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

Like all hotels, we have a lost and found system because people leave things behind all the time. The item is bagged, labeled, and sorted into a storage box based on the floor it was found on, and then the information is written in a binder so we have an easy way to know exactly what’s in our lost and found bins. I’ll abbreviate Lost & Found as “L&F” for the sake of brevity.

We keep L&F items for ninety days. If they’re not claimed by that time, they become the property of the hotel and are typically claimed by whichever housekeepers wants them. If no one wants the items, they are thrown out. The number one items left behind are phone chargers. Most people don’t bother calling and asking for them to be returned, so after ninety days, they get put in a drawer in the office for the employees to use and to lend out to any guest who has forgotten their own charger.

[Guest] comes in with her husband. I greet them and start checking them in and everything.

Me: “Oh! I’m sorry. What was it?”

Guest: “A phone charger.”

I try looking up her last reservation, but for some reason, the system ain’t havin’ it. Name, phone number, email address — nothing I search is bringing up any results.

Me: “Do you remember the room number or the dates you stayed?”

Guest: “No, but I spoke to the manager on the phone multiple times when I first left it here. He said he’d ship it back to me, but it never arrived.”

Me: “Well, I’m sorry, but nothing is coming up in my search results right now. I can look a bit harder later on when we aren’t so busy.”

Guest: “It’s very unprofessional for you to not have any record of our last stay.”

Lady… obviously, we do have a record, but it’s hard to find when the name isn’t turning up results and I don’t know what date or room number you stayed.

Me: “I understand, and I’ll do my best to find it when I have a few minutes. I can call you when I find something, okay?”

She goes to her room, but not ten minutes later, she calls the desk to ask me if I’ve found her reservation yet. My sister in Christ, I haven’t even had a chance to breathe yet.

Me: “No, but I’ll call you when I do.”

Guest: “Could you just physically go to the lost and found and look through everything to see if you can find my charger?”

Ma’am, what in the f***…

Me: “Do you remember what room you were in last time or what date you stayed?”

She half-scoffs, half-laughs.

Guest: “No! Of course not! You don’t need that information to find my charger!”

Me: “Well, that’s how our lost and found is organized, so I either need that or I need to see your reservation, which I haven’t had a chance to find yet.”

Guest: “Can you search by my rewards number?”

Me: “Yes, but I’ve already tried that.”

Guest: “No, no, no. My old rewards number from my old phone number.”

Why, no, that didn’t cross my mind. She reads it off to me, and her reservation pops right up. And I don’t know what I expected, but it sure wasn’t a reservation from February 5th. It’s November. I stare at it and blink for a second, wondering if she is kidding me.

Me: “It looks like your last stay was on February 5th. Does that sound correct?”

Guest: “Yes! That’s it!”

Me: “Oh, that was nine months ago…”

Guest: “I know that. I told you I spoke to your manager multiple times, and he promised to ship it back, but he never did.”

Me: “I, uh… Let me check our L&F log real quick. Please hold.”

I go back and look at our L&F binder, and there isn’t even anything logged in there — not a single phone charger on that day or the next. This also means that the manager wouldn’t have sent anything back because nothing was found in the first place.

I pick up the phone again and tell her.

Guest: *Angrily* “You need to actually go back to your lost and found and look through everything to make sure!”

Me: “There’s nothing documented about you leaving a charger behind. And even if you did, we get rid of items after ninety days.”

Guest: “You’re telling me you threw out my personal property? That you just get rid of things like that? That’s irresponsible, unprofessional, and disrespectful to the person whose property it is. You should be keeping things until people come back for them.”

Yeah, sure, [Guest], because who knows when Gertrude IV might call and demand to have her toenail clippings from two years ago returned. It’s not feasible to keep all L&F items forever.

Me: “I understand, but that’s our policy here. I can pass this on to the manager who will be here tomorrow morning if you’d like.”

Guest: “I’d like for you to go look for my phone charger.”

Me: “I sa—” *Sighs* “Is it a regular iPhone charger?”

Guest: “Yes, it’s an iPhone charger.”

Me: “Well, I’ll give you another one if you want to stop by the desk sometime today.”

Guest: “Fine. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

I pull one out of our drawer, make sure it is clean, and wait for her to come down. I think this will be the end of it. But alas…

I give the charger to her, and she stands there lecturing me.

Guest: “This whole situation is so unprofessional! You’re all so irresponsible! I will be speaking to your manager about this in the morning!”

I text my manager a heads-up so he doesn’t end up ambushed unexpectedly by this woman in the morning.

Sure enough, the next morning, the guest comes down to talk to someone. My manager tells her the same thing I did last night. After this lady yells at her some more, [Manager] goes and gets our L&F binder and drops it on the counter.

Manager: “Look, see the dates here? There’s no mention of any charger found on those dates.”

Guest: “But I spoke to a man who said he’d ship it to me!”

[Manager] goes and gets the general manager.

General Manager: “Ma’am, I’m the only man who works here, and I didn’t speak to you about shipping a charger.”

Guest: “Well, you’re not the man I talked to! It was a different man!”

General Manager: “I’m the only man who works here. Didn’t the agent from last night give you another charger?”

Guest: “Yes, she did. But that’s not the point! This entire staff is handling this extremely unprofessionally. You’re all unprofessional, rude, and disrespectful. I didn’t want to have to write a bad review, but I can see that I’ll have to.”

Manager: “That’s fine, ma’am. Have a nice day!”

The guest left, but I can guarantee you that she did not have a nice day.

I can’t wait to read her review. That’ll be worth a good laugh.

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 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.