I work in a hotel. At about 5:30 am, a guy comes in.

Man: “What is your rate for the night?”

I tell him.

Man: “That’s too much!”

Me: “We are the cheapest in the area, sir.”

Man: “No, I just want a taxi. Can you give me a number to a taxi company?”

Me: “Taxis don’t come out this far since we are on the edge of town, and the one taxi person I can call doesn’t answer his phone for any rides before 9:00 am.”

For those that don’t know, to use a [Rideshare], you have to download an app on your phone and prepay for the ride using your credit card.

Man: “Okay. Can you call me a [Rideshare], then?”

Me: “No, that’s not how it works; you have to use your phone to get a [Rideshare].”

He is holding his smartphone in his hand when I say this.

Man: “Yeah, well, I can’t do that. Can you do me a favor and get me a [Rideshare]?”

Me: “No, I can’t and I won’t.”

Man: “Come on. It’s just a simple favor. You have to do it for me.”

Me: “I am under no obligation to do you any favor whatsoever.”

Man: “With an attitude like that, you should get your a** kicked!”

I stand up in an aggressive posture, which is easy to do since I’m over 6’2″ tall and this guy is like 5’8″.

Me: “Did you seriously just threaten me because I won’t pay for a [Rideshare] for you?”

Man: “I am saying that if you were to ever ask someone for a favor with an attitude like that, you should get your a** kicked.”

Me: “Man, get the f*** out of my hotel.”

Man: “So, what, you never ask anybody for a favor?”

Me: “No, I don’t ask strangers for favors. I am resourceful and have personal responsibility. Now get the f*** out, or I’m calling the cops.”

As he starts walking out, he says:

Man: “You must be better than God, then, to never ask anyone for favors!”

How entitled do you have to be to believe someone should get their a** kicked because they won’t pay for a [Rideshare] for you, especially when you don’t even know each other? I get stupid entitled people like this so often that I can be quick to cuss someone out, I’ll admit, but I don’t feel I was in the wrong, and my boss agreed.

I work for a store that has sibling stores of different “status” levels. I am working the closing shift with another associate and the manager on duty. Right as I am going for my break, a mom-daughter duo comes in.

Thirty minutes later, I come back out and the associate pulls me aside.

Associate: “That lady and her daughter have been here for a while, and they’re still trying on clothes.”

I brush it off; maybe it’s an extreme shopping spree for new wardrobes.

Then, another hour goes by. Then, it’s closing time — a total of an hour and forty-five minutes so far. They’re STILL trying on clothes. But this is when it gets sketchy.

The manager on duty tells me to close the doors, and the shopping mom speaks up.

Mom: “Oh, I can do that for you!”

Huh?

Turns out the duo works at the “higher-end” version of my store, and they know EVERYTHING. The mom even mocks me about my folding.

Mom: “I’ve been working at [Sibling Store] for longer than you’ve been alive!”

Weird flex, but okay.

Thirty minutes past closing, they were finally ready to check out. This is when the sketchiness started to concern [Manager].

The daughter offered to check HERSELF out; she wanted to go behind the counter and do the work. We politely declined with raised eyebrows. Throughout the transaction — roughly $1,000 worth of clothes, but after discounts only $400-ish — she talked about staying past closing, how she knew how annoying it was, and blah, blah, blah. [Associate] was sweeping, and the mom kept saying, “Let me do it!”

Finally, they left forty-five minutes past closing. Was this annoying? Absolutely. What made it worse? The store is in a mall, which means that thirty minutes after the mall closes, the doors are locked.

I don’t know how the mom and daughter got out, but the three of us had to find security to open the doors for us.

I talked to the store manager about it and asked if we could’ve kicked them out sooner. She basically said no, and even if customers stayed past midnight, we still had to check them out.

That’s ridiculous to me.

This was many years ago, but it sticks in my mind to this day. I was a contracted service provider (tow truck driver) for a major roadside assistance/travel organization, though the company I worked for was quite small.

I had been sent to a lakeside neighborhood in my popular northwest city, a neighborhood full of hip restaurants and cutesy boutiques, to change a tire on a new BMW. (This was back when all cars had a spare tire, which should tell you how long ago this was.) I had my own tools, but for the new BMWs, it was always recommended to use the tools that came with the car since they were less likely to cause damage. I had no problem with that since the jack that came with the car was quite easy to use. It had a crank instead of a jack handle.

The only issue was that there needed to be enough clearance between the jack and any nearby immovable objects, such as, say, a curb. This particular vehicle was parked VERY close to the curb. My standard operating procedure is to ask the customer to slowly move the car away from the curb to avoid damage to the rim of the flat tire. No one has an issue with this. Normally.

The chucklehead owner of the vehicle refused to move it.

Owner: “It’ll ruin my tire!”

Me: “If you move it slowly, it won’t damage anything.”

He wasn’t buying it.

Me: “The tire is already flat and likely needs to be replaced anyway, so it’s no problem.”

Owner: *Screeching* “Get on with it and change the tire! I have places to be!”

I got to it, wanting to be clear of this chump as quickly as possible.

