I am driving to work, and another car breaks a whole range of laws at an intersection. Long story short, I end up with a huge dent on the side of my car and a snapped-off mirror. I’m about to get out of the car to swap insurance details, but the driver of the other car screeches away once they’ve composed themselves.

“Great,” I think. “Just what I needed.”

I get to the fast food place where I work and start taking orders. Later in the day, the planets align for me, as a very recognizable yellow SUV pulls into the parking lot. I even notice the slight dent on the vehicle from where it collided with mine.

A stereotypical soccer mom type steps out of the car, yammering on her phone (gee, it’s a wonder she didn’t have an accident!), and walks into the store.

Customer: *Still on her phone call* “I’ll have a [chicken sandwich meal].”

Me: “Do you have a rewards account with us?”

Customer: *Between her call and me* “No, what’s that?”

Me: “Oh, it allows you to get discounts on meals with us. All we need is your phone number and your email, and the first meal is on the house.”

Customer: “Sweet! Sign me up!”

I wrote down her details, and off she went with her free meal. I might have had to pay for her meal out of my pocket, but my insurance company is going to be charging her a lot more when I pass on her details along with her license plate number!

I have a large table to serve at the end of the night. They’re a little needy, but mostly okay… except for one guy. He’s the guy who’s so sure he’s the funniest in any room and so keeps being obnoxious. He is making jokes at my expense; they’re not hurtful or rude per se, but obviously, he doesn’t care how I feel about it and knows, as a server, I can’t really say anything.

Near the end of the meal, everything has been going well, but he’s kept up his schtick. They’re talking among their group, and “Funny Guy” says while pointing at me:

Customer: “Oh, I bet the jester hates us! Am I right?!”

Me: “No, sir. I love all my tables — some when they sit down and others when they leave, but I love them all.” 

Everyone at the table laughed. Then, a few seconds in, as they realized that I might be talking about them, it turned to nervous laughter. 

The schtick ended after that.

I work in a hotel. It baffles me that so many random people walk in and say they would like an upgrade. It doesn’t work like that. We don’t just give free upgrades to anyone who asks. We don’t even randomly upgrade the [Rewards Program] members. If we make a mistake with your room or reservation, we’ll ask if it’s okay to upgrade you. If we accidentally overbook a certain room type, then we’ll offer someone an upgrade. If something in your room is not functioning and it doesn’t represent the standards we keep, we’ll upgrade you. If it’s a slow night and we know you’re having a hard time, (e.g., you had a car accident, you’re escaping domestic violence, you unexpectedly lost someone close to you, etc.), we’ll quietly ask if it’s okay to upgrade you.

Sometimes, third parties upgrade people without asking them first, and I’m the one who has to take the s*** when they don’t want that room. Sometimes, (a lot of the time), third parties literally just lie to people. And sometimes, people are entitled bungholes. Even worse are the entitled bungholes who book using third parties. That’s the type of person this story is about.

It’s a very busy night. We are completely booked and have no rooms left to sell. [Guest] comes in around 9:30 pm having booked a pet-friendly single room (one queen bed) as a prepaid, nonrefundable reservation made through a third-party booking site.

Guest: “My name is [Guest], and I’ll take a free upgrade, thanks.”

And then, she just keeps going through her purse as if she didn’t just say some entitled s***. That ain’t how it works, ma’am. I blink at her a few times until she looks up.

Me: “I’m sold out. There aren’t any other rooms available to upgrade you to.”

Guest: “Well, [Booking Site] told me I could book this room and then ask for an upgrade when I got here, and you’d give it to me.”

Did they now? I can’t say whether they did or not. To be honest, it could go either way; I can see [Booking Site] doing that s***, and I can also see [Guest] making that up. Let me also say that if you book through a third party, we aren’t giving you an upgrade unless something in your room is seriously messed up and another room of that same type isn’t available. If you book a prepaid, nonrefundable reservation, I can’t put you in any other room type anyway. When thinking about who to upgrade, we cross off third-party reservations first.

Me: “Ma’am, even if I did have a room to give you, I wouldn’t be able to switch you because you booked a prepaid nonrefundable reservation, and I’m not able to edit those in that way.”

Guest: “But [Booking Site] said you would give me an upgrade!”

Well, [Booking Site] lied to you, bro.

Me: “Like I said, this is the room you booked. I’m all sold out and I can’t change your reservation.”

Guest: “Well, what am I supposed to do now? Huh? I have my kids and husband with me, and we can’t all sleep in a single room!!”

Okay, then don’t BOOK a single room for your whole family and assume I’ll give you another one for free when you show up. The entitlement! I can’t believe I have to say this, but if you’re traveling with your whole family, you need to book a room that accommodates YOUR WHOLE FAMILY.

Me: “That’s up to you. I can bring some extra pillows and blankets if you’d like, and I think I still have a rollaway available if you want that.”

[Guest] primarily speaks another language, so she has trouble understanding what I mean by a rollaway. I try using a few synonyms (cot, portable bed, etc.) and describing it, but she’s not getting it. That’s fine; I deal with language barriers on the daily with this job. Meanwhile, her two daughters are standing a bit behind her while this is all going down, and the older one — probably about ten or eleven — steps in to translate for her, which is super helpful.

