This happened six or seven years ago when I worked in a grocery store. I worked in a department that prepared premade hot and cold meals. One of our most popular products was rotisserie chicken, which sold out very quickly on a busy day.

One Friday in particular, I was working the closing shift and a customer walked up to the counter.

Me: “Hi, how can I help you?”

Customer: “Hi. I’ll have a rotisserie chicken.”

Me: “Oh, I’m really sorry, sir, but we just sold our last one not too long ago, and we won’t be making more for tonight.”

Customer: “What do you mean, there are no more?! It’s not even 6:00 pm yet!”

Me: “Again, I’m sorry, but unfortunately—”

Customer: *Cutting me off* “You’ve ruined my supper! What am I going to do now?! What are you going to do for me now?!”

His face was super red and angry.

Me: “Next time, you can call in advance to reserve—”

This man gave a death stare and, without even blinking, proceeded to THROW HIS HAND-HELD BASKET ABOUT FIFTEEN FEET IN THE AIR!

Before the basket had even dropped back down, he started storming off out of the store. Then, a split second later, the basket fell into a display nearby; thankfully, it didn’t fall on someone. I simply heard him angrily mumble a few words while walking out of the store.

Man, I don’t miss retail work; people can go from 0 to 100 in an instant.

I’ve been working at a hotel for about two years. I learned to work all shifts, so there are nights that I work as an auditor (overnight shift). We’re also a hotel that receives distressed passengers from the local international airport, which is where some (not all by a long shot) of our most insane customers come from.

This happened to me on my audit shift, and I’m still wondering what is wrong with some people.

I sign in and run my reports. My shuttle driver is heading back with a few people who’ve been stranded due to the weather, so I set aside some rooms and wait.

Five people get off the shuttle. The first four are normal; they’re tired from waiting for a flight but for the most part pleasant and nice to deal with. The fifth is staggering back and forth and muttering to herself. Everyone in the lobby is trying to stay as far away from her as humanly possible, which is my clue that this last person is going to be… “fun.”

I check in the fourth guest and greet the fifth.

Me: “Hello, how may I help you?”

She stands there for about a minute with her mouth open and walks closer to the front desk, where I am barraged by the smell of alcohol. She stands there for another minute staring at me before she finally slurs out:

Guest: “I need a room. G**d***ed airport sent me here.”

Me: “Okay, ma’am, did they give you a letter for a discounted rate?”

A little FYI: unless it’s a mechanical failure or a staffing problem, the airlines will NEVER give out a hotel voucher; they’ll give you a distressed rate that’s approximately 20 to 30% cheaper than the regular rate.

Guest: *Still staring at me* “Yes.”

Me: “I need that letter, an ID, and a credit card for check-in.”

Guest: “What? Why d’you need that for?”

Me: “Well, this letter gives you a discounted rate, so I need your credit card for the cost of the room and your ID to prove that it is your credit card.”

Guest: “Fine!”

She starts rummaging through her ginormous purse, throwing all kinds of stuff all over the place.

She then stops mid-toss.

Guest: “I need to use the bathroom. Where’s the g**d***ed bathroom at?”

Me: “I can make you a key to use one of our bathrooms and give you directions to it.”

I make a key for it, point her down the hallway to where the two bathrooms are, and hand it to her.

Guest: “Gimme the key!”

The drunkard tries to swipe it out of my hand and misses twice before grabbing the key and staggering down the hall toward the bathroom.

While she’s out of the lobby, I pick up all of the crap that she pulled out of that cavernous bag of hers and pile it together so she can shove it back into her bag when she gets back. Five minutes pass before she comes back to the front office, and she’s swearing louder and louder as she’s walking toward me.

Guest: “There’s no g**d***ed bathroom down there! I gotta go, and there’s no bathroom down there, just two doors!”

Me: “Yes, ma’am, those doors are the entrance to the bathrooms. You use the key to open them.”

Guest: “I don’t have time for this! Gimme a room! I gotta go!”

Me: “Okay, I need your ID and credit card for check-in.”

Guest: “You’re not getting s*** until I go to the bathroom! Now gimme a room!”

Me: “Well then, ma’am, I suggest that you take the key that I made you and use one of the bathrooms down the hall because I can’t check you into a room without some sort of payment.”

Now, this is where it goes straight to crazy town.

She stands there for a couple of seconds, and then she unbuttons and takes down her pants and proceeds to evacuate both ends all over the lobby floor.

As she’s crouching there, I dial 911.

Thank whatever hotel deities are out there that the cops walk through that door as she is still relieving herself. They cuff her and walk her out the front door as she’s screaming.