This car’s jack had a very low gear ratio, requiring several turns to lift the car even an inch. But the force required to turn the crank was not excessive, enabling the user to quickly turn the crank until the car was raised sufficiently. The issue with the car being too close to the curb is that while the jack’s crank had a hinge to fold it compactly when stored, the crank had to be unfolded completely to provide adequate leverage to turn and lift the car. But with it so close to the curb, the bottom of the arc of the crank’s movement caused the handle to just barely clear the curb. The only problem was that I was holding the crank as it came around to the curb, and there was not enough room between the crank handle and the curb for my fat fingers.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I did accidentally skin two knuckles down to the bone — with the scars still present to this day — and yes, I did use some colorful, unprofessional language. Captain Chucklehead heard this and smugly announced that he was going to report my horrifying language and get me fired. He then reiterated his desire for me to get the lead out and finish changing the tire.

Oh, really?

See, my first aid kit was back in the truck, several dozen yards away. Well, since I didn’t want to delay this person’s day any longer than absolutely necessary, I just continued to change the tire, splattering crimson jewels of blood on the rim of the flat, on the spare, on the jack, on the lug wrench, and on the fender. I made sure not to waste a single cell on the ground. I even managed to get a nice, fat, drippy drop on the window. His face went pale as he saw the biohazard scene unfolding all over his precious car. I even made him sign the form with a blood-smeared pen, though I gave him the opportunity to get his own.

After he nearly caused an accident leaving the parking space — probably on his way to the car wash — I was then able to tend to my poor, abused knuckles and get ready for whatever else the day would bring. I never heard a single squawk from my boss, or from corporate.

I probably should’ve just driven away. This incident happened early in my career as a roadside assistance service provider, and I learned very quickly not to allow myself (or allow others to put me) in situations where my safety or health was in jeopardy. My boss (and corporate) would completely have had my back in these kinds of situations.

I get an email from the CEO of one of our client companies.

CEO: “I’m receiving a popup which I find unprofessional and annoying.”

Said popup is a notification from our RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) system prompting the user to reboot their PC to complete the installation of patches we push out on a scheduled basis.

I respond letting her know what it’s about.

Me: “I will change the frequency so this only happens once a month, but you’ll need to reboot your PC so it can complete the update installation and get rid of the popup.”

One week later, she sends another email with a picture of the notification.

CEO: “This popup is unprofessional and annoying!”

Me: “You need to restart your PC for the installation of updates to complete and for the notification to disappear.”

Ten minutes later, she responds.

CEO: “I’ve rebooted, but the notification is still present.”

I logged in to our RMM and checked her PC’s uptime. It was at ninety-nine days and four hours, and it was still going. I decided to call her out on her BS; I took a screenshot of the uptime and attached it to my email response, letting her know her PC was never restarted.

I haven’t heard back from her since.

I receive a call from a user.

User: “My laptop isn’t working.”

Me: “Can you elaborate for me?”

User: “It just keeps going to a white screen every time I restart instead of to the login screen.”

Oh, no. I know exactly what’s happened, and it’s the first time this has happened at this job.

I go to the user’s location and take a look at their laptop. Sure enough, the laptop is sitting at the boot menu. The solid-state drive isn’t listed as a boot device, only a PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) boot. Well, no big deal; all of our users are set up to have shortcuts to shared folders over the network and are instructed that anything important should be saved there.

I inform [User] that the machine should be under warranty and that I’ll just go retrieve a new one for them. Before I go on my way to get a replacement baselined for them, they seem to start panicking.

User: “So, you’re saying all the data on the drive is gone?”

Me: “Yes, it seems like the solid state failed. This is not a common issue at all, but all of your documents saved to the shared folders are on a server, so you shouldn’t have lost anything.”

User: “…”

Me: “You were saving your work to your shared folders, weren’t you?”

User: “No, I wasn’t. It was taking forever to transfer documents onto it, so I just saved them to a folder on my desktop.”

Me: “That’s weird; it shouldn’t take that long to transfer documents onto the server. And you know that the IT disclosure form you filled out when you were hired said to save your work into the shared folders.”

User: “Well, it was taking forever because I was working from home over Wi-Fi! This is a huge problem! I just lost four months’ worth of work!”

Me: *Internally facepalming* “So, you were working from home for a while and didn’t think to save all your work upon getting back?”

User: “I got really busy and didn’t think about it! This is completely unacceptable. I have so much work to catch up on! Can’t you do anything?”

Me: “Like I said before, no. This is why those shared folders are set up. Sorry.”

At this point, I couldn’t tell if they were ready to blow a fuse or completely break down, and I didn’t care to stick around and find out.

I got back to the office and got their new machine ready to go for them pronto, and I finished setting up a service request on the old machine. I then made sure to send out a PSA to every user reminding them to back up any documents they have if they haven’t done so already. Then, I told my boss that we should start sending out similar PSAs every month to drill it into our users’ heads.

When I got back to [User], they accepted defeat and begrudgingly took the replacement laptop from me. I felt bad for them, gave them my condolences, and went on my way.

Please use your shared folders. It will save you heartbreak and it will save us headaches.