I work at the front desk of a hotel. The hotel is pretty upscale and sits on a marina. A happy couple checked in the night before their wedding, and I just knew they’d be a handful, but I still seriously underestimated them.

On the first night (wedding eve), they kept calling for maintenance because they couldn’t get the fireplace to turn on or the jets in the tub to work. (It turned out that the trick was to press “on”.) Then, the complaints of loud sex start rolling in, followed by complaints of heated arguing.

We all survived night one. The wedding day was here. They got married on a boat with mainly the groom’s family on board. The bride got so drunk that they literally ditched her a** at the marina. One of the dock hands found her, eighties dress and all, wandering the boat slips.

We sent security to help her, but they couldn’t find her. While they were searching, she stumbled into the lobby bare-footed, losing her s***, grabbing every guest who had the misfortune of walking by, and sobbing to them. She nearly ruined a guest’s Versace suit crying on his arm (unsolicited and very awkwardly). Luckily, he was a good sport.

Before security could make it back, the groom showed up. They proceed to have a public argument and make-up (with plenty of PDA) for all to see.

Security finally rescued me and got them to their room. The last of the fun was more noise complaints of loud sex and arguing. Security pretty much had to set up camp on their floor.

I’m sure they’re still happily married to this day.

I’m a professional chef, and I have been for a few years. In Australia, apprentice chefs are trained in a sort of college where we learn about 150 recipes. Many of the recipes are provided to the students in bulky, finicky booklets that you wouldn’t really want to take anywhere with you, so I started writing some of the recipes in a separate notebook along with some other recipes I’d learned from coworkers or family members. I created a sort of pseudo-cookbook, and I would often bring this book into the kitchen so I would remember ingredient quantities and cooking times. Eventually, I would leave the book in the kitchen pretty much around the clock.

I soon found out that some of the other chefs in the kitchen were using my cookbook to check official recipes for the restaurant we worked for (as typically the head chef would have to tell them and this got annoying for everyone). This restaurant was a part of a popular sports club in the area, so consistency was extremely important to management. Therefore, having a written record of the new recipes or changes to long-time recipes was very important.

As it turned out, management had stopped making changes to the official club recipe book a few months before I even started, so my book had become the de facto official recipe book. For a while, this was no issue to me, and I kept adding new recipes to it throughout the next few years.

However, after my third year working there, I finished my studies and became fully qualified as a chef, so I suddenly became more expensive to keep on as a staff member. Therefore, management started looking for any reason to replace me with a new apprentice.

Eventually, they found someone to replace me and gave a half-a**ed reason for firing me and told me:

Management: “Take all your things and leave. You can no longer offer what we are looking for.”

So, I took everything I owned — including the notebook with all the club’s recipes — and left.

For a few days, not a whole lot happened, but slowly, the club’s reviews started complaining about bland food, dry cakes, inconsistent classic recipes, and every other food-related thing you could think of. At one point, there were fifty negative reviews in a single day. For our town, that was a massive amount in one day. It felt pretty d*** good since I felt they deserved it and left me unemployed on short notice. However, I was quickly offered a new job by a smaller restaurant whose owner knew me from the sports club kitchen.

After about a week, I received multiple calls. I answered one, and it was one of the higher managers from the sports club.

Manager: “Could you return the recipe book? The kitchen needs it back.”

I laughed but replied firmly:

Me: “It’s my book full of my recipes, so it isn’t going anywhere near you. I’ll remind you that you told me I ‘could no longer offer what you were looking for.’”

The manager clearly began to panic; he offered to give me my job back and “just let bygones be bygones”. I already had a new job, so I completely brushed off this offer and ignored him. I hung up pretty soon after that.

I started putting the recipes from my book on the new restaurant’s menu, and it began to attract a few regular customers of the sports club, so I quickly found myself with more and more responsibility and command within the kitchen. It got to the point where about a third of the menu was from my book.

This slow trickle of sports club regulars picked up speed after about three months and led to several high-level managers from the club deciding to visit the restaurant I’d helped build. They basically demanded I give them my cookbook, claiming it would be much more beneficial for the community if they had it. My head chef laughed in their faces and told them to piss off.

It’s been about two years. My head chef and I have a very positive relationship, and the customer base we have at the restaurant is better than ever.

We didn’t take every customer from the big club, but it was enough damage to their profits to scare a few investors away, and it caused a decent bit of damage to one of the higher managers’ reputations. Furthermore, the recipe issues and negative reviews led to the majority of the kitchen quitting. According to one of my old colleagues, they cited the lack of support and organisation from upper management as the final reasons everyone was quitting, and this led to an even larger dip in the quality of the restaurant food.

I also get paid significantly more at this restaurant than I did at the sports club.

I used to manage a pizza chain. Every Friday night, this lady would call and claim that her pizzas had been an hour late and demand a free pizza. The last time she did it, she caught me on the day when my girlfriend had broken up with me out of the blue.

I was already pissed off and hurt, so when the order girl up front yelled back that it was the scammer again, I grinned and said to put her on hold. I got this.