Guest: “That stupid c*** has all my s***! She’s gonna steal my identity! She doesn’t even know where the f****** bathroom is!”

I called my maintenance guy to get the bio cleaners, filed a report with the police, and bagged the pile that I had put together.

The officer informed me that they did find her ID (which she was accusing me of stealing) and were going to put her in the drunk tank until she sobered up.

All I had to do then was help clean up the whole mess she had left. Fortunately, my maintenance guy helped, and I was able to run the audit without any more problems.

One of my high school jobs is working at a large retail chain pharmacy company. I do just about everything at the store except manager duties and running the one-hour photo machine; you need to be eighteen to use it.

One summer day, I’m working at the front cash register and things are just normal, no big rushes, no problematic customers, just a dull, humdrum day.

As I’m up front ringing up a couple of customers, I see a local man come in. This regular customer comes in a few times a month when the weather is nice. This regular, I’m told (and from what I can tell from a few interactions with him) is not all there mentally. I’m told he’s around forty years old and, due to bad head trauma from a motorcycle accident when he was around twenty, he now basically has the mentality of an eight-year-old. He gets around on his pedal bike and he’s very nice, but he’s not much of a conversationalist.

He comes in every now and then when the weather is nice for biking, and he usually pays for some kind of snack or drink. I don’t know what just transpired back by the one-hour photo counter; all I know is that I am helping a customer and, all of a sudden, the regular comes running through the store and toward the front door in a full-on sprint. He’s running as fast as he can, and I can see he’s holding a couple of items in his hands, but I can’t make out what they are as he dashes past me.

The front entrance doors are sliding automatic doors; you walk on the floor mat and the pressure sensor in the mat triggers the door to slide open. The regular is moving so fast that the doors don’t have time to trigger and open, so he just puts his shoulder down and barrels through them! The doors are designed to swing open on hinges. He runs through the doors so hard that he almost knocks the doors off the hinges, and he continues running through the parking lot to where he parked his bike. 

I am standing there, not sure what is going on and not sure what to do. I look to my right and the store manager is walking up to the front to fix the doors, and he is laughing.

I ask the manager if the guy stole that stuff, and my manager is still laughing as he is fixing the doors.

Manager: “No. He didn’t steal anything. He was very excited about the kite he just bought because he really wanted to get outside in the nice weather and fly it. I’ve never seen someone so excited before to fly a kite.”

My manager couldn’t stop laughing as he walked away back toward the photo counter.

 I work for one of many self-employable delivery apps that deliver food for various restaurants.

On this particular day, I have gotten assigned two orders that are relatively close to each other. I pick up the first order and get the second, too. The first order, of course, gets dropped off first. It takes me about ten minutes to get to the first address and drop off the order, but I can’t drop it off immediately since I have to hand it to the customer. This takes an additional five minutes since it takes them forever to answer the door. Once that has been completed, I am on the way to the next address.

I get to the next house to drop off this order, and this one also requests that I hand it directly to the customer. I knock on the door and a lady answers. She has this look on her face like I just kicked a puppy or something. She crosses her arms.

Lady: “Took you long enough! We saw you go all over the place except here to drop our food off. Care to explain?”

I am kind of shocked, but using my best customer service voice, I reply:

Me: “Sorry, ma’am. I was assigned two orders, and I was instructed to take the first order first since it was closer, I assume. If there is an issue, you can contact [Delivery App] support and they can try to work with you.”

She is not happy about this.

Lady: “I want my order remade, and I want it for free, or I’ll call the restaurant and have you fired!”

She has been very rude to this point and I really don’t want to help her further.

Me: “Ma’am, I don’t work for the restaurant. I am an independent contractor. I am so sorry, but there is nothing I can do.”

After that statement, she becomes irate. She starts to clap her hands.

Lady: “Okay. You wait right here. I got something for you.”

I decide it’s time to leave. Before I can completely get off the front porch, her husband comes out! He is at least six feet tall, and he starts to scream at me to hold it right there.

Now, for further context, I have trained in multiple martial arts and self-defense for years. I hear this man come out and yell, and I immediately turn to face him because you never want someone who is potentially aggressive to have your back. I am still backing up, but now I have turned to face him, only feet away.

He starts advancing toward me, screaming.

Man: “You are going get us our f****** refund or else!”

I reply with the same statement I told the lady, but in a softer tone to attempt to de-escalate this man. As I am in mid-sentence, he pushes me back hard. As soon as he pushes me, my instincts and training kick in. As I regain my footing (I didn’t get knocked down), I square my stance and put my hands up to my face in case he tries to swing at me. I start to yell back at the guy and order him not to get any closer or put his hands on me. (This is my warning.)

