I am the front-of-house manager at a trendy restaurant. It isn’t “upscale” but it’s a local restaurant that receives incredibly good reviews from national media. It’s the type of place you take a date to impress them. Part of this is due to the food; part is due to the service.

On a somewhat slow Saturday night at 7:00 pm, I answer our phone.

Customer: “I’d like to make a reservation for 8:00 pm.”

Me: “Sure.”

Customer: “Can you help me with something?”

Me: “What do you need, sir?”

Customer: “I need to make the night extra special. Can you set the table up with flowers?”

Me: “That’s not a problem. We have fresh flowers delivered for décor every few days so I can make a bouquet for you.”

Customer: “Do you have greeting cards?”

No? But it is a slower night, and we have a market next door where I could send a server to grab a card.

Me: “What would you like it to say, sir?”

I struggle to keep up with his rambling, but the gist is about how much he loves this woman.

By this point, I’m thinking, “Holy s***. This guy is proposing.” I tell some of our servers and everybody is stoked because none of us have ever seen a proposal before. We go all-out on this table.

Eight o’clock rolls around and there’s no sign of this couple.

Eight-fifteen comes and a couple walks in the door. I think it’s them, but I’m not sure. The guy looks incredibly nervous; he’s sweating bullets. The woman seems very tired and lethargic. Then, the guy asks for a table for two. The server walks him to a table. He sees the table with flowers and asks to sit at that table. The server tells him it is for a reservation, and he says, “Yeah, that was me.” Weird start, but okay. We seat them there.

The woman opens the card and reads it. She doesn’t seem that interested; she just sets it to the side. Every employee is watching this table from the corner of their eyes, waiting for something to happen. But they are silent. The only words spoken are their drink orders to the server.

After their drinks come, they order some food and sit in more agonizing silence.

Then, the woman turns to the guy.

Woman: “Do you think this is going to change anything?”

And the fighting started. Once the shouting began, it became clear that this wasn’t a proposal. The guy had cheated on her and was trying to win her back.

The woman stormed out of the restaurant. The guy started crying, chased her, and didn’t come back.

I am the maître-d at a busy Manhattan spot. On weekends we mainly seat reservations, but we take walk-ins, as well.

Customer: “Can I see a menu, please? I have a party of two, if we choose to stay.”

I give her a menu. She takes it outside and proceeds to sit at one of the tables, which is reserved. I can’t have her sitting there as it is for parties of four, and I have one coming in soon.

Me: “Ma’am, can I offer you this table over here that’s meant for two?”

Customer: “No, I want to keep this table.”

Me: “I have reservations coming in that need the tables for four.”

Customer: “Put them at that other table you offered me.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but I can’t comfortably put a four-top reservation at a two-top table. And it wouldn’t be fair to do that to people who booked in advance.”

She finally takes the two-top after LOTS of arguing.

Then, her friend comes, and things get worse. She comes up to the front.

Customer: “Can you please move us? My friend is allergic to the sun and she can’t sit there.”

Me: “I’m glad to move you to an indoor table.”

Customer: “We don’t want an indoor table. We want that one!”

She points to another four-top.

Me: “Ma’am, what you see is what you get. The table I have you at is the only outdoor one I can give you. Would you like to speak to the manager?”

Customer: “Please.”

The manager, who is also my boyfriend, takes a look at my iPad and tells her what I told her.

Manager: “We can’t offer you any of these four-tops. You can sit where we seated you.”

She puts up another fight but then goes back to her two-top.

The host, who works beside me, walks by them not even five minutes later to seat someone else. They flag her down and tell her I’m awful and difficult. I go out there again to see if she’s still causing problems for staff and see that she and her friend have moved themselves to a larger table. I walk over and she goes on her whole “my friend is allergic to the sun” spiel. Her friend is pulling an Oscar-worthy performance, acting as if she’s ill. Meanwhile, it’s raining and there’s not a spot of sun out.

Me: “Once again, I am happy to move you inside to accommodate the sun allergy.”

Customer: “No, we can’t do that! We want this table!”

That’s it. I get the manager and he goes to tell them they have to move as we have a party of five coming for that table in ten minutes. They look at each other.

Customer: *To her friend* “Just ignore him and keep eating.”

They made conversation over him as he was trying to talk to them.