Scammer: “Is this the manager? My pizza—”

Using the caller ID, I pulled up her name, address, and order history and then interrupted her.

Me: “Yes, this is the manager — the same manager you call every Friday at 7:00 pm to complain and get a free pizza. Well, that’s not happening. Your name has now been changed to ‘SCAMMER’. You are no longer allowed to shop with us. The phone number for [Other Pizza Chain] one block from you is [phone number]. I’m sure they will gladly take your call.”

Then, I hung up.

Not two minutes later, I heard my order girl gasp and start crying, so I went out and took the phone from her. It was the scammer, and she was SCREAMING obscenities at this poor girl. So, I hung up and waited for the inevitable callback.

Sure enough, two minutes later, she called back, and I answered the phone. She started screaming that she wanted the manager. I said I was the manager. She cursed at me and I hung up again.

She called AGAIN, and I answered, leading with:

Me: “This is the manager speaking. Curse at me again, and you will hear dial tone again. How can I help you?”

She started berating me for my horrible employees and my horrible attitude.

Scammer: “I’m going to get you fired! My brother is the district manager! But it can all go away if you just deliver my pizza!”

Me: “Tell [District Manager] that [My Name] at [Location] said you’re a b**** and will never be served by us again!”

Oh, boy, did she get mad. Among other things, she said:

Scammer: “My husband is going to kick your a**!”

Me: “You’re in luck: you know where I am, and I’m the only guy on tonight, so it won’t be hard to find me.”

Roughly twenty minutes later, a man and woman came in. The woman was livid, and the man was pacing the lobby, all jacked up on adrenaline, ready to fight.

I was sitting behind the counter, and I smiled really big.

Me: “How can I help you?”

Scammer: “ARE YOU THE MANAGER?!”

Me: “Why, yes, ma’am. I am.”

Scammer: “[Husband], you’d better kick this motherf*****’s a**!”

Her husband came marching around the counter.

At that point, I got up — all 6’5″, 245 pounds of me — and looked straight down at this five-foot-nothing guy. He immediately turned around, went back to his wife, and started yelling at her.

Husband: “You said I had to beat down some dude! You ain’t say s*** about beating down a g**d***ed SASQUATCH! WE ARE LEAVING!”

That was the last I ever saw or heard of that woman. It was a great night.

As with most Asian families, my family believes that having a white-collar job is above anything. This is very evident with a couple of relatives who force their children to go to medical school. Any career other than a doctor is a sin in their eyes.

My mother was open-minded about my choice of career. The only condition she had was that I should have at least a bachelor’s degree before getting a job. So, I started working in the IT industry after college graduation. I had decent pay, I was able to learn and experiment at my own pace, and I even got an opportunity to work abroad. I was happy with my career.

Things weren’t easy at first, as with all jobs. I struggled to settle down with the workload and the new city. I reached out to my family to help me find a job near my home. My entitled relatives got hold of this piece of news during a family gathering.

Instead of helping me out, they scoffed. My aunt told my younger cousins:

Aunt: “See, this is why you shouldn’t be an engineer. You’re going to struggle and end up with nothing. After all, a doctor is the most respectable job in society.”

I blinked at her. I was shocked that she could just insult my career in front of everyone. I was also disgusted at her because she’s a teacher and I expected her to know better. I didn’t want to make a scene, so I didn’t talk back. But someone else did: my mother.

My mother is a single parent. She was a brilliant student at school and dreamt of being a teacher. But that was all gone when she was married off. She regretted that when she was divorced and struggled to live. She wanted her daughters not to go through the same thing. She sold her jewellery and spent her savings to get us a decent education so that we could get jobs. She was furious when someone insulted our hard work.

She didn’t hold back her anger as she thundered:

Mother: “Are you out of your d*** mind, [Aunt]? You’re a teacher! Can’t you show a bit of dignity when you speak? Don’t you have common sense to think that your daughter couldn’t work in a hospital with electricity, running water, machines, or software if there were no engineers? Even a janitor at the hospital has their value. If you ever insult my daughter or her choices again, you will see the worst of me!”

The room was silent as everyone watched my aunt process what was going on. Nobody had ever seen my mother that mad.

But it did a good thing. [Aunt] never raised a word about her children’s careers or mine after that. Also, two of my cousins got into the engineering stream following the incident!

I worked in an insurance company call centre to help pay my way through university about ten years ago, and although I was part-time, I was recognised for having a good rapport and became a bit of an example of how to interact with customers due to being considered a bit of a chameleon.

I could be speaking with the financial director of an oil and gas company with an enormous liability risk and have the same effective rapport with them as I might with a farmer wanting the minimum cover possible for a forty-year-old truck that wouldn’t leave their farm, who was haggling and having a laugh with me.

Calls were monitored for training and compliance on a regular basis, so my calls were picked up by the compliance team for being of high quality. They asked if I would mind if they picked a few of my calls to demonstrate to new staff the different ways that I would mirror each customer’s expressions and portray a likeness to gain trust, making the calls easier, making the customers more relaxed about answering questions, and ultimately making it less of a sale and more of a consultation.

