Our state no longer has a mask mandate, and customers are returning in droves. Since it’s taking us a while to rehire after “The Great Resignation”, our customers are waiting in line for a bit longer than they might have been used to before the lockdowns. An angry customer gets to the front of the line.

Customer: “I have been timing you, and I have been in line for six minutes! Six minutes!“

Me: “Yes, we have been working very hard to keep up with the pent-up customer demand for coffee since fully reopening. We ask our customers to be patient during this time.” 

Customer: “What… That’s it?!”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Customer: “I’m not getting my coffee for free for being made to wait?!”

Not much of a customer if they’re getting coffee for free, but whatever…

Me: “I’m afraid we can’t do that.”

Customer: “Well, you just lost a customer!” 

Me: “Oh, wow! Thank you so much! We have way too many customers lately, and we’ve been barely able to keep up! I really appreciate your sacrifice. Thank you!” 

Customer: “No, wait, I—”

Me: *To my manager* “[Manager], this amazing customer has said she’s not coming back! She’s taking one for the team!” 

Manager: “Really? That’s so kind of you, ma’am. We need all the help we can get since we have so many customers now; we do need to start shedding a few.”

Customer: “No, you’re not getting it! I’m not happy! I’m—”

Manager: “I understand, ma’am. We’re not happy, either. We’ve had months after months of unprecedented customer increases since reopening, and to be honest, losing your custom isn’t really going to make a dent against such staggering growth, but every little helps, so—”

Customer: “Stop it! I am not coming back because you’re not treating me like a loyal customer! I am not doing it as a favor to you!”

Manager: “You had to wait in line for a few minutes longer than usual, and you’ve decided that warrants never coming back? I don’t think that’s a very good definition of ‘loyal’, but either way, we appreciate you choosing a competitor from now on. Thank you, and bye-bye!”

Customer: *Screeching* “You’re all a**holes!” *Storms out*

Manager: “No, we’re all overworked a**holes. Okay, that sounded wrong…” 

Related:
When “Never Coming Back!” Comes Back To Haunt Them

I am sixteen years old and have just gotten my driver’s license. My parents have me run to the store to pick up some groceries. I stop by my friend’s house on the way back home for maybe five minutes to show him that I got my license and am out driving alone. It is a really fun moment in the life of a sixteen-year-old.

My stepmom freaks out.

Stepmom: “We did not give you permission to drive to [Friend #1]’s house! We told you to go to the store and that is all!”

Me: *To her and my dad* “You let me drive to [Friend #2]’s house yesterday, so I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

Stepmom: “You are not allowed to drive anywhere we do not give explicit permission for you to drive to. Period, end of sentence. Just because you were allowed to do it previously, it does not ever give you permission another time. Ever.”

Fast forward three days. My thirteen-year-old stepsister has been a jerk to me all day, and I’m sick of her BS. She goes quiet for about thirty minutes and then comes out all sticky-sweet.

Stepsister: “Hey, [My Name], it’s time to take me to ballet.”

I have taken her to ballet three days a week since I got my license. It’s basically one of my chores. But I see my opportunity to say, “Screw you!” to all three of them at once.

Me: “Sorry, [Stepsister]. I’m not allowed to take you to ballet. The parents didn’t tell me to take you, and I don’t want to get in trouble!”

She screams, she cries, she begs, and she threatens. She calls her mom and leaves a message. She calls my dad and leaves a message. Just like Steve Miller says, “Time keeps on slippin’, into the future.” I’m not sure I’m brave enough to hang on to the bitter end and actually go through with it. I’m shaking, but I know I’ve got them dead to rights. There’s no call back from the parents, and the clock goes on past the start of [Stepsister]’s class.

[Stepmom] comes home, and [Stepsister] runs to meet her.

Stepmom: “[Stepsister], what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at ballet!”

I hear [Stepsister] tell her rendition of the story, leaving out how miserable she has been all day, and they go back and forth. [Stepmom] comes pounding down the hall and yells (as God is my witness):

Stepmom: “You just wait ’til your father gets home!”

I have to stifle a laugh because I never really believed people actually said that.

An hour later, Dad comes home, and BOTH [Stepmom] and [Stepsister] go running out to meet him and tell him how horrible I was. I wait in my room for the hammer to fall.

About ten minutes later, my dad calls down the hall:

Dad: “[My Name], would you please come here and talk to us?”

I walk out of my room.

Dad: “Well, [My Name], you did it.”

