My wife is going by the checkout, and an older gentleman is arguing with the cashier.

Customer: “I can’t believe you don’t have any holiday sauce!”

Cashier: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

Customer: “Like on eggs Benedict. Holiday sauce!”

My wife, seeing the issue, attempts to help.

Wife: “Excuse me, but I think you mean hollandaise sauce.”

Customer: “No, I’m looking for holiday sauce!”

Wife: “If you are making eggs Benedict, you are looking for hollandaise sauce.”

Customer: “I think I know what I’m looking for!”

I wonder if he ever found his holiday sauce.

In Texas, to be sales tax-exempt, you have to be a farmer, a church, work for the government, etc. For everyone else, you pay sales tax on most non-food-related items in my state; it doesn’t matter if you’re the governor or a tourist.

In order for a tax-exempt purchase to go through we (the cashiers) have to have the right paperwork filled out, signed, and submitted. Each. And. Every. Time. Someone wants to buy something. It is a long process that takes far longer than it should, holds up the line, and makes cranky customers more cranky.

All that being explained, throw it out the window when it comes to this guy. This older man comes up to my register where I scan and bag his items. I tell him his total, and this is where the confusion starts.

Me: “Your total will be $50.83, sir.”

Customer: “I don’t pay tax.”

Me: “Oh, do you have your tax-exempt paperwork ready with your exemption number?”

Customer: “No, I don’t have paperwork, and I don’t pay tax.”

I’m really confused at this point.

Me: “I’m sorry, but if you don’t have your paperwork, I can’t process the sale without tax. You’ll have to pay the tax and then go through the tax office to try to get a refund.”

This man just looks at me like I’m the dumbest creature on this planet and he doesn’t know why he has to talk to me.

Customer: “I’m from Oregon! I don’t pay sales tax there, and I’m not going to pay your tax! Now take it off or I’m leaving!”

I have a vague understanding (and I could be wrong) that if you visit a sales-tax state, like Texas, and you live in a non-sales-tax state like Oregon, you can get a refund on the sales tax when you get home. But at the time of this purchase (2013), you have to pay the sales tax. Also, it’s not like I would’ve known this guy was from a different state just by looking at him.

Me: “Sir, this is Texas, and everyone pays sales tax. Everyone. I can’t exempt you just because you’re from another state; I don’t even have a way to input that into my computer. Sorry.” 

He, of course, got mad and started walking out of the store yelling about how he didn’t pay sales tax and he was not going to. My coworkers just looked at him like he was a nut, and I explained what had happened when he left.

My manager just rolled his eyes, muttered about what a “f****** dumba**” the guy was, and went back to building a display case.

I work night audit at a hotel, and a couple of teams from the same school are staying with us for a soccer tournament. I worked last night when they arrived, and tonight, they had the first round and lost. Our quiet hours are from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am, and the lobby ceiling is the floor of the third floor, so it echoes really badly. On the second and third floors, if the people in the lobby are loud enough, you can hear what sounds like a club through the floor.

Last night, the parents were drinking liquor and hanging out in the lobby, but no one said they were being so loud that they couldn’t sleep. So, I waited until close to 1:00 am to tell them to pack it up and head to their rooms. It took them a while, but they did so amicably.

Tonight, though, we get a complaint a few minutes after 10:00 pm about the students being loud in the halls. I tell the coach, who says he’ll take care of it

Ten minutes later, a reasonable guest approaches at the desk.

Reasonable Guest: “Hi. I guess the coach didn’t scare them enough.”

Me: “I’m so sorry about that. I can—”

Reasonable Guest: “Oh, it’s fine. I talked to them myself. I guess one of the moms is mad because I cussed at them.” *Rolls her eyes* “But my husband is military, and he needs to be up early.

The coach overhears and comes to the desk.

Coach: “Now, I understand being in the military — lots of my family have been — but you do not cuss at children.”

Reasonable Guest: “Okay, that’s fair. I apologize for that.”

Coach: “No, you don’t apologize to me. Apologize to those kids!”

Reasonable Guest: “Oh, f*** you.” *Heads back to the elevator*

The mom in question (the one who’s upset about the guest’s cussing) and the coach proceed to lecture ME about why it’s unacceptable to cuss out teenagers, with [Mom #1] claiming her children are now TERRIFIED because they’re in the room next to the Reasonable Guest. The hotel is also completely sold out, so I can’t even offer to move them to another room to placate her.

The volume has also not gone down, and we’ve gotten complaints from every floor about how loud they are, so I step up and say that it’s after quiet hours and we need them to quiet down and head back to their rooms soon, and I request that the parents help keep the kids calm and respectful of other guests.