I agreed, and the compliance team went to work, selected quite a few calls, and then arranged for us to all sit in a room to listen to them.

They found quite a few examples of objection handling, calming irate customers, upselling, and professional yet friendly rapport. These were all their words. (And despite how I have described myself so far, I didn’t realise that this was a marketable skill or anything at that point; I was just being me and trying to do a good job, so I found it really embarrassing to listen to.)

They put together all of the audio clips and presented them to the training team to assess. They liked the examples, they put them to the test, and the feedback was great.

They then asked if I would mind doing a live call with a customer for the new staff to listen in on and see how I reacted off-the-cuff. Again, I agreed, and we arranged to have the audio of the call played in the training room, along with a mirror of my screen so that they could see what I was doing. (This is slightly important as it changed the process.)

My first call came in. It was a plumber looking to change his van on his policy. Simple. I made a few jokes, made sure everything was accurate, and got all of the legal and regulatory jargon completed. Happy customer.

The next call was from an estate owner who was looking to renew her estate insurance. It was a very serious call, strictly professional, and with very little rapport as she was giving one-word responses and everything was “taking too long”. It was a good example of when to just do exactly what the customer was looking for and no more. However, with a room full of new staff and her bank account likely having a few zeros before the decimal, I opted to use our secure telephone payment system rather than have her read out the card details to me over the phone and be heard in the other room whilst also being recorded on the call.

Me: “Okay, that will be [total]. And if you have your card there just now, I will talk you through our secure telephone payment system.”

Customer: “Yes, I do, as long as it doesn’t take long.”

Me: “No, no, if done correctly, your payment will be made and your policy will be renewed in the next thirty seconds. I am now going to start the telephone payment process. When I tell you to, type in the long card number on your phone, followed by the pound key; that will then populate my screen with your card details censored out.”

Customer: “Okay, bear with me.” *Pauses* “Done.”

Me: “I don’t think that has worked. Can you try that again?”

Customer: “I thought you said this would be quick. Okay, doing it now.”

Me: “Oh, I don’t think that has worked again. Can I just confirm that you are pressing the pound key?”

Customer: “Yes, I am hitting the bloody pound key. I don’t have time for this terrible system. If it doesn’t work this time, I won’t be doing it a fourth.”

Me: “I’m really sorry about this, I am not sure what is going wrong. But if it doesn’t work this time, I can arrange to call you at a better time to take the payme—”

Customer: *Interrupting* “Done.”

Me: “I’m sorry, it hasn’t worked this time, either.”

Customer: “Oh, for God’s sake. This is absolutely ridiculous. All I want to do is renew my policy. It really shouldn’t be this difficult. We decided to stay with you because it is a good policy, but there is obviously a reason why you are working in a call centre if you can’t take a bloody payment.”

Me: “I’m really sorry about the trouble here. I don’t understand what is going wrong, as everything looks correct on our side. There may be an issue with your phone connecting to our system. Could we possibly try your landline?”

Customer: “I am on my landline. Do you think because my mobile doesn’t have great signal, that is the issue?”

Me: “Sorry, what do you mean? Are you on your landline or mobile?”

Customer: “What don’t you understand? I am speaking to you on the landline.”

Me: “Okay, but you asked if your mobile not having signal could be the issue?”

Customer: “Yes, I am speaking with you on my landline. My mobile phone isn’t doing anything when I press pound.”

Me: *Blurting out* “Sorry, just to check, are you speaking to me on your landline and putting your card number into your mobile phone?”

Customer: *Condescendingly* “Yes! Now we are getting somewhere.”

Me: *Trying not to laugh* “I am… Ahem… I think I have… Ahem… Found the issue. You see… Ahem… You need to type your card number into the phone connected to the call — not just a random phone.”

Customer: “It’s not just a random phone; it’s my phone… Oh.”

Me: *Getting the giggles properly this time* “I am so sorry. I don’t know why I am laughing. You just caught me off guard with that one.”

She burst out laughing, too.

Customer: “Oh, my God, I am such an idiot.”

The two of us laughed uncontrollably for about a minute. I finally moved us along, tears running down my face.

Me: “Sorry, I know you were in a rush. Shall we try this again?”

In proper hysterics and not able to speak, the customer started typing in her card number properly this time.

Customer: “Done. Hopefully, that works.”

The two of us kept ohhing and ahhing from the aches of laughing so much.

Me: “Right. Now I just need you to put in the three-digit security code from your card and push pound again.”

There was silence, and then we both hit hysterics again.

There were then another five minutes of on-and-off giggling before she finally thanked me for my patience and for giving her a much-needed laugh.

I came off the phone sweating and aching with pains in my cheeks and ribs, walked into the training room, and got a standing ovation. Apparently, every single person in there was in hysterics with us the entire time.

I heard recently that the call is still used sometimes and is named “[My Name] Thawing The Ice Queen Live.”