Me: “What do you mean, Dad?”

Dad: “You got us all, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it. Okay, let’s make this reasonable for everyone.”

And they did. They agreed that they were over the top. They recognized that [Stepsister] wasn’t always very nice to me, and they spoke to her about that. I was allowed to have reasonable freedom if I was driving somewhere since I had good grades and had never been in trouble.

I walked down the hall back to my room, my back to my parents, with the world’s biggest grin on my face.

My friend works at a call center. Today, she took a call from a manager who was struggling to get the Point Of Sale system connected to the Internet. At one point, the manager had to call an employee for help, and the first thing my friend heard when the three-way call connected was:

Employee: “Hey, since you’ve got me on the phone, I need to tell you that I haven’t been paid in a f*****’ week. I’m taking my check out of the register, and you’re gonna have to deal with that.”

My friend spent the next few minutes listening to a screaming match between them, unable to hang up since she was on a customer call. Eventually, the employee threatened a lawsuit.

Manager: “And how are you going to do that without any proof?”

Friend: “Um, just to remind you, this is a recorded line.”

Suddenly, the manager completely changed his attitude, becoming calm, polite, and apologetic. OF COURSE, the employee could take his paycheck out of the register, don’t even worry about it, nothing to be concerned over. While my friend legally had to tell them they were being recorded (and already had told the manager when he first called), she was glad she was there to butt in at that moment.

I worked as a parking lot attendant and cashier when I was sixteen. I pushed plastic carts all day, or I rang up people’s groceries.

I was halfway through my shift out in the sun getting carts when I decided to take a small break under the shade near the bench beside the front entrance of the store. I didn’t pay much attention to the few people in the area, but this very nice older Chinese lady struck up a conversation with me.

I was a bit stunned because it came out of nowhere. She started talking to me in a thick Chinese accent about my job and saying stuff like:

Customer: “You have a good job, and you earn good money.”

This weirded me out at first, but she kept the conversation going and talked about how in China, people would work out in the soybean fields and rice paddies only to get very little money at the end of the day.

I was taken on one amazing trip in this chat with this lady, and I still don’t understand why. To end this conversation, she said:

Customer: “You do a good job. Thank you.”

And with that, she kinda just walked away. I never saw her again, but I wish I had. Those words and that lady have stuck with me ever since. I’m sure I did a better job after that because it was very motivating to hear some positive feedback from customers for once!

I just started driving for a rideshare/food delivery company to make some extra cash. I live in a small town. It’s not so small that everyone knows each other, but it’s small enough that there isn’t much crime to speak of. But as a smaller female, I was still nervous about giving rides to people at night, because people in my town are heavy and frequent drinkers. I considered getting a dash cam as a safety precaution, but I didn’t have the money to invest in a good one just yet, and I felt like I probably wouldn’t need one, anyway.

Once I started getting the hang of rideshare driving, I felt more comfortable driving into the night a little bit, because I found that most people were just trying to get from Point A to Point B without incident, and I had some very fun conversations and interactions with most passengers.

However… there’s always one bad apple in the barrel, right?

I arrived at the pick-up destination for a rider one night, which was (I assume) his home, way on the outskirts of town, in the middle of nowhere, where it’s very dark. I didn’t pull fully into the driveway because I didn’t trust myself to back up all the way back onto the road in the dark (and snow), with sharp ditches on either side of the rural driveway, but I was completely off the road just fine.

My rider stumbled out of his house (uh-oh), and on his way to my car (staggering the whole way), he made dramatic sarcastic gestures to showcase how much of the driveway was there that I could have pulled into. Great.

He got in the car and immediately got on my case for not pulling as far into his driveway as he felt like I should have. I stated my reason for not doing so and began the navigation to his destination, which was to a bar back in town, about fifteen minutes away.

He looked at my navigation screen from the back seat.

Rider: “Oh… Are we going to [Bar]?!”

Me: “Yep, it looks like it.”

He clapped his hands like a child and squealed:

Rider: “Yay!”

Yeah, this guy was already fall-down drunk. He was slurring his words and acting drunkenly obnoxious and loud. I was annoyed but didn’t feel unsafe.

As I started driving, he called his friend to let him know he was on the way to the bar.

Rider: *On the phone* “Yeah, I’m on my way. Have you gotten kicked out yet?” *Pauses* “Well, don’t get kicked out. Get me a [Beer #1]. Oh! And get one for the [Rideshare] driver, too.”

