(One evening, shortly after Black Friday, I am called to the customer service desk to speak with a customer. I am a woman, 5’6″ and barely 115 pounds. This man is over six feet tall and easily 200 pounds. We make eye contact and I smile at him. He glares.)

Me: “Hello, sir. You—”

Customer: “You the boss?”

Me: “Yes, sir, I am. How can I—”

Customer: “I’ve been waiting half a f****** hour for you.”

Me: *knowing he’s been standing there for maybe five minutes* “I apologize for the inconvenience. How can—”

Customer: “This lady over here disrespected me.” *points to our customer service rep*

Me: “Would you like to tell me what happened?”

Customer: “She disrespectful.”

Me: “Was it something she said or did or was—”

Customer: “She told me I can’t get my money back, said I did it too many times!”

Me: “Oh, I see. When a customer does three non-receipt returns within a rolling six months—”

Customer: “I don’t give a flying f*** what your system says. I want my money back.”

Me: *getting very annoyed* “Sir, I am trying to help you. I can overri—”

Customer: “No, you’re telling me why she’s right! Don’t talk to me like a [disabled slur].”

Me: “The system blocks returns when you do too many in a—”

Customer: “Nah, I didn’t—”

Me: “Six-month period. Now, I can—”

Customer: “Don’t talk over me! You interrupting and I’m trying to talk to you!” *steps in, a few inches from me, and jabs his finger in my chest* “You’re all disrespectful—”

Me: “Actually, I was talking first, so you were interrupting me. Now. I can override the system and force it to do a return.”

Customer: *suddenly a gentleman, stepping back* “Oh. I apologize, ma’am. Please forgive me for—”

Me: “However, you will not be doing anymore returns.” *smiles and gestures toward the exit* “Please leave.”

Customer: “F*** you, b****! What are you gonna do?”

Me: “I’m going to call the police in five seconds. You’ve been rude, tried to intimidate me, and sexually assaulted me when you poked me in the chest.”

Customer: “You don’t—”

Me: “One…”

Customer: “Don’t act like—”

Me: “Two…”

Customer: “F****** c*** can’t tell me s***!”

Me: “Three…” *I pull out my phone*

Customer: “Bulls***.”

Me: “Four…” *I put my phone to my ear*

Customer: “Man, f*** you and your p****-a** store!”

(He stormed out of the store. The customer service associate told me he wanted to return a blender that didn’t work anymore. If he hadn’t been so rude, I would have gladly helped him out.)

I was skippering a large charter boat off the west coast of South Africa in the 1990s. We took a group of passengers up the coast and stopped off at an island overnight, where we fed them freshly-caught crayfish, BBQ, and all sorts of rich food. The party went on well into the night and many bottles of booze were consumed against the advice of me and my crew.

In the morning, the wind had changed direction and was picking up strongly. The sailing got rougher and rougher, and as captain, I decided to ask the passengers to stay below deck.

Suddenly, one of the passengers ran on to the deck to be ill and, understandably, given how ill he was feeling, had a little breakdown and started screaming abuse and demanding to be taken to shore. I explained that, as we were more than 30 miles from the nearest harbour, nothing could be done.

That’s when he crossed over to the dark side and threatened to kill us before trying to jump overboard to swim for shore. I caught him before he was over the railings and managed to pin him to the deck while he was screaming, trying to bite and punch me, and generally behaving like a crazy person. As I was holding him down, his girlfriend leapt onto my back, also screaming like a banshee, and started hitting me in the head with a shoe.

That’s when I decided I’d had enough and released my inner Captain Bligh, muscling both of them into the aft lazarette, a small stowage area on the boat, and locking them in the tiny enclosed space for the eight hours it took me to get them to shore. Their friends tried to protest and were informed that if they didn’t like it they were welcome to join them and so we sailed in solemn, bitter silence until we hit the wharf.

I released the wayward couple there and watched as they staggered to shore, covered in vomit, and stalked down the pier without a backward glance, never to be seen again.

This story is part of the South Africa Roundup!

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(This is one of my dad’s many stories. In the late 80s and early 90s, he was a very highly skilled network engineer, which at the time was just an emerging field. As a result, he jetted around a lot to help clients with installs and training on the new technology. In this case, he was sent to Argentina. My understanding is that it has cleaned up a lot in the last 30 or 40 years, but back then, it was not a great place. While at the hotel, his primary client contact insists that he should go to the club district while he is in town. My dad, not knowing any better, agrees, and picks a bar at random. The entrance to the bar is a steep set of metal stairs, which will be relevant later. He sits at the bar and orders a drink, but he starts getting a bad feeling about the place pretty quickly and decides he should go elsewhere, so he asks for the tab shortly after.)

Bartender: “Four hundred dollar.”

Dad: “What?”

Bartender: “Your bill. Four hundred dollar.”

(Bad feeling confirmed. My dad takes out all the money he has — a little over $100 — and places it on the counter, backing away slowly.)

Dad: “Look, this is all I’ve got. You can have it. I’m just going to leave.”

Bartender: “Four. Hundred. Dollar.”