Guest: “That’s not acceptable! I want to be upgraded!”

Me: “That’s the best I can do. Bottom line. Would you like the rollaway bed I offered?”

[Guest] starts to take a breath, but her daughter interrupts her and says yes.

Me: *To the daughter* “Sounds good. I’ll bring it to your room when I have a minute.”

And then I finished checking them in.

It’s pretty bad when your ten-year-old kid is more reasonable than you are.

I told my manager about it, and she checked the cameras. I thought [Guest] was just going to have four people in the room. My manager told me she counted nine people going into that room. She said, “Holy s***, it was like a clown car; all these people kept packing in there. All I could think was, ‘Yep, that’s a fire hazard.’”

Insane. People, book the room you need. Don’t walk in and expect us to give you a free upgrade. A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.

I’m not sure what’s relevant or not to this story, but in case it’s relevant, I am a big guy; I am about 6’6″ and rather muscular. I work outside all day, so while I am white, I’m pretty darkly tanned, so sometimes people mistake me for different ethnicities. 

My wife and I recently moved into a new apartment. One Saturday morning, she leaves to go run some errands for a few hours, so I am home alone doing some odds-and-ends chores. I leave my apartment to go downstairs and collect our mail only to find it hasn’t been delivered yet, and when I return, I realize I have locked myself out. I guess the coffee hasn’t kicked in because I didn’t grab my keys, and because I was just going to the mailbox, I have no wallet, phone, or anything else.

I decide to sit down in the hallway and wait for my wife to come back. While I’m sitting there, after about fifteen minutes, the apartment manager from the new management company comes by. I have never met him before. 

Manager: “Hey, uh, can I help you?” 

Me: “Not really. I locked myself out, so I’m just waiting for my wife to get back.”

Manager: “Well, you sitting in the hallway is making some people uncomfortable.”

Me: “I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not bothering anyone, and I don’t have any way to contact my wife to meet somewhere, so I’m just waiting here quietly.” 

Manager: “Look. We’ve gotten a number of complaints, and I really need you out of the hallway. How about this?” 

He goes to unlock the apartment door. 

Me: “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Are you going to unlock the apartment?” 

Manager: “Well, yeah. You said you were locked out. This way, you get out of the hallway, and people stop complaining.”

Me: “I haven’t shown you any ID or any records of any kind. Heck, I don’t even have a piece of mail with the address on it. Would you really let anyone into the apartment just because they said they lived there?”

Manager: “…”

After that, he just left. Once my wife got home, she let me in, and between the overly-trusting apartment manager and the under-trusting neighbors, I think we will be starting the apartment hunt again.

I teach at a small one-building school district. The bookkeeper, who is in charge of all the district’s financial records, is a piece of work.

She sends out the W-2 (an American form for filing your taxes). Two weeks later, she sends an email:

Bookkeeper: “I did the W-2s wrong. Use the updated form I’m sending out.”

Guess who the schmuck was who filed his taxes immediately?

Later:

Me: “Why is my paycheck about half of what it should be?”

Bookkeeper: “Oh, I forgot to withhold something in your last few checks, so I took it all out of this one.”

It never occurred to her that this would be inconvenient for me or that she should warn me. Fortunately, the principal decides that maybe I should gradually pay back the money over several paychecks rather than all at once.

Later:

Me: “Are you still putting money from my paycheck into my annuity? It looks like it stopped.”

Bookkeeper: “Oh, yeah. You needed to sign up again when you switched positions.”

Me: “That was months ago! Why didn’t you say something?”

Bookkeeper: *Huffily* “I was in this office for the entire summer. If you had come in once, I would have talked to you.”

Me: “I taught summer school. I was here literally every day for a month.”

Later, I marry a fellow teacher who starts working in my district. She gets her first pay stub.

Wife: “Wow, this teaching gig sure pays well!”

No, it doesn’t. The bookkeeper accidentally included the school nurse’s salary in my wife’s deposit. Because the money is in our account, we are the ones who have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get it to the nurse.

Later, I change districts, but my wife stays. One day, she calls me in tears. The bank has called us saying the checks we paid our bills with are bouncing. When I find out why, I call the bookkeeper myself. (My wife, who is pregnant at the time, is too upset.)

Me: “I understand that you gave [Wife] a physical paycheck last cycle?”

Bookkeeper: “That is correct. I put it in her mailbox.”

Me: “Well, for the past two years, her paycheck was automatically deposited.”

Bookkeeper: “I had to write a physical check because of [some screw-up on her part, which was the result of another screw-up on her part].”

Me: “Well, she assumed the envelope was just the receipt — like it has been every time. She never opened it and assumed her check had been deposited.”

This is in the early 2000s, before online banking is commonplace.

Bookkeeper: “Well, someone needs to take responsibility for checking those things.”

Me: “Yes, someone does, since it sure as heck ain’t you.”

The district authorized another check, and the bank didn’t penalize us for the overdrafts.

The bookkeeper later retired.