Me: “I’m on the clock, sir. I can’t have a beer with you.”

He ignored me.

Rider: “Yeah, she wants a [Beer #2]. Yeah, that’s what she wants.” *Pauses* “You get a [Beer #1] for me and a [Beer #2] for the driver. Yep.”

I rolled my eyes but just stayed quiet. I’ve learned from experience that you can’t win an argument with someone that drunk. But then, he said this…

Rider: “Yeah, we’re gonna make babies! Haha! Yep! Me and the [Rideshare] driver are gonna make babies!” *Laughs obnoxiously*

Oh, God.

Once he got off the phone, my hope was that he was so drunk that he’d already forgotten he’d said that, or maybe he was just making a crass “guy joke” to seem cool to his friend.

Nope.

Rider: *To me* “So… we’re gonna do that, right?”

Me: *Playing dumb* “Do what, sir?”

Rider: “Make babies! You’ll make babies with me, right? I wanna make babies with you!”

Yes, I know I was within my rights to stop the car and kick him out right then and there. However, it was the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, and very cold outside. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to abandon a person this drunk in such circumstances. I was very annoyed and uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel like I was in danger, so I just figured I’d get him to the bar and that would be that.

Me: “No, sir, I’m afraid I’m spoken for.”

Rider: “Awww… d*** it. What’s his name?”

Me: “[Boyfriend].”

Rider: “Oh… Yeah, I can’t compete with [Boyfriend].”

Me: “No, you can’t.”

Rider: “He must have a huge d**k!” *Laughs obnoxiously*

Me: “He is a big dude — as in he benches 300 pounds, has muscles as big as my head, and could knock someone out with a single punch.”

This was actually true. My boyfriend has been on the bodybuilder path for a couple of years, and he is remarkably muscular and strong. And he used to do martial arts and never lost a match. He absolutely could have stomped this guy just by looking at him. Unfortunately, he’s a trucker and was at work at the time, about 200 miles away. I had activated the “share my ride” feature in the app the second I’d seen my rider stumbling to the car, so my boyfriend was aware of my location. I had told him that I would activate that if I ever felt nervous on a ride, so in some way, he was “there” with me.

Rider: “Oh. Well, if you ever get tired of him, you call me! Then we can make babies!”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Rider: “So, your boyfriend has a huge d**k. I have a small d**k, but I can still make you laugh!”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Rider: “We can have a good time together, even though I have a small d**k. I can make you laugh, and we can have a good time.”

I tried to change the subject.

Me: “I hope your friend didn’t get kicked out of the bar.”

Rider: “If he did, you’ll just drive us to another bar, right? And come and drink with us, and then drive us to the next bar!” *Obnoxious laugh*

Me: “No, sir, I won’t do that.”

Rider: “Awww, come on! We’ll have fun together. Hey! You’ll call me when you break up with your boyfriend, right?”

Cripes…

I finally got to the bar and parked on the street to let him out. He took an annoyingly long time to exit my car.

Me: “Okay, sir, here we are. You have a good night, okay?”

Rider: *Not leaving the car* “Hey… hey… If you and your boyfriend don’t work out, you’ll call me, right? We’ll have a good time.”

I just wanted him out of my car.

Me: “Sure. Have a good night, sir.”

Rider: “Hey! Will you be my driver when I leave?”

Me: “If you call for a [Rideshare] and I’m still on duty, maybe.”

Not a chance, my dude.

Rider: “Oh, I hope so. Hey, you call me, okay?”

He finally opened the car door to leave.

Me: “Have a good night.”

I watched him cross the street to the bar and immediately rated him one star in the app, citing “Disrespectful, Conversation, and Other” as the reasons for my rating. I clocked out of the app and went home. That had done me in for the night.

Once I got home, I called my boyfriend and told him what happened. Though my boyfriend is an excellent fighter and enormous (muscle-wise), he’s a gentle giant and not violent in any way, nor does he have a temper, so I knew telling him about this guy wasn’t going to send him on an “I’m gonna find him and kick his a**!” rampage. He simply sighed heavily listening to my ordeal and agreed that this guy was totally out of line, and he said he thought I handled it well.

Then, I went back into the [Rideshare] app and officially reported the rider for sexual harassment. The help team responded a little while later saying that he had absolutely violated the Community Guidelines, and they temporarily suspended his account.

I was fairly certain that was an isolated event… but I did buy a dash cam the next day.