I have a new job as a server at a tiny local diner. The place is so small we usually have one server on shift at a time unless it’s a weekend.

I had a young couple come in with their daughter the other day. The little girl looked about five and was super bubbly, chatty, and adorable. The parents were friendly and the little girl was very well behaved.

When I dropped off their food, the little girl decided she couldn’t eat the hot dog because it was on a burger bun. We had run out of the right buns and I did let the parents know and they okayed it. But when you’re five, a hot dog on a burger bun is a sin against God and science, so it was now chicken strips she needed. As I started back to the kitchen, she asked if she would still get fries and said something about liking the animal they come from. I started laughing (so did her folks) and told her she would still get fries, and off I went.

Everything was great after that and, when I went to drop off their bill, I wrote on the back, “What animal does the French fry come from?” A few minutes later, the girl came running up to my counter.

Girl: “The lemon!”

She was excited but trying to be super serious.

Me: “What lemon?”

Girl: “The lemon animal!”

Me: “…makes the French fry?”

Girl: “Yes!”

Translation: “Obviously!”

Me: “Oh, thank you for clearing that up. That’s important information!”

As she ran off, I could hear her parents cracking up, and I had to slip into the back to laugh without hurting the little one’s feelings.

These little moments are why I love this job.

A regular stops me at a rather expensive buffet brunch place. We have breakfast and lunch stuff, light stuff and heavy stuff. You can get a fruit crepe at the same time as raw oysters on the half shell, steak tips, scrambled eggs, and a Belgium waffle. Then, you can follow it up with cocktail shrimp and a blueberry muffin. We have a rather large selection — a selection that does not include “Breakfast Soup.”

Regular: “Hey, ‘scuse me, when are they going to put out more breakfast soup?”

Me: “Breakfa… I’m sorry, what? We don’t offer any kind of breakfast soup.”

Regular: “Of course you do! I get it every time, but you’re out right now. I just want to know if you’ll put out more soon.”

Me: “Um, ma’am, could you come with me and point out where the ‘breakfast soup’ is? Then I can help you better.”

Regular: “Ugh, fine. It’s right over here!”

She then walked me to the line and pointed to the tray that normally has our hamburgers with mushroom gravy on top. We mixed half and half 70/30 ground beef with pork sausage to make these patties — very, very fatty greasy patties. And we lined the pan with bread slices to soak up all the fat and grease, and then laid out the patties on the bread, and then covered them with mushroom sausage gravy. And even with the bread, by the time most of patties were gone, the bread was almost swimming.

Turns out this lady didn’t like the burger part, and she was just scooping fat-soaked soggy bread, hot liquid pork grease, and mushroom sausage gravy into a bowl and just eating that with a spoon — AKA, her Breakfast Soup.

I tried to very gently and non-judgmentally explain that the bread was for soaking up the fat and grease from the burger patties and normally was not eaten.

I’ll never forget her look of horror and embarrassment when she realized she’d been eating essentially the fatty trash of this particular dish and absolutely loving it.

I did tell her more would be out shortly but she zipped it back to her table without another word, face turned completely red. It was six months before any of us saw her again. She apparently chose to forgo the breakfast soup after that.

We have a repeat guest who just comes to the hotel for the outdoor pool. She usually comes in the summer and tries to get in early and/or stay later. Our pool times are fixed and inflexible.

This particular morning, she went when the pool opened at 8:00 am. It is February but warmer than normal here; it’s about seventy degrees (F) outside in the morning. Our pool isn’t heated — it never has been — so when it is seventy outside, the pool is probably going to be around seventy, as well.

The woman comes inside to complain.

Woman: “The pool is freezing! It was warm last time I used it!”

Me: “The pool is not heated and never has been. When you came here in the summer, and it was ninety degrees by 7:00 am, the pool was warmer because the weather was warmer.”

When she checked out later that morning, she asked:

Woman: “Can I come back later to swim?”

Me: “No. You need a key to access the pool, and since you’re not a guest anymore, you won’t have access to a key. And we don’t give out day passes.”

She slammed the keys on the desk and walked out the door. She later wrote a review and mentioned me by name saying how cold I am. I had already written a report about her, so I simply attached a note to corporate to check the file I had already made for her.

We have a family staying at my hotel that is here because something happened to their home, so their insurance is paying for them to stay here until it’s fixed. It’s a single mom, a teenage daughter who has her own newborn baby, and a little eight-year-old girl. The teenage daughter also has a boyfriend just as young as she is who is also staying in their room.

The little girl likes to steal. I’ve already heard through the grapevine from a coworker that she’s been caught stealing from our market before. My coworker went to the back office for a second, and the little girl waited until the door closed behind her before she got up from the lobby chair, ran over to the market, stuffed her pockets full of candy, and then ran and sat back down as if nothing had happened. She didn’t know that we have cameras all over the hotel that we can see from the back office monitor. My coworker went back out.

Coworker: “You do know you have to pay for all of that, right?”

The little girl feigned ignorance.

Girl: “Oh. I didn’t know.”

My coworker told her to put the items back. That obviously didn’t stop her, though.

