I am a bike and hike guide in rural Japan. I had a request to do a three-day guided trip in Tokyo for a family of six. I declined.

Me: “I do not do Tokyo. I haven’t been there in years, plus there are plenty of tour guides who live there and know the area.”

I then tried to find someone for her, but since it was around the New Year’s break, none of the other private guides were available. She begged me to help her. I helped her (for free) with planning for transportation and presented various options of things to see (which I took right from the other tour guides’ itineraries listed on the web), and she still wanted me to go there, a couple of hours away.

Okay. I broke down. I figured I could get a paid trip to Tokyo and visit some friends.

One of the things she mentioned was seeing Sumo. There were no Sumo tournaments at that time, but I made an appointment to visit a Sumo practice stable which is only available to foreigners if they have a Japanese-speaking guide with them. They could not have gone alone.

The rules at the stable are:

• Be on time! This group royally screwed that up.

• It is not for gawking; it is for true Sumo enthusiasts. The stable let us slide on this one.

• You have to stay until the end. This means a few hours of watching Sumo drills.

About thirty minutes into the practice, the woman came to me.

Client: “I think my children are tired. Let’s go.”

Bear in mind that these were all adult children.

Me: “No, we can’t. It would be rude, and they have a rule.”

Client: “But the kids look tired.”

Me: “Okay, I will ask.”

I went over to the teacher and pretended like I was asking him if we could go, but I wasn’t. Instead, I just made them wait an extra hour and sit through the experience they had asked for and that few foreigners would get to experience.

Then, we went to the highlights of Tokyo. One was a big temple that is very famous, so it has lots of tourists.

Client: “Ugh, this is too touristy. I want to see the real Japan. Can’t we go to Asakusa?”

Me: “Oh, I’m sorry, maybe you couldn’t hear me before; Asakusa is where we are now.”

I went out of my way to find out-of-the-way places with character to eat where I was sure there would be no other foreign tourists, but she vetoed me.

Client: “No, we want to go to this famous place we saw in [Travel Guide].”

Of course, it was a kind of theme restaurant aimed at foreign tourists, who were 90% of their clientele. They got back to the hotel, and she asked me:

Client: “What is the plan for tomorrow?”

Me: “I thought we would walk from here to Shinjuku and pass through some interesting areas along the way. Some are crowded and popular with tourists but also very popular with the Japanese people. It is well worth it.”

Client: “We can do that by ourselves — unless there are any secret areas?”

Me: “No. I am afraid that there are not any real ‘secret’ places in Tokyo. If it is interesting, someone has written about it, and you will find tourists there. We can go wander through some small quiet neighbourhoods, and I can almost guarantee that you will not see many foreigners, and if you do, they will be locals.”

Client: “Is it in the guidebook?”

Me: “No.”

Client: “Well then, what is good about it? We can do that ourselves, as well!”

Me: “Okay. I agree. I will tell you what I have planned for the next two days, and I am sure you can do it by yourselves. There is plenty of English-language material in Tokyo for tourists. Let’s just say goodbye here.”

I fired my clients, and unfortunately, due to being in a rush in the morning to get to the Sumo, and just not being able to get a chance for them to get cash to pay the full amount for that day, I had to leave with only the deposit.

Luckily, the deposit covered my transportation, and there are cheap capsule hotels in the area.

The day after I fired the customers, I did exactly what I would have done with them, and I loved it. A few weeks later, my family and I had a stopover in Tokyo, and we did that same walk, and they loved it, too.

I am a relatively new employee at a large natural history museum. I give tours to visiting schools. One thing I learned a long time ago is that the kids are usually all great; it’s the parents that you have to watch out for.

During my induction, I am shown a whiteboard in the staff common area. It has a list of odd quotes and descriptions of weird people. I am told that this is a monthly list of all the memorable guest encounters in the museum, with a poll taken at the end of the month about who had the best (or worst) encounter, with a fun little prize. It’s a great way to keep morale high when the guests are at their worst.

I am explaining plate tectonics to a class as they assemble around our giant model of the Earth — a spinning globe showing all the major fault lines.

Parent: “If the Earth is a globe, then how come all the rivers don’t just flow to the bottom?!”

Me: “First of all, there is no if; the Earth is a globe. Secondly, what do you mean by ‘the bottom’? The bottom of what?”

Parent: “Like, the bottom! If the Earth is a ball, then it has a top and bottom, right?”

Me: “We have poles to indicate the axis the Earth spins on, but that’s the only way we’d define an arbitrary top or bottom of the Earth. And the gravity on the surface is what keeps rivers flowing how they do.”

Parent: “Huh… sounds like something an indoctrinated ‘glober’ would say. River flow can be explained so much easier if you account for a flat earth.”

Me: “That’s absolutely not true in even the slightest. Please don’t make such comments around the children, sir, in case they mistake what you’re saying as fact and not nonsense.”

Parent: “You can’t say that to me! I’m a customer!”

Me: “You are a guest, in a place of science and fact. Ask questions about the facts to learn, but do not question the facts themselves. Now, may I continue my tour, or will you keep interrupting?”

The parent remained blissfully silent and sullen for the rest of the tour. 

At the end of the day, I went over to the whiteboard and wrote down “flat-earther” as my craziest encounter. The sad part? I didn’t even win that month.

A tourist waits one week before asking for a 100% refund for a guided city tour, on a bike. She took the full three-hour tour. Her reasons for complaining are:

Tourist: “The group was too large!”

Her party was three out of thirteen people. The website clearly states that groups can be as large as fifteen people.

Tourist: “The guide was insufficiently knowledgeable!”

The guides are trained and tested, but opinions differ…

Tourist: “The city was too crowded!”

It’s a capital, in summer. What were you expecting? Some people…

I am working as a tour guide, and I am waiting for my tour group to arrive. I can hear some of the early arrivals talking among themselves, including a dad talking to his young son.

Dad: “That’s the White House!”

Me: “No, that’s the Capitol Building.”

Dad: “No, it’s the White House! It’s where the president lives!”

I point down to the Washington Monument.

Me: “No, the White House is down that way, right of the Monument.”

Dad: “That thing? But that thing is tiny!”

Me: “It’s pretty big, but it is small compared to the Capitol Building.”

Dad: “Wait… This is the Capitol Building? That thing I saw them storm on the news?!”

Me: “The very same.”

Dad: *Sizes it up* “I bet I could storm it all by myself.”

Me: “Sir, our tour takes us inside the building.”

Dad: “See? I got inside without even trying!”

I advised him to not “joke” about that incident on the tour. He did not follow my advice and was removed from the tour by security before we even got to the entrance.

I am a third-party tour guide, and I am showing some tourists visiting from the Midwest around The Alamo, the famous historical building in Texas. I am explaining the history of the building and the famous “Battle Of The Alamo” to the tourists.

Me: “So, after the thirteen-day siege, the Texans fell to the Mexican Republic—”

Tourist: “Wait… we lost?”

Me: “Uh… yes.”

Tourist: “That’s not how I remember it.”

I go on to explain in more detail what happened and how it was a turning point in the Mexican-American War. The tourist looks angry but is listening quietly.

Tourist: “Well… The Alamo is in America now, so… I guess we won in the end!”