Dad: “I don’t ha—”

(He is cut off by a blow to the front of his head from the billy club the bartender produced out of nowhere. Due to sheer bull-headed stubbornness — okay, and probably some adrenaline — he doesn’t black out, but manages to stumble towards the exit. Just as he gets there, he feels one of the bartender’s friends grab him by the shoulder. He very quickly decides on a course of action, and grabs the guy’s arm and yanks him down the stairs with him, doing his best to make sure that the other guy hits as many of the metal steps as possible on the way down. At the bottom, my dad gets up; the other guy does not. This is apparently enough to make my dad “not worth it” and he stumbles out onto the street. He tries to flag down a passing Policia, but the guy seems to develop a curious case of blindness at the bleeding American crossing his path. In the end, a hotel concierge manages to catch him before he stumbles deliriously into an even worse part of town, and after refusing a ride in an ambulance — 80s Argentinian hospital = NO — the gash in his head is super-glued shut and he is sent on his way. He actually finishes the job, with a huge knot on his forehead, and when he gets home to his workplace…)

Boss: “Whoa. What happened to you?”

Dad: “I got mugged.”

Boss: “…”

Dad: “In Argentina.”

Boss: “…”

Dad: “After the guy you sent me to work with told me to visit the club district.”

Boss: “Huh. Well, that sucks. Did the job get done?”

Dad: “Yes.”

Boss: “Great! Anyway, next month we have another trip lined up for you…”

(Yeah, my dad didn’t stay with that company too much longer.)

I used to work for a third-party call center contracted to a large, national bank, where I was a Debit Card Fraud Analyst. I enjoyed the job, but I had my fair share of belligerent customers. 

My supervisor was going in for surgery for a chronic condition, and I had been teasing her all week that my last call of her last night as my supervisor, I was going to get an “Orange Flag” call. This was simply a piece of orange, laminated paper with instructions on what to do with a threatening call; you would pull it off the board by your computer and wave it in the event of a threat. These events would take close to an hour to resolve, so I was basically telling her I was going to keep her over. She would laugh at me and we’d go about business.

My crew was the last to go home from this center, we’d leave at two in the morning, and on her last night as my supervisor, we had back-to-back calls. Finish a call, the next person was on the line at once. At 11:58, my cubicle partner and I both got calls and as we went to pull information up, nothing worked. None of our systems would come up, nothing. We apologized to our customers, who were thankfully understanding, and put them back in the queue. At 12:02 in the morning, nothing. No calls. Everything seemed to have crashed on us, including the phone systems.

We now had close to an hour between calls, and the supervisor found out that the bank had taken its systems down for maintenance. Nothing would go through. All debit, credit, and ATM cards would not work for the next several hours, and if a customer happened to get through to us, we were to let them know to try again at a certain time. I wrote up a phone script for myself and ended up giving it to everyone there. I sounded like an automated phone system and used it to my advantage to not talk to customers. It politely let them know that our systems were down, we were unable to help them, and to please try again at the specified time. Of the five customers who managed to get through to my phone, four of them just hung up.

At 1:57 in the morning, one final call came through. I opened with the script I’d written: “Thank you for calling [Bank] Debit Card Fraud Services. We regret to inform you that all of our systems are currently down for maintenance and customers will be unable to use their Debit, Credit, or ATM cards until six am Eastern Standard Time. If any trouble persists after that time, please call the number on the back of your card to speak to an associate. Thank you for your understanding.”

And he responded with, “WHAT THE F***?!”

I tried again, but he launched into a tirade on me. “NO! NO! YOU STUPID F****** B****! NO! SHUT UP! SHUT THE F*** UP! I HAVE A FLIGHT TO CATCH IN THE MORNING, AND I NEED TO BUY MY PLANE TICKETS RIGHT NOW, AND YOU’VE BLOCKED MY CARD!”

He wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain to him that our systems were just out, and I was thinking to myself, “Why would you wait this late to book your tickets anyway?”

Then, he gave me this gem: “IF YOU DON’T UNBLOCK MY CARD RIGHT NOW, I’M GOING TO FIND YOU! I WILL FIND YOU, AND I WILL F****** KILL YOU AND YOUR WHOLE G**D*** FAMILY! DO YOU HEAR ME?! I WILL F****** SHOOT YOU!’

I muted my mic, sighed, and waved the orange flag at my supervisor, who just stared at me. She took over the call from there and I sat and listened to her deal with this man for a good forty minutes, taking down information. I went to clock out, use the restroom, and get a drink, and came back to ask what happened.

Turns out, he was already on file for making threats like that against employees pretty regularly, and that was his last strike. The bank was going to close out his account with them and blacklist him as a result.

My prediction came true. On the last call of her last night, I had to give her an orange flag. I couldn’t have timed that better if I had tried.

I’ve just finished ordering a healthy lunch of nuggets, fries, and soft drinks for my kids in the packed food court when a man jumps up on to the counter and starts yelling about god and demons.

He is obviously having some sort of psychological crisis and security is quick in arriving and coaxing him down. He seems pretty harmless, but it’s school holidays and the place is packed with families and teens who wouldn’t normally be there this time of day mid-week so there’s a lot of kids looking a bit scared.

Security is successful and he is coaxed down and escorted away — hopefully to be met by an ambulance so he can get some assistance — and everyone starts to get back to what they were doing prior to the excitement.

Cue an irate woman who starts yelling at the staff because her food is taking too long to be ready. She actually folds her arms and stomps her foot and demands that her food be ready “right this instant or corporate will be informed.”

Honestly, how self-absorbed are people?!