My boyfriend is an extremely chill guy. Not much gets to him, but I could tell that this was pushing him to the edge. He ended up calling the owner and the cops. He told them that these women were disrespecting his staff and he wanted to put a stop to it. He told the women he was going to call them beforehand, but this didn’t deter them, and they stayed put at the table.

The cops showed up and offered to escort them out, but the manager said no because at that point they were already basically done. (I would’ve just let them escort the women out because they were already there). The cops said they were happy to do things like this especially, when it comes to entitled customers, so that was nice, but they ended up leaving without talking to them.

I set up the five-top around them as they were eating, adding chairs and place settings. They ended their experience by telling the server he was wonderful and that he wouldn’t believe what “they had to go through”. Please.

I work for a retailer that provides mobile service. A customer comes in angry and upset.

Me: “How can I help you, ma’am?”

She begins to give me a very lengthy explanation about how she signed up for our mobile services with my coworker, and someone racked up over $600 in charges for a shared plan on her mother’s account.

Customer: “My mother is on a fixed income, and she can’t afford this. She’s going through a lot in life right now.”

I express my sympathy and attempt to help her out, just walking into the situation.

This is where it gets interesting.

Every time I try to read off what is on my computer system or billing ledger for her, she interrupts me and goes on a tirade about how that’s not what she signed up for or how the billing is incorrect.

As it turns out, the person berating me is the one who racked up all the charges. I tell her that.

Customer: “My son has autism, and he uses the phone nonstop.”

That’s not a problem, but it still doesn’t resolve the fact that she is the one who went over.

Customer: “All of the phones on that plan should be unlimited.”

I call up my coworker who helped them, and he confirm that they signed up for a shared plan. The woman denies this and tells me it was supposed to be unlimited when, in fact, my coworker says they insisted on the shared plan.

At this point, the customer switches to unlimited, but the charges remain because they are from a past billing statement.

Customer: “I want a refund for those charges!”

I have no authority to do so, especially for a $600-plus credit, so I email my supervisors and regional managers about what I should do.

All I can do at this point is send an email and provide her with some phone numbers to get her pointed in the right direction.

By this point, the woman is calmer and apologetic and thanks me for helping her.

Not thirty minutes later, she comes back in and interrupts me while I’m helping other customers. She starts berating me in front of them and shouts at me that no one will refund her. She forcefully puts her phone into my hands and has me speak to the phone representative.

Representative: “Since the charges were legitimate, we cannot refund her.”

The customer keeps shouting at me while I’m talking to this representative, and before I can get more information from them, she snatches her phone out of my hands.

Customer: “F*** this. F*** all of you! We’re going to the bank and cancelling the charges and switching carriers!”

And she abruptly left.

I work in a little section of a resort gift shop. We have our own cash registers and our own section of things people can buy that’s sort of separate from the rest of the gift shop

I am working the cash register like usual, and our little section is completely empty. This mother comes in with her baby who is wearing a shirt and nothing else — no diaper or pants, just bare butt. She walks right up to the counter, I greet her politely, and she decides to set her child on the counter. We don’t let customers set their kids on the counter at all, let alone bare-a**ed.

Me: “Ma’am, you can’t sit your child on the counter.”

She promptly snatches up her child.

Woman: “IT’S NOT LIKE HE’S HURTING IT!”

And she stormed out of the gift shop while I was standing there, blinking in surprise at how she went from zero to one hundred in the blink of an eye.

And yes, I did thoroughly disinfect the counter after she left.

I’m putting up stock and a lady approaches me.

Customer: “Do you have any barley?”

I know exactly what she wants: [Barley], small box, the only kind we carry. I lead her over to where I think it is, but it’s not there. Thinking it has been moved, I go to ask our produce manager because she’s always cooking and would know where it is. She doesn’t. So, we go to look. We find the assistant manager, who goes to check if we still carry it.

This lady is following right along with us the whole time, mind you. I find the store manager. He doesn’t know. We go looking. There’s now a group of five people wandering around the store, looking to help this customer. Finally, an assistant manager comes down and says we still carry it. She leads us directly to the space, but it’s empty.

Assistant Manager: “We carry it, ma’am, but we’re out at the moment.”

Customer: “I know. I was asking if you had any more.”