(This happens at least once a week when I walk the floor at the casino where I work. Guests will flag me down and then:)
Guest: “My ticket/card/cash won’t work in this machine. Fix it!”
(I take the item from the guest and insert it into the machine. It works perfectly, and the guest stares at me.)
Me: *waves* “Magic hands. Have a great day!”
(I am an area supervisor of my store and if I’m the only one there I am also the manager on duty. I end up getting called up to the front to help with a customer return)
Me: Hello, sorry for the wait, how may I help you?
Customer: Yeah, I want to return this. I just bought it but it doesn’t work.
Me: Okay, let me see your receipt?
(He hands me the receipt that has the same days date on it. Our store policy is that we need ID for the first 24 hours of purchase for any returns, and our computers will no process the returns at all without them)
Me: Okay we can do the return, but we will need to see your ID.
Customer: What? I don’t want to give you my ID!
Me: I’m sorry but it is our store policy that we have to have ID within the 24 hours that you purchased your items. (I go on to explain that our computers won’t except his return without it, and that we don’t have access to any of his personal data once it’s entered into our system.)
Customer: I don’t want to give you my ID. You’re trying to trick me!
Me: (feeling slightly baffled by this but still keeping my customer service attitude) We aren’t trying to trick you, it is just our policy.
Customer: Then use your ID!
(He yelled this in front of several of my employees as well as other customers.)
Me: I can’t do that, it is fraud and I could get in trouble.
Customer: But it’s okay to trick me then?
Me: Like I said, we are not trying to trick you. If you don’t wish to give us your ID then may I suggest coming back after 24 hours and returning it then?
(He decides to take this route, as he grumbles about us trying to trick him into giving us his ID.)
I was shopping when I noticed a woman following me through the isles. I have severe social anxiety and agoraphobia, so she was making me nervous. I tried to get my shopping done as fast as possible. It is important to this story to say that I am a very pale female.
Crazy lady: *grabs my basket* “Excuse me, but why do you dye your hair and wear contacts?”
Me: *surprised* “I dye my hair because my natural color doesn’t suit me, but I don’t wear contact lenses.” *walks away toward the check out*
CL: *grabs basket again to stop me again* “Why are you lying to me?” *louder* “STOP LYING TO ME! I KNOW YOU ARE AN ALBINO! You should be proud of who you are!”
Me: *starting to freak out* “I’m not an-”
CL: “Come here!” *reaches for my face*
It’s obvious from my reaction that I can’t tolerate being touched, but she keeps going until I’m backed into a corner. She then firmly grabs my face and tries to stick her finger in my eye to remove the nonexistent contact. I push her away from me, run to the other side of the store, and the entire time she is screaming about how I “assaulted” her. An employee who saw the whole thing and didn’t step in tries to calm her down while I have a panic attack near the registers.
CL: “I want her ARRESTED for pushing me!” *violently jabs her thumb in my direction*
A manager comes out from the back.
Manager to CL: “GET OUT OF MY STORE. You are banned.”
He then noticed me hyperventilating, walked over to me, handed me a fifty dollar gift card, and apologized for his employee not helping me. The cops had to be called on CL because she tried to assault two other people on the way out. It took me a long time to go back to that store to use my gift card.
I’d had a slight run of bad luck and had lost a previous job. After being without a job for a month, I was unfortunately in a spot where I needed to accept whatever came my way. So, I’d been applying all over and had gotten called in for an interview with a third-party IT company. The role I was interviewing for was an onsite support tech at one of our clients’ offices. Due to being jobless, I’d let some issues with my car slide because I had no money to fix them, something I asked about in the interview. They told me that it was fine, and I’d mainly be based out of a location about ten minutes south of Seattle and only have to travel to the peninsula occasionally, usually around the first of the year. I was okay with that as I knew the area I was supposed to be based in fairly well.
The interview finished up and the next day I received an offer. This job was a problem from the start. I should have known when I fell on my face heading into the interview. Anyway, I showed up for the company meeting — there were only eight people in the company, so we met at a coffee house in north Seattle — on my first day, busted my butt to get there an hour early, like they’d asked, only to find that A, the computer they’d ordered — and the reason I needed to be there early — wasn’t supposed to arrive until the next day and B, no one else was actually there!
Then, during the meeting, my boss looked me straight in the eye and said that the next day, I was supposed to meet two of our techs at the client location that was about an hour south of my house, in an area I was totally unfamiliar with. I was not really comfortable going when I had a car that wasn’t behaving. I asked if someone would be willing to give me a ride and my coworker said sure, as long as I was willing to come to meet her at the coffee house — which was about an hour north of my house. I tried to get her to come to me, but she maintained that the only way she’d give me a ride was if I met her at the coffee house. I said no, I’d drive, and then had to force them to give me directions and an address where I was supposed to go!
And that was just the second day. Things went downhill from there.
I found out after my first full week that the company meeting I attended was actually a weekly thing, but no one bothered to tell me that. And this meeting was at the location an hour north of my house, forcing me to go through Seattle to get there, so my hour-long drive turned into two or more hours.
Then, they asked me to be at a location in Everett — which is north — at 8:00 in the morning, but again, I had to drive through Seattle to get there, and traffic to Everett is never good. I flat-out refused to try and be there by 8:00; I told them I’d get there when I got there because I was not willing to leave my house before 5:00 in the morning.
Things continued in that vein the entire time I was there. They did everything from making me go to locations outside of my “home” one — locations I hadn’t known about until they told me I had to go there the next day — to not covering my mileage because I didn’t have a company card and they never gave me one. Whenever I was with another tech, she always had to buy me lunch and a tank of gas; I didn’t let her leave without those two things.
It took me about nine months, but I finally found another job that doesn’t treat me like that. It’s a strange feeling.
(I work IT for a retail company and I work remotely from my basement. That means that the dogs come and hang out with me during the day when I’m the only one home. I’m used to them coming over and nudging me occasionally if they think they’re being ignored. One day, I’m on the phone with an end-user.)
Me: “Okay, you’ll want to reboot really fast and we’ll confirm that we’ve fixed the issue.”
Caller: “Okay, how long will that take?”
(While we are talking, one of the dogs comes over and sits next to me. I absentmindedly start petting him while talking to her.)
Me: “Shouldn’t take long to reboot; if it’s been a while since it was rebooted, it might take a little–”
(I’m interrupted by the dog howling in my ear.)
Caller: “Um, what was that?”
Me: *trying not to laugh as I side-eye the dog* “I’m sorry! I work from home and the dog has decided he’s being too ignored!”
Caller: *starts laughing* “Oh, good! I thought it was a dog, but I was wondering why you would have a dog in the office!”
(Her computer reboots and we verify the issue has resolved itself.)
Caller: “Thank you so much. Enjoy your day! And give those puppers some love!”
Me: “Enjoy your day, as well, and I will!”
