During my summer break, I often work part-time for a local country club/golf course. I help the groundskeepers, and I took the job with one provision: “no member interaction”. I’m what you would call a surly old b*****d.

One morning, I was finishing my shift, and I noticed an older woman stumble. She looked injured.

Me: “Do you need help? Or do you need medical attention?”

Woman: “Oh, I’m fine. My daughter will be right here soon.”

Her daughter returned, very distraught, but the woman said she had just slipped and would be fine. As the daughter helped walk her mom back into the clubhouse, I brought her clubs up and left them outside. (Heck, they were on a cart.)

Now that was how the end of my day began.

As I walked back to a maintenance shed to retrieve my water bottle, I heard someone come up behind me.

Member: “Excuse me. My friend and I would like some iced teas while we let this other group play through.”

Me: “Okay, go ahead…”

Then, she tried to push a $20 bill into my hand.

Member: “Can you hurry? We don’t want to wait all day.”

Me: “If you’re waiting on me, you will be waiting all day. That’s not what I do on the course, and I’m leaving.”

Member: “You work here, and I’m a member, so you do what I need.”

I said something to the effect of:

Me: “Lady, what you need is therapy if you think I’m bringing you tea.”

I walked off while she was still talking.

The next day, the “manager” stopped me and told me there had been a complaint.

Me: “I don’t care. Fire me if you want, and find someone else to clean the goose s*** off the patio each day.”

The waterfowl come onto a large patio area overnight and leave calling cards everywhere.

Me: “I had an agreement: No Customer Service!”

So, I walked away and went home.

My manager called me the next day asking if I would please return to work. He said later that he’d talked to the member and informed her that grounds staff do not interact with members.

That last part about not interacting with members/customers isn’t completely true. I have enjoyed many rounds of golf with members. There’s an older gentleman who asks if I have time for a round just about every other week. Let’s just say my golf prowess makes him look like a PGA champ…

I work for a pet-sitting and house-sitting company, and I had a new client on my schedule to take care of a dog for two weeks, three visits a day.

When I got to the house and went in, I saw a kid and thought the family must be running late leaving and hadn’t let us know.

Me: *To the kid* “Hi! It’s okay; don’t be scared.”

Then, I called out for the parents.

Kid: “They’re gone.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Kid: “You need to hurry up and make my breakfast and take me to school!”

Me: “What do you mean? Where are your parents?”

Kid: “They’re gone on their trip. Hurry up; I’m hungry!”

Me: “How old are you?”

Kid: “Seven.”

Me: “And your parents left you here alone?”

Kid: “Yeah. My mom told me you’d be by in the morning to make me breakfast and take me to school, in the afternoon to pick me up from school and make me a snack, and at night to make me supper.”

Me: “Where’s [Dog], the dog?”

Kid: “We don’t have a dog.”

Me: “When my boss came to meet your parents and get the house keys, she met a dog.”

Kid: “Oh, my mom borrowed the neighbor’s dog.”

OMG. I called the company owner and told her what was going on. Of course, she was flabbergasted and came over immediately. She tried to get ahold of the kid’s parents, but they weren’t answering their phones, so she called CPS [Child Protective Services] and explained everything when they arrived. CPS took the kid, got the parents’ information, and left.

The next day, the kid’s mom called the owner and left a rambling, screaming message.

Mom: “How could you turn my kid into CPS?! You broke our contract! We’re going to sue you for that! And we’re going to sue you for the cost of our ruined vacation!”

The owner called them back and told them that our agreement was to take care of a dog, not a kid, and that what they’d done was illegal anyway. She also pointed out that borrowing a dog for her to meet for the client meeting was deliberate misrepresentation, so good luck with a lawsuit.

She hasn’t heard from them since. I guess our pet-sitting service was cheaper than hiring someone to watch the child properly. We still can’t understand how this woman thought this would actually work.

Related:
Some Parents Are Way Too Comfortable Leaving Their Kids With Strangers, Part 3
Some Parents Are Way Too Comfortable Leaving Their Kids With Strangers, Part 2
Some Parents Are Way Too Comfortable Leaving Their Kids With Strangers

CONTENT WARNING: Harassment/Stalking

I’m a woman in my late twenties, and I work in a restaurant. I have a male customer, around fifty, whom I have served a couple of times before. He asked me out sometime in early 2020, and I told him no.

The day after Christmas of 2020, this man came in alone and sat in my section. I was hoping that he wouldn’t recognize me this time because I was wearing a mask and I had changed my hair. Unfortunately, he did remember me, but his meal was fairly uneventful.

The issue started when I dropped off his check. As I reached to pick up his payment, he grabbed my hand (during a global health crisis) and said:

Customer: “I love you.”

I was caught very off guard, so I just gave an awkward laugh and walked away to swipe his card and get him outta there. When I walked back with his receipt and card, he asked:

Customer: “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve? Would you like to go out with me?”

Me: “No, I will be home with my husband.“

Customer: “Oh, I didn’t realize you were married.” *Looking at my wedding ring* “Well, he’s a lucky man.”

And he winked. Gross. I told him to have a good night and walked away, deciding I was not going back to my section until he got up because he was creeping me out.

I figured that would be the end of it and I could go on with my night. No such luck. He sat at the table for another fifteen minutes waiting for me to return. I refused to go over there, so I asked other servers to run my food, and I helped run their food to other parts of the restaurant.

He finally got up, but then he went and stood by the host stand for another twenty minutes watching me. At that point, I was feeling super uncomfortable and getting very anxious about him still being there. I finally told my boss what was going on and that I was uncomfortable, so he kept his eye on the customer for me.

