My best friends run a beautiful high-end bed and breakfast. They close it every February to go on vacation. I used to work there but haven’t in the last two years due to health; however, when they go out of town, I stay there and pet-sit for them.

This last time I was pet-sitting I heard a knock on the door. Assuming it was a friend or neighbor, I went to open it and saw two people I didn’t know, which is rare because we live in a tiny town and have the same friend group.

Me: “How can I help you? The owners are out of town.”

Customer: “Okayyyyy… Well, we have a reservation for tonight, and we need to get to our room immediately.”

Me: “That’s not possible; these dates are blocked off years in advance. I can call the owners and have them check.”

I gave the owners the customers’ names, and the owners found the reservation… for March 11, not February 11.

Me: “You’re a month early, I’m afraid. But I’d be happy to give you the names of some other inns that are open in the off season.”

Customer: “No. We made a reservation here and are staying here. Move!”

Me: “I’m sorry, sir, but if you check your reservation confirmation, you’ll see it’s for March 11, and we don’t have any rooms available, as the owners are out of town.”

They checked their emails on their phones and then quickly shoved them in my face.

Customer: “See?! 3/11! Now let me into my room!”

Me: “Sir, February is the second month, not the third.”

After realizing his mistake, he suggested that it was obviously the software’s fault and demanded I allow them to stay anyway. Uh, no. No rooms were made up, I certainly don’t cook, and there were no supplies in house. I told him for all those reasons and more that wouldn’t be possible. He became quite irate and started calling me all sorts of names — lazy, entitled, fat even — all while demanding a room. I shut and locked the door while his tirade continued, and I walked away.

Forty-five minutes later, I heard another knock. This time, it was the wife alone. I spoke to her through the window. She apologized and meekly asked me for the name of any open inns. I provided them to her, as I felt bad for her having to deal with this a**hole day in and day out.

They didn’t show up for their reservation in March but were charged full price for it.

A few days ago, I had a young couple checking into the hotel. As I was doing the check-in process, this was the exchange we had.

Guest: “Last time I stayed here, they upgraded us to a room with an ocean view. I told them it was our anniversary, so they just upgraded us. Do you think we can do that again?”

Me: “Yeah, of course! Just tell me the name of your last reservation and I’ll confirm we have it, and then I’ll put you in that ocean view room.”

Guest: “Oh, it was two years ago so I doubt you still have the reservation.”

Me: “No worries! Our system goes as far back as 2012.”

Guest: “Oh, back to 2012, huh? Uhh, okay, the name was [Name #1].”

Me: “Hmmm… I’m not seeing anything under that name.”

Guest: “Maybe I had it under [Name #2].”

Me: “Nope, nothing under that, either. Let me just bring up all the reservations I had on this day two years ago.”

Of course, I found nothing.

Me: “Sorry, sir, if it was here, I would definitely upgrade you back to the room you said you’d been upgraded to. But since it’s not here, I can’t. Do you maybe have the confirmation in your emails?”

Guest: “I do not. No worries.”

His demeanor after this exchange was very awkward; it was obvious he was embarrassed. His girlfriend also looked like she was going to make fun of him once they went to their room. In my head, I pictured them in the car on their way here with him betting her that he could easily get an upgrade.

The funny thing is, if he had just told me that it was his anniversary, I would have upgraded them. I just don’t like when people lie or say stories to imply what they want. If you want something, just ask. It’s even worse on his part because he wasn’t even paying for the reservation; it was his girlfriend. That’s fine, but if you’re going to lie for an upgrade, I’d expect you to be the one paying for the room. If he was the one paying and he lied, I probably would have called him out the way I did but still upgraded him just to be nice.

I work for a large-scale ISP in the United States. I work on anything residential, but I also offer technical support for small businesses and enterprises. This happened around a year ago. I work in the chat department, and I got a chat.

The guy chatted in, gave his details, and stated that he was having speed issues. I looked at his modem. Everything looked fine, so we decided to run a speed test. The speed test indicated that he was getting great speed and had a ping of 10. With modems, any ping from 5 to 50ms is considered great.

Customer: “But I’m lagging in my online games.”

He was hard-wired from his Xbox into the modem. We ran speed tests on the Xbox, as well, and it was showing very similar numbers to what we were getting with his PC.

Me: “There shouldn’t be an issue. You should try rebooting the Xbox or taking it to Microsoft since it’s a third-party device.”

Customer: “No, your connection is the issue, not my Xbox. I want higher ping!”

I explained to him what higher ping would do and that it would make the lag worse, but he didn’t believe me; he was going off what his friends were telling him. I get that in some games, lag can actually help (extremely rare).

Customer: “If you don’t give me higher ping, I’m leaving your company.”

