything like that”, and what’s more, that I “couldn’t know that” because there was “no proof” of it.

Over the course of about eight months, there were several similar incidents, most of them less creepy, but all of them resulting in [Coworker] scolding me for “making up” stuff about customers and being rude to them.

Eventually, it came to a head, and I pushed back, telling her directly that she was the one who could not understand human expressions, so if I was seeing something and she wasn’t, it was the result of her flawed brain, not me making stuff up.

Naturally, she pretty much immediately ran to the manager about my blow-up. The manager got the details, wrote me up for causing a scene — the blow-up had happened in front of several customers, who had left the store over it — and then warned [Coworker] that it was not her job to try and police her coworkers and that she shouldn’t be trying to scold us about things like this.

She pulled the same “shouting louder to try and drown him out” move, repeating the phrase, “If you see something, say something” which had shown up in some of our training videos, and eventually, she was excused to go home.

It seemed like [Coworker] had mellowed out over the next two weeks, but then she spent two entire shifts following me around and critiquing literally everything that I did, insisting that I needed to “be more professional and diligent” the entire time. I went to the manager, he pulled her in for another talk, and it resulted in her storming out of the store entirely, apparently having quit.

The last I heard of the situation was that [Coworker]’s mother was apparently threatening to sue the store for discrimination. I never heard anything more of it while I worked there, so I think her mother, at least, realized she didn’t really have a leg to stand on.