This guy walks up to the desk.

Me: “Hello. Checking in?”

Guest: “No. I need a new key.”

I didn’t recognize the guest, so I went to look up his reservation. His name did not match what was on the reservation.

Me: “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make you a key due to you not being on the reservation.”

He flipped his s***. He also paid cash; there wasn’t an email or phone number on file, so there was no way that I could verify information. We did have a copy of his ID, so I thought that was interesting. He kept saying how ridiculous it was, because he was definitely in the room, cameras could prove that, and I needed to call my manager because he had things to do.

I start dialing my manager’s number, and he backtracks.

Guest: “Actually, don’t. I was going to check out early today anyway, so don’t even bother. I’ll just come back tomorrow for my refund.”

Me: *Continues dialing.* “Okay.”

Guest: “Didn’t you just hear what I said? Why are you calling your manager?!”

Me: “…because I can?”

As soon as she picks up, he starts yelling over me and demands to speak to her.

My manager explains that it’s a safety issue due to his not being on the reservation, and once they’re done “investigating,” they will reach back out to him as far as reimbursement.

She could barely get that out, though, because he kept cutting her off about a refund and tossed the phone back to me and left.

Manager: *To me.* “Cancel the reservation and check the room to see if it’s clean.”

While doing that, she called the previous front desk associate to see what had happened. 

Turns out, this guy is a regular who cheats on his wife. He goes the extra mile to call hours in advance and wants to be let in through the back door with his mistress to avoid being seen in the lobby with her. He pays cash every time, but for some reason, yesterday, he requested that my coworker change the name on his reservation. I don’t know why, but my coworker did it.

The room was definitely used. Trash on the desks, the bed was destroyed, towels and soaps were used, and the room smelled like straight a**. My manager kept saying she didn’t know what to do, and I told her that he needs to be charged just like any other day.

I looked up his previous reservations, and he’s only stayed for a few hours each time. Housekeeping left for the day, so the room couldn’t be flipped. He needs to be charged full price.

The next day, I found that the manager had left 35% of the room total attached to a post-it note with the guest’s name on it in the office. Apparently, it’s a partial refund due to the “inconvenience” yesterday.

WHAT INCONVENIENCE?!

Realistically, if he were honest about it instead of being a jack-a**, I would’ve just made the key, but what really p***ed me off about this is the fact that this is the third or fourth time that I’ve had a guest act wild while management is on the phone and can clearly hear what’s happening, but still chooses to side with the guest.

An old woman brings in an old photo.

Customer: “This is a picture of my husband and me and some friends on our front lawn during the summer of 1968.”

Me: “Wow, it’s a great photo. Were you looking at some restorative work?”

Customer: “No. I need you to rotate the photo so I can see behind us. See how my husband’s hand looks like it’s touching Sharon’s a**? He always says he wasn’t, but look at his face! You can tell that he is!”

Me: “Uh… ma’am. That’s impossible.”

Customer: “No, it’s not, because Sharon was a total hussy back in the day, and—”

Me: “—No, ma’am, I mean technically impossible. I can’t rotate the image.”

Customer: “Yes, you can! I saw you have all that AI stuff now, and you can do all sorts of things.”

Me: “Uh, yes, technology has advanced incredibly, I’ll give you that, but AI is just a… a guess, based on what’s already in the photo. It can’t reveal information that isn’t already there. It can only extrapolate on the information already present in the image.”

Customer: “So… you can’t do it?”

Me: “No, ma’am. If you can’t tell from the photo with absolute certainty that your husband is… uh…”

Customer: “Groping Sharon’s a**.”

Me: “…yes, that. If that’s not in the image already, then AI isn’t going to suddenly make it so.”

Customer: “Is there any computer thing that could?”

Me: “Only a time machine, ma’am.”

She sighs, leans forward, and then starts shouting into the ground.

Customer: “You hear that down there, you two?! I’m not giving up! I’m gonna wait until they invent a time machine and then I’ll be proven right, just you see!”

Our superstore has a photo lab. Back in the day, it was primarily One Hour Photo and developing, but these days it’s special prints, passport photos, and converting old film to digital.

An older lady asks me, handing me a photo album.

Customer: “These are pictures from my fortieth wedding anniversary. The film is inside the album sleeves.”

Me: “Did you want me to convert these to digital?”

Customer: “Yes, and also eliminate my sister.”

Me: “Sorry, what?”

Customer: “My sister is in a lot of the pictures. I don’t like her anymore. I want you to remove her from the pictures.”

Me: “Uh, we can’t do that, ma’am.”

Customer: “Sure, you can. I’ve seen it on the news. You have AI now. You can just tell it to take her out.”

All this talk of ‘eliminate’ and ‘take her out’ is getting a bit mafia for me.

Me: “Ma’am, I meant to say those are services we do not offer. I can only convert the images to digital as they are.”

Customer: “But it’s easy now! I saw it on the news. All you have to do is tell it to remove the cheating husband-stealing b****, and it’ll remove her like the waste of space she is.”

Me: “Uh… maybe that’s something you can try at home.”

Customer: “Oh, fine, I’ll just go for the regular service then.”

Me: “Of course, ma’am.”

Customer: “If you can’t remove my sister, you couldn’t ask it to replace my sister-f******-husband with Ryan Gosling, could you?”

Me: “…no, ma’am.”

Customer: “Ah, well. Worth a shot.”

You process a family’s photos, and they think you want to hear EVERYTHING that’s been happening.

Me: “Ma’am, can I help you?”

Customer: “What aisle is the truth serum in?”

Me: “Uh, we don’t have that.”

Customer: “So you don’t have any of that… sodium, uh… temperamental?”

I’m assuming she’s referring to sodium thiopental.

Me: “No, ma’am. That’s a controlled substance.”

Customer: “You got anything that’ll prove my man is cheating?”

Me: “I think that’s a bit outside our scope.”

Customer: “Do you sell tasers?”

Me: “Ma’am, maybe just talk to him?”

Customer: “I tried that! It didn’t work! Your store is useless!”

My high school algebra teacher asked me to hang back after class.

Teacher: “I’m convinced you cheated on the last test, so I’m failing you.”

Me: “What?! I didn’t cheat!”

Teacher: “You got almost every question correct, but you didn’t show any of your work. You must have copied the answers from somewhere. Tell me where.”

Me: “I did them in my head.”

Teacher: “What?!”

Me: “I did the algebra in my head.”

Teacher: “You can’t do algebra in your head.”

Me: “No, you can’t do algebra in your head.”

That was probably not the best response, but I was angry. I made a complaint to the principal, via my parents. When I demonstrated that I could complete a new algebra question in front of them without writing down my work, the teacher was forced to give me my passing grade.