He then throws a wild punch which I slip back with a lean, and then I counter with a front kick to his stomach. This lands flush, confirmed by a notable “Oof” sound. He folds slightly, exposing his face, so I followed up with a one-two as trained. After eating a one-two, he falls to one knee. I move back slightly to disengage and tell him to stay down so I can leave. (Once again, you never just turn your back on an aggressor.)

He gets up, red in the face. He screams at me again.

Man: “F*** YOU! I’LL KILL YOU!”

And he attempts to charge me. He throws another wild punch and another. I eat one but slip and duck under the second to get around to his back. From here, I attempt to wrestle him down. He keeps trying to punch me and even elbows me once in the face before I am able to trip him and take him down. I do my best to pin him, but I’m not successful until he rolls toward me and I mount him. He is mad!

Man: “I will f****** kill you! Get the f*** off me!”

He tries to bench-press me off of him and almost gets up a couple of times. He is strong!

Me: “I’m not getting off of you until you calm down!”

Now, he starts to punch, scratch, and bite me. In response, I give a good couple of hammer fists to get him to cover up, and once he does, I get higher on his chest to pin his arms above his head. We remain there until the cops come.

Once they arrive, they order me off him and PUT ME IN CUFFS! I am put in a squad car until a cop comes to get my statement and asks me what happened.

Me: “They wanted a refund, and I couldn’t give it to them since I’m just a [Delivery App] driver.”

Cop: “The lady here called and said you threatened her and that you were assaulting her husband on their front lawn. Do you have any way to prove your side?”

Lucky for me, I have a dash cam in my car, and I left the windows down. The cam caught some of the action from the front door on video and the rest caught audio of the man demanding a refund and threatening me, me telling him to back off, some audio of the struggle, him telling me he was going to kill me, and even me telling him to calm down.

Apparently, a neighbor across the street had a doorbell camera, and it also captured the incident with video and some audio.

The cops then let me go. They got my information and told me that my story seemed straight. I pressed charges against the man and was told by the cops they would call me if they had more questions.

I also reported them to [Delivery App] and included a copy of the police case number from the record in my county. That should be sufficient to get them banned.

Related:
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 32
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 31
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 30
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 29
On The Need For Hazard Pay, Part 28

I am working the opening shift at [Pizza Chain] with two other people. It’s around 10:40 am, so we are putting everything in the oven so we can open at 11:00. Hearing a knock at the door, I look up from cutting a pizza and see a woman teetering in front of the door with two small children next to her. I notice her parked car taking up two spots before noticing we still have fifteen minutes before we opened. The assistant manager is a stickler for the rules, so he tells us to not let the person in until we open. I’m fine with that since we don’t have anything ready.

Cut to 11:00 when I go to unlock the door before taking the register. The lady and her two kids enter. The kids run to the table in the corner, while the lady stumbles to the counter. I can now smell the alcohol emanating from her, and I solve the mystery of the parking situation. She orders a couple of pizzas and breadsticks — nothing too fancy. I proceed to give her the food, and as I hand it to her, she blurts out that she wants to talk to the manager.

Knowing something is about to go down, I proceed to get him and return to the oven. Nothing is coming out, giving me plenty of time to listen to the conversation between them — not that it’s hard, as the woman immediately starts screaming at my manager.

Woman: “You didn’t open on time! You were supposed to open at 10:30!”

I guess she knows our schedule better than we employees.

Woman: “And my food took way too long to make!”

We serve Hot-n-Ready pizzas, so as soon as I got the money in the register, I turned around and grabbed the food.

The manager is trying to calm down the drunk woman, who is threatening to call the police now. He is halfway through a plea before being cut off by the woman, belting out what will become his future nickname:

Woman: “YOU OL’ [RACE] B*****D!”

She stormed out of the place, leaving the food with the kids still sitting at the table. She walked back in a few minutes later, now carrying a paintball gun she had grabbed from her van.

The other coworker and I had made our way to the back of the store to burst out in laughter. The manager was still standing at the register, in a combined state of confusion and anger. The fun was only beginning.

Upon seeing the paintball gun, the manager asked me to call the police. However, the police were already pulling up. Apparently, while the woman was grabbing her paintball gun, she actually did call the police. The officer made his way into the store and took a look around, noticing the drunk woman in the corner of the store with a paintball gun and two kids, the manager at the register slowly turning red, and two employees stifling laughter.

The officer tried to get both sides of the story. The manager calmed down and told him our side of it. However, the woman was arguing with us the entire time. By now, the officer could smell her new perfume, Eaux de Jack Daniels, and gave her a breathalyzer. Five minutes later, she was being carried out of the store in handcuffs.