The kids all head back to their rooms and chill, while the parents stick around in the lobby. There’s one table of moms and another table of dads, and they’re ALL drinking liquor and riling each other up over this one person who went through the proper channels to get the kids to quiet down, but when that didn’t work, told the kids to herself, and when she apologized to the coach, he didn’t accept it. They also turn on music, which I repeatedly ask them to turn down. At one point, I leave to go to the laundry room, and they BLARE the music.

Me: “Come on, guys, seriously?”

The group all protest that they don’t know what I mean. The music has already been turned down by this point. I even saw one of the dads reach for the speaker and then pull his hand away.

Me: “The loud music. I’ve asked you to keep it down.”

Mom #2: “Maybe it’s the TV?”

Dad #1: “Yeah, we don’t hear any loud music.”

Me: “Because you turned it down as soon as I looked at you.”

Dad #1: “We’re all adults here. You can relax. It’s okay.” 

It’s now 11:45 pm. I tell them that they need to head back to their rooms — or go to a bar — because it’s way after our quiet hours, and they haven’t heeded my repeated requests for them to be quiet. Two minutes later, the music blasts loud again, so I turn around.

Me: *Shouting to be heard* “Okay, that’s it!”

The music volume comes down and I lower my voice.

Me: “Everyone needs to get back to their room now. Or leave and go to a bar. It doesn’t matter, but you can’t stay in the lobby being loud anymore. It’s way past quiet hours.”

Dad #2: “All you had to do was ask us nicely; there’s no call to yell and be rude.”

Me: “Sir, I’ve asked you repeatedly since 10:00 pm.”

Dad #2: “No, you haven’t. You’ve just yelled at us. I’m a paying customer, and I want to stay here.”

Me: “I just raised my voice to be heard—”

Dad #3: *Waves a hand to shoo me away* “Just leave it. Go back to your desk.”

Dad #2: “Either go sit down and shut up, or call the cops on us. Those are your choices.”

Me: “Yes, sir.”

I turn on my heel to head back to the desk, but [Mom #3] intercepts me by getting directly in my face.

Mom #3: “You’re really gonna side with those b****es over us?”

Me: “Ma’am, it’s my responsibility to care for all the guests here—”

Mom #3: “You’re gonna f****** kick us out for sitting here talking and having beverages?“

Me: “Please don’t cuss at me, ma’am.”

Mom #3: “Okay, I won’t cuss at you. But let me ask you this: who’s rented the most rooms at this hotel?”

The soccer group as a whole has rented twenty-five rooms out of our ninety, so not even a full third. Please also note that we get a lot of business bookings, so we generally have around a third to a half of our rooms rented out during the week to regular customers who love our hotel and its staff.

Me: “Our quiet hours begin at 10:00 pm.”

Mom #3: “Who. Rented. The most. Rooms.”

Me: “Our quiet hours begin at 10:00 pm.”

Mom #3: “You can’t even tell me, because you don’t know. Your duty should be to the people who bring you the most business.”

Me: “Hotel policy states that quiet hours begin at 10:00 pm.”

Mom #3: “Last night, you were telling us to turn up the music! At 1:00 am!”

Me: “No, ma’am, I definitely did not.”

Mom #3: “This is f****** ridiculous. You’re going to side with the b****es who cuss out children, instead of good customers. This is horrible hospitality, and I tell you one thing, we will never be back here, and I will be complaining about how terrible this has been and about your s****y service!”

I just walk away because she is cussing in my face again. I pull out my cell phone and dial the police non-emergency and check out some kids buying soda from the market while all of this is going down. They can’t look me in the eye.

Operator: “[Location] Police Department, how can I help you?”

I’m visibly shaking from anger and adrenaline at this point. I give my location, job title, and name to her.

Me: “We have a bunch of drunken guests in the lobby, and I’ve repeatedly—”

At this point, it all starts coming out in sobs.

Operator: “Hey, it’s okay. Is there an office or somewhere you can go that’s safe?”

Me: “Yes.”

Operator: “Go in there, lock the door, and then tell me what’s happening.”

I step into the back office; the door has an electronic lock so it automatically locks when fully closed.

Me: “Okay. I’m okay.”

Operator: “Take some deep breaths and tell me what happened.”

I go into detail about the circumstances, how long I’ve been politely requesting that they quiet down, being explicitly told to call the cops on them, etc. In the middle of this, the knob on the locked door jiggles.

Me: *Shouting through the door* “This door is locked! Please don’t try to open it!”

It doesn’t happen again, but the entire time I’m on the phone, I can hear them clustered right outside the office door, talking.

Operator: “Okay, they’ll be pulling outside any moment.”

It takes five minutes for the cops to knock on the office door and get the story from me directly. After that conversation, I go back outside and continue doing my job.

I’m still crying off and on because I need to remain calm, and I can’t, so instead of screaming and hitting anyone, I’m crying. All of the moms are gone by this point, and I can hear a man ranting and shouting, presumably to a cop.