Me: “Would you like to be on a lower plan that will make your ping higher?”

Customer: “Yes!”

We got him from 250mbps download and 10mbps upload to 50mbps download and 5mbps upload. We tested his connection and there was a higher ping due to the number of devices connected. He thanked me, told me I should get a raise, and hung up.

To this day, I still check up on that account every month or so and he has yet to change his speed back to the speed he had before. I guess all he wanted was higher ping after all.

Years ago, I worked at a small consulting firm/software developer that worked primarily with local government offices. Working with local government is… interesting. Let’s just say that they have more than the normal share of people who wind up in positions they aren’t fully qualified for.

One such individual was the head of IT support for one of our customers’ offices. This gentleman was very sure of his expertise in all things computer. Those of us who had to deal with him, however, were skeptical.

We met with [IT Support] and other members of this particular customer administration once a month to discuss our software implementation. It wasn’t what I’d call a flawless rollout, but despite a rocky start, things had started to smooth out, most staff at that government office had transitioned to the new app, and we had worked out the kinks of most of the workflows.

Or so we thought…

[IT Support] was apparently not happy with our software. Rather than submit his concerns as tickets to our helpdesk — which I ran — he decided the appropriate way to handle this was to ambush me with a laundry list of complaints at our monthly meeting, in front of my boss, and in front of his boss.

In the middle of the meeting, he stood up, pulled out a stack of papers, and read complaint after complaint to the room. All complaints were from him, rather than actual end-users, many of which had already been addressed, but he saved the best for last. His final complaint was that he was looking at the data extract our software generated to comply with a state reporting requirement and that the “font the application uses looks extremely unprofessional!”

After pointing out that this was literally the first time we were hearing all of the unaddressed issues, since he had never reported them to our help desk per the established policy, I expressed confusion over the last complaint, since the data extract just generates a .csv file. We don’t have a specific viewer bundled with our app, so… that particular report doesn’t get any fonts from us. I asked for a screenshot, and [IT Support] agreed to send it once he got back to his office.

Sure enough, he sent a screenshot showing the contents of the report displayed in good old Comic Sans font… opened in Notepad… in a screenshot that included his Windows desktop, where all the icons also had their names in Comic Sans font.

Turns out [IT Support] had taken advantage of the Windows theme feature, selected a theme that used Comic Sans as the default font for all Windows applications, and then… accused us of using an unprofessional font.

I do art commissions. Sometimes I meet really awful people who are literally nothing but rude. This particular guy will probably stay in my memory forever.

It all started with a job offer that I commented on. The client offered roughly $100 for a dozen or so complicated illustrations in a very specific style, and he needed it done really fast.

I commented:

Me: “$100 is not enough to pay for such a big commission. If you want to find someone, and fast, you should offer more money.”

Other artists wrote him similarly, but he focused on me specifically.

Within an hour or two, my profile was flooded with offensive comments sent from his fake accounts. It was noticeable because each of the accounts was created just a moment before and the names were very similar to each other. He claimed to be my former clients, claimed that I had stolen money from him without giving the commission at all, and claimed that I was extremely rude to them. He even called me a psychopath.

When other artists and my actual clients started to defend me by leaving nice comments on my profile, he replied back to everyone saying it was just my spam accounts. Seriously, he thought that since he had created tons of fake accounts to slander me, I was going to do the same to fight him. He literally couldn’t believe that my satisfied customers’ accounts weren’t mine. He even claimed that all people who defended me were just “my gang”.

I started hiding his comments on my profile, but then they started popping up under all my submissions, claiming that I stole all the characters I drew for people as commissions. He didn’t even try to make it look believable. He was just switching over and over between fake accounts and writing, “Stolen,” and, “It’s stolen, too.”

At one point, his actions looked so idiotic that no one was believing him. Everyone knew that this was some kind of madman who got on with me. But when that happened, he decided he had to take revenge on me for this humiliation. He started creating new fake accounts, but the names included my nickname and various insults such as “fraud,” “psychopath,” etc.

It took about three days. Every day, he tried to slander me in new ways. He pretended to be clients who complained about my job and lied that I stole his money. He even pretended to be professional artists who came to call my work crap.

Honestly? I envy him the energy he put into it all. He had to write tons of comments and put up a lot of fake accounts just to finally humiliate himself. The funniest thing is that he insisted that I attacked him after he turned down my offer to work together because I wasn’t good enough, which never actually happened. I was the one who told him that $100 was not enough to cover the costs.

He also spread the link to his original post, claiming that that’s the one where I was attacking him. Our conversation there took literally three comments: me saying that he should raise payment a bit, him replying that I should not leave a comment If I wasn’t asked for it, and me saying bye. That was his proof of what a psycho I am.