I work at the customer service desk in a grocery store. Recently, the lottery payout was at almost $2,000,000,000. I had a gentleman come to my window and purchase almost $1,200 in tickets. He made a joke I’ve heard a million times over.

Customer: “If I don’t win, I get my money back, right?”

He even said this while laughing and smiling. I gave him a generic polite smile, and he went on his way.

They drew the numbers the following day, and I heard that someone in California had won. I showed up to my shift, and it seemed to be a normal shift. That was until the gentleman came back. Despite one of my coworkers offering him assistance, he said he wanted to talk with me. I finished with the customer I was with and waved him over.

Before I could greet him he slammed down his pile of tickets, receipt included.

Customer: “Okay, missy, I didn’t win anything! You said if I didn’t win, I would get my money back, so I am here for my full refund!”

I was slightly taken aback. I was trying to figure out if he was being serious or not, and after a moment, I realized he was.

Me: “Sir, regardless of winning or not, all sales on any lottery tickets are final.”

Customer: *Screaming* “NO, NO, NO! You said it yesterday! If I didn’t win, I get my money back! Now refund me before I call the cops and tell them you stole all my money!”

Me: *Calmly* “I understand that you are upset that you lost, but no one has stolen your money. This is just how the lottery system works.”

I could see he was getting more upset and not wanting to hear what I had to say. This was when it became one of those “I don’t get paid enough” moments. He had started getting more and more upset, so he decided to start knocking over a nearby display of candy and glass soda and beer bottles while shouting about how we had stolen his money. I had enough of this and called for both management and security.

Management ended up calling the police while security detained the man, and he ended up causing more than $350 in damages. It was definitely an interesting one.

As can sometimes unfortunately happen, our flight has been canceled (after a significant delay already), so we passengers are queuing up at the airline’s help desk to find out what options we have.

While this is frustrating for everybody, I have seen wave after wave of passengers shouting some truly awful abuse at the poor woman representing the airline in my particular queue. It has been relentless, and the passenger she is dealing with currently has been the worst.

Passenger: “Unacceptable! You will f****** get me on a plane to f****** Chicago right this f****** minute!”

Airline Representative: “Sir, as I have already explained, there are no more flights to Chicago from this airport for the rest of the evening. I can get you a flight to Indianapolis in the next hour and from there a connecting—”

Passenger: “Are you as stupid as you look?! I said that was f****** unacceptable! Did you not learn proper English when your mama smuggled you over the border, you f****** smelly [slur for Latinos]?! Get… me… to… Chicago… now!“

The airline representative simply stares at this awful human being for a moment, and anyone looking can tell that she has just broken. She has been putting on a brave face for this whole ordeal, but the water in her eyes shows she has now reached her limit.

Luckily, this passenger has been shouting his abuse so loudly that he has attracted the attention of airport security. Three large men have approached him from behind.

Security: “Sir, please come with us.”

Passenger: “Why? Do you have a plane for me?”

Security: “No, sir, we’re escorting you away from the airport. Your behavior is posing a risk to staff and other passengers.”

Passenger: “Oh, f*** off! You can’t be serious.”

Security: “Sir, your options are an escort to the exit or an escort to a holding cell where you will be collected by the police. Choose.”

Passenger: “You f****** stupid—”

Security: *With zero hesitation* “Holding cell it is! Well done. You just squandered your free pass.” *To his colleagues* “Gentlemen?”

They all step closer, and the passenger only then realizes how badly he has f***ed up. Thankfully, he allows himself to be escorted away without a fight.

When it’s finally my turn to be served, I am being seen by another representative.

Me: “Is that poor woman okay?”

Other Airline Representative: *In a whisper* “I… I think she just quit.”

I’m not sure about their workplace or Human Resources rules, but in case I wasn’t supposed to know that, I whisper back:

Me: “I don’t blame her for one second!”

I know it can be frustrating when airlines cancel flights, but raging like a bigoted maniac is not how you complain!

I worked in a hotel with a bar — a super ritzy place where there was a room that was over $5,000 a night and a shot of alcohol that was $1,000 — for a little over two years and have hundreds of stories. However, I am going to start off with one of my favorites. I was the supervisor of the contract security division.

After a portion of the rush was taken care of one night, I had the opportunity to go out for a lightly deserved smoke break. The smoking section was beneath the balcony of the bar. While I was shooting the s*** with a coworker, I heard the crash of a bottle as it fell from the balcony.