I have to check out some teenagers who want to buy sodas, and I take some others up to their room because they got locked out. The entire time I’m doing this, there are exchanges like this:

Dad #4: “She knows this is bulls***.” *Louder, to be sure I can hear* “SHE KNOWS THIS IS BULLS***!”

Dad #5: *To another dad who’s heading to his room* “Hey, you’d better be quiet! I can’t believe you’re being so loud right now! That’s so disruptive, God!”

They’re almost totally cleared out by now. I’m returning to the desk and passing the elevators, and [Dad #1], the one who told me to relax because we’re all adults here? He calls out and I look up.

Dad #1: “Hey, you might want to turn down the TV. It’s pretty loud.”

Luckily, five hours later, my manager was the one who relieved me, and I told her the whole story. She said she was proud of how I’d done, that I’d done everything right, and that those people weren’t welcome at the hotel anymore. In fact, the general manager was going to cancel their future reservations and blacklist them for this behavior. She even sent the lobby footage to the school as part of the explanation.

[Mom #3] did leave a review, which claimed that the front desk staff was responsible for abusing her teenagers, that we had “no hospitality”, and that they “do not recommend.”

Meanwhile, I spent the weekend hanging out with my friends at a festival, being happy. Good riddance, bitter old windbag.

This story is part of our Not Always Right Most-Epic Stories roundup!

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About four years ago, I used to live in a nice HOA (Homeowners Association) in a small town in Texas, and I enjoyed having only one neighbor over my backyard fence. The plot was about two acres, and the other side of the backyard butted up to a hay field. The stars were beautiful at night because of virtually no light pollution…

Until the neighbor decided to install an incredibly bright security light over their back porch aimed right at my back patio and bedroom windows. I tried to ignore it at first and put shades in the bedroom, but out on the patio, it was like having a bright LED headlight in your face all night.

I consulted the HOA about adding a privacy addition to my fence to increase its height, and they said no because it was already at the eight-foot maximum allowed height. They said there was nothing in the bylaws or whatever about bright lights, so there was nothing they could do.

I hated for this to be the thing where the neighbors and I finally had a formal greeting after three years of back porch waves, but I walked over and rang the doorbell with $20. I politely explained that the light was causing the aforementioned nuisance and asked if there was any way I could convince him to point the light down or in a different direction. I even offered to buy him a case of beer (with the $20) out of goodwill and even a new motion-sensing light. The neighbor seemed nice and agreed to point it down.

But after waiting a month, nothing changed. I went back to have another polite conversation, and he said he had changed his mind and was going to leave it on every night and leave it pointed as-is.

Needless to say, I was a bit upset that diplomacy had failed, and I started figuring out how to win. If the military taught me anything, it’s that there are always ways to adapt and overcome. So, I started researching fast-growing plants to create big privacy walls and reading through the HOA bylaws and city and state ordinances about what I could or couldn’t plant and whether there were any repercussions for encroachment across the property line.

I quickly discovered that running bamboo, despite being very invasive, would grow super fast to make the neighbor’s house and light disappear from view, and there was nothing on the HOA, state, or city books to prevent me from planting it or cause legal recourse if it spread and grew on his side on the fence. The only thing he could do was cut anything that grew on his side of the line.

So, I pulled the trigger and planted a bunch of Golden Bamboo which grows and spreads crazy fast in Texas and grows up to twenty feet tall. I didn’t care if it took over the fence line because his house was fifteen feet from the fence while mine was fifty yards away, so I planted a bunch right against the fence and only put a root barrier on my side to prevent it from spreading into my yard.

Within six months, my neighbor’s house and light were gone from view, replaced by a pretty bamboo jungle row at the edge of my yard. Within a year, he complained that it was growing into his yard via mailed letters. They went right into the trash with no response. He rang my doorbell once, and I looked at him through the window but just didn’t answer the door.

I unexpectedly sold the house and moved two years after planting for a career opportunity. It’s been two years since I sold, and I just checked the property on Google Earth. The neighbor’s entire backyard is bamboo.

Several years ago, I was driving home from work, turning off of a major roadway onto a residential street. A school bus was in front of me, making the same turn. Barely half a block after turning, the school bus stopped suddenly and its red flashing lights came on.

It was very different from how a bus usually drops kids off. Normally, they brake gradually and have yellow flashing lights as a warning. Not this time.

I was able to slam on my brakes and stop in time, fortunately. I barely had time to start wondering what the heck the bus driver was doing when I saw a young woman frantically running from the house on our right, heading for the street. She ran in front of the stopped bus… and scooped up her toddler, who had wandered into traffic.

While she was carrying her child back to the house, I dialed the “How is my driving?” phone number on the back of the school bus — to give major kudos to the quick-thinking driver who spotted the toddler in the street and not only avoided hitting her but also activated the bus’s red lights to stop other traffic.