This morning, I’m working the morning shift, and I see this same child walk down the corridor over toward the market area. I don’t haul a** like I could, but I walk out there and figure she’ll ultimately decide, “Never mind,” and walk away. She does. She immediately leaves that area as soon as I open the office door and come out to the front.

Me: “Did you need anything?”

She looks me dead in the eye and says no as she wipes her mouth with one of our breakfast napkins like she was just drinking her juice and minding her business.

I go back after she leaves and watch the cameras, and sure enough, she took candy and put it in her pocket quickly before moving away. I immediately get on the phone and call her mother. Normally, I would just wait to speak to her mother later, but after looking at their bill in our system, I see notes stating that the teens from the room have been adding market items to the room when there is no card on file for incidentals. We’ve made attempts to get in contact with the mother so she knows about it, but no one has gotten back to us.

Obviously, their insurance won’t want to cover these charges. So, not only do we need a card on file for incidentals (don’t know who dropped the ball on getting that), but her kid is stealing and her teenage daughter and her boyfriend are adding things to her bill.

She doesn’t answer when I call, but she calls back a little later.

Guest: “Somebody called me from there? I’m thinking it was y’all or my daughter in the room.”

Me: “Is this Miss [Guest]?”

Guest: “Yeah.”

Me: “This is [My Name], the front office supervisor here at the hotel. I’m calling because your youngest daughter has been taking things from our market area. She’s already—”

Guest: “Hold up, hold up, hold up. I can’t hear you; I need to pull over.”

I’m sure you heard me fine. But okay.

Guest: “Go ahead?”

Me: “This is [My Name] here at the hotel. Your youngest daughter has been taking things from our market area. She was already told by another staff member that those items do need to be paid for the last time she took some. But she’s still taking things now; she just took something this morning before she left.”

Guest: “Oh… Okay… How do I go about getting a new comforter?”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Guest: “A new comforter for the sofa-bed in the room. How do I get another one? My oldest daughter just had her cycle so the one in the room needs to be changed.”

I literally pause, not because I am shocked, but because I don’t know whether I want to go ahead and give her a full taste of my smart-a** attitude or if I want to play nice this morning and tread the line of nice/nasty with her instead.

Me: “You would just request a new one from the front desk.”

Guest: “Okay, I just wasn’t sure how I’d go about getting another one.”

Me: “Right. Yeah, you could just ask for one.”

Guest: “All right, then, thanks for letting me know, I appreciate it.”

Me: “Um, I do need to know what you’re doing about the incidentals. There isn’t a card on file for you, and your insurance won’t be covering any of your incidental charges.”

Guest: *Angry* “Well, I could just pay for the items. What’s the balance?”

Me: “Your balance right now is $48.50. Besides paying it off, we do need to have a card on file just to authorize for other incidentals besides the balance you already have.”

Guest: “Hold on. Why is it so high?!”

Me: “You have market items on your room that have been added by your kids, and then you also have lots and lots of long-distance phone calls being made from your room.”

Guest: “My phone number is a long-distance phone number, and my daughter’s phone doesn’t keep a charge, so she needs to be able to call me in the event she needs me for anything.”

Me: “I understand. Our phones in the rooms are automatically routed so that they charge for long-distance calls, so there is no way for me to stop the system from charging for that. The only thing I would suggest is that if she needs to call you, she can come down here to the desk and make a call to you from our front desk.”

Guest: “So she would literally have to leave the room just to call me or else it’ll charge my account?”

Me: “Yes, ma’am.”

Guest: “This is so ridiculous. All right, well, I’ll come by and pay for the balance. Thank you.”

She hung up on me.

I am a secretary for a medical facility that funds other medical institutions. I am also responsible for their travel to conventions and conferences. There is a very large, very highly attended conference held each year to which our medical professional staff members are invited as presenters.

One such presenter just has to be incredibly difficult as she feels she is above us dregs and never lets us forget it. As a presenter, they are given certain hotels that are reserved for them at a reduced rate. However, most are nowhere near the convention site and they end up paying a crapload of money for cabs. (This is in the days before rideshares.)

I set up the travel for at least ten folks when I realize that, by a loophole, I can book them into the hotel where the conference is held, so I do that instead of allowing the conference coordinators to book them in heaven know where at the last minute (which they are prone to doing).

[Presenter] comes up to me and demands that I only book her into the hotels listed by the conference coordinators, and if I don’t, she will have me written up. So that’s what I do.

The day before they all leave for the conference, which is clean across the country on the west coast, [Presenter] finds out she is not only the only one not booked in the conference hotel but that she is nine miles away near the airport. And no, there are no more rooms available at the conference hotel. She is hopping mad and storms to my desk screaming about my putting her in a faraway two-star hotel.

Me: *Calmly* “You are in one of the three hotels the conference coordinators reserved for you, and you distinctly instructed me to only select those hotels and nothing else.”

She ended up spending more than $70 in cab fare to and from the hotel to the venue while everyone else only had to go downstairs from their hotel rooms. She almost missed giving her presentation because she was late.

Since then, when I’ve booked everyone for a trip, [Presenter] no longer demands I give her “special treatment” and lets me use my judgment when booking hotels.