Names are tough. How do our parents pick our names? I've heard that some parents choose the names of their children before they are even born. How does that work? I mean, I can like a name, and I can even believe that it is the perfect name for my unborn child… However, what happens if the child is born, and the name we have been daydreaming about for the past nine months simply doesn't seem as perfect anymore? Do I stick to the name just because I announced it in a grandiose name reveal to all…

Imagine you are sitting in an uncomfortable, old desk chair that needed to be replaced about 10 years ago, and instead of staring at the empty hotel lobby in front of you, you opt instead to play some Solitaire on your as equally old computer. You are just about stumped when your game is interrupted by a Karen who is on her way to interrupt your peace. She enters the lobby with a dramatic air about her, shouting words that you can't quite make out yet until she gets a bit closer. Anddddd, you h…

Working retail is the experience of permanently being wedged between a rock and a very angry place. The rock is the obstinate management structure above you that is setting and enforcing policies that make no sense—but that they refuse to change. On the other side are the perpetually angry customers who are often upset about those exact same policies. Unfortunately, you, the lowest-level employee, take the brunt of the customer's dissatisfaction, which then becomes management dissatisfaction as…

Quitting is like a game of peekaboo. Now you see me, now you don't… and once you see me less, or rather, when I hand in my two-week notice, it's all fair game. Unless your employer is decent, which, if you work at a food franchise in customer service, is rare, you are bound to hit a few obstacles. So, in this case, OP's boss hired a new worker, whom OP was told to train. That was all dandy until OP's boss began giving the new hire all of OP's hours. Then, afterwards, OP got super annoyed, becau…

This woman told a whopper of a lie, but she wasn't expecting to be called out . Customers learn their behaviors by reinforcement. While it might seem obvious to you to be pleasant to the person on the other end of a phone call , not everyone acts that way. Some folks have been conditioned to believe that the louder and more demanding they act towards customer service reps, the faster their problem will be solved. In reality, as call center workers will tell you, this is almost never the case. M…

Imagine how audacious you'd have to be to expect a free upgrade everywhere you go? Like if you were heading to the mechanic for a tire rotation and expected a full new set of tires. Or if you had coach tickets for your flight home for the holidays and Jeff Bezos just showed up to the tarmac insisting you take his private jet instead. Feels silly, huh?

Internet tutorials make DIY projects look like a walk in the park. Watching a sped-up video of a professional woodworker dismantling, staining, and rebuilding a piece of street furniture makes upcyclers green with envy, but whenever an amateur grabs the same set of tools, most people realize they're all thumbs.

This pool salesman has been on the job long enough to know that some customers can't be convinced to buy the products they need. Customers often like to think they know everything about a product just because they own it. In this case, the owner of a pool was pretty sure he knew everything he needed to know about his swimming pool. How hard could it be to maintain one little pool? All you have to do is fill it and empty it seasonally, and put in some chlorine or salt. Right? Surely there's noth…

This story is a peek into the a life of a DMV manager and her least friendly employee. If you've ever been to the DMV before, I'm so sorry. They're usually one giant room full of chairs and workers behind numbered desks. As a customer, you show up ready to renew a license or passport, and then it's time to wait. It's best to bring a book or a crossword puzzle and just expect that you may spend several hours there.

Is that you, Karen?

Usually once you've worked in the service industry, you learn how to be a good customer. Oftentimes, you'll learn how to respect your server, clean up after yourself, and generally be a half-decent human being while you're enjoying food at a restaurant. You'd think that it would be a natural reflex to be polite to the person handling your food supply, but for the disrespectful types, tormenting your server is a prize-winning sport.

You've probably heard about the “Ship of Theseus,” a paradoxical thought experiment that challenges you to question whether or not an object that has had all of its parts replaced is actually the same object anymore. Another variant of this is the "grandfather’s axe," which seeks to challenge whether or not an axe that has had its handle replaced and then later its head is really the same axe as it was before. Although not really quite the same philosophical question, I can't help but wonder… I…

Sometimes, the only way to deal with a Karen customer is to give them a taste of their own medicine. Here, we have a rare instance of a revenge tale that ends up having more of a wholesome ending. Who knew that getting payback could actually lead to positive change in your adversary's behavior? That's what this Redditor learned after they refused to let this regular customer get away with nonsense at the fast food restaurant where OP worked.

Everyone's stayed at a hotel or motel at least once in their life. The magical wonders of continental breakfasts, freshly made beds, and clean white towels get cemented in your memory, making your hotel experience (even the non-luxurious kind), memorable simply because it may be the one time in your life that you're pampered with room service. Your hotel experience is designed to go quite smoothly, that is, unless you're a poor listener and a tyrannical Karen...

Accusing a hotel front desk agent of fraud is probably not the best way to get them to help you. Remember: these are the people that can make your stay exponentially easier or exponentially more difficult. It's also worth noting that so much of this drama can be easily resolved if people remember to book their hotel stays directly on the hotel website rather than through a third-party site. The number of instances in which we have seen irate customers make this mistake through Internet stories…

Working in a call center is a pretty thankless gig. Constantly dealing with less-than-kind customers who are frustrated at your company's refusal to help them with their problem with your product—which to be fair, is a known issue that the company has deemed to be too expensive to resolve. So, now you're bearing the brunt of that frustration on a daily basis because your wage for 20 years still costs far less than paying R&D to fix the issue.