“Oh, s***. Time to get back to work,” I thought, as that was never a good sign.

When I got up to the bar and made my way through the crowd, I spoke to one of my officers who had a really keen eye for dumba**ery. I gave him an update and asked him to keep an eye on the balcony. He did so, and not even a minute later he came back to me.

Officer: “I just saw someone throwing a bottle off the balcony.”

[Officer] later informed me that [Guest] had been trying to sell alcohol to another bar patron, which is illegal in my state. That bar patron told [Guest] no but that they were going to get security, which is why [Guest] had decided to throw the bottle of alcohol from the balcony.

My second-in-command officer and I approached the guest, and we escorted him out.

In our bar, we had a sign at the exit for people leaving that stated, “No alcohol beyond this point”, which was one of our ways of keeping the place state legal. As we passed this sign, [Guest] must have seen the sign because he reached into his pocket and pulled out a little bag of coke.

Guest: “I don’t have any alcohol but I have this.”

At that point, I radioed property security, and they sent “Tower” over. Tower was an officer who worked private security for the property. He stood at about 6’8” and was a tower of a man.

I got [Guest] out on the second floor, and he wandered off. When Tower showed up, I updated him and gave him a description of [Guest], but at this point, [Guest] returned and shoved a group of random people, stating, “They were in my way,” as if he hadn’t done anything wrong. I went to talk to the group he had shoved, and Tower spoke to [Guest].

You know that one guy on your team that not a single person will screw with? That was Tower, mainly because there wasn’t anyone even close to his size, but also because he was a giant teddy bear. But [Guest] was pretty much ignoring Tower, to the point that he just walked away. Tower got the police on the radio and they met him at the skybridge.

I got the group that [Guest] had shoved to calm down, asked if everyone was unharmed, told them that we were handling this guy, and let them know that if they wanted to they could file assault charges. They declined, and we moved on.

I turned around to see [Guest] peeing off the skybridge while Tower was speaking on the radio.

At the end of this incident, [Guest] was trespassed from the property, but the police released him because the amount of coke in his possession wasn’t enough to prosecute. They did confiscate his coke, though.

BUT WAIT: THERE’S MORE!

[Guest] came back to the property later, found the officer who had confiscated his coke, and asked:

Guest: “Can I have my coke back?”

That officer called the police, who arrested him for violating a trespass, and it turned out he had warrants for his arrest in other states. All in all, that was the last time I will ever see [Guest]… probably.

A friend of mine lost her left leg to cancer when she was little. It was one of the most heartbreaking, devastating things for a child to go through. I can’t even put into words how strong and resilient she is, living her life with the terrifying thought that the cancer could come back one day. (She’s currently seventeen years in remission, though!)

We went to a concert in our late twenties and headed to the disability seating, which happened to be right up close to the stage. Since she’s lived with this all her life, my friend only gets a really pronounced limp when she has overextended herself. Today was a really good day, so she was walking just fine. 

A security guy stepped in front of us and smirked.

Security: “Okay, girls, which one of you is supposed to be handicapped?”

Friend: “I am.”

Security: *Smirk widening* “Okay, prove it!”

Me: “Seriously? You know you don’t have the legal right to ask that, right?”

Security: “And yet, here we are.”

My friend bent over slightly and knocked on her prosthetic leg. The hollow sound was very audible since the worst of the crowds hadn’t arrived yet.

The security guard turned very red and backed away from us. Shortly after I had a little talk with some other staff at the venue, he was replaced by someone else. We enjoyed ourselves immensely after that.

I am a UK-born Canadian of Pakistani origin, which means I hold citizenship in three countries. Since I travel back and forth quite a bit, I keep my British and Canadian passports attached together with a paper clip and don’t keep my Pakistani passport on my person.

I am buying cigarettes at a shop in the USA and get asked for ID. I hold out my passports.

Shopkeeper: “Why do you have two different passports?”

Me: “I have multiple citizenships.”

Shopkeeper: “How can anyone be a citizen of two countries?”

I don’t know what I was thinking, but I say:

Me: “Three, actually. I don’t have my third passport on me right now.”

Shopkeeper: “That’s not possible. No one can be a citizen of more than one country.”

She called security as she suspected a fake ID. I did not get cigarettes because security concurred with her opinion: no one can be a citizen of more than one country, so my passports couldn’t have been real.