When the man finally left the building, [Boss] came to tell me that he’d watched the man get in his car and I could relax.

About thirty minutes later, [Boss] started hovering around my section.

Boss: “You haven’t done anything wrong, but I am going to be spending some time in my section.”

He did this twice, and over an hour after the customer had left, he pulled me to the side to talk to me.

It turned out the guy never left and was still sitting in his car. He had walked into the restaurant twice looking and wandering around and went to the bathroom. [Boss] was worried about me and called the cops on the guy. The cops came in to ask me what had happened, and they asked if [Boss] and I would like to have him trespassed.

Boss: “It’s your choice, [My Name].”

Me: “Yes. After this, I can’t imagine having to see him again.”

The cops pulled the man out of his car and told him he would be arrested if he ever came back to our restaurant.

This incident gave me pretty bad anxiety for a week or two after it happened. Why was he sitting in his car for so long? By the time the cops got to him, he had been at our restaurant for over two hours after he finished eating and paid for his meal. What would have happened if [Boss] hadn’t been watching him? I wouldn’t have known that he didn’t leave. Was he waiting for me to get off so he could follow me, kidnap me, rape me, murder me? Several weeks later, a manager is still walking me to my car every night when I leave.

I’m grateful my manager had my back and took my concerns seriously. But I hate that it went so far. I wish I would have had the quick thinking and the courage to tell him, “DON’T TOUCH ME.” I wish I could be more verbal and stand up for myself sooner instead of having a freeze-and-appease reaction. But I do feel like I learned from the situation, and hopefully, if there is ever another time I’m in a similar situation, I will be stronger.

I work security in a phone shop in a major city. It’s pretty much the flagship shop’s overflow shop, so we aren’t busy unless the main shop is packed. Today, both shops are insanely full. There is a large queue in the shop, and it isn’t getting smaller.

This man walks in and starts walking past the queue. It’s not like the queue is hard to miss. So, I approach him.

Me: “Excuse me, sir. There’s a queue there you need to join.”

Customer: “No, I’m fine.”

Me: “Sir, there’s a queue; you have to join it if you want to talk to staff.”

He has now walked past the queue, which is about ten people long, and is standing opposite the desk by the wall.

Me: “Sir, if you want to talk to staff, you have to join the queue.”

Customer: “I heard you the first time.”

Me: “Okay, but you will not be served before the people in the queue.”

Customer: “Whatever. You go back to the door and leave me alone.”

I looked at the manager, and he gave me a nod to let me know he had this.

The man tried a couple of times to be served, but the staff told him to join the queue. Then, they just ignored him as they served the people in the queue.

The queue did not get smaller; in fact, it grew a couple of times. I watched the man get annoyed and start huffing and cursing under his breath.

He had to wait for almost an hour and a half because he wouldn’t join the queue. When the shop was finally empty, the staff took their sweet time with the paperwork. (The manager said they could and he would sort the man out.)

The manager approached him, and he was not happy. He complained about the wait, and the manager just looked at him with absolute incredulity. The man eventually said something racist to the manager, and the manager kicked him out.

I had just finished playing a few hours of “Demon’s Souls” when my Min Pin [Miniature Pinscher] started to beg for some attention. It was around 3:00 pm, so she was probably hungry. I grabbed my keys and drove a few blocks to my local [Supermarket Chain]. I just needed puppy food and a bottle of Tapatio hot sauce to complete my shopping for today.

I grabbed the puppy food first and then headed for my hot sauce. As luck would have it, there was only one left, but it was on the top shelf, and in the back corner. I’m 5’10”, and I have a pretty good reach, but this one was a bit too far for me. I looked around for an employee but could not find one. I decided to just hang tight and simply ask a normal customer who was tall if they would not mind lending me a hand. The first guy who walked by my area happened to be tall, and I decided to ask for help.

Me: “Hi. Sorry to bother you—”

Guy: *Cutting me off* “I don’t work here.”

Me: “Sorry, I know you don’t work here. I was just wondering if you would be so kind as to lend me a hand. You are taller than me, and I am not able to reach a bottle. Would you be able to assist me?”

I figured that if I told him I understood that he was not an employee and that I was simply asking for a quick hand from another human being, he might be cool with it. Wrong.

Guy: *In the d****iest way possible* “H*** no.”

Me: “Okay, no worries. Thank you.”

I figured he was under no obligation to help me, so don’t be rude, and don’t say anything else.

The next time a person walked by, I asked the same question, and they said sure, no sweat, and handed me the bottle. I thanked them for the help, and off I went to pay for everything.

The fifteen-items-or-less line was long, so it took me a bit to get out of the store. When I got to my car, the tall guy from before was struggling to open the trunk of his car and not drop all his groceries; he had tried to carry a bunch of bags in both arms and also carry a few boxes on top, using his chin to hold them down. He was a few moments away from toppling over and losing his eggs and fruit bag when he noticed someone nearby — me.

Guy: “Quick, I’m about to lose my grip! Please help.”

I stopped. I am guessing he knew what was coming from his expression.

Me: “I don’t work here”

I unlocked my car, and as I was getting in, I heard something hit the ground and the guy started yelling something. I don’t know what he said because I was too busy not giving a single F about that p***k. I did see in my rearview mirror that his eggs were splattered on the ground, and some fruit was rolling away under some nearby cars.

You don’t want to help a person? That’s fine; just don’t expect help in return.

Related:
Turnabout Is Fair Play