I work in a small, affordable hotel in the middle of tourist-town Manhattan. A guest has come down in the middle of the night on a weekend to complain about the sounds of people, garbage trucks, trains, cars, basically everything outside being too noisy to let her fall asleep. As her ranting begins to slow, I show her a bucket of small plastic packages.

Guest: “What are those?!”

Me: “Earplugs, ma’am.”

Guest: *Screeching.* “You expect your guests to have to cater to the noise outside, instead of doing something about it?!”

Me: “I can’t stop the noises coming from the city, ma’am.”

Guest: *Screeching louder.* “This is unacceptable! We’re paying over a hundred dollars a night!”

Me: “Which, for a location in central Manhattan, ma’am, is a bargain. We’re walking distance to Times Square, it is Saturday night, and we state clearly on our website that we are an old building without sound insulation from the outside. Please be appreciative that we have free earplugs.”

Guest: *Screeching louder still.* “I expect you to do something about all this noise!”

Me: “I am. I am trying to send it back to its room!”

I admit, I shouldn’t have said that. It was late, I was tired, and I let the impulsive thoughts win. For a few seconds, I was convinced I was going to be handing in my staff ID to my manager the next day.

Instead, the guest just… blinked. She stopped her noise, silently took a set of earplugs, and simply went back to her room. I didn’t hear anything else from her for the rest of the weekend she was staying there.

I have never made a habit of talking back to a customer like that; it was a once-only thing. I mainly don’t want to repeat it because I don’t want to risk losing my 100% success rate!

I work in a retail superstore in Alaska, one of the first ones that visitors to the state come through after arriving here.

A customer pulls me from a conversation I’m having with another customer to angrily ask:

Customer: “Why did the bathroom faucet water make my hands all red?!”

Me: “Ma’am, did you let the water warm up before wetting your hands?”

Customer: “No! It was freezing!”

Me: “Ma’am. We’re in Alaska, and it’s thirteen degrees.” *Minus ten in Celsius.* “You need to let the water warm up before you stick your hands in it.”

Customer: *Slightly less aggressive.* “Does… does this happen to everyone?!”

Me: “No, usually just the people who stick their hands in freezing water.”

Guest: “I’m feeling like I need to complain about your breakfast service.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am. What is the nature of the complaint?”

Guest: “Well, we were excited to enjoy our continental breakfast but were greatly disappointed to find that we had to serve ourselves in the cavernous lobby!”

Me: “We do also have a restaurant on the top floor that offers a sit-down service.”

Guest: “Yes, but that’s not part of the prepaid breakfast!”

Me: “That’s correct. The self-serve breakfast still serves a wide variety of options, and—”

Guest: “—No! I expect waitstaff to bring my breakfast to me, and for it to be included in the room rate! This would not be acceptable in America!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Guest: “…and?”

Me: “And what, madam?”

Guest: “You’re sorry to hear that… aaaaaand?!”

Me: “…and I hope you have a nice day?”

Guest: “You’re not going to do anything?”

Me: “The breakfast will be served in the lobby, the same as it has for the last twenty years, madam. We have a smaller sit-down restaurant on the roof deck for à la carte options, but these are charged separately. There is nothing else I can do for you regarding your query.”

Guest: “Well… that’s just not acceptable!”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Guest: “Stop being sorry!”

Me: “Yes, madam.”

Guest: “And do something about it!”

Me: “Would you like your breakfast pre-selected and brought to your room from tomorrow morning?”

Guest: “What good would that do?!”

Me: “It would mean you wouldn’t have to enter our cavernous lobby.”

Guest: “That doesn’t benefit me!”

I soooo wanted to say, “but it DOES benefit me,” but I held back. 

The manager ended up taking her complaint and re-explained how the hotel works. She seemed completely incapable of accepting that her complaint would elicit no action or apologies from us, and when she finally ran out of steam and wandered away, it was more from confusion than anger.

For a short time, I worked in a call centre that dealt with the insurance perks for a large bank account. One perk was travel insurance. As any call centre agent will tell you, I had a script to follow. Especially when it came to setting up insurance cover, we had to know specifics.

This particular call was dealing with travel insurance, so we had to know if it was a business trip, how many people were going, all that jazz. This call came from a very gruff Scottish-sounding man, and coincidentally, this was around the time my sanity was depleted, and I was ready to quit.

Me: “Good afternoon, [Bank Insurance Name], you’re through to [My Name], can I take your account number, please?”

Angry Scot: *Sighs.* “It’s [number]. Now hurry up and help me, I’ve been on hold for nearly half an hour!”

Me: “I apologise for your wait, sir. I’ll move through this as quickly as I can. Can you please just confirm your first name, surname, and date of birth?”

Angry Scot: *Exaggerated sigh.* “I want travel insurance for my holiday.”

Me: “No problem, we can do that for you. I just need you to confirm your account details so we can move forward.”

Angry Scot: “It’s [Name]. Birthday is [date].”

Me: “Thank you for that. Now, I understand you want to set up the travel insurance for your upcoming trip. I can do that, I just need to run through some standard questions with you if that’s alright.”

Angry Scot: “Just give me the insurance!

Me: “To validate it, we need to run through these questions. I’ll try to get you sorted as soon as possible, but these questions are mandatory.

Angry Scot: “This is ridiculous! I waited on hold for nearly an hour, and now you want to ask me some f****** questions! Just give me insurance.

Me: *Trying to keep my cool, but already feel my last shred of sanity packing up to leave.* “I understand, sir. However, as I explained, we cannot put this insurance in place without these questions.”

Angry Scot: “F****** ridiculous! Is there anyone else I can talk to?”

Me: “Unfortunately, all other agents will ask you the same questions. I promise that this will not take long if you just answer the questions relating to your trip.”

Angry Scot: “This is ridiculous.”

Me: *Internal sigh.* “Okay, sir. Can you please start by telling me how many people will be travelling?”

Angry Scot: *Loud sigh.* “It’ll be the whole of f****** Scotland! What do you think?!”

I don’t reply. I stay silent and stare patiently into space, allowing the silence to stretch between us until the customer seemed to realise his sarcastic replies weren’t getting him anywhere. After about thirty seconds, he finally speaks up.

Angry Scot: “It’s me and the wife.”

Me: “Thank you, sir.”

We go through the rest of the questions with minimal sarcasm, and only a small flurry of colourful Scottish dialect thrown in. All in all, the call took about fifteen minutes. It would have been significantly less if the guy just cooperated to begin with. Who knew that cooperating with call centre staff would actually get you somewhere?

A couple are checking in with me at the airport.

Guy: *Handing me their passports.* “Yeah, we’re going to Bali.”

Me: “Oh, how nice!”

The guy then looks up and down the check-in area and leans in to whisper.

Guy: “Yeah, Sydney is getting waaaay too Muslim lately, so we needed a break from it, know what I mean?”

Me: “…riiiight.”

Guy: “We noticed you were the only Australian doing check-ins today, so we let some people go ahead of us so that we could get checked in by you.”

Me: “Well, all of my colleagues are more than capable of—”

Guy: “—yeah, yeah, DEI and all that. You know what we mean.”

I thought being anti-DEI was an American thing, but oh well…

Me: “Anyway, here are your boarding passes. Please enjoy your flight to Bali, Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world!”

Guy: “The what?!”

I’m knowledgeable enough that I know Bali is the only Indonesian province that’s more Hindu than Muslim, but I also know that most racists are stupid by default, so I wasn’t expecting him to know that.