As a security guard, I often have to deal with customers from stores. Normally, it’s to get them to leave if they are doing something the store doesn’t like, but on this one day, I got to tell off an impatient Entitled Jerk at [Clothing Store].

I was stationed as security for a shopping center, and as part of my rounds when I would first clock in, I would check in with the [Clothing Store] as I was always called in to help them stop someone from stealing.

On this particular day, the store was PACKED. I was talking to the Loss Prevention person stationed at the door, checking in to see which manager was in charge for the night and seeing how the store had been so far. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two ladies standing at the jewelry counter waiting to be helped and glaring at us.

Loss Prevention: “I’ve already called someone to help those ladies, but they just haven’t gotten here yet since it’s slammed and all hands are needed to ring customers out. The line is so long it’s almost out the door!”

As we were finishing up our talk, which was only maybe three minutes at most, I turned to walk out the door to finish my rounds when one of the ladies suddenly yelled toward me.

Lady: *In a very rude tone* “Excuse me! I need some help here!”

Me: “Ma’am, he already called someone for you.” *Pointing to [Loss Prevention]* “As you can see, they are swamped and the line is long. Maybe you should grow some patience and learn to wait your turn.”

I then walked out of the store with the biggest smile on my face, and my inner customer service rep was clapping at finally being able to tell off an Entitled Jerk.

Customer: “I need a password reset.”

Me: “In order to reset, we require you to answer the security question you picked.”

I load her account to find her security question.

Security Question: “What is baby daddy’s name?”

Customer: “How am I supposed to know that?”

If there is one true thing I have learned about traveling it is: do not annoy airport staff! They are the people who decide if you get to board or not; being aggressive, rude, or confrontational to them will get you nowhere!

I am traveling to see family in New Zealand and currently going through the bag check. In front of me, I can see an angry, red-faced businessman who seems to be stressed and in a hurry. The security person, an Asian woman in her forties, is checking his luggage and the businessman immediately becomes abusive.

Businessman: “WHY THE H*** ARE YOU LOOKING AT THAT? GET A BLOODY MOVE ON!”

Security #1: “Sir, your luggage was selected for a hand check, so you just need to be patient.”

Businessman: “I HAVE AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT LEAVING IN TEN MINUTES! F****** HURRY UP! GOD, I’M SICK OF THIS AIRPORT HIRING THESE IDIOTS!”

Security #2: “Sir… you need to calm down. We are just doing our jobs!”

Businessman: “I travel through this airport frequently, and it gets worse every time because you keep hiring these [Asian slur]s, and I’m sick of their d*** incompetence! Learn to speak f****** English!”

Security #2: “There is no need for that language, sir. You just need to let us do our jobs!”

Businessman: “I have a flight leaving in ten minutes! I don’t have time for this s***! Just give me my bag and let me leave! Why is that so f****** hard?!”

Security now looked extremely fed up with this guy, but clearly, they weren’t done with him yet. I noticed that the staff member did her bag check slightly slower than normal. All the while, the man proceeded to throw a tantrum and acted like a spoiled child.

At long last, he snatched his luggage away and began to stomp off… only to be stopped for a body search! Immediately, he blew his top again.

When I left to walk to my gate, he was still raging and I very much doubt he made his flight.

The moral of this story: while traveling is stressful, it always helps to be patient with staff doing their jobs. Otherwise, you may not make your flight. I’m still baffled about why he was causing so much trouble when he had so little time to make his flight.

I worked in Africa as an operations manager for a large global security company from 2009 to 2014.

The country I was working in had been through a long civil war and was very underdeveloped — think no paved roads, and people living a very traditional African lifestyle. At the time, I’d been working there on a rotation of ten weeks in the country and two weeks at home for about four years.

I’d flown to and from work so often that I had the journey down to the bare-minimum travel time, and it worked out as the cheapest option for the company because travel days were paid from when I left home. The shorter my journey was, the cheaper it worked out for the company.

Someone in the head office looked at cutting down on travel costs, probably to make themselves look good and get promoted. As a result, I got an email after a week at home saying they had changed my normal flight, which was at 5:00 pm on Sunday from my nearest UK airport, via Amsterdam, then on to Nairobi, Kenya, connecting with a 9:00 am flight to [Country] on Monday morning. The change was from a 5:00 pm departure to a 5:00 am departure the same day, using the same route and saving about £80.

To clarify, the 9:00 am flight from Nairobi was the first flight to [Country] because the destination airport was the only surfaced runway in the country. It had no runway lights or radar, so all flights had to be in daylight.

I agreed to the flight time change, but they had to move it to Monday so I wouldn’t lose a day at home. They agreed because they still saved £80 on the ticket — no skin off their nose.

Once I got the flight confirmation, I contacted the travel desk asking for hotel and taxi bookings. When they asked why I needed these, I explained that a 5:00 am departure required a check-in at 3:00 am, so I needed a hotel at the airport on Sunday night because no trains were running to get me the three hours to the airport from home at that time of the morning.

The flights they booked would get me into Nairobi at 7:00 pm — after dark — so I’d need a hotel there and a taxi each way to and from the hotel to get me onto the 9:00 am flight on Tuesday — the same flight I would have been on if I’d left at 5:00 pm but a day later.

A couple of days went by, and I got a phone call from the company travel desk telling me the travel plan was confirmed. I was on the 5:00 am flight with a hotel reservation at my UK airport the night before and a hotel in Nairobi after landing, and the taxi would collect me in Nairobi and drop me at the airport for my final connection.

I asked about the cost savings and they said it was £80. I then asked about the hotels and taxis. They replied, “Oh, they don’t come out of our budget; that’s the operations budget, so you’re fine.”

I was happy. I was arriving back at work a day later, still paid the same amount, with a night out in Nairobi to sweeten the deal.

My boss, on the other hand, went nuts! Nobody had told him about the changes. My deputy flew out on the plane I flew in on, meaning I didn’t get a handover of the work that was going on. On top of that, the cost of hotels, taxis, and an extra day’s pay had all come out of my boss’s operational budget.

I think the total amount added was almost £1,000, but hey, they saved £80 on the flight cost!

I used to work in IT for a local credit union. One day, we start getting calls from several branches with roughly the same question.

Branches: “Hey, there’s a guy here from [Company], and he says he’s here to look at the printers. Is he cleared to do this?”

While this is following process for unscheduled visits, it happens to about five branches in the same area and it is the same tech showing up. We start talking to our manager, and just as he’s getting to a point where he’s going to have us tell the branch to call the cops, one of my coworkers gets off the phone.

Coworker: “Hey, guys, I was just talking to [Manager #2] at [Branch]. She said the tech gave her a card and he’s supposed to be doing this? Like, they’re actually a security company of some kind that does tests like this to make sure people are following protocol.”

Manager: “[Coworker] and [My Name], go talk to [Security Engineer] and see if he’s aware of this. For now, if we get any more calls, continue to have branches follow the process of turning him away. If [Security Engineer] isn’t aware, we’ll call the cops.”

My coworker and I head around the corner and into the engineer’s office.

Security Engineer: “Hey, guys, what’s up?”

Me: “We just wanted to check in because we’ve gotten calls from several branches saying they’ve got an unauthorized vendor onsite looking to inspect the printers. So far, we’ve told them to follow process and turn him away because we can’t verify the visit.”

Coworker: “But I just got off the phone with [Branch], and they said the tech gave them a card that showed he worked for a different company and that they did this kind of thing to test security.”

Security Engineer: “He wasn’t supposed to do that!”

[Coworker] and I just blink at him.

Security Engineer: “Yes, this was scheduled through us—” *meaning the security team* “—but the tech wasn’t supposed to tell him who he was! The branches were going to be notified at the end of the day. He should have hit all the branches we asked him to by now, but if you get any more calls, have them follow process.”

[Coworker] and I start walking back to our seats.

Me: “Did they send us any sort of notice that this was going on?”

Coworker: “I have no idea.”

We get back to our desks and tell our manager what happened. He starts looking through his email.

Manager: “They didn’t tell me.” *Heavy sigh* “All right, that’s fine. Like he said, if we get more calls, have them follow process. I’ll go talk to security and let them know if they do it again, they need to tell us.”

Me: “I mean, you’d think it would be smart to at least warn IT that this is going to be happening, so we don’t, you know, tell the branches to call the cops because there’s a random guy trying to get in!”

Manager: “Yeah, I know. I’ll handle it.”

We hadn’t had another instance like that by the time I left. But sometimes I wonder what was going through the security team’s heads that they thought NOT telling IT they were running this test was smart, especially since we were the ones who would get those calls in that situation and we would check tickets and system for visits. It would have been simple to send us an email that said, “Hey, we’re running an experiment/test, and if the stores call about an unauthorized vendor from [Company], he’s supposed to do this. Don’t tell them who he is; just remind them to follow process and turn him away.”